Bow Wow: The Interactive Violin Bow and Improvised Music, A Personal Perspective
Jon Rose a b s t r a c t Bowed string music has always existed as an aural culture with improvisation considered as a prime focus of expression. It is the author’s strong belief that experimenta- tion is the natural state of Grunt Grunt hair have in common is their stick- all string music. This paper slip action. While the bow hair is concentrates on recent history: Sometime after the last ice age, a hunter-gatherer returned bows that have incorporated to his cave and, instead of sharpening his arrows for the next sticking to the string, motion in one interactive sensor technology. day’s sortie, picked up his bow and started to improvise on it— direction is followed by a quick snap The central narrative deals with using his fingers, a stick or a bone. Sometime later, in a stroke back in the opposite direction upon the author’s own experiments and experience at STEIM since of genius, he started to use that weapon to excite the strings release. This gives rise to the charac- teristic sawtooth waveform and con- 1987. How reliable and practi- of a chordophone, a precursor to the rebab, lira, ravanastron, cal is this technology? Are the er-hu, kalumbu, crwth, berimbau, bumbass, chikara, viol and sequent sound of the bowed string. results worth the trouble? Are violin, to name but a few from the long list. With the invention of the “mod- there new modes of improvising Bows come in a plethora of shapes and sizes, from the colos- ern” François Tourte violin bow in only possible with an interactive bow? sal arched Vega bow invented through misguided Bach schol- the 18th century, an aesthetic as arship [1] to the abrupt, serrated and hairless stick used with well as technical watershed for the the Korean ajaeng (zither). One thing, however, that bows with violin bow was reached. Up until that time, violin bowing technique
Jon Rose (violinist, improviser, composer, instrument-maker). E-mail:
Fig. 1. Jon Rose playing Palimpolin with the K-Bow at Galapagos Club, New York, 2010. (© Jon Rose. Photo © Jill Steinberg.)
©2010 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 20, pp. 57–66, 2010 57
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00013 by guest on 29 September 2021 bow reached its zenith in works such as corporates a loop of lateral (normal saw- uncool to do all the lightweight rapid L’arte del Arco (The Art of Bowing) by Gi- tooth action) and longitudinal (à la Ellen up/down stuff. That said, it’s a very ef- useppe Tartini (1692–1770). Post-messa, Fullman) vibrating options. Between the fective bow stroke that all non-string play- composers (with the exception of the vir- straight and unstraight bow stroke lies ers want to do when they pick up a violin tuoso class, e.g. Paganini) moved string a broad area of under-utilized bow op- for the first time, because it looks good music ever further away from the rhyth- tions—and that’s using just the straight and punters think you are really working mic impulse into a symphonic swirl of vanilla detaché bow stroke. hard.) massed strings—leading to Mahler and If we push and pull on through the The reverse bow requires the string eventually to Mantovani. Nothing wrong bow’s repertoire of tricks, we find the player to remove bow hair from bow by with either, but the rise of the symphony martelé, meaning “hammered,” referring undoing its frog, then replacing hair in orchestra to unchallenged power sped to a percussive on-string stroke produced said frog, but with the instrument now the death of many improvising traditions by an explosive release following heavy caught between bow hair and bow stick. in European music. The ones that sur- pressure—a kind of initial pinching of This enables the violinist to play all four vived, such as church organ music, did the string. Staccato is basically a series of or more strings at once. Like most string not use the violin bow. martelé strokes taken in one bow stroke. techniques, it has probably been around Then we get to the flying staccato (prob- since the beginning of bowing itself and ably more hovering than flying), which was standard fare in the fiddling tradi- Ups and Downs leads us to the ricochet or thrown bow tions before improvisers took it as their The majority of detaché violin bow strokes stroke said to have been invented by Pa- own. take place at right angles to the string— ganini in a very bad mood. The same goes for super-slow martelé the legitimate angle of action. Once an Improvisers such as myself have de- bow strokes that slow the sawtooth wave- improvising musician circumnavigates veloped variations and combinations of form and pitch down to something more this straightjacket convention, a number these two killer actions—one of mine is like a chainsaw idling. Most improvisers of bent bow strokes—from the diagonal the equivalent of running on the spot for can control this bowing feature quite to the almost parallel—can be applied to extended durations (it comes with an RSI well, but Mari Kimura is in a sub-har- the string. The lateral bow stroke (with health warning). Utilizing and extending monic class of her own, capable of play- bow hair moving at 180º up and down the bow’s basic binary action presents ing a complete scale down from the open the whole fingerboard) is perhaps the most available sensors with quite an ar- G (the lowest string on her violin). These most useful, revealing (with variable ray of readings. (Oh, I forgot to mention kinds of sub-harmonics are not achiev- pressure) a smorgasbord of vibrations the tremolo. On no account use this bow able through any signal processing that and transient noise. The circular bow in- stroke! These days it is considered very I have heard. In the classical pedagogy of the last 150 years, the bow has been pacified and straightened out, and the violinist conned into the notion or nonsense of Fig. 2. Bowing the “endless singing line.” The violin was experiments with the 10 String invented not for singing, but for danc- Double Violin, ing! And for dancing, you have to have Sydney, circa 1982. rhythm in the bow. Any research direct- (© Jon Rose. Photo: ing the bow toward a more radical life Kristine Rose.) armed with sensors needs, I believe, to take this into consideration.
Despite Gravity Once the bow leaves the strings, theatri- cal space can be accessed, the audience easily following the gesture; away from the violin, the sonic simulacrum of a fly can meet its doom with a swish of the bow stick [2]. Apart from the natural swish of the bow (one of the great acoustic gestures), other sonic phenomena lend association, such as the sounds of bird wings flapping, wind blowing, machines whirring or preindustrial slashing and hacking. The bow can unleash psycho- drama—the bow is a bit dangerous, you see; you can poke someone’s eye out with it. In the hands of Wilbur Hall (Paul Whiteman’s trombonist and the most out-there violinist ever recorded on film), the bow becomes truly a magician’s wand. The famous armless violinist Carl Unthan was also captured by camera but,
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alas, there is no movie of him plying his sound of the bow hair is embedded in ev- bow is used merely for the addition of bowing skills with his right foot. ery bow stroke that the “perfect” Heifetz- signal processing (let’s call it effects!) to The bow is forever weaving a pattern, type classical violinist has ever emitted. the regular violin, is that a worthwhile en- like a giant knitting needle noodling It’s the noise, the grain, the grit behind deavor? My first effects gadget, purchased with imaginary wool, drawing transitory any bowed utterance. By itself a belt of in 1969, was a wah-wah pedal—not the shapes, creating an abstract gestalt, not droning broadband noise, but amplified kind of thing I wanted an interactive sys- quite a synesthetic condition, but posing and augmented by pitch shift, the horse tem to bother with 20 years later. Satu- intangible relationships. The sign is writ- can get very frisky, with a sound pallet rated feedback-distortion, however, is a ten in the bow stick as well as by it. The reminiscent of a double bass, Albert Ay- sonic state that I have never grown out bow drips with its own totemic language. ler in the top octave or a barbed wire of, even 40 years on. Looking at classical violinists on YouTube fence [4]. The use of samples became a polemi- with the sound turned down, it is possible The bow can also play the big switch cal quest: Why use a violin sample when to pick the composition being rendered character. Keith McMillen’s K-Bow (Fig. you already play the violin? I relished (or murdered) as much by looking at the 1) has included gesture recognition the study of the simulacra; the industrial bow as by watching the left hand. The software [5]. In terms of embedding string sample or the self-made string sam- whirl of bow activity is a clear indication a multiplicity of MIDI switches into an ple to the real string sound. And since I of sonic attack, duration, speed, timing, improvised language, the selection and had a garage of homemade string instru- rigor, acoustic projection and (in non- isolation of a suitable gesture for each ments (The Relative Violins) (Figs 2 and classical musics) pulse. Amplification function becomes a key part of the sonic 3), I could explore the contradictions can readily confuse that relationship—a theater. The gesture must resonate in the of what constituted fake, real, industrial volume pedal can transform or reverse subconscious and bubble to the surface and authentic homemade all in real time that expected expression and function of almost before it is required, in the same [6]. The convincing and unconvincing il- bow, the lightest toneless bow hair sound way that many deeper-level decisions are lusions of bowed, struck, plucked—once becoming as loud as a full-on sforzando made in all instrumental improvised mu- amplified—seemed to hang more on is- down bow [3]. sic. Easy to say, hard to do on stage. sues of context than anything else. The In conversations with George Lewis excitement lay, above all, in the collision about his interactive Voyager project, I of these real- and not-so-real-sounding Hearing the Hair remember him saying something to the sonic artifacts. With a quick rub of the colofon (rosin), effect of, “Well, I make a pretty good On the suitability of sensors: Once let’s move onto the bow hair itself; it’s sound on the trombone—why would I upon a time Ultra Sound ruled; then an underestimated sonic performer. The want to change that?” Yes, indeed, if the came the reign of the accelerometer.
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Most sensors are there to model move- data difference between an up-bow and duces? Probably the most successful re- ment, and despite problems of reflec- a down-bow may come as a surprise. As sults that have been reverse-engineered tion, Ultra Sound did this effectively. I’ve indicated, I prefer to exploit the gaps from bow action deal with timbre [10]. As the price of accelerometers dropped and failures of this mission impossible: The bow is capable of filtering the violin throughout the 1990s, the rules of the Mine is an improviser’s and not a com- strings’ 20-plus harmonics to an extraor- game were transformed: Accelerometers poser’s worldview. If I want the sound of a dinary degree through the position of the were active; you could play with them and real violin, then I can just pick up the in- bow relative to the bridge (sul ponticello exploit and exaggerate bow movement. strument and play it. Interestingly, most to sul tasto) and by applying a range of Most experimental interactive bows are researchers in this area are also string pressures and arm weights. Max Mathews now fitted with accelerometers in or on players themselves; there is an almost experimented with tuning, adding and the frog. IRCAM has their clip-on con- religious smell about the quest. How to removing the characteristic resonances troller [7]. Diana Young, with her Hyper- know the unknowable? It’s the “What’s of the violin in the mid-1980s. Among bow (“A Precision Violin Interface”) has in the Stradivarius magic varnish?” other earlier filtering attempts, I would taken the MIT bow-measuring pursuit to syndrome. want to include the engaging Peter Beyl another level—but accelerometers do Bernd Schoner spent research time and his IT-violin, which he showed me in not measure bow movement with “preci- in the 1990s analyzing bow movement Brussels around 1990. sion.” To expect such is a reductive use through oscillators mounted tip and This background has set the stage for of their potential. However, Young has frog, a chain of resistors along the stick, further research. Charles Nichols’s V- inserted a strain gauge into the bridge, an antenna positioned underneath bow and Dan Overholt’s Overtone Vio- an innovative move that must yield useful the violin strings and another antenna lin spring immediately to mind. Nichols data on bow pressure [8]. mounted on the bridge; the received has taken his lead from bowing-machine signal strength was proportional to the maker Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, bow position relative to the bridge. The who in 1921 created an electric motor- The Holy Horse collected data was synthesized into his driven prototype to test variations of bow The Holy Grail for some scientists is Marching Cello, a set-up that demanded speed and pressure under controlled to come up with an algorithm that will that he play his leg with the bow [9]. Let conditions. (I first read about Raman in model a convincing violin simulacrum us pause to hear the sound of a leg being The Acoustical Catgut Society Journal, the in real time. Measuring the complexities played with a cello bow. organ of recently deceased luthier Car- of bow action is fundamental in this re- What sonic effects might be analogous leen Hutchins, pioneer of the extraor- search. To many non-violinists, the huge to or amplify what the bow already pro- dinary Violin Octet.) Under the title “A
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00013 by guest on 29 September 2021 Four Degrees of Freedom Haptic Musical with a foot pedal. This is also valuable programmers. The argument went some- Controller Human-computer Interface,” when used with a noise gate. Depending thing like this. Most programmers were Nichols has built a beaut robot, with ser- on how fast our spiccato actually flies, we looking for a simple gesture leading to vomotors, encoders and cable systems, could reach the limits of MIDI process- a complex result, often bearing no re- to sense a fiberglass bow in three dimen- ing, a protocol that everybody already lationship in scale to the original input. sions of operation [11]. Sadly, the com- complains enough about. I was happy to have some heavy lifting poser limits its function to that of a data Most violinists who improvise on am- done by smart programming but not at generating/collecting device. I would plified violin have at some stage engaged the expense of scale—the system had like to hear what this machine can physi- with a foot-driven effects or volume to reflect skill, energy, physical human cally manipulate in real time by itself or pedal. You can spot those who are new to limitations, time spent and the fact that lined up in direct comparison or compe- the game; they exhibit a kind of Parkin- only one performer was the originator tition with the human version. I reckon son’s foot disease. The older hands have of the music; the potential for artist to it’s for public consumption in the same developed a well-footed intelligence that morph into an all-powerful Nietzsche- way that the Aeolian Company’s Violano takes care of business without the owner style Übermensch was not useful. For the was [12]. (or anyone else) noticing. The first and first two Hyperstring setups, I also lim- The V-bow machine has been built possibly only law of free improvisation: ited my MIDI output to one channel’s with laser precision, so it probably can If you start a sonic action, you should be worth, setting the balance between repeat the same operation without much able to at least stop it. the monophonic output of violin and variation. For the Inventionen Festival Around 1999 I was given as a donation digital modeling. The basis for this (to in Berlin, 1989, I built a robotic violin a 3D MIDI pedal built at the Institute of some eccentric) modus operandi was quartet (Fig. 4), each instrument with Sonology in The Hague. I utilized it for the clear instrumental paradigm that a simple one-dimensional mechanical the basic procedures of volume, pan- expression is often the result of playing bowing action [13]. Because of my less- ning and pitch bend. This was a joy to to the edges of the possible—what is a than-perfect craftsmanship or less-than- use in conjunction with my interactive piece of cake on one instrument may lie efficient German motors, the results bow but a pain to carry, as it was made at the extremities of instrumental chops always guaranteed variation, if not total of heavy-gauge industrial steel; as gear, it on another. I wanted a digital interface bow malfunction. This may just dem- is now, post-9/11, out of the question for to replicate that. (My early-enforced onstrate another difference between concert tours. stringency has relaxed since then, but the improviser’s brain and that of the I am going to stay off-message and I am glad I started out considering the composer. suggest that fully functional feet can be issue.) In 2004 I came across Dan Overholt, more than just complementary to an hunched over a workbench at STEIM, interactive bow system, particularly in busily soldering circuits on his Overtone solo improvisation. I do not have many ail ags og Violin [14]. This is one helluva piece heroes in music, but one would have to T W D of homemade violin. It comes with fin- be Nicolaus Bruhns. He made quite a One advantage the violin has over other gerboard-tracking sonar sensors, thumb reputation as an organist, violinist and instruments is that it comes with a full slider, miniature joystick, a heap of pots, composer in the time of J.S. Bach, but cupboard of iconography. Not a month infra-red, wireless data transmitter, video his greatest claim to fame was playing a goes by when the violin’s image is not camera for media and audio manipula- ground bass on the pedalboard of the dragged out to sell insurance, banking, tion and a glove for the bowing hand with organ and simultaneously improvising real estate, holidays, magazines, lifestyle (by now) ubiquitous accelerometers and on the violin. In the early 1980s I built a and music itself. So, when Tom Demeyer sonar. Unlike the V-bow, this instrument pedalboard to control a string frame and of STEIM showed me his pre-Jitter MIDI- has real strings—in fact six of them, so later an amplified two-string pedalboard to-image program in 1997, I was ready you wouldn’t want to be doing complex with which to continue his tradition [16]. to participate with the entire Rosenberg double-stops often. The name of his vio- The action was like a clavichord’s, with Archives of collected violin imagery, from lin gives away Overholt’s preoccupations the pedal cutting each string into two Paganini to Pornography [18]. Mapping with timbral manipulation, but he states, vibrating parts. I initially thought that bow gesture to violin image is an excit- “The Overtone violin can be viewed . . . transferring pedalboard action to the ing area, but it is a challenge to move as a traditional electronic violin, and a digital realm would involve a chromatic into the space beyond the constraints of gestural computer music controller.” pedalboard of some sort. Then, applying film music; it’s the old maxim of getting The violin can be heard and seen on-line a simple logic, I remembered that I had beyond the sum of the parts—the eye is [15] showing bow gestures triggering but two feet, and all I needed were two so greedy [19]. pitch-bend and other signal processing. footswitches with a third switch to change Neal Farwell’s interactive project of Rhythm in the bow there is not. the function of that initial pair. There 2001, even without the play of MIDI- is something satisfying about stamping generated imagery, investigates all the away on foot switches that a bow cannot cultural and social baggage of what it emulate. And the immersive use of the means to play second violin and not first. The Pedestrian Option body to demand an idiokinetic relation- My Funny Fiddle project has been dor- Global volume is probably easier to ac- ship with the digital world provided me mant for some years. Its aim wasn’t to cess through a pedal than, say, a bow ac- with a performing rationale more akin synthesize a string sound (I’d prefer the celerometer or hair pressure. But then to a traps drummer or late-19th-century violin for that), but to make a new in- again, we could really work at a detailed one man band straight out of Vaudeville terface instrument that could draw on some of the trained technique, visual volume set-up that exaggerates the gain [17]. theatre and audience legibility, traditions with each clonk of a flying spiccato with The necessity to actually do physical of showmanship and real or simulated changes in volume speed not possible work often led me into jousting with virtuosity [20].
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00013 by guest on 29 September 2021 Practice and Theory That early bow was fiberglass with a 1" of course. I developed a technique that I met Michel Waisvisz while on tour strain gauge mid-way down the stick could handle the system’s specific dif- in Germany in 1983. He invited me to (screwed to the top). . . . I didn’t like the ficulties—mainly weight and balance of results, but it was enough for distinguish- STEIM; this was the same year that I ing articulations. And it had a ribbon bows and cables. It was quite a mind-body was working on a violin and sampled- cable . . . interfaced to a Yamaha MIDI split, as the bow, which was the engine of violin improvisation project with Mar- controller. There was an accelerometer the violin, was also driving the computer tin Wesley-Smith on the Fairlight CMI on the frog. system. If I reacted to what the computer (the world’s first commercial sampler did by playing something on the violin, and by then already losing out to cheaper Chris went on to say that when the then I automatically changed the state of options). In 1985, I went to Amster- Don Buchla Lightning came along, he the bow and its real world input via bow dam and got some useful advice from switched to that, using direct position sensors to computer. It was the musical Joel Ryan and George Lewis (on their tracking—small infra-red emitters on equivalent to Heisenberg’s uncertainty rebound from IRCAM). By 1987, I his wrist. It is easier to handle a bow with principle: By identifying and entering had a working MIDI bow using Ultra wires coming off a wrist controller than the moment, you changed it. Sound and a bow hair sensor (a pres- to handle a bow with wires attached to Added to this conundrum were ad- sure pad taken out of a MIDI keyboard) the frog [21]. ditional, sometimes uncooperative vari- (Fig. 5). Other explorations involved It took me a while to figure out how ables. The pressure sensor on the MIDI bar code, microphone triggers and to use the bow hair tension as an inter- bow hair gave different readings depend- putting a sensor actually in the wood active controller. I eventually rational- ing on room or location humidity, bow of the bow—none really useful in ized it as follows: I broke down violin hair tension (slightly different every getting a varied and workable data technique into two basic functions: left time) and how hard you had dug in on stream. hand as primarily tone manipulator and the previous bow stroke (a well dug-in According to Chris Chafe, who pio- right hand as primarily tone generator via stroke might not have returned to non- neered the Celleto, resplendent with the bow. The line where each function bowing equilibrium by the time of the Max Mathews pickups, maintained independence was mobile, next stroke). Initially, I set up the Ultra
Fig. 5. Jon Rose’s second-generation MIDI Bow with pressure sensor, mapping switches, Ultra Sound, amplified bows, STEIM, 1989. (© Jon Rose. Photo: Laetitia Royackers.)
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Sound with a focal length of 5 meters, the shuttlecock or miss-hit it, or scored a the violin) combined with Bonge and which lent itself to theatrical uses of the point; even with a video to MIDI tracker, Fangerboard, the whole setup set off with stage and led to misread reflections off the meaning of a movement is not neces- his R-bow (two force-sensing-resistors objects and surfaces. I could also cheat sarily decoded into sound. between the stick and hair mounted on the system by shielding or interrupting foam plus two accelerometers). I heard the signal with body or violin. In addi- and saw most of Trueman’s gear onstage tion, none of the STEIM hardware used Oops, No Violin at the now-defunct Tonic Club in NYC in in the Hyperstring project had any visual Eh . . . let’s go back a bit further: What 2000, and impressive it was, too, in very feedback information. I took this restric- about taking the violin away from the difficult circumstances [22]. tion as a positive feature, as it meant I neck? History does not record who had Trueman has also identified compos- had to learn the preset options of the the bright idea to move the violin away ers who want to measure and control the entire system using only sound and mus- from the comfort of a cradling arm to the data of a string player without the player cle memory to negotiate the options. At discomfort of wedging the thing between actually having to react or change any one stage, I also set program changes collarbone and chin. There are certainly aspect of his or her playing shtick, and through random access, which was like advantages in terms of playing higher others who seek and relish a physical re- driving down an un-mapped road: A se- and faster, but if ever a non-violinist lationship, do not avoid it and look for ries of forks kept popping up, and you thinks that violin playing is a normal ex- some sonic event that will change the mo- never knew which one you’d find your- tension of being a Homo sapiens, let them ment—I guess we will call them improvis- self on . . . a kind of dysfunctional AI. stand for half an hour with the left arm ers. Dan Trueman clearly had MIT’s Tod Within a few years, I realized that this held in the correct Carl Flesch posture (a Machover (and his use of Yo-Yo Ma) in kind of headless “chook” (Australian for dog’s severely twisted hind leg) and feel his sights. . . . Then there’s Trueman and chicken) activity was going to shorten the pain. The violin-playing position is the rest of us who prefer to jump into the my life, hence the introduction of foot one of self-inflicted perversity. Cello fine. mess (interaction). pedal controls, the change over from Piano fine. Trumpet fine. All other in- Suguru Goto, on the other hand, is Ultra Sound to accelerometers and use struments fine. But the violin. . . . seeking the third way, determined to of the infinitely programmable STEIM There is nothing so liberating as using screw up the violinist’s back even more Sensor Lab (from 1990). With the Perks a violin bow free of a violin. I have quite by fitting his Superpolm Violin with an Badminton project of 1994, based on the a collection of amplified bows, bows with interactive pressure-sensored chin rest. Jekyll-and-Hyde mind of Percy Grainger, extra strings strung along them and free- If you squeeze down on your chin every I got other people to start running standing string instrument homemades. time you get or want virtual string excite- around the stage or court. In effect, You can assault these instruments from ment, you will be heading to an expen- badminton rackets fulfilled part of the all directions with a bow. All can be sive specialist in your local clinic. To be function of bows. Quasi “random” set- pitch shifted, scratched or manipulated fair, his non-stringed ersatz violin has tings of the Spider code (the Sensor Lab in some way by interactive bow-powered some cool touch-strip sensors on the fin- software programmed for this project MIDI. gerboard, and there does appear to be a by Frank Balde) were also scaled back, Dan Trueman has developed this no- reaction when he shakes the Superpolm as computers just do not “get” theatri- tion of an unattached bow to sophis- up and down on his website’s video [23]. cal moments, and as in Murphy’s Law, ticated homemade heights with the However, the sounds being controlled if there is a chance of misreading a mo- BoSSA (Bow-Sensor-Speak-Array), a spa- have such long envelopes, front and ment, computers will. An accelerometer tial filtering audio diffuser speaker hub back, that it gives away what he thinks a does not know or care if you just missed (to replace the resonating chamber of bow or indeed a violin should be about.
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When it comes to putting a spanner in sue. My hunch is this. When a pianist, enough about me, what do you think the works of the bow’s haptic feedback, a violinist, a guitarist, a trumpeter or a about me?” According to Dr. Limb, im- the British know how. Bennett Hogg sub- flautist of similar ability are asked to play provisers simultaneously switch off the mitted an interesting proposal to STEIM an A 440 at various durations and ampli- dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where in 2006; he called his project The Resis- tudes, or a phrase, or a complete piece, the brain plans careful actions and self- tant Violin. His trajectory flies as follows: the neuron activity in the brains of each censoring. If only improvising were that Most digital technology is about making performer lights up in different amounts simple. There is clearly a long way to go music easier and making the performer and in different parts of the brain. In the on mapping cognition in music, let alone more powerful for less effort. Suppose we reductionist world of European notated improvised music [24]. reverse that—add technology, make mu- classical music, a note is often a note is sic much more difficult and render the often a note. But from an instrumental- performer powerless if not impotent and ist’s perspective, and of paramount im- Nirvana? having to work harder and harder. Yes, portance in improvised music, it matters Can an improvising violinist now buy a he’s onto something. Love it! The first how a note is produced. The haptic feed- commercially available interactive bow? thing he wants to do is connect the vio- back and instrument motor skills are fun- Well, not only a violin bow, but the full lin bow to a violin with 15 strong elastic damentally other for the various classes of set of viola, cello and double bass bows bands triggering strain gauges. . . . I leave instrument. is now available. Based on 30 years of his the rest to the imagination of the reader. A violin bow comes loaded with cultural own and others’ R&D (notably that of baggage to be confirmed, augmented Don Buchla), McMillen’s K-Bow (Figs 6 or undermined. The conventions and and 7)looks like it will break out of the Haptic Feedback inventions associated with a bow are experimental ghetto and into the hands It is not by chance that there are distinct beautiful performance options, not just of any violinist who dares or cares [25]. classes of music instrument. The hit, the technical issues to be solved or ignored. Within the fiberglass bow are two loops of plucked, the blown and the scraped exist The bow at work delivers a complex and wire acting as an antenna; it gives precise because they map distinct physiological subtle narrative, and in the context of positional information about the bow in traits of our species. Each requires com- improvised music at least, it makes you relation to an emitter that is tucked under pletely different motor skills. I am not an wonder how keyboard players continue the fingerboard. There is the expectedx, academic, let alone a neurologist, so it to get away with it. y and z axis accelerometer in the frog of might be that in a dark cupboard some- At Johns Hopkins University, research- the bow. There is a very reliable pressure where, someone has carried out research ers have fingered the medial prefrontal sensor that measures bow grip and makes comparing brain scans as these classes cortex region of the brain as the happen- an excellent program switch. There is a of instruments undergo a set musical ing place that lights up when musicians force-sensing resistor that measures bow task. I have not, however, come across improvise. This is the bit of the brain hair displacement. Altogether, there are any controlled study that looks at this is- that flashes when people say, “Well, that’s seven streams of high-quality continu-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00013 by guest on 29 September 2021 ous controller information transmitted to. Through the bow it was possible to be- Blaûek sisters, who could have used this via Bluetooth to a computer. The bow is come aware of what might be described instrument if it had been invented back perfectly balanced and weighs no more in chaos theory as the attractor sensibil- in 1891, when they were exhibited in than a regular bow. Max-based stand ity. Just recently, at McMillen’s studio, I Paris [27]. Moving forward with these alone software, written by Barry Threw, was asked to try and screw up a new pitch examples, we can begin to imagine the allows for signal processing, sampling, tracking code—make it make mistakes. digital modeling of two or many bows looping and the immersive possibilities It read spiccato passages quite well but dueling in previously impossible data of surround sound—with clear visual could still be tricked by fingered harmon- worlds: dozens of interactive bows trans- monitoring. Not bad for a bow. ics and sul ponticello. This gets better and mitting to a central hub or telematic bow When Miller Puckette came up with better for the composer but is not really hookups of massed strings swarming on his fiddle object in Max, he did not ex- interesting to the improviser. a global scale—it’s going to be a Chinese pect that there would ever be a perfect Coming out of McMillen’s bow ex- violin factory anyway. pitch rider for the violin; the signal is just perimentation is also the possibility of Strings were never part of a military too complicated. There are always octave multiple bow interaction. This not only band going into battle, as they simply displacements and odd pitches (the in- takes care of the quartet and chamber could not be heard. But digital bow explicable sixth is common) occurring, orchestra options but could take the transmission and amplification place often for no apparent reason—it is just bow(s) into more radical and scary sce- the improvising violinist in contexts that an embedded feature of bowed sound. narios. One of the Relative Violins from historically have not been considered From a composer’s standpoint, this is the 1980s was the double piston, triple “in the tradition”: violins outside the unacceptable behavior, but from an im- neck, wheeling violin (Fig. 8)—a double- expected territory (The Relative Violin provisational aesthetic, the unexpected bowed instrument built to measure dis- project [28] also engaged in sonic ter- is often desired and seized upon. In my tance in music (as opposed to time) in ritorial disputes, such as performances early bows, I set my MIDI note-on out- Australian outback conditions [26]. involving the Sydney airport, freeways, comes from bow pressure in a way that Another was a Siamese twin violin that beach, explosives, earth diggers and I couldn’t predict, but at the same time delved into aspects of duality; naturally supermarkets). So the bow as active im- could feel a sense of pitched shapes and enough it required a double bow. I later provisational weapon in the digital realm tonalities and where they might morph discovered the violin-playing conjoined does not necessarily have to transform
Fig. 8. Triple Neck, Double Piston, Wheeling Violin and Truck, Pacific Highway, Sydney, 1984. (© Jon Rose. Photo: Kristine Rose.)
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00013 by guest on 29 September 2021 the sound of a violin with signal process- but as an improvising device, a switch with unstable 19. Much of the time I had to be content with a kind ing, control samples or images, or make desires can also be used to positive improvisational of synesthetic counterpoint comparable to the way effect. See
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