Pan-dora: the report.

Pan-dora was written for the bassoonist Ruth Hardwick and premiered at her final recital, June 1st 2012, at Guildhall, School of Music and Drama, London.

Pan-dora is meant to be a theatrical piece of music and performed as such. Bassoonist walks on stage to his/hers 2 microphones. 1 connected to the main sound system (Mic 1 (Mic 1 is optional, depending on the venue)), the other connected to the laptop (mic 2). Mic 1 is the performer´s main mic and all music should be played into it, except for the multiphonics in bars 8, 21, 34, 42 and 55. Those should be played into Mic 2 as a triggering material for the laptop. The laptop´s software (MAXmsp) will be programmed to sense all incoming signals over a certain threshold as a trigger to play the appropriate sound file (first three are sound files, the last one is a beat, generated by putting together six different bassoon sounds ranging from a few ms to a whole sec.) to accompany the performer for a few bars. Once the sound file in question reaches it´s end the performer is, "unexpectedly", left alone playing the music. This is such a shock to the performer that she/he looses concentration. After stopping she/he

then needs to restart the playback by playing another multiphonic into Mic 2. This become quite frustrating since it was "not meant to happen".

Hence the subtitle: The uncooperative machine.

In the case of a multiphonic not triggering the playback the performer should repeat the multiphonic until it does. Except for in the last bar, there the multiphonics should be played as written.

The piece ends with the 4th unsuccessful attempt to make the CPU cooperate. The performer needs to accept that this performance is over, though it may be against his/hers will. How it ends is up to the artist. Here are some ideas: Running off stage or bowing in shame. For the more extreme bassoonist one could even destroy the laptop in a rage, an old dummy CPU could be used for that.

Additional props/costumes would make this piece even more entertaining to watch.

"Pan-dora was the composer´s first attempt to set up a MAXmsp patch and instead of worrying that something might go wrong he decided to write the error into the music. The result is a theatrical composition whereby the bassoonist and laptop are to be treated as equal performers. Unfortunately the laptop does not cooperate quite as expected."

-       from the premiere´s programme.

Today the piece is approx. 3 minutes and is due to become longer as it get´s revised in the near future. Also it´s the composer´s intention to incorporate a more advanced graphic/visual aspect: everytime the performer triggers something, you dont only hear a playback, you also see a visual reaction to what is taking place. You could say you would see the detailed emotions of "Pan-dora" as she plays the loops/music/beats. How that will be portrayed has not yet been decided and will be workshoped with a designer in due course. Some visual aspects can already be found in the current patch, but they are very basic, and would hardly be convincing during a large scale performance. Even so, those basic visual aspects worked very well during the premiere and gave it that extra theatrical sparkle.

Here is a video demonstration of the patch:

http://screencast.com/t/9v2dV4zL23

The plugins I use can be downloaded from here:

http://mda.smartelectronix.com/

Best wishes
-Helgi R. Ingvarsson

Wigmore Hall: "Ground" premiere.

It´s been a while, but we, me and my voiceworks group, premiered our piece "Ground: a dialogue study", for 2 singers and 2 trombones, wednesday May 25th at Wigmore Hall.

It went well and we are all pleased. Just being backstage in that building was a great experience, not to mention being on the actual stage. My first feeling, when walking of the stage after having performed it for a decent crowd (great audience by the way), was that I wanted to go back on and perform it again. So at least I had fun conducting it.

At this point it´s hard to look back objectively. Hearing the recording would help a great deal. I do hope we´ll receive it sooner than later.

Now I have less than 4 hours to finish "Penelopeia" for Chroma and write a 1000-2000 word report about "Pan-dora: the uncooperative machine" and the MAXmsp patch I made for it. Better get on that...

Pan-dora, the uncooperative machine - Premiere

The premiere of "Pan-dora: the uncooperative machine" was a great success last friday at GSMD. Ruth Hardwick performed it with great professionalism and portrayed the theatrical scenery well (pic: Ruth rehearsing day before concert).

There will hopefully be a second performance in the end of June and ofcourse I´ll post all relevant information here. The plan is the record it, both video and audio, at that occasion. An audio recording would not suffice since the piece demands quite the dramatisation on behalf of the performer.

Today the piece is approx. 3 minutes. Once I get a chance to revise it it will no doubt be longer (somewhere between 5-10 min.) and I intend to incorporate a more advanced graphic/visual aspect into it. So everytime the performer triggers something, you dont only hear a playback, you also see a visual reaction to what is taking place. You can see the detailed emotions of "Pan-dora" as she plays the loops/music/beats. How that will be portrayed has not yet been decided and will be workshoped with the appropriate designer. Already I do have some visual aspects in the piece, but they are quite basic. Still, they give the performance that extra sparkle.

The MAXmsp patch worked perfectly, and as the final project for my electro-acoustic elective I´ll be handing in a short report, 1-2 pages, explaining the process and functions. I intend to share that report here on my blog in due course along with a video tutorial. For now, you can view my patch as a png file as it looks to today (presentation mode):

Diary of a dramatic composer...

Diary of a dramatic composer... 
June 2nd, 2012: 

I´ve been putting it off for a while continuing with my Chroma composition, with only 9 days to go today towards the deadline I decided it was time to finally tackle it.

After struggling with the opening for a whole day I gave up and deleted it (with theatrical gestures I might add) and started over. 2 hours later I had a new opening but then decided to listen to the old one again, just for kicks (recorded live at a workshop 2 weeks earlier). That´s when I decided to use the old one after all, with some alterations. But now I cant find the right backup score so I´ll have to write it up again completely.

Thank god for my old print out.

Productive day? Hell yeah! (warning, sarcasm)

Here is a tiny bit of the workshop with Chroma where they played my sketch.

Short sketch (mostly strings) - nota bene: first time rehearsal

Bless og ekkert kex!
-Helgi