I, as a composer, had been quite skeptical about improvised music until some time ago. I love to listen and experience of course, but I always thought that it should be done after a number of ‘formal music’ performances. In a way I still think that playing ‘formal’ music could help to give insight on the way music flows.

However, the  improvisation itself also needs practices : not only about musical practices, but also trusting your intuition, showing the moments, what you are aiming to throughout what you are playing. So I tried as well.

It’s been just a couple of years that I seriously started making my own solo project, using the instruments that I can play, and still treat them in the way that I do in my own composed music.

Here I’d like to share one recording of those. Recently I performed at Studio Loos in Den Haag, and this recording is made with the same setup. The only difference is that I used the ground noise at the beginning, without touching any devices, I only ‘approach’ toward the device with one hand, while the other hand was touching a different electronic device, connected to the same ground.

I liked the result. There was a big plan behind, but not all the details.

The process:

Benjolin, the chaotic analog sound generator, gives an input signal to the computer system, which was developed in SuperCollider. The signal not only works as the sound input, but also as the control rate, manipulating the buffer that was live-sampled inside the computer endlessly. The performer -me- is constantly choosing the moment for the live sampling, and looping the samples. There are 4 layers doing the same. The 1st layer as more aiming toward the base line, and the 2nd layer receives the first layer as the input. The 3rd layer is directly receiving the Benjolin sound as the input without any treatment, and 4th layer receives the 3rd layer. All the buffer lengths are different.

Those 4 layers are then processed, treated as an instrumental sound. The processings include  -several wave shapings and distortion, -spectrum manipulation, -binaural spatialization. An interesting aspect could be that I used a single output channel as the input channel for the processing. That means when the processing starts, it will also give a feedback to the result itself.

This is how the setup looks like:

And the Recording:

This was performed recently in Seoul, South Korea at the event,  “Unsold Art.”

Hope you enjoy!