Electronic Music Performance Research Articles

Approaches for Working with the Body in the Design of Electronic Music Performance Systems

ABSTRACT This article outlines a body-centred focus in the design of performance systems for electronic music. Through a movement-led design process, I discuss the interaction of the body, controllers, data and mapping. A flat hierarchy approach to performance system design aims to support bodily autonomy in performance, challenge human-machine dualism and expand the definition of virtuosity in performance to include system virtuosity. The affordances and behaviours of the components of performance systems are discussed in terms of their cooperation. With an awareness of the non-neutrality of data, controllers, and sensors, I outline methods for making adaptive and flexible systems which respond to and respect individual bodies. This embodied and hybrid approach to system design can facilitate posthuman expression in electronic music performance.

Capture and express, question and understand: Gloves in gestural electronic music performance.

Gesture-based musical performance with on-body sensing represents a particular case of wearable connection. Gloves and hand-sensing interfaces connected to real-time digital sound production and transformation processes enable empty-handed, expressive musical performance styles. In this article, the origins and developments of this practice as well as a specific use case are investigated. By taking the technical, cognitive, and cultural dimensions of this media performance as foundation, a reflection on the value, limitations, and opportunities of computational approaches to movement translation and analysis is carried out. The insights uncover how the multilayered, complex artistic situations produced by these performances are rich in intersections and represent potent amplifiers for investigating corporeal presence and affective engagement. This allows to identify problems and opportunities of existing research approaches and core issues to be solved in the domain of movement, music, interaction technology, and performance research.

Soma-Based Nonphysical Instrument Design in Electronic Music Performance

Abstract Attention to the role of the body and bodily awareness in human-computer interaction is increasing. Broader availability of cost-effective motion sensors in mobile and gaming applications has prompted a shift to body-centered design methods. This article examines the relevance of embodied sketching activities drawn from soma-based and sonic interaction design to digital musical instrument (DMI) development. It focuses specifically on the Telechord, a novel motion-controlled system that promotes methods for exploring connections between movement and sound. By emphasizing the felt aspects of movement-based design and performance, this approach places performer experience at the forefront, complementing technical efforts to enhance nuance and coherence in current DMI design research.

Online Education and Wireless Network Coordination of Electronic Music Creation and Performance under Artificial Intelligence

This paper is aimed at studying the online education and wireless network collaboration on electronic music creation and performance under artificial intelligence (AI). This paper uses a fuzzy clustering algorithm (FCA), designs the sensor network‐related equipment, and uses AI to design an electronic music creation system. The analysis of simulation experiments suggests that under the premise of increasing the number of neighbors, the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Squared Error (MSE) of collaborative filtering and fuzzy C‐means clustering algorithms show a downward trend. However, with the same number of neighbors, the filtering matching algorithm is greater than FCA regarding the mean values of MAE and MSE. Meanwhile, on the electronic music performance system of AI, the digital module is designed and the sound data are imaged on the oscilloscope, and the collaboration of electronic music online education and wireless network is completed. The following conclusion is drawn: modularizing the creative mode of intelligent electronic music has achieved higher computational efficiency. Through the oscilloscope, the sound feature is converted into the image structure, and the corresponding sound and image mode is formed, which realizes the purpose of online electronic music intelligent matching and optimizes the effect of online education. In the AI environment, the matching degree of verification electronic music curriculum resources is better than traditional matching algorithms, and the accuracy is higher.

Now I'm Digital, Where Is My Ritual?: Exploring Postdigital Performance Objects as Totems for Agency and Ritual

The author argues that significant aspects of electronic music performance have been diminished in the rush to incorporate the latest, often discreet (as in intentionally unobtrusive) technologies. He identifies these aspects as agency, ritual and, to a lesser extent, serendipity and mess. Using references to his own work, he suggests that applying an understanding of how actors create totems to present agency and affordance is essential to regain, and possibly acclimate, these tools and practices so they are relevant to live electronic music performance practice in a contemporary technology environment.

Illuminating musical code: Program an electronic music performance in real time - [Resources_Hands On

Live coding is a type of performance art in which the performer creates music by programming and reprogramming a synthesizer as the composition plays. The synthesizer code is typically projected onto walls or screens for the audience to inspect as they listen to the unfolding sound. Live coding events are sometimes known as algoraves, and at these events it's common to see visualizations of the evolving music projected alongside the code. Often, these visualizations are created by a second performer manipulating graphics software in tandem with the live coder. After attending a few algoraves in New York City (musically, the results tend to fall along a spectrum from ambient soundscapes to pounding electronic dance music, with a few detours into more experimental domains), I decided to look a little closer at the software the performers were using. I wanted to see if I could come up with my own hardware spin on creating visualizations. While I'm not yet ready to take to the stage, the results have been fun. I'd recommend that any reader interested in music or sound art should try live coding, even if they have no experience playing any traditional musical instrument. The most popular software for live coding appears to be Sonic Pi. This is an open source project originally created by Sam Aaron for the Raspberry Pi, although it is also available for Windows and macOS. Sonic Pi's basic interface is a text editor. Apart from some performance-specific buttons, such as for starting and stopping a piece of music, it looks pretty much like any integrated development environment (IDE), in this case for a version of the Ruby language. Like Python, Ruby is an interpreted language that can run interactively. The Ruby-powered Sonic Pi IDE provides a friendly front end to the powerful SuperCollider sound-synthesis engine, which has been used for over two decades as the basis of many electronic music and acoustic research projects.

Co-Design of Musical Haptic Wearables for Electronic Music Performer's Communication

Communication among performers is a fundamental aspect in music performance. A large number of electronic music instruments based on tangible and screen-based interfaces require a focused visual attention from performers while they are controlled. In certain stage and artistic configurations, this may be an obstacle to face-to-face creative interactions between coperformers and their collaborators. To address these issues, we adopted a user-centered design methodology to develop a novel class of IoT devices that we term musical haptic wearables for performers. We conducted a co-design workshop with 10 electronic musicians using focus-group discussions and the bootlegging technique. This workshop identified numerous creative communication issues among performers in electronic music practice and resulted in mock-up prototypes. We then developed three chest-, foot-, and arm-worn haptic wearables respectively for coperformer, performer-conductor, and performer-sound-engineer interactions. The wearables were assessed with 25 participants using a mixed-methods approach. High accuracies (70%-100%) were obtained for musical actions expected after instructions wirelessly communicated via tactile signals. The results provide evidence that musical haptic wearables can be an effective medium of communication in the context of electronic music performances. More challenges were identified regarding size and placement of the devices on the body, interferences with concurrent vibrations generated by music signals, limitations on the range of creative controls, and a required training curve.

Personalised interactive sonification of musical performance data

In this article, we describe methods and consequences for giving audience members interactive control over the real-time sonification of performer movement data in electronic music performance. We first briefly describe how to technically implement a musical performance in which each audience member can interactively construct and change their own individual sonification of performers’ movements, heard through headphones on a personal WiFi-enabled device, while also maintaining delay-free synchronization between performer movements and sound. Then, we describe two studies we conducted in the context of live musical performances with this technology. These studies have allowed us to examine how providing audience members with the ability to interactively sonify performer actions impacted their experiences, including their perceptions of their own role and engagement with the performance. These studies also allowed us to explore how audience members with different levels of expertise with sonification and sound, and different motivations for interacting, could be supported and influenced by different sonification interfaces. This work contributes to a better understanding of how providing interactive control over sonification may alter listeners’ experiences, of how to support everyday people in designing and using bespoke sonifications, and of new possibilities for musical performance and participation.

Motion Tracking of a Fish as a Novel Way to Control Electronic Music Performance

The authors have mapped the three-dimensional motion of a fish onto various electronic music performance gestures, including loops, melodies, arpeggio and DJ-like interventions. They combine an element of visualization, using an LED screen installed on the back of an aquarium, to create a link between the fish’s motion and the sonified music. This visual addition provides extra information about the fish’s role in the music, enabling the perception of versatile and developing auditory structures during the performance that extend beyond the sonification of the momentary motion of objects.

Gestural Performance of Electronic Music—A “NIME” Practice as Research

The practice of gestural electronic music performance provides a valid context for artistic or practice-based investigations in the field of ’NIME.’ To this end, the material and conceptual conditions for the development of performance pieces using gestural actions need to be explored. The use of digital musical instruments and concepts for the expressive performance with digital sounds leads to questions of perception—by the musician and by the audience—of movements and actions, the body, the instruments, and of their affordances. When considering this performance mode as a topic for investigation, it becomes evident that in order to be based on practice, research in this field needs a definition and differentiation that helps to identify the specific perspectives that are only made possible through application in an actual artistic practice.

Recollections and Reflections on Organised Sound

In this contribution to the twentieth anniversary issue of Organised Sound, I first recall the reasons for dedicating a periodical to organised sound which I mentioned in my answer to inquiries from Cambridge University Press before the journal existed. The digital era is still in its infancy and it will permit a host of new ways to organise sound. I suggest in particular the development of an intimate relationship between acoustic and digital sounds; the extension of structural notations of sound and music and their exploitation for novel musical transformation; the amplification of the use of functions and combinations of functions. I evoke some issues discussed in Organised Sound, elaborating in more detail some problematic topics: analysis and reconstruction of computer music, live electronic music performance, perception of musical sound and sensory aesthetics.

Cassiel: symbolic pulse sequencing

This text presents the motivation and design principles behind the pulse sequencer, a software component used for electronic music composition and performances by Cassiel. The pulse sequencer is a generic, language-based sequence processing engine which can be regarded as an arpeggiator, a sequencer, or anything in between. In fact, arpeggiation and sequencing are special cases of a more general control system. We conclude with some comments about the strengths and weaknesses of the system drawn from several years’ experience in performance projects.

Riding the Sphinx — Lines about ‘Live’

The article discusses various aspects of live electronic music performance. The question of the physical gesture is of highest importance to the author, who also pays careful attention to the audience feedback. More generally, the author mentions several questions relative to interaction, such as direct engagement with the instrument and distributed engagement … Taking a strong esthetical stand, the article discusses the relationship between the instrument and the composer as a result of live performance on stage.

“This is an instrument!”

The article describes how the first live synthesizer piece came about in Rome. Later, with the collaboration of Robert Moog, the author starts a project revolving around the development of a multidimensional sensivity control keyboard better suited to live electronic music performance than traditional devices.

Performance Practice in Computer Music

My interest in electronic music was first inspired by Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms no. 6 for piano and tape. Since then, I have been including electronic music in my musical activities, along with my classical violin repertoire. Electroacoustic music has only recently become part of the contemporary repertoire; consequently, the teaching and discussion of performance practice by actual performers has been scarce. I hope to contribute to the evolving performance practice of electroacoustic music for classical performers. It is important that musicians today learn how to perform electroacoustic music, and address the potential of this new media. A working knowledge of electroacoustic music performance practice should be part of a contemporary repertoire. I also hope to make musicians and electronic-music composers aware of the particular difficulties of performing with electronics. Ideally, this article will stimulate more study in electronic-music performance, and provoke a greater sense of responsibility for aural effects and sound production in live-performance situations.

The Musician-Machine Interface to MIDI

Late in the summer of 1989, the readership of EMUSIC-L, a computer mailing list for the discussion of electroacoustic and computer music, expressed an interest in learning more about the history and development of musician-machine interfacing for electronic music performance. Since many of EMUSIC-L's readers are relatively new to the field of synthesis and not terribly well versed in the history of the genre, the author posted a series of five short articles briefly touching upon various historical landmarks and current trends in the fasci-