for piano and live electronics
electro-acoustics / 4-channel audio
Youngjoo Jennifer Ryu Portrait Concert,
Lee Kang Sook Hall,
Seoul, South Korea
OCT 14, 2022
⟪SICMF 2022 Concert 1⟫
Platform-L Contemporary Art Center,
Seoul, South Korea
(winner from fest-M 2022 of KEAMS; Korea Electro-Acoustic Music Society)
Sound disappears over time.
Time is a series of faded sounds.
When sensing, time does not move by exact intervals nor flows in one direction. Inside the mind, the same length of time could become a fleeting moment or an eternity. Under the name of memory and intuition, past and future pass through.
The sounds generated by an acoustic instrument are fated to linger for a certain period and fade away. However, in this piece, piano sounds that disappear after playing recur as electronic sounds. Through this process, the boundary between beginning and end becomes meaningless. The piano sounds recurring as fragments, tremors, or as a whole cast doubt about the proposition. 'Sound disappears as time passes by.' With the mixture of piano sounds flowing linearly and electronic sounds coming back recursively, this piece shows the subjective face of time.
• Techniques Employed
Max/MSP
- Effects
- Live sound processing
- ICST Ambisonics plugin
- Master controller for the performance
Score
Production Details
The piece, Recursion, was created between September and December 2021.
• Goal
- To expand the piano’s instrumental possibilities through live processing in Max/MSP
- To make the piano feel almost like a different instrument
• Composition Process
While composing the piano score, I played the piano, imagining how the electronic music would sound and leaving space for it. I wanted the performer to play naturally without feeling disjointed, such as when hearing clicks from in-ear. Therefore, I chose a time notation without bars, allowing the performer to play the piece by subjectively counting seconds.
• Performer’s Role
The performer's role is crucial, as they are not only playing the piano but also making gestural cues recognizable to the Max/MSP operator (composer), such as raising their arm higher or taking a deep breath before hitting a note. There are more than 50 cues in Max/MSP for this piece, so the Max/MSP operator (composer) and the piano performer are both performing.
• Max/MSP Integration
In Max/MSP, the piece is divided into two parts: the sine oscillator part, and live processing part. In the first part, the piano and the Max/MSP compensates each other. A limitation of the piano as an acoustic instrument is that once a note is played, it disappears over time. In Max/MSP, I reversed the envelope of the piano note's disappearance, giving it a long attack, a sustain controllable in length (by observing the piano performer's next movement), and a release similar to that of the piano.
After the piano performer strikes a note, Max/MSP plays a oscillator sound by replacing the note at the end of the phrase with a sine wave at the corresponding frequency. I could cue a sine wave with the envelope mentioned above to play and stop. This could involve a single oscillator or multiple oscillators playing simultaneously. I replaced 33 notes with the piano in the first part to create the effect of a missing note returning.
Live Processing and Effects
In the second part, live processing is used to replay the piano sounds captured by the two microphones in real time to create the effect of hearing them on the piano. This live processing involves manipulating the sound of the piano as it is being played, adding a layer of complexity and depth to the piece. Various combinations of effects were used for different cues, including delay, reverse delay, grain delay, chorus, flanger, and pitch shift. For the 4-channel output, the ICST Ambisonics plugin was used to assign different ambisonic positions to each effect and to create a function to move each point.