Human Bodies, Computer Music Author(s): Bob Ostertag Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 12, Pleasure, (2002), pp. 11-14 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513343 Accessed: 23/07/2008 16:29
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http://www.jstor.org Human Bodies, Computer Music ABSTRACT
The authorconsiders the absenceof theartist's body in electronicmusic, a missing BobOstertag elementthat he finds crucial to thesuccess of anywork of art. Inreviewing the historical developmentof electronic music frommusique concrete to analogand then digital synthe- sizers,the author finds that the attainmentof increased control iierre Hebert, a frequent collaborator of mine, use outside of research institutions. andflexibility has coincided with says the measure of a work of art is whether one can sense in Computer music was still confined thereduction of identifiable it the of the artist's If so, then it is a success, to crude run on main- bodilyinvolvement bythe presence body. programs Hecontrasts this and if it's a failure. frame at universities. performer. not, computers trendwith the highly physical I think this is an important insight. It is closely related to the The thinking at the time was that interventionand manipulation, issue of virtuosity, by which I mean what happens when some- these electronic instruments were firstpracticed with atypical one acquires such facility with an instrument or paintbrush, or so new and different-their en- electronicinstruments such as with that an and tire and thetheremin, subsequently anything physically manipulable, intelligence methodology pedagogy introducedto the electric guitar creativity is actually written into the artist's muscles and bones seemed unique-that they would byJimi Hendrix and his follow- and blood and skin and hair. It stops residing only in the brain lead to the creation of a new kind ers,and then to vinylby and goes into the fingers and muscles and arms and legs. of music. We eagerly searched for turntableartists. He concludes has been out of fashion for now, ever since the outline of this new kind of thatthe tension between body Virtuosity years andmachine in as in the advent of art and other movements music that no one had ever heard. music, punk rock, conceptual modernlife itself, can only exist that emphasize the idea rather than its execution. Neverthe- Today we actually do have a new as anexperience to examine less, virtuosity of some sort is a necessary element of almost kind of music that has come directly andcriticize and not as a any performance. from electronics, and specifically problemto resolve. We all live in human bodies. Every one of us lives through from computers: electronic dance every day of our lives in the reality of our bodies. We struggle music. Throughout the whole his- to make them do the things we want them to do. We have aches tory of music prior to computers, no rhythm was absolutely and pains. We know the joy of using our bodies in an expres- perfectly timed due to the limits of human accuracy. This was sive and wonderful way, the frustrations of failure, and what it a good thing, however, as the nuanced irregularity in how the was like to learn whatever physical skills we have-riding a beat was actually played was one of the crucial things giving bike, playing a sport, typing, being sexual, anything. It is one distinctive character to different kinds of music. The precise, thing absolutely every person has in common. So when you perfectly timed beat was a sort of ideal grid that everyone kept give a performance that takes your body out of the mundane in mind but never actually played. With the evolution ofjazz, and into something extraordinary through art, it has a pro- the discrepancy between the ideal grid and what people ac- found appeal-this appeal is the foundation of all perfor- tually played came to be known as swing, but there was no mance. It need not be limited to virtuosity in the conventional music in the world that didn't have somebit of swing. With elec- sense of, say, a violin master. There are punk rockers who can tronic dance music, the precise mental grid that had been lurk- barely play their instruments but whose physical stage pres- ing unheard for thousands of years behind human music was ences-in body motions, voices or even just facial expres- pushed out front and center and made audible. sions-are extraordinary. That's revolutionary. It is a kind of music that could not exist I think most musicians working with electronics are proba- without computers, and it is a natural outgrowth of using com- bly not very satisfied with the state of electronic music today, puters with sound. Electronic dance music thus meets the cri- and the crucial missing element is the body. Many of us have teria of what in the 1970s we thought must be coming in music been trying to solve this problem for years but we have been but could not yet see, although it did not turn out to be what notoriously unsuccessful at it. How to get one's body into art anyone back then was expecting. In fact, many of us absolutely that is as technologically mediated as electronic music, with detest this kind of music. But if we step back for a moment, it so much technology between your physical body and the final is not so surprising that electronic dance music is what devel- outcome, is a thorny problem. oped. Of course, Hebert's dictum, which began this article, about I remember when the first MIDI sequencers (easily man- sensing the body of the artist in the art, should not be viewed ageable composition software for personal computers) came too literally. It is not that it is impossible to put a sense of one's out and everyone said, "Well,that's cool, but it sounds so ma- body into art made with assistance from machines. Hfbert is chinelike no one will ever listen to it." And the software mak- talking about a sense of the corporeal presence of the artist ers busied themselves trying to figure out how to make MIDI emanating from the work. It is not necessarythat an artist sequencers sound human. But before they could solve the "touch" an image or instrument in order to achieve this re- problem, a new generation of kids had come up who likedthe sult, but it certainly helps. machinelike quality of the sound, and if the software compa- nies had then found a way to make their sequencers sound human no one would have the software. A NEW KIND OF MUSIC bought Apparently
I got into electronic music in the mid-1970s, playing analog Bob Ostertag (composer), 737 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA 94110, U.S.A. E-mail:
? 2002 ISAST LEONARDO MUSICJOURNAL, Vol. 12, pp. 11-14, 2002 11 our tastes acclimate to technology faster and splicing them back together. "Per- look like those of a piano and are laid out than our ability to innovate technologi- formance" of these works consisted of in a pattern of 12 unique notes in an oc- cally. playing back the final tape. In the late tave in the key of C, most people would Or at least the tastes of young people 1970s I made some attempts to move tape understandably start to think like piano acclimate quickly. Reaction to music with manipulation out of the studio and into players and to think in conventional an electronically precise beat is the most performance by building contraptions of terms of harmony and melody. But the generationally determined thing I have multiple tape recorders I could crudely situation was even worse than that be- ever seen in music, or any other art form manipulate on stage, but this was a little cause acoustic instruments never sound for that matter. I cannot think of a per- far fetched. two notes in exactly the same way. There son I know over the age of 30 who likes Instead of using recorded sound, ana- are too many variables in how one's fin- electronic dance music, most certainly log synthesizers generated voltages that gers or breath actually produce the not anyone over 40. oscillated at audio frequencies and thus sound.Just as small variations in the beat In one sense, dance music solves elec- could be heard as sound when amplified turned out to be a critical nuance that has tronic music's problem with perfor- and sent to speakers. One way to "play" shaped different styles of music, small mance by making music the secondary these synthesizers was to control the changes in sound from note to note have event to whatever else is happening. Peo- shape, amplitude and frequency of their turned out to be crucial to the vitality of ple don't miss the performance aspect of audio signals with other voltage sources the sound (at least to the ears of those of the music, because that is not what they that changed at a rate slow enough for us who grew up listening to music pre- are paying attention to. They are either the changes to be perceived as distinct computer). It is impossible to get that dancing, or chatting at the bar, or taking events instead of changes of pitch or tim- kind of note-by-note variation from a syn- drugs, or something,but they are not fo- bre. This was a very enticing idea: since thesizer, and this is what gives conven- cused on the performance. In fact, peo- both the shape of the sound and the tional music played on a synthesizer its ple who make electronic dance music shape of a composition could be con- characteristic flat, machinelike feel. have been going to great lengths to di- trolled in the same world of automated Thus, while keyboards and guitars at- vert people's attention from their actual voltages, complex and surprising systems tached to synthesizers were able to in- presence: putting on light shows, show- could be set up within the synthesizer it- corporate synthesizers into conventional ing films and videos, and so on. self, which produced music that was star- music in an often cheesy way, synthesiz- One could argue that making dance tlingly new and different. "Composing" ers also promised something much more music with computers is a backdoor way in this situation meant setting up the con- radical. Exploring that direction meant of getting the human body back into the nections and parameters of the synthe- throwing out the keyboards and learning music-however, the bodies are the audi- sizer so as to set in motion the processes to "play"the complex internal processes ence's, not those of the performers. So the one had designed, and "playing" the that seemed to be idiomatically indige- physical bond of performance is that ev- composition involved listening to the out- nous to these new instruments. eryone is dancing, while the performers put and intervening in the evolution of Digital technology soon developed to hide behind a light show or a fog machine. the process one had set up by fine- the point that all the processes that syn- Dance music has become so popular tuning parameters and connections as thesizers did through voltages, comput- that it has changed the very meaning of things progressed. ers could do through numbers, and do electronic music in our culture. In the This is what I generally did in the so more accurately, more flexibly and less 1970s, it was assumed that if you played 1970s. But whereas most others working expensively. Digital synthesizers and sam- a synthesizer or were interested in syn- along these lines worked alone or with plers replaced tape recorders and analog thesizers, then you were out on the fringe other synthesizer players, I moved to New synthesizers, but the analog synthesizer's doing something creative and unusual. York and immersed myself in the down- dichotomy between its use for conven- The current situation is exactly the re- town improvised music scene, trying to tional music played mechanically and its verse: If you tell someone that you make develop the skill necessary to set up use in unorthodox process-oriented electronic music, they assume you are "play" processes in my synthesizer as music was carried over to the laptop fully making dance music. Similarly, in the quickly and accurately as collaborators intact. few 1970s, though electronic instruments such asJohn Zorn (on alto sax) [1] or The problem was and still is how to get were being built, they were specifically Fred Frith [2] (on guitar) could on their one's body into the unorthodox kind of for designed making music that was far instruments. performance we are talking about. It had off the beaten path. Today there is a large A completely different way to play the been problematic enough with a synthe- and specialized market for electronic synthesizer that also evolved during this sizer, sitting on stage and carefully mov- musical instruments, which are nearly all time involved rigging a conventional in- ing a knob a fraction of an inch, narrowly tailored to dance music. strument to generate voltages that could disconnecting a patch cord here and re- control synthesized sound. Keyboards connecting it over there-with none of were that translated the de- it with a direct in the A BRIEF REVIEW designed correlating change pression of the keys into a voltage the syn- sound that the audience might perceive Let's review the early days of electronic thesizer could accept. Less successful as related to the physical motion. With to see music, why things turned out the experiments used guitars, drums and the emergence of the laptop as instru- did. Most of the earliest way they elec- other instruments as input devices. ment, the physical aspect of the perfor- tronic music was musique concrete,com- Many people, including myself, mance has been further reduced to made from of sounds positions collages thought the use of keyboards and the like sitting on stage and moving a cursor by recorded on In magnetic tape. general, a dead end, for it meant using a great deal dragging one's finger across a track pad these were studio works first and last: of technology to play music that could be in millimeter increments. assembled painstakingly by cutting up readily played with a piano or a guitar. This is often conceived among instru- of with pieces recording tape razor blades When confronted with a row of keys that ment designers and programmers as a
12 Ostertag,Human Bodies, Computer Music problem of "controllers"-that new kinds The theremin was very limited, how- films of him is a revelation; his guitar and of physical devices are needed, the ma- ever: it could play one timbre, and that his body appear as one, and it seems that nipulation of which could integrate more was pretty much it. Since the performer everything from his toes to his hair is in- appropriately into this kind of perfor- only had control over volume and pitch, volved in shaping the sound [6]. mance than a keyboard, guitar, knob or its application was limited to performing The radical element in Hendrix's work button can. For years there has been fairly conventional music. Over the years was later developed by Keith Rowe and much experimentation with "alternative the theremin also found a niche in mak- Fred Frith, among others [7]. These two controllers" at research studios around ing spooky effects for science-fiction have approached the electric guitar ex- the world [3]. I have tried many myself: movies. However, it does stand as possi- plicitly conscious of leaving behind the infrared wands, drawing tablets,joysticks bly the only electronic musical instru- entire tradition of the acoustic guitar, and game pads, video frames-anything ment on which one could become a starting from the idea that they were deal- I could get my hands on. virtuoso. Clara Rockmore, in particular, ing not with a guitar per se, but with am- Despite years of research and experi- became a bona fide theremin virtuoso by plified vibrating strings stretched over a mentation, however, there is still no new any definition of the word and per- resonant body. By using amplification, instrument sufficiently sophisticated to formed on the instrument in concert set- they found that even tiny disturbances to allow anyone to develop even a rudi- tings [5]. the string could be made into musically mentary virtuosity with it. I believe that The key here is that the theremin used useful sound. this failure is rooted in the premise that actual skin capacitance as the central el- Interestingly enough, electronic mod- the problem lies in inadequate con- ement in controlling the instrument. ification of the sound is not central to the trollers. The bigger problem is this: What There were thus fewer layers of technol- work of any of these three musicians. exactly are we going to control with these ogy between hand and sound than in Hendrix used a wah-wah pedal, which is controllers we would like to invent? The other electronic instruments. The way just a very crude filter. When I first performance software I have made does the theremin sound was generated and started playing with Frith, he was using not require much data input to play. On the way it was controlled are an inte- no electronic sound modification at all. the contrary, it requires very little. I grated package that one could literally Although later he began using a variety might spend a whole performance mak- stick one's fingers right into. Further- of foot pedals that manipulate the string ing changes of very fine gradation to just more, the theremin was a conceptually sound in various electronic ways, the a few variables. complete instrument that did not un- physical control of the vibration of the If I had some really wild controller that dergo a constant series of revisions, re- strings and electronic amplification of doesn't exist now but that I could dream designs and "upgrades." One could the same have remained at the center of up-such as a big ball of a mudlike sub- devote years to learning to play it with- his work. stance that I could stick my hands into, out worrying that all that hard work In addition to the electric guitar, the squeeze and stretch, jump up and down would be made useless every 6 months by turntable has emerged as an interesting on, throw against the wall and wrap an "upgrade" that changed everything. hybrid instrument, pioneered in the around my head, resulting in a variety of The most successful electronic instru- Bronx in the mid-1970s by artists such as parameter streams that would be seam- ment to date, however, came much later: Kool Here, Afrika Bambaataa and Grand- lessly digitized and fed to the computer- the electric guitar. This is not even a master Flash. And just as Rowe and Frith even if I had such a thing I don't know "pure" electronic instrument in that its took Hendrix's guitar innovations sys- how I would use it. I have no software that sound is not generated electronically but temically outside the bounds of popular could use all that data and I don't think physically, by a vibrating string that is music where they could be explored anyone else does either. The problem is then amplified electronically. Within ac- more rigorously, Christian Marclay did inherent in the very concept of the ademia it is not typically even included the same for the turntable [8]. music: if we are "playing"by intervening within the realm of electronic music, The turntable is now the focus of in- in ongoing automated processes, then identified as it is with blues and rock and tense experimentation by an entire gen- most of what is going on requires no roll. It took the genius of Jimi Hendrix eration of DJs,and the term "turntablism" input from the performer, and subtle in- to blow the lid off the conventional use has come into vogue. Here again, we have terventions on the performer's part are of this instrument and point to a whole a sound that is generated physically: the more likely to add compositional coher- new way of playing it as a whole new kind vibrations of a stylusas it is dragged across ence to the result than big, dramatic of instrument. Hendrix's crucial innova- grooved surfaces. Once again, the crucial ones. tion was playing at high volume and element that the electronics provide is standing close to the speaker to obtain amplification, which makes the very sub- feedback that he could control in an ex- tle control of the A DIFiERENT DIRECTION stylus meaningful. Any tremely nuanced way with the position further electronic processing of the There were, however, some early elec- and angle of the guitar, the weight and sound is just icing on the cake. And fi- tronic instruments that integrated the position of his fingers on the strings, even nally, once again we have a development body differently. The theremin, designed the exact position of his entire body. that was missed entirely by electronic by Leon Theremin in 1919 [4], produced At his most experimental, Hendrix music research institutions, coming in- sound by means of the beat or difference made the most successful electronic stead from popular culture. People like effect, using two oscillators at inaudible music to date. It is music that would be Marclayand the Invisibl Skratch Piklz [9] radio frequencies to produce an audible impossible to make, impossible even to have developed substantial skills that re- difference tone controlled by changing imagine, without electronics. It is also quire very fine control and techniques, electrical capacitance. This variable ca- hard to imagine a musician on any in- something like virtuosity. pacitance was made by moving one's strument in any genre integrating In contrast, the approach favored in hands around an antenna, sticking the his/her body into the performance as to- electronic music research facilities has body "into"the sound in a most literal way. tally as Hendrix did. Even now, watching been to electronically process conven-
Ostertag,Human Bodies, Computer Music 13 tional instruments. For example, a clar- which prioritizes struggle and tension. Discography of Works by the Author inetist with a second musician For we can this difficult terrain performs explore SayNo MoreProject CDs 1 & 2, MVORL (2002). Orig- who sits at a computer that records the without the catastrophic consequences inally released separately as Say No More (1993) and No More in Person (1994). Re-issued in MVORL clarinet sound and manipulates it in var- of weapons development, the astronom- Say limited edition in 2002. With Joey Baron (percus- ious With few this di- ical costs ways. exceptions, of space exploration, the bio- sion), Mark Dresser (bass), Gerry Hemingway (per- rection of work has produced stunningly logical casino of gene technology or the cussion) and Phil Minton (voice). Assembled on computer from fragments of solo improvisations. uninteresting results. Music that uses elec- profit imperative of high-tech business. tronically generated sound from synthe- We might not be able to perform with ma- SayNo MoreProject CDs 3 & 4, MVORL (2002). Orig- released as Verbatim and Ver- sizers or suffers from the chines, but we can with them, which inally separately (1996) computers play batim Flesh & Blood (2000). Re-issued in MVORL problem that one cannot actually get may be the best thing humans can do limited edition in 2002. With Gerry Hemingway one's fingers into the generation of the with them at this moment of history. Ne- (percussion), Mark Dresser (bass), and Phil Minton Third and fourth and final CD, from the sound. instruments like the elec- this (voice). Say Hybrid gotiating terrain, however, requires Noproject.Assembled on computer (3) and recorded tric guitar solve this problem by using that artists who use machines must do so live in Gent, Belgium (4). sound sources controlled the and not but by body critically: celebrating technology PantyChrist,Seeland 510 (1999). With Otomo Yoshi- amplifying them. But acoustic/electronic questioning it and probing it, examining hide (DJ) andJustin Bond (vocal). such as have been the its or collaborations, rage problematic nature, illuminating Twins!Creativeman0030 (1996). With Otomo Yoshi- in academic computer music, make the clarifying tensions between technology hide (DJ). Resampled "twins" of parent tracks by Herb Robertson, Chris Cutler, and problem even worse by dividing the tasks and the body, and thus offering the kinds Yagi Michiyo. of the generation and control of the of insights only art can provide concern- Fear No Love, Avant 041 (1995). With Mike Patton, Fred Bond, Breedlove, 15 others. sound and giving them to two different ing the nature of life at the dawn of the Frith,Justin Lynn people. The sound might be generated third millennium. A Melody,No Bitterness:Bob OstertagSolo Volume 1, See- an skilled with mas- land 508 (1997). Solo improvisation. Re-issued in by extremely player MVORL limited edition in 2001. terful control over the sound, but this is often all but irrelevant since that All theRage, Elektra-Nonesuch 79332-2 (1993). Kro- person References and Notes nos of does not control the final Quartet plays Ostertag's transcriptions gay actually output. riots in San Francisco. Libretto by Sara Miles. 1. For more information about John Zorn, see
14 Ostertag,Human Bodies, Computer Music