Documenting our working sessions with video and high-quality audio capture is a powerful strategy because it allows us to quickly review and comment on our musical experiments. We have the option of re-listening several times, focusing on the ‘good bits’, and inventing new terms to describe these musical ideas. While new terms are always arbitrary at first, with repeated use they begin to offer a concrete, reliable way to refer to elusive musical ideas. We see these newly coined terms as empty containers that can be filled with meaning as we collaborate over time.

For example, the term ‘manifold’ came from a recent stimulated recall session. The term was inspired by the layered nature of the music we were experimenting with, but it eventually came to refer to a much more complex possibility space that we explored over the course of many video recordings. On the following page, we show additional examples of the terminology we created for manifold.

Certain choreographers in the field of dance have been using similar terminology-based methods for decades:

We began the aubiome project with the simple motivation to investigate various computer-saxophone ‘links’, with a focus on performance-related considerations rather than compositional ones. What kind of music could be produced if the electronics system is designed as part of the instrument, by the performer, rather than as part of a specific piece? We noticed a qualitative shift when we reconceptualized the system’s role as a platform for exploration and experimentation, rather than as a means by which a specific piece is realized.

Open-ended, exploratory working processes can reveal a wide range of potential outcomes, but not all of them are necessarily musically interesting. The musical explorer must be able to discriminate between the desirable and undesirable, making judgements about which path to take along the way. The experimentation process involves testing, judging and adapting, a method discussed by Joel Ryan:

Ryan describes how a composer works with technology to produce new music, but we have found that these issues are equally applicable to ‘hybrid instrument’ scenarios, in which a traditional instrument, such as the saxophone, comes into contact with real-time computer processing. The ‘good bits’ are often hidden among many less interesting options. In order to uncover them, we must adopt an exploratory mindset and have access to an appropriately-designed system. We wanted to be able to move quickly through the experimental cycle described above when designing the system for aubiome, and in particular, I wanted to be able to work hands-on with the saxophone for multiple cycles without interruption. We consider this capability to be an important aspect of our ‘performer-centric’ approach, because it prioritizes a workflow that leverages my expertise as a performer and puts me in a position to generate and explore my own musical material. In other words, this approach enables us to explore musical territory that might otherwise be inaccessible.

Capturing material

With the emphasis on the hands-on and the physicality of musical gesture, it can be a challenge to capture and recall musical ideas when they present themselves. This may be regarded as a feature of the performer-centric approach by musicians working in the free improvisation space. For example, in my interview with Jeff Kaiser (2021), he describes how his own system does not allow him to save and recall certain configurations: a deliberate choice he made to avoid his improvisations becoming too predictable.

Adrián and I, on the other hand, come from a classical contemporary music background and are interested in producing structured, repeatable, rehearsable works of music. For us, this means not only being able to discover musical ideas through exploration, but also being able to capture, analyze and refine them. Musical notation, our go-to tool as classically-trained musicians, is not well-suited to describe the gestural types of musical material that we are looking to produce, especially when considering the wide range of possible interactions between the saxophone and the computer. Without the ability to rely on notation, we face certain challenges related to documentation and communication.

Our project’s research-based framework and the emphasis placed on documentation, led us to an interesting solution, which we now use as a regular part of our practice to capture and evaluate musical material: recording segments of our working sessions with high-quality audio and video. Additionally, we often include a screen capture from the computer(s) in order to identify the software configuration at any given point. The video at the top of this page is an example of how we record ourselves and document our shared experiences, taken from a session we did while working on the material discovery phase for manifold.

When reflecting on our working sessions, it can be challenging to verbalize thoughts about abstract musical material. We can draw on existing musical terminology such as 'microtonal', 'climax', 'tension/ release', 'agitato', 'misterioso', and so on. We can also use saxophone related terminology, such as 'aggressive multiphonics', 'frantic key clicks', or 'work up to a high D'. There is also a lexicon associated with electronic music, such as ‘modulation rate’ and ‘wet or dry signals’, as well as terminology drawn from or inspired by the history of electronic music, such as ‘objet sonore’ or a sound described as ‘Stockhausen-esque’. These terms provide a broad framework for discussing specific musical concepts, but they often serve only to describe music on the surface. In contrast, we have discovered that much of our creative decision-making occurs at a deeper, more abstract level, and that standard musical language is insufficient to describe the thought processes that underpin it.