Orchestrating timbre - unfolding  processes of timbre and memory in improvisational piano performance

Magda Mayas

The doctoral research investigates the orchestration of timbre from a performer’s perspective. Through the dissertation, I explore orchestration as means to “unfold” improvisational processes. The foundation of the work lies in my practice as a pianist in the realm of improvised music, in which I often use preparations and objects as extensions of the instrument. Whilst timbre is often understood as a purely sonic perceptual phenomenon, this view of timbre does not accord with its use within con- temporary site-specific improvisational practice. This research grew out of the need to explore the potentiality of timbre, and to renew and situate it within my own practice. Through the research, I argue that a range of aspects that exceed the purely sonic—for instance, changing spatial circumstances, the affordances and agency of instruments and objects, and the performer’s movements and gestures— all impact upon a performance and the listening experience. All of these aspects need to be taken into account in understanding and working with timbre. In this dissertation, I introduce and argue for an extended and situated understanding of timbre in relation to material, space, and body that recognizes timbre’s complexity and embraces its potential to contribute to an ethical engagement with the contextual environment. I understand these material, spatial, and embodied relations to be non-hierarchical, inseparable, and in constant flux, and to require continuously re-configuration without being reduced or simplified. This timbral approach, which navigates multiple media beyond the sonic, radiates throughout my research. From a performer’s perspective, I define “orchestrating” timbre as the attentive re-organization of these active agents and the creation of musical structures on micro and macro levels through the sculpting and transitioning of timbre— spatially, temporally, physically, and mentally—within a variety of com- positional frameworks. Understanding timbre in this way requires that we recognize the multiple and complex roles that memory plays in contemporary improvisational practice. I therefore introduce the term timbral memory in order to describe how I use memory strategically as means to gain knowledge about improvisational processes undertaken in line with an extended understanding of timbre. In the course of the research, I conducted four investigative projects that were integrated into my practice, which were further extended through collaborations with sound engineers, an instrument builder, and a choreographer. The resulting practice-based research explores multiple, combined, artistic, and analytical approaches to timbre: I use systematic mappings to detail vocabulary and technique, explore amplification and recording in the creation of spatial compositions, em- ploy a custom-built device for live spatialization as a means to expand and deepen spatiotimbral relationships, adopt gestural approaches in composing timbre choreographies, and articulate a range of diverse perspectives through dialogues and interviews with other practitioners. Taken together, these diverse studies constitute an exploration of both timbral memory as a structural, reflective, and performative tool, and the creation of performing and listening modes as integrated parts of timbre orchestration. The thesis opposes the notion of generalizable, reproducible, and transferable techniques and instead offers detailed and intimate approaches to technique and material, describing object timbre, action timbre, and gesture timbre as active agents in sound-producing processes. Orchestrating timbre forms a hybrid compositional approach, which can be applied to various improvisational contexts and which, by engaging with dynamic relationships, reconfigures them; in this, it offers a way of understanding and using the potentials that instrument-body-space interactions afford. By reaching beyond the sonic, my research makes a contribution to the field of critical improvisation studies. It addresses practitioners and audiences in music and sound art alike, attempting to constitute a bridge from artistic research in music—which is often viewed and treated as a self-contained discipline—into multiple artistic fields, in order to inspire discussions, creation and education in broader audiences.

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D. Mind Maps

As part of investigating and mapping my technique and vocabulary, and also as a preparation for the project described in chapters 4 and 5, I made a structured inventory list of material I found to be representative of my vocabulary. This list was developed into two conceptual mind maps which represent connections between sounds and reflect upon:

1. The material/objects used to produce sounds.
2. The actions/playing methods used to produce sounds.

My aim in making these maps was to show the complex interactions and potentialities that objects provide as material agents in music making, and to demonstrate how I work and perform with them. The maps illustrate the interdependence of objects and actions, as well as my own musical thinking and categorizing; they also reflect how I intuitively map my vocabulary when I improvise.

The Object Mind Map

First, I mapped sounds through the objects that I used to produce them, as this seemed to me like the most natural and practical way to group sounds. Lines indicate connections between sounds in the map. I note that I list my hands as an object when I use them without any additional objects to produce sounds with, inside the piano or on the keyboard. As there are many different ways of using one single object, I tried to be as clear and short in my descriptions as possible.

The Playing Method Mind Map

I also produced a second map that illustrates the relation between sounds and the methods or playing techniques used to produce them. I chose to start with the basic sound-producing mechanisms and actions used to set the strings, etc., in motion, including strik- ing, bowing, and plucking.

In the process of making the map, I soon found that I needed subgroups and had to invent new terms to differentiate between similar playing methods and to describe them in more detail.

I was not always able to find them in descriptions of other string instruments’ playing methods either, and some techniques seemed too idiosyncratic to describe by recourse to a general terminology—e.g., the sound produced by making a column-shaped magnet vibrate on a string. Reflecting on my playing methods and the intentions behind certain actions, I noticed a strong aleatoric element. I chose to group those sounds together under the term initiating: after the initial action of setting some- thing in motion, the movement/vibration and sound either continues without any further agency from my side, or the sounding result is in some ways beyond my control, and intentionally so.

Importantly, I found that the attitude or intention behind all of the sounds in the initiating group, whilst connected with other categories of sound-producing mechanisms (in the case of throwing a magnet on a string it would entail initiating as well as striking) differed from the rest of the methods that I use.

The compositional possibilities of the two approaches detailed in these two maps, exist simultaneously and to differing degrees, can be amplified, re-linked, combined, or applied to other objects and actions. The endless nuances of technique are impossible to entirely capture in such maps, yet the attempt of collecting, mapping, systematizing, and repeatedly performing still revealed a myriad of details and suggested a range of possible transitions to me—timbral as well

as temporal and spatial.

In chapter 3 of the thesis, I discuss the Mind Maps, as well as a collection of short stories by different practitioners, reflecting the manifold and unique ways that technique and vocabulary in music making are developed through objects.

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