Études for Live-Electronics

Musicians often describe their musical instrument as an extension of their own voice and make it sing, scream, whisper or cry. With acoustic instruments, the biomechanical energy of the players is converted by the instrument into vibrations and sound. Musicians feel the vibrations while playing, hear the sound directly and can acquire a virtuoso playing technique through years of training. To learn this, musicians often practice études, which are specifically composed pieces of music that deal with a technical problem. In the case of electronic instruments, the sound is continuously generated, and it requires an interface so that musicians can control the sounds. Typical interfaces consist of many knobs, switches and LEDs. However, there are almost no limits to interface design, as you can see from the multifaceted interfaces presented at the NIME conference every year. Live-electronics players often build their own instruments, compose the music for them and play live on stage. Consequently, they develop their own methods to learn playing techniques or to improve existing ones, which raises questions about performance preparation strategies in live-electronics. What criteria do performers use to design their interfaces? How often do they change them? What influence do changes have on the performance preparation time and the performance quality? What meaning does the term étude take on, when applied to the multifaceted and constantly evolving field of live-electronics? This research project explores the hypothesis that the core element of the étude the encounter with a problem through repetition and slight variation can be transferred to a multi-culturally driven, collaborative, artistic research procedure, that facilitates knowledge exchange through the practice of live-electronic music performance itself. Through a series of artistic experiments, we will explore new methods of designing electronic instruments, creating repertoire and building a diverse community, in close connection with performance practice. The project will feature practitioners such as sound artist KMRU (KE), composer Trinh Luong Hue (VN), music technologist Bernt I. Wærstad (NO), interaction designer Astrid Bin (DE), and others. The research team, led by Alex Hofmann (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, mdw), in cooperation with Karlheinz Essl (mdw), is in dialogue with local music scenes in Europe, East Africa and Southeast Asia, with the aim of developing a new understanding of the concept of études through live-electronics.