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Adam Barkley (Independent Scholar)

Composing with Cables: Modular Patching as a Musical Process

The process of patching a modular instrument reflects a crucial intersection point at which a performer’s musical intentions meet the technical affordances of a system. Unlike most CEMIs, modular electronic instruments require a performer to make numerous technical, aesthetical, and musical decisions regarding the form, function, and structure of a system before they are ever capable of producing any sounding material. Through the practical analysis of various patching techniques, this paper and presentation will examine how approaches to this process have impacted the development of contemporary electronic music practices and aesthetics.

The patching process informs a modular instrument’s internal communications protocol, imposing a (provisionally) fixed state upon an otherwise amorphic network of possible musical architectures. Where hardwired CEMI mappings generally employ a direct and predictable relationship between an instrument’s controller and its audible sonic parameters, the internal structures of a modular system remain architecturally dynamic. As a result, a range of approaches to patching techniques and philosophies have arisen across modular communities, reflecting and informing the development of contemporary electronic music aesthetics.

Whilst aiding performers navigate the plethora of possible patching variations, each approach is inscribed withan inherent and observable musicality; both in the way a performer interacts with the instrument, and the resulting sounding material. Accepting Bratton’s interpretation of musical interfacing as ‘any point of contact between two complex systems that governs the conditions of exchange between those systems’ (2015: 220) allows us to approach the patching process not only as a means of integrating input controllers, but as a performative interfacing process itself. The Analogue Solutions Colossus synthesiser will be used to demonstrate some of these approaches, whilst the presentation will explore how approaching patching as amusical process, rather than a distinctly technical one, can enable performers to exploit and optimise the full musical affordances of modular architectures.

Paul Wiffen (Independent Scholar)

The Role That The Yamaha GX-1 And CS-80 Triggered The Development Of Velocity And Aftertouch In Electronic Keyboards Leading To Greater Expressivity In Popular Music And Film Soundtracks.

The influence of these milestone instruments on the music of the 70s and 80s can be traced through to not only their exponentially increased value as vintage instruments but also to their legacy that can be clearly seen in recent instruments like the ASM Hydrasynth, Expressive-E Osmose and others in allowing the performer to affect the volume, timbre and pitch in real-time which vastly increased the expressivity that can now be transmitted in a performance.

Having worked as a sound designer with both Keith Emerson (one of the key performers on the Yamaha GX-1) and Vangelis (perhaps the most iconic of CS-80 players) I had a supporting role in how they used these instruments live or in real-time performances in the studio to imbue their music with deeply affecting emotional content which came at a key moment when many people were starting to criticise the sterility and impassiveness of synthesisers.

I will examine the way that the GX-1 commanded the attention of the audience as a lead instrument and challenged the electric guitar as primary instrument of rock. Keith Emerson replaced the Moog of his early years with ELP with the GX-1 and was front and centre in the sound and virtuosity of the band. In a different way, Greek maestro Vangelis was able to break into the world of film soundtracks with the CS-80 as for the first time, a depth of  expression mirroring human emotion and dynamic action could be achieved without the use of a conventional symphony orchestra.

Having analysed how the instruments allowed this, I will conclude by looking at the current hardware synths and controllers which allow the same level of expressivity and the fact that almost all virtual instruments running on DAWs are capable of responding to this via MIDI from whatever is used to control them

Samantha Bennett (Australian National University)

On Recording Studio Ornamentation

Drawing on extensive research to be published in Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies (co-authored with A/Prof Eliot Bates, CUNY, and forthcoming from The MIT Press), this paper examines hardware professional audio recording technologies–gear–and their presence in today’s music and audio technology cultures. Today’s production praxes are reliant on computer-based digital audio workstations, software plugins, and digital distribution and dissemination of recorded music files. Yet gear–technologies including microphones, consoles, and signal processors–is ever-present in professional and amateur production domains. Compared to their skeuomorphic counterparts, gear is expensive, cumbersome, heavy, time consuming to integrate into workflows, energy inefficient, and space-dependent. Why then, do we need it? What are the reasons for its ongoing appeal and success, decades after the introduction of DAW-based systems, which dominate 21st Century production workflows? This paper focuses on how organisational norms, to include pairing, chaining, racking, and stacking, workplace and space ornamentation, precious presentations, and other gear accoutrements, amplify fetishization, reinforce technological canons, and uphold gear traditions. These conservative, organizational norms also work to exclude certain people–mainly women–from spaces where electronic music and audio technologies are arranged. This paper traverses these conservative gear organizations and examines the structures in which gear is presented, observed, and socialized. Drawing on Thorsten Veblen’s theory of conspicous consumption (1899), and Susan Pearce’s work on Victorian collections (1999), the paper then focuses on how gear spaces are decorated in specific ways using lava lamps, fairy lights and specific items adorning console meter bridges. Some gear is organized and presented as precious, as analogous to jewelery. Some gear is sexualized. Above all, the paper shows how various ornamentations occurring in recording and production settings come to stand in for missing female bodies. How does the organization of gear amplify gendered and sexualized understandings of technologies? And what extra-audible work is this ornamented gear called upon to do?