laptop improvisers

[flies]

having searched through all references to "laptop" in IHM through 2005, i was surprised that i didn't find a thread on this topic.

who do you like, and what albums?

i was looking for the thread b/c i have been having trouble coming up with anything performance ready on my own laptop, and I wanted some examples of what other people have done.

What i've been finding with my own work is this: i think the physicality of other more traditional instruments is a great asset. The supreme malleability of environments like max/msp etc is problematic for an improviser since, although you can do virtually anything, it can take a great deal of preparation (days/weeks) to get just the sound you're after. This means that the freedom you have to improvise is determined to a great extent by forethought.

This is admittedly a question of degree as compared with other instruments (eg you can't pick up the radio sounds on an acoustic guitar), it seems that the laptop performer's capacity for discovery or the unexpected is considerably less, at least in terms of the kinds of sounds produce. (it goes without saying that a limitation of the kinds of sounds can produce will not prevent one from making excellent music, as we can see from sachiko M or whoever you want.)

so: what works and what doesn't in laptop improv?

[fearandpanic]

Most of the live improvising laptop sets I've seen have been pretty bad, partly for the reasons you mentioned. One person who stood out was Wade Matthews. I can't say if he's using max/msp or not, but he seemed well able to keep up with what was going on, mostly using very small movements with his fingers. Phil Durrant has been preoccupied in recent years with making the laptop as versatile and responsive as other instruments, designing his own software.

[(<oo>)]

forcing an open door: the use of an external sound source (mic) can liven things up.

[gordon]

i make a lot of computer noise by feeding back Ableton Live plugins, and it is way too easy to lose control of what you're doing if you aren't careful. i limit myself to a small number of controls, and play it as if it were hardware. having a MIDI controller to get your face out of the computer screen is an excellent idea. my default set has been evolving over time, it used to be much more complicated but i've scaled it down to two parallel feedback loops, one with a ring modulator and the other with a delay. i'll occasionally drop a sample in there, or record one and loop it, and i also will sometimes mix a microphone in there to get the sounds started.

just like hardware, you have to dedicate a lot of time to learning one or two pieces of "soft gear" inside out and not letting embellishment get out of control.

[some guy]

Fortunately (for me), most of the live improvising laptop sets I've seen have been pretty good. Maybe there's more here in Portland, OR than other places or the players are more skilled. (But I've seen some in France and San Francisco, too, so....)

Agreed about Wade Matthews for sure. He was here in Portland awhile back, and that was pretty cool. Keith Rowe and Masami Akita both do laptop--very different from each other but both pretty good. Last time I saw Jerome Noetinger doing improv, he was at the laptop. Doug Theriault has put out several CDs. Most of the other people in Portland that I know haven't released anything commercially. And maybe those days are over, anyway. You may be able to find Abusive Delay (aka Abusive/Consumer) and Brandon Conway and Peter Karman online, though I don't know how much of it, if any, is laptop improv.

[flies]

any particular wade matthews you'd recommend?

[gohleekwang]

Julien Ottavi is very good.
http://www.apo33.org/

[yonhosago]

One word to describe the work of Christof Kurzmann in his set up for Klaus Filip's lloopp would be agile. His forced open door for this is a wide library of samples. But then again, the managing of this library according to what's happening outside his soundworld, is astonishing.

[cheapmachines]

Second on Julien Ottavi, I've seen him do some very interesting stuff (plus you're never quite sure what you're going to get which is always good).

Klaus Filip in a totally different style does some extremely graceful, considered work.

John Wall - not too much publicly available in the way of recordings as yet but he's really doing some fantastic work in improvised settings with his laptop right now. Great speed and response. Saw him last night in London as a duo with John Butcher (a first public meeting as far as I know) and in various trio/quartet combinations with John Edwards and Mark Sanders. Jaw-dropping stuff.

[jon abbey]

John Wall - not too much publicly available in the way of recordings as yet but he's really doing some fantastic work in improvised settings with his laptop right now. Great speed and response. Saw him last night in London as a duo with John Butcher (a first public meeting as far as I know) and in various trio/quartet combinations with John Edwards and Mark Sanders. Jaw-dropping stuff.

great to hear he's making some progress along these lines!

[cheapmachines]

great to hear he's making some progress along these lines!

From an audience perspective, he certainly is. I've seen the Wall/Sanders/Edwards trio a couple of times now and both have been very solid outings. There was a concern that extreme/abstract computer tones would stick out like a sore thumb up against an acoustic drum kit and an upright bass, but not a bit of it.

I have it on good authority that there will be something released from the trio soon-ish.

[barry]

great to hear about john wall's progression. after his appearance on audition, i've been waiting for some improv recordings from him.

flies - i have used my laptop as an improv instrument on a few recordings and on a few performances, i've used Live in conjunction with a hard drive full of samples & recordings to manipulate. I found that along with ChucK and SuperCollider for some on-the-fly programming make for a pretty good improv rig for me. but of course it all involves lots of skill and practice to make it work. just like any other instrument.

[sound323]

John's live work utilising aspects of improvisation is a complete paradox for him. He is quite open regards his dislike of most improvised music and is even more open about his complex relationship with performance of his own music, something that he has never been comfortable with; whether performed by others (a recent concert by an ensemble in Amsterdam who had transcribed Alterstill is a shining example) or himself . Yet he is, presently at least, compelled to both improvise and perform live.

The Trio : in my humble opinion, is simply stunning. The dialogue between the three is complex, hard hitting and above all, subtle and sophisticated. Potentially, one of the greatest groups in the history of electro/acoustic music. No question.

JW/JB premier : Moments before going on stage JW told JB that he could not align himself with the process and suggested that JB play solo. Thus John selected his solo reed and prepared himself accordingly and took his place before the audience. Only then to be surprised by JW sudden appeared on stage and the resulting abrupt commencement of the duo performance. This resulted in music of a tense, driven nature, both were grappling with material unfamiliar and in part, uncomfortable. Real improvised music.

[jon abbey]

John's live work utilising aspects of improvisation is a complete paradox for him. He is quite open regards his dislike of most improvised music and is even more open about his complex relationship with performance of his own music, something that he has never been comfortable with; whether performed by others (a recent concert by an ensemble in Amsterdam who had transcribed Alterstill is a shining example) or himself . Yet he is, presently at least, compelled to both improvise and perform live.

right, and add to this the speed at which he works: composed pieces take two years to get 20 minutes he's happy with, improvised pieces happen in the moment.

The Trio : in my humble opinion, is simply stunning. The dialogue between the three is complex, hard hitting and above all, subtle and sophisticated. Potentially, one of the greatest groups in the history of electro/acoustic music. No question.

JW/JB premier : Moments before going on stage JW told JB that he could not align himself with the process and suggested that JB play solo. Thus John selected his solo reed and prepared himself accordingly and took his place before the audience. Only then to be surprised by JW sudden appeared on stage and the resulting abrupt commencement of the duo performance. This resulted in music of a tense, driven nature, both were grappling with material unfamiliar and in part, uncomfortable. Real improvised music.

nice! hope this new phase of his translates well to disc, or I get to see it for myself live sometime...

[cheapmachines]

JW/JB premier : Moments before going on stage JW told JB that he could not align himself with the process and suggested that JB play solo.

Thanks for the extra detail on this Mark, I saw all this and couldn't quite make out what was happening. It certainly explains, as you say, the tense but gripping nature of the performance.

[sound323]

Yeah, i got both sides of the story. JW feeling slightly guilty. JB was not shaken in the slightest, in fact, he told me he relished the moment.

The other classic Wall moment of the evening was when the quartet had completed the last set of the night, with the audience going mad for an encore. JW clearly closed the lid of his computer signaling the end of the evening. Mark Sanders introduced the musicians, expecting enough was enough. To everyones surprise JW open the lid, this prompted the other musicians to regroup and start playing again. JW sat there motionless for a couple of minutes and then left the stage as abruptly as he had previously arrived for the Butcher set.

[Dan Warburton]

Excellent! Nice to see it's not only Mattin who has a flair for live laptop (lapdance?) performance

[horaflora]

Cojones!

[(<oo>)]

the best way to begin is to check out example patches and patches made by others and adjust them, trying out things, adding parameters, modifying the interface till it suits you. there was this one recurring sound in john wall's audition session of which i thought: dammit, he knows how to do that too. before i hadn't heard anyone else producing that sound (semicontrollable, meandering feedback spikes). i obtained it by opening an existing karplus strong model patch (or a comb filter, i forgot), changing the range of parameters and adding things, finally ending up with this abstraction which i thought sounded like nothing else. it's improvisation from the beginning on. gradually you'll get to produce more personal sounds. i love crunchy lo-fi sounds. it's taken me a while to find out that some simple sample and hold magic does the trick. add that to the previous patch and you get crunchy meandering feedback spikes. and so on. even if something is already available, try to build it yourself. you'll learn, you'll get more pride out of it and it probably will sound not exactly the same as the preexisting alternatives.
i wonder if i'm answering your question?

[stephe]

I think preparing sounds for live performance is a little like practicing modes, standard chord progressions or extended techniques on an acoustic instrument. Familiarizing oneself with the tools in the toolbox can allow for more creative use of those tools in the right environment. So, I don’t see a huge issue with hours of sound preparation if you have a flexible enough instrument (i.e. laptop, software, controllers) to create this environment. Maybe its also analogous to preparing a piano.

Flies, you might want to check out Kenaxis, a quite sophisticated Max/MSP patch written by a friend of mine, Stefan Smulovitz.

He wrote it for his own performances, to counter some of the limitations you are referring to (specifically the lack of spontaneity / over preparation / boxed in issue) while still allowing enough ease of control in the interface that the software doesn’t take over in the live environment. Kenaxis allows for incorporating live sounds as well, which I think is really valuable in the improv setting. He has used it while improvising with people like Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Mark Dresser, Mark Feldman…

Here is a link to a recent piece that uses Kenaxis in an electroacoustic piece. The composer said specifically that he used the granulators and basunerah tools extensively.

http://www.myspace.com/rohandelivera

Stefan’s site has sound examples and a nice quote from Keith Rowe about the software:

http://www.kenaxis.com