Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:25:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Dignart.pdf: 477064 bytes, checksum: 35ac83e10edf51d5b0c87a44caaae8d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-22 / In the context of electroacoustic music production, specially in the acousmatic version, the human gesture will not develop its primordial role - the utilized material, in this case, is obtained no longer exclusively by the physical action of an agent who produces it. In this tendency, the musical discourse is constructed by sounds and noises that no longer are obligatorily proceeding from determined musical instrument played by a performer, but created and processed in studio. Based on such premises, this present work has the intent of pointing possibilities of applications of the use of the gesture as a structural principle in the electroacoustic musical creation, through the compositions Trajetórias, Metagestos and Entre Planos. Three gestural approaches are used in the creation process. The first mentioned piece is the acousmatic work Trajetórias, where the use of the electroacoustic gesture is applied in its pure form, without explicit relations with instrumental gestures. Another approach is the also acousmatic piece Metagestos, where the creation of gestures used as material is done based on gestural instrumental models. The third case is the mixed piece for cello and electroacoustic sounds Entre Planos where, inside of the same musical context, the instrumental gestures interact with the electroacoustic gestures. With such compositional experiences, we believe that the use of gestures as structural principle may be a strategy, front to the new sound possibilities that in many times may relate with the lived musical experience of the listener, who may already possesses in his perceptual repertoire a range of sound motions that will be re-interpreted in electroacoustic context, being perhaps possible to provide a certain indirect familiarity with such motions. / No contexto de produção musical eletroacústica, especialmente na versão acusmática, o gesto humano não irá desenvolver o seu papel primordial - o material utilizado, neste caso, não é mais obtido exclusivamente pela ação física de um agente que o produz. Nessa vertente, o discurso musical é construído a partir de sons e ruídos que não são mais obrigatoriamente provenientes de um determinado instrumento musical tocado por um performer, mas sim, criados e processados em estúdio. Baseada em tal premissa, a presente pesquisa tem por objetivo apontar possibilidades de aplicações do uso do gesto como um princípio estrutural na criação musical eletroacústica, por meio das composições Trajetórias, Metagestos e Entre Planos. As peças apresentadas enfatizam o uso do gesto sonoro como material composicional. Três abordagens gestuais são usadas no processo de criação. A primeira peça relatada é a obra acusmática Trajetórias, em que o uso do gesto eletroacústico é aplicado em sua forma pura, sem relações explícitas a gestos instrumentais. Outra abordagem é a peça também acusmática Metagestos, na qual a criação dos gestos usados como material é feita a partir de modelos gestuais instrumentais. O terceiro caso é o da peça mista para violoncelo e sons eletroacústicos Entre Planos em que, dentro do mesmo contexto musical, interagem os gestos instrumentais com os eletroacústicos. Com tais experiências composicionais, acreditamos que o uso de gestos como princípio formador pode ser uma estratégia frente às novas possibilidades sonoras que muitas vezes podem se relacionar com a experiência musical vivida do ouvinte que já possui em seu repertório perceptual uma gama de movimentos sonoros, que serão re-interpretados no contexto eletroacústico, sendo possível, talvez, proporcionar certa familiaridade indireta com tais movimentos.

DYSPHONIA is a music and dance work, for violin soloist with a live chamber orchestra, including multiple laptops and a custom-built gesture detection system worn by a dancer. The piece was choreographed by Professor Charlotte Adams of the University of Iowa Dance Department and premiered at the Faculty Graduate Dance Concerts in February of 2015. This piece is inspired by ongoing research into computer programming, gesture and music-making, artificial intelligence (AI), and creative algorithms. While the actual algorithms I developed for use in this piece are far from sentient, it is my hope that this piece may bring about discussion and further interest in creative AI. In our initial discussions, choreographer Charlotte Adams and I discovered that we both have witnessed a large number of people buying into immersive technologies without questioning the total cost to their well being, without questioning whether the technology has a positive impact on their lives, and without an understanding regarding the complex changes being wrought in our society due to the mass adoption of such technologies. Thus we designed this piece around the technology itself, so that the union between the dancer and the prosthesis is brought about by the movement and action that takes place in the piece. The intent was to create a scene where the audience suddenly becomes aware that something new is happening, namely that the dancer’s glove has started to make noise and there is a new connection made between the music and the dance.

The combination of solo percussion with live electronics is one of the newest genres of music today. An outgrowth of the instrument and fixed media genre, live electronic music combines a musician on stage performing with a computer or other technology performing real-time processes. This document is a collection of five works scored for percussion and the computer program Max intended for the collegiate level. In addition, there are explanations and schematics of the patches to help the performer learn how to use Max. This document could serve as supplemental material for an undergraduate percussion curriculum to help students gain experience performing with live electronics. Most students in university music departments are not exposed to technology unless they seek it out themselves. This may cause many student instrumentalists to be hesitant to play works with technology. However, as performing with electronics becomes more common, music students without this experience are at a disadvantage. Basic knowledge of audio equipment, having experience using a microphone, sound recording, and other technical know-how is essential to becoming a successful performer in a contemporary setting. Being able to perform with electronics creates new opportunities for repertoire, collaboration, and performance. Many universities are starting new programs dedicated to interdisciplinary studies such as digital humanities. These collaborative efforts bring together musicians, dancers, writers, visual artists, computer scientists, and others to create new work. Music students who have some background in performing and working with electronics could be a part of these collaborative efforts and help produce compelling, original work.

Master of Music / The use of error by composers as a means of adding colour to a musical text has a long history, but the device is ultimately ineffective. Material whose significance is its incongruity is incorporated by recontextualization, and in time, becomes familiar and unremarkable. ‘Glitch’ is a stylistic mannerism within electroacoustic composition that emerged in the late 1990s. Glitch, or ‘microsound’, as it is known in an academic context, observes the conventions of music concrète, drawing on material sampled from the real world, and fashioning this into sonic narratives. Its signature is the ‘sound of failure’, sonorities characteristic of electronic devices malfunctioning or mis-used: clicks, crackles, distortions, fractured digital files. Glitch/microsound has already diminished from a movement to a mannerism, but its legacy is a refreshment of our palette of sonorities, and an interrogation of the very act of listening. This essay is short examination of the use (and nature) of noise a musical ingredient and the significance of glitch/microsound for electroacoustic composers. It concludes that this ‘style’ is little more than a nuance, and that its advent and advocacy were less to do with a new musical movement, than with a new generation of electronic composers attempting to distinguish itself.

I offer this dissertation as a survey and a story: a survey of my work across the field of sonic art and a story of my progressive compulsion toward sound that conveys touch. This haptic sensibility sharpens from Susurrus (2006) through Soma (2012), manifesting in a fixation on the impact of sound on bodies and the impact of bodies on sound. Both the visceral sensation of hearing and the manner in which movement imprints onto acoustic phenomena concern me. My musical forms are conceived not as abstract arrangements of objects (or notes) but as complex physical confrontations that produce audible byproducts. I compose primarily with chaotic spectra, mixing raw noise from found objects with extended instrumental techniques. These timbres front an acoustic wildness intentionally abated in conventional instrumental practice. And yet, the precision of classical instruments opens avenues of transformation closed to unmediated noise. Virtuosity and crudeness face-off in my work, circling an aesthetic region between embellishment and fact, between sound as a carrier of aesthetic intent and sound as a subsidiary effect of action. The ten works presented in this portfolio include eight compositions scored for a range of ensembles, from soloist to orchestra, with and without electronics, as well as two interactive multimedia installations. Dramatic links between physical movement and musical form arise across this output. In my installations, I posit causal relationships between visible stimuli (spinning strings, spatial structures, moving bodies) and resultant sounds. In my electroacoustic works, I attend to the implied weight of spatialized sound – as though a gesture’s trajectory through arrayed speakers were informed by gravity. In my acoustic music, I bring the muscular strain behind instrumental technique to the perceptual fore. My professional activities shift regularly between concert music and installation art and between acoustic and electroacoustic contexts. Passing between these genres stretches the boundaries of my creative practice and forces me to consistently reframe notions of ritual and form. Within each platform, I aim to stage visceral aesthetic encounters that, as Francis Bacon once hoped for his paint, bypass the brain and go directly to the nervous system. / Music

Master of Music / The use of error by composers as a means of adding colour to a musical text has a long history, but the device is ultimately ineffective. Material whose significance is its incongruity is incorporated by recontextualization, and in time, becomes familiar and unremarkable. ‘Glitch’ is a stylistic mannerism within electroacoustic composition that emerged in the late 1990s. Glitch, or ‘microsound’, as it is known in an academic context, observes the conventions of music concrète, drawing on material sampled from the real world, and fashioning this into sonic narratives. Its signature is the ‘sound of failure’, sonorities characteristic of electronic devices malfunctioning or mis-used: clicks, crackles, distortions, fractured digital files. Glitch/microsound has already diminished from a movement to a mannerism, but its legacy is a refreshment of our palette of sonorities, and an interrogation of the very act of listening. This essay is short examination of the use (and nature) of noise a musical ingredient and the significance of glitch/microsound for electroacoustic composers. It concludes that this ‘style’ is little more than a nuance, and that its advent and advocacy were less to do with a new musical movement, than with a new generation of electronic composers attempting to distinguish itself.

Swan is a multimedia work for conducted ensemble with amplified instruments, electronics and video projections. Swan is about going out: going out to the street, to the club, to a ritual, to a party or a funeral. It’s about real places with real people, but less about the realities of these places and more about their vibe. It’s about getting out of home, the studio, the institution, going to places where people connect and do things, sing, dance, laugh, cry, perform or celebrate. The music of Swan come from ‘outside.’ Swan’s aesthetic is a blend of Turkish/Islamic and pop-cultural elements. The opening section, Korridor, is a drone/ambient movement with a big trance synth part. It is ritual music. It is big, dense, heavy, and it moves slowly, like lava. Karaoke Mahshar is a Turkish Trance-Pop hybrid. It is a very melancholic, dark piece of music. The instrumental choir sing an emotional pop/“fantasy music” (a Turkish genre) melody in unison over a flamboyant electronic track. It’s the soundtrack to a club for the wasted, for emotional after-hours karaoke. The final section, Rod Modell, is a dub-techno influenced ambient movement. It is the sound of a giant, post-apocalyptic mosque - a mosque sunken in chalky waters. This section evolves to a big, stretched monophonic melody, a song from the old times, which finally cadences to an electronically processed “tilâvet”. I started composing Swan in July 2016 in Turkey, before the military coup attempt took place. The work is not programmatic, however, the sound materials I worked with, the musical references and the sonic and visual iconography it incorporates are rather influenced by and derive from the sounds, sights and emotions I experienced during my stay. By the end of my visit, a person who had been very dear to my heart, Ferhunde Köke, had passed away. I recorded the sounds of her burial accompanied by a hafız’s recitation of the Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 from the Holy Qur’an which I edited, processed and ended this work with.

Este memorial consiste na reflexão estética e técnica do processo de composição musical realizado na peça Anamnesis, pertencente à área da Música Eletroacústica Mista, que configurou o trabalho artístico do curso de mestrado. O trabalho escrito está dividido em três partes: a primeira aborda a postura do compositor frente aos sons e a música, suas motivações, expectativas, influências e inspirações estéticas; a segunda compreende reflexões composicionais sobre o processo criativo, a descrição de procedimentos e técnicas adotadas, além do relato de dificuldades encontradas; a terceira apresenta uma reflexão da experiência após a realização da obra em recital e após a escrita das duas primeiras partes deste memorial, com a finalidade de identificar as contribuições para o desenvolvimento do compositor e para o meio musical. / This Masters Dissertation comprises an aesthetical and technical reflection on the compositional process of Anamnesis, a live electroacoustic music composition. It is divided into three sections, of which the first discusses the positioning of the composer in relation to sounds and music, his motivations, influences and aesthetical inspirations. The second part reflects on the creative process and describes its procedures and techniques, as well as the difficulties that arose during the composition. The third and last part presents a post-recital reflection and a reflection on the first two parts of the Dissertation. Its aim is to identify the contributions that this Masters Dissertation might present to its writer as well as to the musical milieu.

Este memorial consiste na reflexão estética e técnica do processo de composição musical realizado na peça Anamnesis, pertencente à área da Música Eletroacústica Mista, que configurou o trabalho artístico do curso de mestrado. O trabalho escrito está dividido em três partes: a primeira aborda a postura do compositor frente aos sons e a música, suas motivações, expectativas, influências e inspirações estéticas; a segunda compreende reflexões composicionais sobre o processo criativo, a descrição de procedimentos e técnicas adotadas, além do relato de dificuldades encontradas; a terceira apresenta uma reflexão da experiência após a realização da obra em recital e após a escrita das duas primeiras partes deste memorial, com a finalidade de identificar as contribuições para o desenvolvimento do compositor e para o meio musical. / This Masters Dissertation comprises an aesthetical and technical reflection on the compositional process of Anamnesis, a live electroacoustic music composition. It is divided into three sections, of which the first discusses the positioning of the composer in relation to sounds and music, his motivations, influences and aesthetical inspirations. The second part reflects on the creative process and describes its procedures and techniques, as well as the difficulties that arose during the composition. The third and last part presents a post-recital reflection and a reflection on the first two parts of the Dissertation. Its aim is to identify the contributions that this Masters Dissertation might present to its writer as well as to the musical milieu.

Este memorial consiste na reflexão estética e técnica do processo de composição musical realizado na peça Anamnesis, pertencente à área da Música Eletroacústica Mista, que configurou o trabalho artístico do curso de mestrado. O trabalho escrito está dividido em três partes: a primeira aborda a postura do compositor frente aos sons e a música, suas motivações, expectativas, influências e inspirações estéticas; a segunda compreende reflexões composicionais sobre o processo criativo, a descrição de procedimentos e técnicas adotadas, além do relato de dificuldades encontradas; a terceira apresenta uma reflexão da experiência após a realização da obra em recital e após a escrita das duas primeiras partes deste memorial, com a finalidade de identificar as contribuições para o desenvolvimento do compositor e para o meio musical. / This Masters Dissertation comprises an aesthetical and technical reflection on the compositional process of Anamnesis, a live electroacoustic music composition. It is divided into three sections, of which the first discusses the positioning of the composer in relation to sounds and music, his motivations, influences and aesthetical inspirations. The second part reflects on the creative process and describes its procedures and techniques, as well as the difficulties that arose during the composition. The third and last part presents a post-recital reflection and a reflection on the first two parts of the Dissertation. Its aim is to identify the contributions that this Masters Dissertation might present to its writer as well as to the musical milieu.