What if music could be composed and performed simultaneously? I’m not talking about that scene from Amadeus where Mozart composes the D-minor Requiem Mass in his head while Salieri furiously jots it down. Tech-savvy Metropolis composers Jakub Ciupiński and Cristina Spinei have collaborated on the Blind Ear Project and designed a music composition software that allows composers to create music in real-time. Using a network of laptops that are connected by Wi-Fi, one composer operates a “master” program that sends musical notation to the “slave” programs.
The music is displayed on the laptop screens in front of performing musicians; these musicians—who have to be solid sight-readers—read a few bars of music at a time and follow dynamic, expression, and technique directions from the composer. Spinei explains, “Our compositions become more alive because we’re able to communicate directly with our musicians in real-time; it’s a great change for us to be an active participant in the formation of our music.”
Ciupiński and Spinei have teamed up with other Metropolis composers Ryan Francis, Ray Lustig, and Adam Schoenberg on this project. Schoenberg notes how this project has shifted the role of composer in performance: “The composer performs live simultaneously with the other musicians, and this in itself is quite rare and unique…we make decisions and bring them to fruition on the go.” The composer uses pre-composed loops (short, repeated musical fragments) as building blocks during the performance. By rearranging, redistributing, combining loops, and otherwise manipulating these musical phrases, the composer pieces together a larger sound collage. Francis discusses his own treatment of the loops:
“I found that I was more interested in picking just a few musical ideas and using the software to exploit them in ways that I couldn’t achieve with a normal fixed musical score…It was liberating to realize that I could sustain musical interest with a few choice loops over a long period of time by manipulating the performance aspect of the software, rather than treating it simply as a sound bank from which I could choose many short, fixed musical ideas.”
The musicians wear headsets that play a click-track controlled by the composer, who is then able to independently adjust each individual’s tempo. This means that musicians can be desynchronized (and re-synchronized) with each other, leading to further creative experimentation with complex rhythmic dissonances. The project has also experimented with dance, video, and lighting elements. Dancers wear wireless headsets with click-tracks and pre-recorded voice directions from their choreographer; the dancers have prepared “dance loops” prior to the performance; the order and tempo are determined in real-time with the music. Video loops are triggered together with audio loops, and lights respond to dynamics cues. The composers seem to be taking this composition experiment and expanding it in every direction.
Lustig comments on this completely novel approach for the composers:
“This kind of real-time composition that we’re experimenting with in Blind Ear is utterly terrifying…The project goes against everything in our usual process, against the way we’re trained to think about music. Here we try to create both beautiful sounds and coherent structure at once—not in the silent safety of the studio, but in front of the audience.”
This can only lead to a seriously exciting and unpredictable experience for composer, performer, and audience—lucky for us, Blind Ear has an upcoming show with flute duo Flutronix at The Cell Theatre on
Saturday, December 18 (8pm)
.