Voluntary Self-Sabotage
Jonathan De Souza · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017
When musicians alter their instruments, they may open up new sonic possibilities. Yet instrumental alteration can also induce dynamic remapping of players’ auditory-motor associations, subverting habitual connections between performative action and sonic effect. Instrumental alteration, at this level, affects players’ perception. This chapter considers experimental research on altered auditory feedback in instrumental performance, then turns to a series of case studies related to guitar improvisation. It distinguishes between three kinds of instrumental alteration—retuning, preparation, and redesign—that affect action-sound coupling and instrumental space in different ways. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological reflections on touch, the chapter ultimately argues that the remapping stimulated by instrumental alteration reveals forms of aesthetic or sensual contact with instruments.