Portraiture, recording and improvised music

[frogger]

Recently I made a series of recordings of solo improvisors. For each recording, I picked a place with interesting acoustics, and made use of multiple microphones and recording devices (of variable quality and placed at variable distances around the room, and including contact microphones placed on the instruments) to record multiple tracks (or perspectives if you will) of each soloist at once. I then layered and mixed the recordings together, sometimes using all of the recordings (up to 8) at once, but more often focusing on fewer recordings or even a single recording at once.

At the time, I was thinking 'audio cubism' but then it occurred to me that what I was doing could also count as a form of portraiture, if we allow that the gestures, the style, the exploration, the space recorded is denotative of real individuals and spaces. Not a standard, static, single-perspective kind of portraiture, but something more akin to one of Thomas Ruff's video portraits (but only if shot with several cameras at once, and mixed together), or some of the video work of John Oswald.

Another thing that occurred to me is that an audio portrait of an improvisor has aspects of both the candid and the staged, and perhaps blurs the distinction between the two.

I was wondering if anyone else here has considered portraiture and improvisation before (or explored it artistically), or if they have done research into it? And if they did, what did they come up with?

I've been thinking of developing some sort of video installation about it.

Thanks.

[frogger]

Sorry, I meant Thomas Struth... I get the two photographers confused sometimes.

[faster]

Do you mean people who have recorded improvisers the way you did or who specifically thought of it (or something similar) as "portraiture"?

[jon abbey]

Recently I made a series of recordings of solo improvisors.

who were they, just curious?

[frogger]

Torsten Muller

Joe Rzemieniak

Jordan Fehr

Dan Carkner


I was considering doing people doing eai but I only had limited studio and equipment access. I want to develop the project more.

[frogger]

Faster,

I mean either... People who recorded improvisors or people who tried to consider it in terms of portraiture.

[faster]

Okay, I'm pretty sure Eric LaCasa has done stuff like this, as well as Pierre-Olivier Boulant (credited with "subjective recording" sometimes).

[kcorcoran]

frogger,

also check the recent disc on Ftarri (http://www.ftarri.com/ftarrilabel/998/index.html) of Seijiro Murayama with soundworm, credited with "sound engineering, suggestions." I don't know the complete details, but understand soundworm arranged several different mics for the recording, activating and deactivating during performance in a technique that sounds similar to what you are talking about.

[RFKorp]

there's also the Cyril Epinat/Mathias Forge/Jerôme Bertholon album on Creative Sources.

When you look at the liner notes, Bertholon is in fact credited with "recording, electric lighter, quartz clock" and while I'm not sure how the lighter necessarily fit in, I can point out in reference to the clock, that the track titles incorporate the hour and minute at which they were recorded....

[frogger]

Hey,

Thanks everybody for the recommendations. I am looking them all up online. So far, Seijiro Murayama / Soundworm is closest to what I did, in terms of process and in terms of concept. Its funny, but as I was working on this I had an idea very similar to the Doneda/Boulant collaboration but I ran out of time to do it. I wanted to go for a walk with an improvisor, with several microphones, and record them improvising in several different spaces, and edit the recordings together. The improvisor was supposed to be in on it, in that they would regard each 'recording stop' as part of one big improvisation.


F.

[jon abbey]

John Butcher's Resonant Spaces is also worth checking out along these lines:

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/labels/ ... ont17.html

Ruari Cormack is credited on the CD as doing the recordings, in six different locations in June 2006.

[frogger]

I am familiar with the John Butcher recording. I looked up Ruari McCormack but info was sparse.

I did some recordings in a large, deep and resonant stairwell as part of my project. Some were percussion recordings and other ones were trumpet recordings. The improvisors definitely were observant of the space.

Still trying to think about what portraiture can tell us about improvisation, and what improvisation can tell us about portraiture.

[faster]

I'm not sure where I heard it, but I think it's true to some degree that a musician can't lie in improvisation--there's nothing there but you. In that sense, improvised music--especially a player's corpus of work--is always already a portrait of sorts.

[Charon]

I'm not sure where I heard it, but I think it's true to some degree that a musician can't lie in improvisation--there's nothing there but you. In that sense, improvised music--especially a player's corpus of work--is always already a portrait of sorts.

I'd definitely have to agree with this, and likewise I can't think of where I first heard it, it just seems to be something that's in the air. Actually after a gig once, I was getting a drink and a guy who had been in the audience came up and asked me "Do you think you can get a feel for someone's personality when you improvise with them?"

[nhennies]

I'd definitely have to agree with this, and likewise I can't think of where I first heard it, it just seems to be something that's in the air. Actually after a gig once, I was getting a drink and a guy who had been in the audience came up and asked me "Do you think you can get a feel for someone's personality when you improvise with them?"

This isn't something that's unique to improvisation. Our personalities are inherently reflected in our work, improvised or not.

[yonhosago]

Is it possible to lie or be truthful through a music, be it improvised or not?

[faster]

Is it possible to lie or be truthful through a music, be it improvised or not?

I think so. In fact, I think bands do this every day. After all, one day a guy's girl dumps him and he writes a sad song about it. Then he goes on tour and plays that song every night, trying to dredge up some semblance of that initial emotion. Some of those days, though, he's triumphant, and eventually he finds a new girl. But that's his most popular song, and it stays in the setlist. That may be "acting" more than "lying," but it's kind of what I mean.

I guess it could be argued that improvisers can do this too, but I'm not sure it's as possible or at least as obviously positively reinforced to do so.

[nhennies]

Is it possible to lie or be truthful through a music, be it improvised or not?

I think so. In fact, I think bands do this every day. After all, one day a guy's girl dumps him and he writes a sad song about it. Then he goes on tour and plays that song every night, trying to dredge up some semblance of that initial emotion. Some of those days, though, he's triumphant, and eventually he finds a new girl. But that's his most popular song, and it stays in the setlist. That may be "acting" more than "lying," but it's kind of what I mean.

I guess it could be argued that improvisers can do this too, but I'm not sure it's as possible or at least as obviously positively reinforced to do so.

It's not a question of "truth". Scott Walker has talked at length about how you don't need to be suffering in the moment of performance (and I think I remember reading similar comments from David Lynch) to evoke pain, fear, etc. in your work. I think he said something along the lines of, "If you were in that state of mind all the time you'd go crazy." An improviser drawing on an established repertoire of sounds/techniques in a performance is no different from a band playing a song aside from the fact that the improviser's musical material will change from performance to performance.

Assuming that improvisers are more consistently and readily tapped into their emotional state than a rock musician (or that rock musicians are doing nothing more than writing songs about their ex-girlfriends) is a little far down the road of self-importance for me. I can't count the number of improvisers I've seen playing on "auto-pilot".

[frogger]

Good discussion so far. Its getting my creative juices flowing. I am going to chime in some more once I've had a chance to think about the comments.

[Charon]

For me, it all comes back to Steve Lacy's observation about the difference between improvisation and composition: "...the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what you want to say in 15 seconds, while in improvisation you have 15 seconds."

It's not necessarily that improvisation is always going to be a more 'truthful' portrait of the person and composition is always going to be a less 'truthful' one, but that improvisation, being so much more immediate, allows far less time for someone to create masks/lies to hide behind. Its basic nature is far less permissive of 'lies' 'masks' or 'acting'