A Study of Interactive Electroacoustic Music: A Performance Guide to “Naica for Alto Saxophone and Live Delay Processing” (2011) by Viet Cuong
Trek Boyland · 2025
This study will provide solutions to challenging performance circumstances and examine practice and performance approaches of the work Naica. The research intends to provide historical insight, musical analysis, discussion of performance challenges, and pedagogical techniques to Viet Cuong’s Naica for alto saxophone and live delay processing. Saxophonists, performers, and educators should familiarize themselves with the technical and musical demands of interactive, electroacoustic compositions to broaden their scope of evolving saxophone repertoire. Interactive electroacoustic music can provide unique challenges for the performer. The interplay between acoustic instruments and electronic interfaces necessitates the performer’s comprehension of how their musical decisions and physical motions shape their overall performance. This dissertation will identify unique musical challenges to performing music with a saxophone and delay pedal, such as tonal control, articulation, note duration, intonation, fingering selection, tempo, and dynamics, and how these factors affect the style of the composition. Because each note is immediately repeated back to the performer, the individual directly determines how each consecutive note will sound. The delay created with the MAX software repeats notes at one hundred and sixty-four beats per minute, which creates a polyphonic texture that one would achieve playing in a chamber ensemble. This musical trait is unique in that performers do not usually perform in this self-guided polyphonic format.