Beyond Pitch Organisation: an interview with Michael Maierhof
Sebastian Berweck · University of Huddersfield Press eBooks · 2013
Sebastian Berweck: Michael, I always thought of your work as a composer as that of a sound researcher, as somebody who tries to get new sounds out of objects and instruments.However, I did not see you in the line of Merzbow or early Einstürzende Neubauten and was therefore quite surprised when you labeled your music as "noise music."Therefore, my first question is a very general one: what constitutes noise music in your view and where do you see yourself in this context?Michael Maierhof: I make a distinction between pitch-organized music and non-pitch-organized music.If one does not use pitches in music as a central category, people often describe this as Geräusch-Musik, which would be the German equivalent to noise music.And because I am not writing pitchorganized music, my music belongs to the other category, which is usually called noise.However, my strategy is to define a more elaborate concept of noise, something that I call Klangkomplexe, to describe the complex qualities of non-pitch materials.SB: Can you explain how you make these sounds?What tools do you use and how do you find them?MM: Because I mostly work with acoustic instruments, let us exclude the possibilities of electronics for the moment.One possibility is to create new instruments that can produce the sound complexes I am looking for.Since 1999 I have built resonance boxes with different structured surfaces, which can be found on the backside of tiles, on Beyond Pitch Organization: an interview with Michael Maierhof Sebastian Berweck 10.5920/noise.08noise in and as music