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Peter Tornquist: Q-CarvingBLOGG
The fractal tree by IRCAM generatedmatherial for this piece in open music, and is a nice visual of the development of the piece. This is a Blogg written to gets immediate and intuitive reactions working with the piece. Apologies for misspelling... 23 November 2007. "Orgelfestdager i Slemmestad". I played the piece after an orgen improvisation and it felt hard from the beginng to the end. The organ solo was tonal and played with songs from "Eurovisjons song contest". I newer felt ok to play the avantgard approach after that. However I tried to do everything we had planned to. A long slow devellopment of the beginning 3 - 5 minutes. It felt wrong in this setting, and I felt locked in my plan. I had also prepared the blow sensor, but afther the audiense laught of my funny face, I stopped. The joystick however was a success. I tried it on a concert for the first time. A new patch in MAX which converted all the functions to MIDI in IMPULSE. Starting soundclips, adjusting faders and filters, arming tracks and recording samples. I used a marimba sound for this, but the potential is great. A energy and a suprise element for the audience. The non tonal approach struck me during this concert. I had just gone through a period of working with improvisation with improvisation musicians and the strong and weak sides of my improvisation are clearer to me. Peter has talked for a long time about that I should play like a percussionist since that is what works best for me. I have not yet understood what he ment before this week. I play percussive, structurally well but the tonal approach is not good. I can simply not do it! But I am now ready to develop my tonal side, since I finally understad what I have been loooking for! 14 November 2007. "pen uke" at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Performance in the Lindemansalen for 200 students of potential applicators for the Academy. Musically we finally found some of the sounds and ways to work with them live that we had been working against for some time. Our comunication are also on a higher level. A better understanding of where we want to go. The performance went good. I think the best ever. The space this creates are in the direction I want to devellop. pdf August 07. Tornquist writes about the technical issues and development of the piece.
10 August. National music researcher conference at the Academy of Music. A project presentation of Q/Carving focusing on interaction between performer and composer and performer and electronics. Is the struggle of part c a result of a change of my personal goals as a performer? After playing with part D I see this. I want a more open form and be able to play. Part A and B are efficient and intense like my ambitions in 2005, entertaining, action, intense++ I now want to play marimba in a nice way, more in the direction of new Norwegian jazz. Nice sound, calm music, rough but subtile, soft and rich. This came to my mind me after the session. Time to close version 1 - 7 and start over on a new piece developing from the new part D! I learned a lot in this process. Talking to an audience is great, it pushes the process to articulate what the issue really is about. August 2007. Met with Peter to arrange for the presentation friday at the Academy. A great meeting! We finally can talk open about the music and the direction we want it to go. He brought some new sound files on the calm side. We have for a long time discussed the need of a section after the friction part. I tried something we called D, long notes with ornaments and a lot of room effects. It worked ok. But after listening to other pieces's of Peter I asked if it was possible to try some of these background files. They sound nice and are great to play on top of. They give room to play on. I feel inspired! The piece is great to use for developing instrumental technicalities, music tech issues as well as boosting the improvisation ability.
Paper on the process in PDF (Norwegian) Examining committee's comments on Q-Carving. (Norwegian) Klsisk Klbb:A concert for new audience by Rikskonsertene in November. Peter Tornquist. End concert of the Scollarship. It went great. Best ever. I worked all night to finich the set up. 5.1 sound I ballanced every speaker and played for hoers in the hall. Really great potensial to be able to use the room in this way! The music playing went also great. I was ready and made my best. Lindemansalen 18.08.2006. The hall was filled to capacity: 450 people. A great atmosphere. The sound from my setup was sent to the main two speakers in front, and the electronics to the quadraphonic set up of l' acoustic speakers. The sound engineer used my microphones and sent the signal back to me; I used this to process the marimba sound. I did not have any control over my setup - making life rather difficult!. The signal became too weak in return, resulting in too little processed sound. The video part worked ok, and the lightning I had set was ok. I used two 500w lamps with white light on my face (not leaking onto the screens), and set some color on the instrument using the small 50w lamps on the floor. Used my own fader. During the summer I had tested screens and projectors and got the money to buy professional equipment. A lot of time spent testing! but the quality of the performance was great. Finally on a level worth presenting to an audience. In this concert I felt that the musical material of the piece was in place, but at the limit of its potential. However, the response from the audience was overwhelming. The only negative comments were about the latency on the video imaging. The images are processed as fast as possible, the problem is that the audience can see me playing and moving fast, but the processor can only give 25 frames a second and has 30 milliseconds latency. When I used effect processing this was not an issue, but clean images do not go with fast movements. After this I felt that I had to be able to control all the lighting equipment in the main hall. I acquired a DMX panel for the stage; this was ready in April 2007. I found out about the light control interface using max/msp in February 2007, and it was ordered in April 2007. PDF about the performance, (Norwegian) MP3 recording from the concert (Click) Recording of the piece 30 of June 2006. Day one of a two day session at the sound studio at the Academy of music. The ambition was to make a 5.1 mix of the piece (first time at the academy) The ingenear Yngve Guddal did a great job. Patient with all the ideas of Tornquist and Innervik. Day two: We fine tuned the timing of the sections, playing with the routing of the effects and sound samples fore 6 hoers, tuning and testing and learning a lot. Composing activity with the timing and dynamics and worked to make each section optimal. Day tree: 09.00 adding dynamics and adjust the timing between the sections, filtered some of the marimba sections because some of them has noise from the room. We want to bounce to a cd, but it is not possible because we do not have the equipment in the studio, and we do not have anywhere to listen to it...We will continue in the autumn. Will it become great? It is anyway a documentation on were we are now. Some taught's: A great way to sculpture the piece, sections from the improvisation used to make the piece in studio, balance the dynamics, a great way to get into the piece, perspective, understanding of the form quality of sound, mallets and instrument sound, balance my imagination on how it sounds on how it really sounds.. May 2006.
In May I really wanted to do multi speakers to get more active use of the electronics. I was really eager to get the form even better, to know the material so good that i could play. Slower development of the lines and more calm and presence than the school concerts attitude. Musikkhgskolan i Stockholm, April 2006. A presentation of the project and some pieces for the students at the Academy of music. I was in Stockholm with Haakon Stene for the Norwegian Concert institute to present our self at the IAMA artist agents gladdening.
Students testing the instrument (left) Supervisor Anders Login sees the instrument for the first time and plays duet with one of his students (Right) National museum of the art. April 2006. The Norwegian concert institute School concerts March and april 2006, The piece worked great! It had the potential of playing with to make me able to respond to the audience and interact. The producers saught the potential during rehearsals and said it would work. I really believe that this piece is great to communicate with. Voksenaasen for the scholars in Art. Rros vinterfestspillene february 2006. A test on audience on tree concerts with 120 people each. They appreciated it. I had a good feeling to play it. I feel that i now have the control over the technical aspect to play with different elements like background sound, possessing, interactive cuing of the sound samples. I tried out the video system on this piece and it works great. It becomes like a big improvisation for multimedia instrument! February 2006, 22 sessions. Programming, rehearsing, learning Ableton Live, tuning Ableton Live, making the pluggins work, using midi triggers and midi foot board, I need to alter the sound during processing. Making the sound modules work, tune the sound, make music, understand the form of the piece, Finally i have control! I can rehears with out Peter. This has great potential! Maybe he would like to use the new Video mixer i got from Videoutstyr Norge on this piece? January 06. Concert at the Academy of Music We had made a new part C and it worked better, We added a midi controller (mallet kat) and the feeling of having control over the sound modules were great. However on the concert someone tripped over the midi cable so Peter did not get the signal into ableton live. But he was able to read me better as to when i wanted impulses. The length and cuing of new parts are a problem. I dry out of ideas...He used also some effect from the Alessis module as well as pluggins in Ableton. I need this set up. I want to use this on my school concerts in march! Video of the performance (Klick) part C needs activity, Wood block, something bright, tremolos mixed with accents, graffics notation, line playing, accords, Reactor from Native instruments, I need to control the electronic impulses, i need to be able to find the cues to time the lines and make a a form..Form the music, make music. Quote from my diary in Norwegian: October 31.05 at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Kollegakonsert listen to a MP3 of the performance (soon to come) Ultima 2005 06.10 2005 Universitetsbiblioteket. Video of the performance (Klick) Concerts at Ski, Manglerud and St.Hallvard high schools. I had the material at my note stand, Peter possessed the marimba and started sound files. Q-1 to start section A, 2 to go to B and 3 to go to C. I had boat a 4 channel mixer and to speakers. Peter took care of most of the electronics during the process we vent from using his solo microphone to my stereo set up. I had very little experience using this, but on the concert i also played Alvarez Temazcal for tape and maracas using a cd and amplified maracas. I also amplified the Cage Child of tree. I had no experience using live electronics. The students seemed to like it! 23.09. Studio at the academy. Peter arrived with a Mac and a big Protool sound interface and microphones. He had a week before sent me some sections that I had rehearsed like a mad man, really difficult rhythmic and pitches, I was asked up and did my best in playing the music, part A, B,and C. He responded that it sounded great, but I was curios,because i was not able to play the right notes in tempo. He wanted it faster and more virtuoso. We recorded samples he was going to use to make sound files. I did not understand anything, but i loved the idea and it was fun to play! He also tried to process the marimba live thru his computer using pluggins from Pluggo.
The first session, June 2005, NMH We had met at the scholar gathering at Voksenaasen. I invited Peter to do something with me and I was quite nervous, because he was so secure about his project and talking about art and music, and i did not get what they were talking about or what he's project was all about. He was also a generation over me and had a career an a reputation. However I was not all to secure of the aesthetic of Peters music coming from a contemporary musicians approach. I met Peter in the cantina at the academy. He played me some of the material he had made for percussion in Open music in his Mac. It sounded great! Rhythmic and groovy. We talked about the piece he was going to write for the Oslo sinfonietta and had a lot of ideas for percussion music. He explained the way he is working, and what he wanted to do in this project. I was totally open to all the ideas. Improvisation with material generated from algorithm, from open music. I was not going to play the exact tones, but use the scores as an inspiration. The overall form was sections from this material. I tried to explain that I wanted a piece for Quartertone marimba, but if he wanted he could add some percussion instruments or add sections for percussion We vent to my room were I presented the instrument and some thoughts and instrumental possibilities. We made a schedule.and talked about what kind of a project it was to be instrumentation, duration, delivery date, first performance. I talked about scheduling the piece for the Ultima festival 2005. Some concerts for kids 16 - 19 years and a solo recital. We worked for an hour and got interrupted by a telephon call from my father telling me that my mother had passed away. Summary 2006:This part of the quartertone marimba project has been very interesting and challenging. It has brought new thoughts and afforded valuable experience with improvisation, instrumental techniques, and electronic processing, control and composition. The open approach has given room to incorporate aspects of stage performance, live electronics, live video, lighting the instrument both for aesthetic purposes and to enable live video to be visible. The composer's need and wish to control the palette of sounds with sensors has opened a great world of possibilities for creating an extended sounds cape from the quartertone marimba, combining live sound (both acoustic and processed sound) with prerecorded material, processed by the computer that is controlled by the performer. The piece has been well received by different audiences, and has opened many new possibilities for the quartertone marimba. The idea of an hyper instrument To be able to use the possibilities of the computer world to make an powerfully expressive performance. Kjell Tore Innervik about the process.The interactive approach: Interaction with the composer is a great challenge. It is personal artistic work. Total trust is necessary, and the artistic goal is constantly changing. We have spent a lot of time getting eatch other to now, discussion music, art, composing and playing the marimba. It requires a openness and trust difficult to establish on stage. We bout have to be open to input and trust the other persons goals. We both have other influences like other pieces and concert and we constantly bring this into the next meeting. The electronics: Peter wanted background sound, sound files as for me to play on. He used the material for rehearsals and concerts and processed them in the computer and made sections for me to play on. He made long sections and short ones for me to react on. The first performances he started everything form his computer, and effect processed the marimba as well, using Ableton Live. I now do this by myself. I start and stop the sound files, controlling the effects un the marimba sound using triggers, pedals and sensors incorporating video analyses and industrial sensors.This gives me a great instrument to control. But i also gives me a lot to react on and to interact with, using some random functions as well as getting control over the technique in the way of getting the feeling that it is an incorporated part of my instrument, being able to focus on playing music. The material generated taught: The settings witch the performance take please matters a lot. We try to establish a improvising informal setting, Like looking for things with sounds nice on the marimba and preferably things that are special for the quartertonemarimba. We try to include rock effects like live video and heavy lightning to get a modern, cool, visual playing style to reach new audience. The cyclic process: The essence ot the process. We have worked for 2 years with performances and sessions and different input. Trying our best every time, resulting in knowlige on several topics like interaction beetween performer and composer. What to say and do to get the best artistic result, what to do to challange the other part in a positive way. Constantly developing the instrument, the composition, the composing ideal and working pattern. The feeling of ownership: Who made this piece, the composer of the performer? We bouth agree that it is ourself... And it is great. The composer is proud of his work and ceeps on thinking of it and keep on working with it. The performer love to work with it and love to present it as his work! It is truly a great feeling presented and projecyted to the audience. |
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Copyright: Kjell Tore Innervik | January 23, 2008 |
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"Festkonsert" at the Academy. 
