Abstract
The author describes his 15-year development of the hybrid interactive instrument “Endangered Guitar”, and how it grew out of an already decade long practice of sonic performances on guitar, followed his aesthetic interests through hundreds of concerts, and influenced these interests in turn. The Endangered Guitar is an instrument is made to facilitate live sound processing. The software “listens” to the guitar input, to then determine the parameters of the electronic processing of the same sounds, responding in a flexible way. The instrument is interactive, in that it does not react in a fully predictable way to the input of the performer. The author makes a case that in order to truly improvise with electronics one has to program “uncertainties” into the machine. He uses weighted random functions, feedback strategies, and the fuzzy behavior of pitch tracking devices when presented with overtone-rich sounds, which the performer draws from the guitar with a variety of tools.
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- 1.
I do not pretend that the instrument is designed for ALL cases, because there is music I am not interested in.
- 2.
I can’t resist bringing up Joel Chadabe’s observation: “I offer my nontechnical perception that good things often happen—in work, in romance, and in other aspects of life—as the result of a successful interaction during opportunities presented as if by chance” (Chadabe 1984).
- 3.
I listened to this music as soon as Music Improvisation Company’s LP came out on ECM in 1970 (ECM Records 1970). But I started to understand its implications when I read Derek Bailey’s account in the 1987 German translation of the first edition of his book “Improvisation: Its Nature And Practice In Music” (Bailey 1987).
- 4.
I can illustrate those musical interactions best with our quartet recording from 2000, Kärpf (Tammen 2000).
- 5.
CD Endangered Guitar (Tammen 1998).
- 6.
In light of the guitarists who came forward since Rowe and Frith were using those techniques (especially the explosion in the 1990s), it is safe to say that playing the guitar with knitting needles or alligator clips is just another traditional guitar playing technique.
- 7.
Website Dafna Naphtali (2016).
- 8.
Ask me about database applications for undertakers, orthopedic shoemakers and for those who sell colostomy bags!
- 9.
See my mini-CD release on NurNichtNur, recorded June 2001 during a tour in France: “Endangered Guitar Processing” (Tammen 2001).
- 10.
Harvestworks Website (2016).
- 11.
It is strange that I can’t find a proper link to this groundbreaking software. STEIM has a successor to LiSA, and you may get some information about Waisfisz’s approach from their RoSa page (STEIM 2016).
- 12.
It is not a coincidence that it sounded like Teo Macero’s application of an echoplex to Sonny Sharrock’s solo on Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson album. I always wanted to sound that way, and Sonny Sharrock and the music of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew period belong to my earliest Jazz influences.
- 13.
The occasional tapping not withstanding.
- 14.
- 15.
I am fond of GRM Tools—I may have been able to replace some of those with my own programming, however, I am not sure it would ever sound that good! (Institut National Audiovisuel 2016).
- 16.
In Max/MSP parlance, I use bpatchers, poly~ objects and abstractions.
- 17.
The interface is entirely done with bpatchers—Max’s presentation mode wasn’t out yet.
- 18.
A list of approaches can be found on my website (Tammen 2012).
- 19.
You can see an example in the first few seconds of this concert video from 2010 (Tammen 2010).
- 20.
I came to like Don Buchla’s use of this term to name a synthesizer module that produces unpredictable control values.
- 21.
It is baffling (but also attests to the stability of Max/MSP) that in 15 years the software crashed just four times live on stage.
- 22.
As a method in itself it does not have to be of value—a musician playing the same licks over and over does also, strictly speaking, “open form composition”.
- 23.
“Practicing” is a good point: I am always amazed by people whipping up some patches up the night before the gig, and then getting lost on stage. Exceptions not withstanding, one does hear lack of preparation.
- 24.
… thus replacing one binary scheme with the next.
- 25.
Tammen (2014).
- 26.
Tammen (2015).
- 27.
Clang (2016).
- 28.
Tammen (2016).
References
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Clang. (2016). http://clang.cl. Accessed August 8, 2016.
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Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center. (2016). http://www.harvestworks.org. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Institut National Audiovisuel. (2016). GRM-Tools, http://www.inagrm.com/grmtools. Accessed August 8, 2016.
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Tammen, H. (2001). CD Endangered Guitar Processing. http://tammen.org/endangered-guitar-processing/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Tammen, H. (2010). Endangered Guitar at HERE Arts Center, YouTube video 2010. https://youtu.be/vFXIfgljMjw. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Tammen, H. (2012). Multichannel Endangered Guitar projects. http://tammen.org/multichannel-endangered-guitar-works/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Tammen, H. (2014). Live sound processing projects. http://tammen.org/live-sound-processing/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Tammen, H. (2015). Percussores for tabla machine and live sound processing. http://tammen.org/percussores-for-tabla-machine-and-live-sound-processing/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Tammen, H. (2016). CD Endangered Guitar Live—Deus Ex Machina. http://tammen.org/cd-endangered-guitar-live-deus-ex-machina/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
Toussaint, G. T. (2005). The Euclidean algorithm generates traditional musical rhythms. In (Extended version of the paper that appeared in) Proceedings of BRIDGES: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music and Science (47–56). http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff-extended.pdf. Accessed March 8, 2016.
STEIM. (2016). RoSa Product Page, http://steim.org/product/rosa/. Accessed August 8, 2016.
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Tammen, H. (2017). Case Study: The Endangered Guitar. In: Bovermann, T., de Campo, A., Egermann, H., Hardjowirogo, SI., Weinzierl, S. (eds) Musical Instruments in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2951-6_14
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