~Proceedings ICMCISMCI2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece
Transcription, Adaptation and Maintenance in Live Electronic Performance with Acoustic Instruments
Pete Furniss
Reid School of Music
Edinburgh College of Art
University of Edinburgh
United Kingdom
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
This paper examines processes of musical adaptation in a
live electronic context, taking as a case study the authors'
collaborative work transcribing Richard Dudas' Prelude
No.1 for flute and computer (2005), to a new version for
clarinet and live electronics, performed in the Spring of
2014 by clarinettist Pete Furniss. As such, the idea of
transcription and its implications are central to this study.
We will additionally address some of the salient information that the user interface in a piece of interactive electro-instrumental music should present to the performer, as
well as some possible ways of restructuring not only the
interface itself, but also the deroulement of the piece to
aid the solo performer to the maximum degree possible.
A secondary focus of the paper is to underline the need
for the creation of a body of musical works that are technically straightforward enough to serve as an introduction
to live electronic performance for musicians who might
otherwise be daunted by the demands of the existing repertoire.
1. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
The process of adapting an electro-instrumental' work
has afforded the opportunity to consider three modes of
transcription and their implications. Firstly, the musical
material itself has been transcribed and transposed for a
different instrument, as have some of the events in the
electronic processing - those which stem necessarily
from the new instrumental circumstances. These include
adapting the pitch transposition and revoicing the harmonic material generated from within the software. Secondly, the user interface has been modified from a desktop-oriented design to one fit for onstage performer control. Thirdly, with a view to future performance of the
work, a software-neutral, graphical transcription of the
technological processes has been created as a form of
"study score". The score-following technology employed
The genre is sometimes referred to as "mixed" electronic music, primarily in the francophone community, or simply "live electronic" music, which generally implies the presence of one or more acoustic instruments. There is to date no universally recognised term and we will
use both the rather technical "electro-instrumental" and perhaps more
elegant "live electronic" interchangeably here.
Copyright: ~ 2014 P. Furniss et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the (a nnLicense.._.... which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited.
Richard Dudas
Center for Research in Electro-Acoustic Music and
Audio Technology (CREAMA)
Hanyang University School of Music
Seoul, South Korea
[email protected]
to trigger events during the piece was also "transcribed"
to use a more recent, and potentially more robust, system,
but this has subsequently been revised and reworked, due
to issues of maintenance, control and the licensing of
third party software. The processes described here represent an ongoing work in progress, towards the publication
and a future commercial recording of the piece.
Widening access to a composer's output has historically provided an incentive to produce adapted musical
material for performance, particularly before the advent
of commercially available recordings. Such adaptation
also contributed to the expansion of available repertoire
for instruments which may be have been underrepresented in the catalogue as a whole. The tradition of
musical transcription goes back at least as far as the 18th
century, when it was important to both composer and
publisher for the generation of maximum sales, and a
broader dissemination among the music making populus.
Many composers have produced pieces in versions for
alternative instrumentation or reused their own ideas, and
indeed whole works, in different contexts2. The piece that
this paper uses as a case study, Richard Dudas' Prelude
No.1 for flute and computer (2005), seems ideally suited
to this purpose, due to the concise nature of its instrumental and technical requirements, its short duration and its
pedagogical potential as entry-level live electronic repertoire.
Just as the initial impetus or compositional sketches for
a musical work may be quite different from the final
notation supplied to the performer(s), so the visual user
interface of a live electronic piece may require significant
adaptation from that designed during the work's creation.
Moving from a "sketch" or prototype interface intended
to drive the compositional process, towards one which is
designed for use in performance, is an important and
sometimes overlooked consideration; a streamlined
interface is essential in providing the optimum "user
experience" for any performer. What players often find
presented in the software interface provided may offer
only limited help to them in terms of both operating the
software and learning how to interact in a comfortable
and confident manner to the computer's musical output.
In order to be more closely engaged with their
electronically augmented instrumental environment as
true soloists, some musicians are beginning to move
2 For example, Beethoven's Septet Op. 20 was transcribed as Clarinet
Trio Op. 32, and Mozart's String Quintet No.2, K.406, from the Serenade in C minor K.388.
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