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Hey Zoe,
Thanks for the detailed response, I found it really
interesting and I'm sure a lot of other people did
too. So, its great to see a musician out there doing
this kind of thing, because its something I'm really
interested in trying out, and its good to see that it
can actually work, and even, dare I say it, be
liberating or inspiring.
I do have one more question, I'm based off of Ableton
as well, as I'm sure a lot of people are, and I was
just wondering, for the basic mechanism of triggering
ableton clips/cues with midi clips, how are you doing
that? Are you routing them back into ableton through a
Midiyoke or similar internal midi cable, or is there a
way to actually do that easily from within Live?
I've been using that method, with moderate success,
and a few infinite midi feedbacks from time to time,
accidentally taking midi in on the channel I send it
out.
Thanks!
Jesse
Oh, and I very much relate to what you were saying
about a piece being new each time you play it, and
even though I'm not a classical musician, i do get a
bit of a kick at looking at all this through that type
of lense, the "empty score" metaphor really makes
sense to me.
--- Zoe Keating <cello@zoekeating.com> wrote:
> let's see...i started using the "empty score"
> analogy as a neat way
> to describe this techie stuff to classical music
> people in a way they
> understand. i do think of it that way, that a
> sequence of midi
> commands IS a score, just in a different format.
>
> anyway, the technique is similar to what kid beyond
> is doing in that
> we're both using midi clips within ableton live to
> control recording
> and playback.
>
> differences:
> 1) in addition to ableton, i have 2 multi-track
> hardware loopers to
> quickly create amorphous and layered loops
> 2) the "empty scores" are constructed of modules.
> each module is a
> sequence of midi commands (anything really: record
> on track 2 for
> four bars then fade out track 1 over the course of 8
> bars; start
> playing loopB on track 3 and stop all the other
> loops 4 bars later;
> etc.).
> 3) the structure of a piece can be a bit like a
> choose-your-own-
> adventure novels. each module i can trigger with my
> feet, or have it
> be triggered by another musical event, or string
> batches of them
> together in another module. i can therefore change
> the order of
> events quite easily. or arrest the sequencing and
> move to manual
> foot control if i'm feeling like improvising the
> rest of the
> structure. i
> 4) some of the the compositions are
> that..."composed"...and so i have
> the computer execute batches of modules in a certain
> order. obviously
> every performance is still different because i am
> not a machine so
> the arrangements can be quite varied if i use a
> different bowing
> style, etc. i can always arrest the progression with
> my feet and
> switch into manual mode. for example, in one of my
> recent pieces i
> play a long, solo composition on the cello.
> meanwhile, i have the
> computer silently sample segments of it in the
> background. then, 3
> minutes in, i press a foot pedal and BANG, a whole
> orchestra comes in
> made up of all the sampled phrases.
>
> i've gotten pretty fluid with the programming and
> the execution to
> the point that now this setup is extremely freeing.
> i can move
> seamlessly between structured and improvised bits
> and i can so do
> much more than i could do before. most importantly i
> don't have to be
> linear which seemed to me one of the limitations of
> lets-build-layers-
> on-top-of-layers-looping. i still use that technique
> ad nauseam of
> course, but its nice to have a bit more musical
> freedom.
>
> also, i don't know if this is relevant, but i don't
> really make a
> distinction between improvised and composed parts.
> and i don't find
> the idea of a 'score' or 'structure' to be limiting
> since nearly
> everything i do is about working within well defined
> boundaries,
> maybe this is the classical musician in me. playing
> exactly the same
> composition, 4 days in a row...is no different to me
> than
> improvisation. i mean, each day is different and i
> am not
> experiencing the same things the same way every day.
> so the music
> will mean whatever it does at that particular
> moment, a moment which
> can never be duplicated. don't know if that makes
> sense. but whether
> or not i choose to improvise in the middle of a
> composition, is also
> about what is happening right at that moment. i'm
> happy to have
> finally found a method of playing that allows me to
> do that.
>
> one of my favorite "games" to play now is to take an
> empty score of a
> particular composition, and then play different
> music into it. the
> computer takes care of the arrangement and i just
> improvise and see
> what happens. it's kind of like back in 2000 when i
> first started
> playing at afterparties. i would play and my
> electronic music friends
> would sample and manipulate me, and then i would
> react to that. but
> now I AM IN CONTROL...HA HA HA (fade evil laughter)
>
> i'm sure other people are doing this too.
>
> On Sep 23, 2007, at 12:37 AM, J E wrote:
>
> > Hey Zoe,
> >
> > Not to make you blush more, but I've got to second
> the
> > awesomeness comment. More than just impressed, I
> went
> > and checked out your music, and its just plain
> great
> > :).
> >
> > So, I don't know how much this is about the mics
> now,
> > but I noticed that you say you use a
> >
> > "empty-score" (a blank musical framework in the
> form
> > of pre-programmed midi sequences that I then play
> the
> > music into)
> >
> > I've been experimenting with this idea, and was
> > wondering, do you have the midi sequences as
> freely
> > callable tools at your disposal (i.e.
> non-sequentially
> > individually callable) or is the form locked in,
> and
> > it varies more by what you play each time into the
> > "empty-score".
> >
> > I was thinking through this idea with Kid Beyond
> over
> > the summer, as one of his songs, 'Cathedrals', is
> more
> > or less an empty score in ableton, that takes the
> > input material and midi clips it around to form
> the
> > song. At the far extreme you could even
> predeterimine
> > the song as one giant clip, which would require
> you to
> > know when to play what, but after you hit start,
> would
> > not require foot switching etc.
> >
> > This of course is an extreme, and would be very
> > limiting to amount of improvisation involved, but
> its
> > a neat to look all the way to the end of the
> spectrum.
> > I could also imagine a world, where composers of
> > "empty-scores" could share their scores with other
> > musicians, who could learn how to play them and
> come
> > up with entirely different music, that would still
> be
> > bound together to the fundamentals of the empty
> score
> > loop architecture. You could even write some stuff
> > down on a piece of paper, a "real" score to help
> an
> > artist learn your "empty" score.
> >
> > What seems cool about the idea is not so much the
> > codifying and reductionist thinking, but the
> concept
> > that through speaking a common language, people
> could
> > start sharing their architectures they've
> developed,
> > their empty scores, with eachother, allowing us to
> be
> > simultaneously loop players, of our own scores and
> > other's scores, but also loop composers, of scores
> to
> > share with other loop musicians.
> >
> > So, related to that idea, I was wondering, to you,
> or
> > anyone else who's been working with these ideas,
> how
>
=== message truncated ===
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