Composing with Instruments and Live Electronics
Sohrab Uduman · Focal Press eBooks · 2024
Compositional practices, that are variously theoretical, practical, and pragmatic, separate out working with ‘traditional’ instrumental and vocal (acoustic) forces from electronic, computer-based (electroacoustic) resources. This chapter demonstrates how, with reference to the author’s own creative practice, the domains of electroacoustic, or electronic, and instrumental music composition can integrate with, contribute to, and inform each other, and how the techniques associated with instrumental writing can fuse with the rich, comparatively heuristic, outlook associated with Musique Concrète. Ideas and approaches for dealing with sonic materials, their relationships, and how these can be shaped and formed over time are presented. Specific musical antecedents examine the articulative function of live electronics together with how acoustic music can utilise thinking drawn from electronic music, before works are discussed under three broad headings: spectral shapes; morphs; textures and gestures. Initially showing how spectral and morphological characteristics of samples from instrumental source sound recordings can integrate with a data-based approach to materials, the notion about morphing sound material is then discussed in relation to its role in shaping musical form, before the structuring role of performance, and physical gesture, in electronic music sound-making in real time is explored.