4. Research design and implementation of the project
4.1 Methodology
Working with the approaches of artistic research, I used my own artistic practice as the core working method, which is later analysed and discussed in relation to other literature.
The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research (2020) explains, that an artistic practice and reflection are used as methods in artistic research to generate knowledge, insight, understanding and skills (p.1). In this study, I noticed how all of these outcomes developed in an intricate manner during the artistic process. As knowledge on how to use my guitar for making ambient music started to emerge with the help of everyday practice of musical skills, a larger understanding of what affects the music making process began to foster insight into how all these different parts were interconnected and important for the process as a whole. The artistic outcomes then, in turn, may inspire new avenues for further exploration, insight, and revelation. As stated by Boeck (2021) artistic research is not only an analysis of the artistic process, but can work as a sensory medium to examine human subjects (including oneself), objects and contexts to incite reflection, amusement, disturbance or provocation.
The meaning of the music that my own artistic research produced, is completely open for listeners interpretation, as is usually the case with ambient music. I have merely provided my listeners a tangible working ground from which they can then unearth unique personal knowledge through their own way of listening. Julian Klein explains artistic knowledge as follows: ”Whether silent or verbal, declarative or procedural, implicit or explicit - in any case, artistic knowledge is sensual and physical, ’embodied knowledge’. The knowledge that artistic research strives for, is a felt knowledge” (Klein, 2010, p.6). The knowledge that I managed to generate during the music making process was above all sensory knowledge, until it was also put into words during analysis.
4.2 Data generation
The artistic data in my research is generated through a structured practice routine, as mentioned in the introduction. Data was generated by recording and archiving each improvisation to be analysed and commented later. I will now outline my artistic process in further detail.
I will firstly explain the three main elements of the practice routine (orientation, meditation and improvisation) in detail.
Orientation (30 minutes)
Exercise A is something which I have developed myself, while exercises B and C are inspired by Bernth’s YouTube video ”Finger Exercises You Should Do Every Day! | Beginner & Advanced Workout” (Bernth, 2019). Exercice D is inspired by a practice method that my guitar teacher Raoul Björkenheim taught me.
Exercise A: Fingering variations (5 minutes)
The first exercise is going through all the different fingering variations one can play on one string on the guitar. There are 11 different variations along with their inversions. Those variations and their inversions are then played systematically through the neck using all 6 strings, first with alternate picking and then with the hammer on / pull off technique. Before starting this exercise, I set the metronome to somewhere between 50 and 55, and by playing 6 notes per click I am able to complete this exercise in 5 minutes. This even leaves time for repeating the more difficult variations twice. Playing all variations in a systematic and uninterrupted flow with the click eventually results in a simultaneous practice of polyrhythms, because the click does not always mark the first note of the next variation, but can land on any note, depending on the number of notes in the variation at hand. This exercise gave me lots of control and confidence over my fretting hand and it warmed up my fingers nicely for the next, a more challenging exercise.
Exercise B: Spider walk (5 minutes)
This next practice is for developing autonomy of the fingers in the fretting hand. First you fret a chromatic line (frets 1, 2 ,3 and 4) with all the four digits on the 6th string. Then without moving other fingers, you play the 1st fret from the 5th string with your index finger. Then the ring finger moves to the 3rd fret of the 5th string, again with other fingers staying in their place. Now that the fingers are in a zig-zag formation on two of the lowest strings, the middle finger then frets the 2nd fret from the 4th string, skipping the 5th string. This is followed by the pinkie moving to the 4th fret of the 4th string. This index-ring-middle-pinkie -zig-zag process continues to go through all the strings up to the high E string and returning back to the lowest string in a reversing manner. I then repeat this process with the two remaining fingering orders (index-middle-ring-pinkie & index-pinkie-middle-ring). This practice is also played in tempo with the same click as the first exercise. The first round of all fingering orders is played very slow, only one note per click. Then the second round is played two notes per click and the third and the fourth rounds are played four notes per click. This exercise provides a good working ground for the fretting hand for playing all sorts of different chord shapes on the guitar fretboard. When practiced with alternate picking, it is also a good practice for the picking hand, because the exercise involves string skips. Furthermore, this exercise is a good way to practice macro timing and synchronization between the picking hand and the fretting hand, which results in a clean sound.
Exercise C: Sweep picking (5 minutes)
This exercise uses the same click in the same tempo and the practice starts with four notes per click. The idea is to start from the 1st fret of the 6th string with the index finger, then continuing to the 2nd fret from the 5th string with the middle finger. Then comes the 3rd fret from the 4th string with the ring finger and finally the 4th fret from the 3rd string with the pinkie. So the idea is to move diagonally on the fretboard, with a one note per string idea. This four-note sequence is swept like an arpeggio with the picking hand in a one down-stroke motion. After that, while positioned at the 3rd string, the 1st fret is played with the index finger, and with a one down-stroke motion, the same diagonal pattern is swept all the way back down to the 6th string in a similar, yet reversed fashion (starting from the index finger on the 1st fret of the 3rd string, then the middle finger on the 2nd fret of the 4th string, then the ring finger on the 3rd fret of the 5th string, and finally the pinkie on the 4th fret of the 6th string). This criss-cross pattern is then played on the middle string set (A, D, G & B) as well as on the higher string set (D, G, B & E). After that, this whole pattern is played in a mirrored way (pinie-ring-middle-index formation) and practiced through the string sets in the same way. I then play these two patterns on all string sets from all positions on the fretboard up to the 12th fret, and then rewind the pattern back to the first fret with double speed (8 notes per click). This exercise gives lots of dexterity, coordination and strength to all fingers equally, while simultaneously deepening the synchronization of the fretting and the picking hand.
Exercice D: 365 days practice (15 minutes)
This exercise is inspired by a practice my guitar teacher Raoul Björkenheim created, in which the practitioner goes through many of the musical scales found in jazz music in all 12 key signatures, in one year. The idea is that because a year has 12 months, each month is assigned with its specific key. Then because a month has 4 weeks (plus a few days), each week is assigned with its specific mother-scale (the 4 mother-scales used in this research are: the major scale, the melodic minor scale, the harmonic minor scale and the harmonic major scale). Then, since a week has 7 days, every day is assigned with its specific mode from the mother-scale of the week. The final leftover days of every month are then used for practicing symmetrical scales, such as the diminished and the whole-tone scale. Then after a full year, the practitioner has gone through all of these scales as well as their modes in all 12 keys. During this research project, I used different ways to practice the scale every day. Sometimes I would make an ambient soundscape from the notes of the scale. Sometimes I would practice specific intervals. Sometimes I would sing the notes of the scale. Sometimes I would search for interesting chord voicings. Whatever the method I was using, I was always looking for a way to make that scale sound interesting to my ears. Knowing and being able to use all these different mother-scales and their modes eventually turned out to be a crucial ingredient in the creation of my personal ambient guitar style.
Meditation (20 to 30 minutes)
Meditation has provided me with lots of clarity and relaxed focus over the years, which is why I wanted to include it in my practice routine during this project, wishing it would radiate its benefits to my music. The technique I used was fairly simple and something I was already familiar with. It included just sitting for 20 to 30 minutes in an upright, yet balanced and relaxed posture while focusing on being present in the moment. Every time I would notice my mind wandering off to thinking about this or that, I would gently bring it back to the present by asking myself ”how am I sitting?”. Without giving it a rational answer, I would just focus on the physical sensation of sitting and fixing my posture if needed. There were no other goals during the meditation practice, just to notice when the mind lost its track and to bring it back. Some mornings I was really sleepy and other mornings very energetic. Sometimes my mind would wander a lot and sometimes it was easier to be present, but whatever my mental state was, I kept doing the practice because I felt that even sleepy meditation was beneficial for the improvisation. Interestingly enough, the improvisation session that followed eventually developed into becoming my personal form of meditation practice during the final stages of this research project.
Improvisation (30 minutes)
My plan was to do the routine in the morning before going to school, therefore everything had to happen fast, including the improvised recording session. For recording, I used an analogue mixer called TASCAM Model 12 that has a built-in digital recorder. This machine turned out to be a time saving device for the task since I did not even have to open a computer for completing the recording process. All 360 improvisations were recorded in stereo (two mono tracks) using only an electric guitar with maximum of six effect pedals and a looper, in a recording style where all loop layering and guitar playing happened in a real-time process. This approach also saved time, since an eight-minute song for example would only take eight minutes to create, record and save. I would first experiment with my effect pedals to create new sounds so that I would not need to do that much setting during the recording. Some mornings I would record a song on the first take and sometimes I would get so lost that I ended up deleting the take and starting everything all over again. Sometimes I would delete multiple takes and finally manage to capture something interesting. Even though I decided that whatever comes gets recorded and saved, some mornings I was being so self-critical that it was impossible to get anything worth saving recorded. Then on other mornings I came up with three or four different tracks instantly.
I had been interested in ambient music for five years prior to this study and had made countless of try-outs for its creation. They had all resulted in frustration as I always ended up tweaking every little detail and never completed anything. This practice routine was the first time for me trying to approach ambient music making from an improvisational angle. It seemed to work right from the start. Pretty soon I realized that by recording every day, the pressure of coming up with something great decreases. Even if you do not make anything nice today, you will be trying it again tomorrow, therefore the music making starts to be more about the whole process, and not about single attempts. It is like building a strong building brick by brick. Some bricks can be a little crooked even, since the house will look beautiful when completed and viewed as a whole. All those hits and misses will make perfect sense in the end.
In the next chapter I will explain the brick-by-brick process of how I developed my personal style of improvised ambient music.
The artistic process
I started to record my improvisations in June 2023 with an idea of developing a form of real-time process-based ambient music. I would always first record music for about two or three weeks and then listen to everything while writing comments. The first notion of something that sounded interesting to me happened already in improvisation number four ”Improv_0004”. I realized that having diverse musical elements in different registers on separate loops can create a texture where all loops have their own unique functionality to the music. This effect made me feel that there was a sense of being present while listening to the recording. Pretty early on in the process I also noticed that my loops had so much musical material in them that they tend to sound very restless, and that a more minimalist approach would be more suitable for my equipment.
In the beginning stages of this 1,5 yearlong musical journey, I tried to mix many different styles and techniques in search of the sound that I liked. Almost every time listening to the recordings I felt that I needed to play with more determination and focus. Sometimes I would make loops with interesting note material, but the sound choices lacked diversity, resulting in a dull overall texture. Sometimes I succeeded improvising the first loop in a very good rhythm, but then felt too much pressure to create any interesting layers to complement it. In the seventeenth track ”Improv_0017” I mistakenly cut the first loop too short while recording, but decided to give the track a chance nevertheless. Surprisingly, this led to a feeling of having nothing to lose and it was then very relaxing to improvise the next layers of sound and to finish the track effortlessly.
In ”Improv_0022” I made a discovery which gave me a completely new direction in looping style. I managed to create interacting loops that had lots of space between the notes. While listening to the recording, there was a point in which I was unsure of which loops were on playback, and what was the one I was currently recording. The overall texture unfolded as if it was living its own life. This discovery inspired me to start practicing a looping style where loops are no longer treated nor created as background accompaniment for foreground elements, but as equally important layers from which the overall texture is crafted. While listening to ”Improv_0030” I felt that frequently repeated melodic phrases which happen in a musical foreground can create a very restless atmosphere, if they do not change their shape over time. As I did not feel an interest towards complex musical arrangements or changing song structures with my looping, I thought that instead I have to start practicing musical material that could be on playback for a long time without sounding like it has to change into something else.
In the beginning of this project I was mostly experimenting with percussive grooves and rhythmical patterns, but after about a month into the routine, pulse and synchronization started to fade away and along came atmosphere and unevenness. An interest towards sound colour and mood started to grow. I started to feel the need to add more different kinds of sounds to my aural palette, not necessarily by getting more gear, but by experimenting more with the equipment that I already had. The hardest thing in the whole process for me was to learn how to balance the volume levels between loops so that the overall texture is pleasant to listen to. This was difficult because I wanted to learn how to record new layers of sound without spending any time noodling with ideas first. I wanted to challenge myself to get to know my musicality, instrument and equipment so well, that I could produce my musical ideas right away during the improvisation on a desired volume level and sound, so that the music could progress with less searching moments. The further I got in the artistic process, the better I got at this approach.
One important comment which I wrote during an analysis of the song ”Improv_0064” was ”…there is a good atmosphere here, but think of playing as listening” (Personal diary entry, 9th of Sep, 2023). Over and over again I noticed myself playing too much in the recordings. I wanted to learn how to improvise ambient music, which was not only nice to play, but nice to listen to as well. Even though I already had developed a liking towards ambient music aesthetics and was aware of different ambient styles, I still knew that I was going to have to build my own sound from scratch, recording after recording. By making many try-outs and experiments while also listening and analysing them, I was able to notice everything that I liked and disliked in my music. I would then write those things down and carry on with the process.
Sometimes though, I felt that the music I was making did not have any idea at all and that it was just a big waste of time, but still somehow, I managed to keep the routine going thinking, that I would eventually develop something that I liked. Many improvements then happened in a cluster of tracks during Autumn of 2023. I have had constant trouble operating my volume pedal in a smooth way, ending up making a small buzzing sound at the end of every note by moving my fretting hand away from the note before fading the sound out with the pedal. I noticed this habit while listening the song ”Improv_0089” and started to pay more attention to it, while at ”Improv_0112” I felt that I had fixed the issue.
While listening to ”Improv_0115” I wrote: ”I have now learned how to smoothly erase playback loops while recording. They always go out in a seamless fashion during moments where it all seems to fit nicely with the surrounding loops” (Personal diary entry, 8th of Oct, 2023. This refers to unnoticeably turning off and erasing one of the three playback loops in a nice musical spot while performing, thus creating one free loop for new musical material to be inserted to the overall texture. Then another improvement regarding loop erase happened in ”Improv_0119” when I started to simply decrease the loop volume levels from the knobs in the looper pedal. This manual technique would later become something that I would use almost every time before erasing loops during a live-performance. It allows the gradual fading out of single loops during a performance. The more ambient my music started to sound, the more my hands started to be on the pedals.
After listening to ”Improv_0124” I felt that I had finally learned how to create balanced textures with loops that complement each other in an interesting way. This thought was then reinforced in ”Improv_0135” when I commented ”I have now developed an aesthetic and style to my music, so from this point on, I shall not go back making random guitar jam-songs during this project anymore” (Personal diary entry, 21st of Dec, 2023). I felt that this new ambient aesthetic was successfully represented in ”Improv_0165” which combined different timbres, musical registers and effects in a balanced overall texture. It was certainly one of the best loops that I had done so far.
”Play less, deliberately and with devotion. Go slowly and peacefully, with a good touch and with full listening. Play with focus and intention” (Personal diary entry, 18th of Feb, 2024). These were my reoccurring comments about my own music during the project. Another reoccurring comment about when a song was good was ”I have no idea what I’m playing in this” (Personal diary entry, 9th of Sep, 2023). This meant that there was a moment when I did not know which of the layers I was currently recording, and which were on playback. This happened in a couple of different songs, in ”Improv_0083”, and in ”Improv_0191” for example.
”Improv_0203” introduced a new looping technique. I firstly played a chord and after a while pressed the loop record button accidentally. As I could not catch the attack of the chord to the beginning of the loop, the recorded sound started with the chord already reverberating. As the attack is usually the defining feature of an instrument’s sound, deleting it with the help of a looper made my electric guitar sound a bit more like a synthesizer. ”Improv_0205” also provided me with a new looping technique. I played two different notes on a short loop, and a third one on another loop. These two loops were at different lengths, and because of that they created an ever changing three note pattern that gave nice flow to the overall texture.
After recording around 200 improvisations, I started to experiment with non-musical sounds more, adding a layer of noise to many of my tracks. Pretty soon I then came up with something called ”the rule of three”, which stands for swells, singles and scratches. It is an idea to keep in mind when making improvised ambient music. Swells stand for volume swells or sounds with slow attack, singles stand for sounds with fast attack such as single notes and strummed chords whereas scratches are sounds that do not have a recognizable pitch. These were the three main musical elements that my ambient textures were consisting of during this artistic research. Whenever I was creating loops, I could remind myself of the rule of three to see if there was anything that I could add to the texture which was not already there. I first thought about this while analysing the song ”Improv_0229”.
During ”Improv_0235” and ”Improv_0236” I started to question the improvisational aspect in my ambient music making. I thought about quitting the improvisation, composing everything, and recording everything to a multi-track format, but this idea vanished right away after giving it some thought and realizing that it is the improvisational aspect that actually gives birth to my music. It is essential to the creation of my own style of music. Because only through an improvisational process can I truly reflect the state of my mind in real-time. Before I started this project, I wanted my music to be very precise rhythmically and orderly in terms of structure. It was always a struggle for me, and I suffered a lot from not being able to complete songs because of my perfectionistic personality. During this project, ambient music taught me how to let go of trying to be in control of everything, because in ambient music it is quite frankly impossible to control everything.
In ”Improv_0240” I noticed that the progression of the music was especially slow. At around 11 minutes the music started to sound good to my ears. This slow pace then gave birth to an idea of a much longer ambient process, a style which eventually was to become the approach for my bachelor concert. Having been recording improvised songs for a full year, my music had entered a stage where I felt that the aesthetic and the technique was now there. During a summer day in 2024 I was listening to ”Improv_0276” and thinking that I am ready to move on to the next stage of the process.
I began practicing for my bachelor concert in September 2024 while still keeping the morning routine. Although this time the formal sitting meditation session faded away from the routine, and sight-reading practices received the open spot. This was because I felt that the improvisation session itself had formed into a type of meditation practice for me, and that by learning to read music better, I could track my improvisation better theoretically. During the Autumn semester I rehearsed for my bachelor concert three times a week while filming and analysing all 40 improvised sets. Now that I was taking video of my ambient music making process, I started to give attention to visual things such as body movement. I realized that slow movement suits my slow music. If I was crouching down too fast to adjust the sound from the pedalboard, the music seemed to move too slow compared to my movement. But if I was moving very slow myself, I was able to visually match the slow pace of the music. When starting to practice a 45-minute-long improvisation, I would orientate myself towards thinking about doing even a longer set. In this way I could approach the music making process without any feelings of haste. It was very important to start the music really slowly, sound by sound and layer by layer so that my mind would also have time to slow down with the process. If my mind was feeling busy and thinking about many things, it was even more important to go really slow in the beginning. This slowness was then something which I practiced sustaining during the whole improvisation.
With the rule of three in mind I would build the first texture and already start to move towards the next one. With the knowledge from the scale practices that my teacher Raoul Björkenheim introduced me to, I started to learn how to turn an ambient texture into another one by changing some of the notes in it. I would usually erase one loop with the manual method that I did the first time in ”Improv_0119” and then record a new loop with new note material in its place. The new notes would then be from another, yet a relative key signature. In this way I could change only one loop in the texture and move to a completely different atmosphere. Although I developed various ways of moving from mood to mood, this continuous erasing and replacing loops method would continue for the whole set.
4.3 Data analysis
To analyse the artistic data, I created a thematic framework guided by my research questions:
1. How does one create balanced musical textures in improvised ambient music?
2. How is the mindstate linked to the creation of improvised ambient music?
Here are the core themes I identified for the analysis process:
- Textural structure of the music
- The link between my mindstate and the music
- Unexpected realizations
During this artistic process I analysed the data every time I managed to gather enough material. As I was creating a song almost every day, in three weeks I would usually have around 15 songs which would then take me up to three to four hours, or sometimes even longer to analyse. Therefore, I did not want the data to pile up too much before going through it. When listening and analysing my recordings, I often wrote down every sound I heard in the order of their appearance, what effects I used and how I felt about the track. This is because I wanted to understand my real-time loop layering process in order to make it more interesting. In this way listening became a vital aspect of learning how to implement my own liking to the music already in the beginning stages of the project. A big emphasis was then put on analysing the overall textural structure of the music in order to learn how to create interacting and complementing loop layers. When analysing the video material, I focused mainly on how my mindstate was affecting the overall performance, as well as how the performance was affecting my mindstate. Each video was viewed and analysed before the creation of the next video, to ensure a gradual progression in the music. Unexpected realizations also happened a few times during the course of the whole project, and they were also written down. By analysing the data through these different themes, I started to gain an understanding of how to create ambient music in an improvised way with an electric guitar and what mindstates are affiliated with the process.
4.4 Ethical considerations
This artistic research was a personal solo project without the involvement of other participants in the process. I personally hold the copyright to all the artistic data produced, including videos and audio recordings. The data is securely stored on an external hard drive. The research was conducted with reliability, honesty, respect and accountability, the basic principles of research integrity (RI) according to the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, thus following the TENK 2023 RI guidelines.