PA6303 - Solo Performance

Performance of my piece, "Mind The Gap"

For my solo piece, I composed and performed a song called “Mind The Gap”. I wrote the song about living in London and the positive and negative implications: one day it can be the greatest city in the world and the next, one can feel consumed by the rat race. London can often make its inhabitants feel lost in its grandeur, not knowing where to go, and this was something that I wanted to get across in the song.

Before the performance, I prepared numerous materials, such as samples, synths and pre-recorded guitar. I collected samples of what I’d refer to as “Sounds of London”, which included sirens, tube announcements and street market sellers; this was drawing inspiration from Music Concète, which is described as “music made of raw sounds” (Schaeffer cited in Hodgkinson, 1987, p.1). I wanted the piece to be immersive, for the listener to feel like were actually in the middle of the madness of London, and sound effects are a key tool for doing this (Prince, 2012). I also used a synth to play a continues drone sound to represent the continuous nature of London as a city; a city that never sleeps.

The samples used for the performance

To represent the vast nature of London, I wanted to make use of panning; panning is an often overlooked tool for creating space (Seydel, 2016). For this, I prepared synth noises to play during the faster tempo section of the piece. But, I automated the pre-recoded synth to alternate between far left and right, in order to further represent the franticness of London.

I used pre-recoded guitar and programmes drums to organise the structure of the song. As the song progress, I would queue the next strip of sounds and recordings. I wanted to have a range of dynamics in the song, so for the middle eight, I stripped the piece back to the synth drone sound. I then queued numerous pre-recorded guitar clips to work as a crescendo to, again, increase the dynamics of the piece.

Guitar loops used for bridge

Similar to performance analysed in my blog post, “‘Liveness’ In Electronic Music’, the connection between myself and the electronics was through gesture and then subsequent dislocation. I was queuing the samples, effects and pre-recoded clips by pressing buttons on an Akai APC Key 25. It could be said that there was a dislocation in time (Emmerson, 1994) as the parts being queued had been prepared before the performance. There was further dislocation in space as I had put reverb, chorus and delay effects on my vocals, changing the way in which the music was perceived by the audience.

Akai APC Key 25

I found the experience of performing with electronics quite challenging. The first challenge came in writing the piece. As someone who has mainly composed music using a sole acoustic guitar and voice, introducing electronics to my repertoire was not something I was used to. I used albums such as Dog Eat Dog [1985] by Joni Mitchell and Human Love [2015] by Newton Faulkner for inspiration, as these were artists who were traditionally acoustic but began to incorporate electronics in these albums.

Dog Eat Dog [1985] by Joni Mitchell

Human Love [2015] by Newton Faulkner

One of the main things I struggled with was interacting with the audience. As I was using instruments and technology I was not used to, I felt that I wasn’t able to be as present in the performance as I usually am when playing with just my guitar. When performing, “gaze, body movement, [and] facial expression” were found to be highly important communication cues for audience members (Kawase, 2014, p.49). By having to concentrate on the new equipment, it could be said that these communication cues were affected. To counteract this, I added sections to the piece where I was able to step back from the equipment and play my guitar, increasing the interaction between myself and the audience.

With this being said, the feedback I received from my peers and tutors was positive. Despite my own reservations, my stage presence was praised, so I feel the actions I took to counteract my fears had been affective. One of the main aspects of my performance that received good feedback was my use of visuals, as I used the projector during me performance playing a video of a train illusion. Research has shown that when audio and visual are presented together, as opposed to only audio, the listener is more likely to have an intense emotional response (Pan et al., 2019). This was vital to the performance because, as mentioned before, I wanted the listener to feel immersed in the music.

A still from the video of the Train Illusion

As a way to improve the piece, my tutors suggested that I have more variation in the loops that I used. In order to do this, I need to stop looking at the electronics as a way to produce a foundation for me to perform live vocals and guitar. Instead, I want to begin to use the electronics as the focal point of the piece. Firstly, I plan to incorporate live manipulation to the vocals, instead of turning vocal effects on and off. Furthermore, I want to improve my skills in creating drum loops to have a greater variation, and therefore a greater driving force to the piece.

Overall, I felt that the solo performance went well. For my first performance using live electronics, I believe that it was a strong one. However, though this was my first, it definitely will not be my last. This performance has left my wanting to experience the diversity and creativity of live electronics more, and I certainly plan to do so.

Reference List

Emmerson, S. (1994) ‘Timbre Composition in Electronic Music’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1-240.

Joni Mitchell. Dog Eat Dog [CD] (1985). Geffen Records.

Kawase, S. (2014) ‘Importance of Communication Cues in Music Performance according to Performers and Audience’, International Journal of Psychological Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 39-64.

Newton Faulkner. Human Love [CD] (2015). BMG.

Pan, F, Zhang, L, Ou, Y, Zhang, X. (2019) journals.plos.org: The audio-visual integration effect on music emotion: Behavioural and physiological evidence [online]. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217040. [Accessed on: 24/02/20].

Prince, S. (2012) Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality. 1st edition. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Hodgkinson, T. (1987) timhodgkinson.co.uk: An interview with Pierre Schaeffer – pioneer of Musique Concète [online]. Available at: http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/schaeffer.pdf. [Accessed on: 24/02/20].

Seydel, R. (2016) blog.landr.com: How To Use Panning To Get Bigger Sound In Your Mix [online]. Available at: https://blog.landr.com/use-panning-get-massive-width-mix/. [Accessed on: 24/02/20].