richest live-interactive music

January 16, 2009 1:47 AM

Live instrument(s) plus Max/MSP or PD or other live-interactive audio setup. What are the richest, most musically interesting pieces you've heard in this genre?

"Rich" and "interesting" by your own definitions, of course. (And I would love to hear anything you want to say about your definitions.)

I'm looking for pieces that best counter some of the existing stereotypes about live-interactive music (lack of depth / lack of complex structure / noodling / tech purely for tech's sake).

posted by kalapierson to media & arts (7 comments total)

Jonny Greenwood's solo at the end of Radiohead's Go to Sleep (last 50 seconds or so) is awesome. It actually fails your test in most of the superficial ways, in that it's totally noodly and simple, but I still find it rich and interesting in context (if, shall we say, closely related to Adrian Belew's "Born Under Punches" solo off Remain in Light).
posted by abcde at 3:23 AM on January 16

abcde beat me to it! I second that for sheer out-of-this worldness
posted by ashaw at 4:19 AM on January 16

In a more classical vein, Gordon Mumma most likely started doing live interactive electronic pieces before you were born. Check out, from the above link, this legal mp3 excerpt of Medium Size Monograph (1963). It kind of blows my mind that it is that old. This is the year Hendrix first started as a session musician! Which brings up Horn (1965), contemporary with what Hendrix did with his electric guitar, on the french horn, of all instruments (plus some home made electronic processing that fits somewhat into the role of what we would call an "effects rack" today).

Mumma worked with a depth and a lack of "noodlyness" that betrays his classical roots as a composer. Of course, compared to the serial music that was the mainstream of the experimental music world of his time, he was very unfocused and arbitrary, but these things are relative.

Some more recent work from the noise world:

Does a contact mic count as a live instrument?

Wiese uses Max/MSP. If you don't hear the depth or complex structure, I am severely deluded, or you don't understand the genre (who's to know which).

The poor recording quality does not do his timbre justice (and this is so much about the play of timbres).

Flashing light epilepsy warning.

Gerritt Also uses Max/MSP, his patch controls both the audio and the strobes (in a dark room with a smoke machine running). This Gerritt performance is more focused, simultaneously less noodly and less deep, to my ears. The recording is much clearer.

A huge and barely explored potential with electronic music is a proliferation of systems of timbre. While it is often hard to get specific and controlled results with a traditional instrument, our imaginations are barely beginning to catch up with the potential of the technology with electronic instruments. Sadly, an overwhelming majority of digital audio technology is devoted to modeling "retro" or "authentic" analog sounds. I think we finally could be in the era that the Italian Futurists imagined they were ushering in, artistically.
posted by idiopath at 4:24 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I almost forgot Lucky Dragons. A bit to soothing and new-agey for my tastes, but someone recommended I check them out recently, and they use extensive live, and even audience participatory, electronics.

Regarding live electronics, there is the funny question of what we call live electronics. Really, when it comes down to it, anything amplified and performed in front of you is live interactive electronics. We only call it live electronics when we hear intentional electronic alteration of the sound, or electronic production ex-nihilo of the sound, and it is not a "rock guitar effect pedal" or a "synthesizer" or "accidental feedback" or "ableton live dance music sequencing" (somehow these things are too commonplace to be called interactive live electronics). Perhaps live electronics is a vague abstract term, like person or entity or object, that we apply when we have no strong framework to understand the thing yet, and no longer tend to use once we understand the thing it applies to. Which makes it all the more interesting that Gordon Mumma made things in 1963 that we would call interactive live electronics.
posted by idiopath at 4:55 AM on January 16

Thank you, idiopath -- using the processing structurally / texturally (to extend the live instruments sounds and build a sound world, rather than gross-motor "big crazy sounds" improv) is EXACTLY what I'm into, although I didn't want to lead people's answers down too specific a path.
posted by kalapierson at 6:13 AM on January 16

that Fennesz album, Endless Summer?
posted by mary8nne at 8:11 AM on January 16

And here's a great article on sonic transformation as structural/aesthetic device, with some classic examples...
posted by kalapierson at 10:10 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]