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
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