The garden in the machine: an embodied music
A few weeks ago I set myself the challenge of creating two compositions to explore our changing relationship with technology. In my previous post The garden in the machine I went into detail about this, describing my desire to create one highly embodied composition and another highly disembodied one. The first composition is finished and can be listened to in the video above.
The process
Recording to analog tape without allowing myself to edit any mistakes felt like stepping into a time machine, one that might not travel so far back in time but nevertheless lands in a radically different world. A world closer to live performance and its ancient roots.
Part of what motivated me to work this way was hearing a number of musicians say some formulation of the following: ‘I might not be able to learn that, but we can fix it up in the studio.’ On one level this makes sense. Why spend hours rehearsing when you do not need to? After all, the studio is now a laboratory where illusions can be conjured up and refined with increasingly powerful technology. Rehearsing is work. You have to make time for it while paying your rent, food, and bills. Yet adopting this logic may have a wider effect on musicians and our culture.
I was surprised that the act of removing the safety net of editing felt liberating. I prepared more than normal, carving the composition into my body through the ritual of daily practise. The aim being not only to learn the piece but to turn the body into a conduit for the music and experience it through movement and pattern.
Although I have never found evidence for this story, a theatre actor once told me that the American playwright Arthur Miller wrote out Shakespearian passages by hand so as to experience the same physical sensation Shakespeare would have felt when writing them. An eccentric practice for a writer — apocryphal, or not — it nevertheless represents standard practice for musicians. Learn the piano and at some point you will follow the precise finger steps J.S. Bach took centuries earlier, reanimating the movements of his body in a way that offers clues to the logic behind his music.
However, the body can deceive. One can get lost in enjoyable movements that do not necessarily sound good. Playing music often induces hypnotic, dreamlike states; closing the eyes, rooting into the body, and rejecting light in favour of an invisible world of sound and movement can be deeply stimulating and creative, but one needs a bridge back — a way to sober up.
One method is to record the music, thereby extracting the sound from the ritual of performance. For this project I permitted myself this method of disembodiment, since as part of my regular creative process I use my phone to create low-quality recordings of my playing. The low-quality recording representing a challenge to the music, because if the composition still shines through it indicates there is something in its musical essence.
The form of my composition is inspired by a South Indian Carnatic concept called Yathi — a word that does not directly translate into English but broadly describes the shape of music or its temporal structure. Carnatic music combines small algorithmically-inspired compositions that produce shapes due to the nature of the formulas used to generate them. These compositions are then combined to create full-length compositions that mix human aesthetics and mathematical processes.
For example, below is a commonly used Poorvanga composition notated in a spoken rhythmic language called Konnakol. It has a reducing form called Gopucha Yathi, which can be seen at a glance.
ThaThaKuTomThaTom , x3
ThaKuTomThaTom , x3
TomTomThaTom , x3
TomThaTom , x3
ThaTom , x3
Tom , x3
Gopucha Yathi depicts the spiralling of a cow’s tail. However, in my composition I used the opposite of this form, Srothovaka Yathi, which describes a gradually broadening river. This broadening would be referred to as augmentation in Western music terminology, however that describes the process, not the resulting shape.
Despite using this form I have not done so in a traditional manner, but chose to experiment with time. The Poorvanga above is traditionally played in less than a minute, whereas I had it last for more than 8 minutes. Each phrase is traditionally played 3 times, whereas I repeated them approximately 8 times. I did this out of a desire to experience the gradual expansion of its temporal structure.
The humanity of error
Technology is changing our relationship to mistakes by offering forms of control that encourage perfectionism, and not just in music: our culture aspires to perfect bodies, opinions, lives, and morality — resulting in a culture that can feel unrelatable, dull, or even callous.
Though I was born too late to have seen John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, or Miles Davis perform live their recordings deeply affected my life. Each is a master, yet having recorded their music at a time when editing technology was less advanced their records are full of mistakes, hesitations, incomplete ideas, and perhaps none more than Miles Davis. I found Miles’s mistakes reassuring growing up, demonstrating he was human but brave enough to take risks and push against his limits. Were these bands recorded now I have little doubt most if not all of their mistakes would be removed, making the records more polished but less interesting.
The jazz pianist Herbie Hancock shared a fascinating insight into Miles’s relationship with mistakes when recounting his experience of making a major error during a live performance while playing in his band.
Right in the middle of Miles’s solo, when he was playing one of his amazing solos… I played the wrong chord. A chord that just sounded completely wrong. It sounded like a big mistake … Miles paused for a second and then he played some notes that made my chord right. He made it correct which astounded me. I couldn't believe what I heard. Miles was able to make something that was wrong into something that was right with the power of his choice of notes… What I realise now is that Miles didn't hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened, just an event.
Hancock connects this to a wider philosophical view of life that he sensed in Miles’s approach to music.
That taught me a very big lesson about not only music but about life. We can look for the world to be as we would like it to be as individuals… but I think the important thing is that we grow, and the only way we can grow is to have a mind (that) is open enough to be able to accept situations. To be able to experience situations as they are and turn them into medicine; turn poison into medicine, take whatever situation you have and make something constructive happen.
I think the sense of liberation I mentioned at the start of the article is related to this. Working in this more forgiving aesthetic feels honest, not aspirational. Our bodies are as imperfect as us. We push against the ignorance of youth, then the withering of ageing. We are not relentless machines; we sleep, grow tired, and have limitations. Imperfect, we nevertheless experience companionship, curiosity, humour, love, and spiritual awakenings. Music acts as a deeply sympathetic art form, offering consolation amid the inevitability of suffering.
Allowing mistakes in my recording made me feel more connected to it. It reflects exactly what happened that day. Had I not liked what I heard I could go away and work hard to improve, rather than edit it into fiction.
This is not to suggest or prescribe that all recordings should be created in this manner. Recording culture should to be free, creative, and experimental. However, if we eliminate human expression from our sound culture, what does that say about our world? Are we not eliminating ourselves?
Some technical notes
Recording studio El Spot, Valencia, Spain.
Engineer and mastering engineer: Ronald Ayala
Assistant engineer: Emmanuel Linois
Film Editor: Lucia Molina Pflaum
Performer: Dom Aversano
Instrument Stainless steel handpan Panstream F# Minor hammered by Mark Wilson
Notes: F#2 (C#2) (D3) (E3) F#3 G#3 A3 (B3) C#4 (D4) E4 F#4 G#4 A4 (B4)