Improvisation, dynamic form and the acousmatic composer: perspectives on Triple

Retort
Manuella Blackburn
Liverpool Hope University
blackbm@hope.ac.uk
Abstract:
This paper introduces the semi-improvised mixed work Triple Retort (2011) for flute, cello, mezzo-soprano
and three laptops, and presents the concept of constructing dynamic form as a means of enabling and
encouraging variation with each performance. This variation encompasses flexible time lengths, different
instrument combinations, multi-disciplines (eg. dance), structural progressions and characters. The work
confronts a number of pertinent issues associated with more fixed forms of instrument and electronic works
(namely fixed media) and places itself between the idioms of fixed media and real-time electronics.
The composer will describe the experience of navigating the mixed music medium, as a departure from a
predominantly acousmatic background, and how aspects of acousmatic music filter into work where control
and precision apply on different scales and in contrasting dimensions. Associated with this, the paper
questions the notion of the composers voice and identity within works involving improvisation, and
establishes a discussion point regarding compositional signatures by contextualizing this argument within the
mixed music medium.
The paper will be accompanied by live demonstrations with Trio Atem (Gavin Osbourn, Nina Whiteman and
Alice Purton) and the performers perspectives (musicians and laptop performers) to illuminate the
discussion.
Mixed music from an acousmatic music composer
Triple Retort is an interactive mixed work for cello, flute, mezzo-soprano and triggered samples via three
laptops. It is not, in the conventional sense, a fixed media plus instruments piece or a live electronics work.
The work sits somewhere between the two, borrowing the pre-composed elements of fixed media creation
and the chance, impromptu aspects of live electronics. Driving the works conception was the question of
live performance as a suitable environment for yielding compositional ideas in real-time, and how this
compares to the more solitary and controlled activity of studio-based acousmatic music composition. My
questioning is however, not entirely new and has been extensively probed by composer Adrian Moore with
his search for a middle ground between the acousmatic-continuous work (of closed, fixed time-frame) and a
laptop school of improvised electronic pieces (based around repetitions of small fragments. His questioning
around improvisation and its ability to sit with ready-made acousmatic soundfiles in a musically coherent
way when played live
1
also mirrors my own enquires into the status and importance of improvisation within
my own practice.
Composing from spectromorphological vocabulary
Through Triple Retorts construction I aimed to build upon Moores research by maintaining elements of
acousmatic music namely through the use of pre-composed samples and also through trialing the application
of my acousmatic compositional tools (based on the vocabulary of Smalleys spectromorphology) in the
medium of interactive music where the live performance environment would replace my studio sequencer.
This earlier research produced a compositional aid useful for acousmatic music creation through the
establishment of sound units, which I consider to be the fundamental nuts and bolts of my music.

1
Adrian Moore, Fracturing the Acousmatic: Merging Improvisation with Disassembled Acousmatic Music
ICMC 2008 proceedings.
Spectromorphological vocabulary is at the heart of this approach, informing sound choice and structuring
processes. For example, a sound unit can be constructed from an onset (emergence), continuant (transition)
and termination (release) where the individual words inform the way a sound is sculpted:
Figure 1. Sound unit construction in an acousmatic situation
This provides a useful starting point for generating material in the early stages of the work. In its more
elaborate forms I have personally found the process to be beneficial in educational situations
2
and visualizing
the process in action in my music making practice
3
.
Morphological stringing
The concept of morphological stringing
4
was directly transferred to a live improvisational situation, placing
the decision making in the hands of the laptop operators. Each laptop contains a different sound library of
around 150 samples derived from one of the three instruments. These samples were edited and transformed in
the studio affording me a degree of control and ownership over the sound materials included in the work.
Each laptop was then paired with one of the instrumentalists and thus a dialogue initiates through soundfile
triggering via keyboard keys and on-screen buttons mapped using Max/MSP. The laptop may be viewed as
both initiating a dialogue and generating another performer
5
or a clone
6
of the live performers on stage.
Since the samples are computer clones of the live performers, a state of confusion
7
emerges within
performance where it is not always possible to identify with certainty if a sound is instrument or laptop
derived. Morphological stringing occurs within Triple Retort as both live performers and their clones
triggered from the laptops contribute in real-time to this extension of short sounds. Since this sequence
building process is trebled, density and polyphony are further aspects contributing to the aural complexity
that arises.

2
Manuella Blackburn, Composing from Spectromorpholgical vocabulary: Proposed Application, Pedagogy
and Metadata, http://www.ems-network.org/ems09/proceedings.html
3
Manuella Blackburn, The Visual Sound-Shapes of Spectromorphology, Organised Sound, Vol.16(1),
2010, p5-13.
4
Denis Smalley, But morphologies are not just isolated objects, they may be linked and merged in strings to
create hybrids. Spectromorphology and structuring processes, in Simon Emmerson, ed. The Language of
Electroacoustic Music, 71.
5
Simon Emmerson, Combining the acoustic and the digital in The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music,
p169
6
Ibid.
7
Flo Menezes, For a Morphology of Interaction, Organised Sound, Vol.7(3), p305.
Control and intervention
In some respects acousmatic music composition and improvisation appear as opposites when considering the
level of composer control and intervention in each practice. Piecing together a new acousmatic work in the
studio enables the composer to rework and audition sound materials repeatedly until one is fully satisfied
with the end results. The final product can be made concrete and captured in time, just as the composer
intended. On the other hand, improvisation, by its very nature, is indeterminate and unrepeatable, drawing a
stark difference with acousmatic music playback. In a live setting there is little or no chance to refine
8
.
Such differences between these genres are not immediately or easily overcome, and it is for this reason that
my foray into the world of instruments, electronics and improvisation borrows much from the acousmatic
realm, in which I feel more at home.
Improvisation for fixedness
My attention to improvisation within performance has steadily increased by observing the presence of chance
elements inherent in many forms of composition. Examining the happy accidents that my own studio work
has yielded communicates the fundamental need for an improvised trial and error approach within my
acousmatic music practice. Being delighted by a mistake
9
or stumbling upon unintentional sonic gems is an
experience many of my composer colleagues can identify with. Most acousmatic music composers would
agree to some extent that we improvise with software, tools and sounds to find successful material. Moore
has stated: For many, the process of composing electroacoustic music with the computer begins with free
exploration of materials.
10
Part of my compositional process for creating acousmatic music involves
improvising with sound material until something worth keeping is found. Piecing sound materials together or
organising sound may also be considered as a sort of improvisation. What ultimately differs is that decisions
can be made to discard or retain these improvisations, or in other words, the composers early attempts and
mistakes can be hidden and withheld from an audience until perfected. My acousmatic music compositional
process would not make for interesting or engaging audience viewing since this whole process may take
anything up to a year to complete! Richard Orton has previously posed this same perspective in his writings
on improvisation Perhaps composition is simply improvisation writ slow.
11
Triple Retort challenges this
lengthy time scale and functions as a live compositional process. The piecing together of onsets, continuants
and terminations occurs in real-time and these nuts and bolts lie dormant and isolated until activated.
Exposing the compositional process in this way enables the happy accidents to occur in the moment of
performance, providing the audience with a glimpse into my usually private studio experiences. In
performance this flat-pack composition may be assembled without an instruction sheet (score) and comes to
life with little predictability concerning the connections, sound clusters and progression of events.
Dynamic form
The form of the work may be considered as dynamic, where each performance is different depending on
what sounds are utilised from the patches. The works overall duration is one of the few instructions that may
be set prior to performance to suit concert programming, affording the work flexibility through its partly
improvised nature. The three musicians are instructed to respond to what samples they hear and the laptop
performers may trigger any number of soundfiles in no set or predetermined order. The laptop operators are

8
Adrian Moore, Fracturing the Acousmatic: Merging Improvisation with Disassembled Acousmtic Music,
p1.
9
Todd Winkler, Composing Interactive Music, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, 2001, p?
10
Adrian Moore, Making Choices in electroacoustic music: bringing a sense of play back into fixed media
works online text, 2007.
11
Ricardo Orton, From Improvisation to Composition, in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought,
Vol.2, London 1992, p763.
thus co-creators, decision makers and performers
12
themselves. The musicians are asked to respond by
imitating the sounds from the laptop they are paired with and they are free to develop upon what sounds are
thrown out to them. In rehearsal a loose structure is determined based upon creating contrasting moments of
sparseness and density controlled partly through the intensity and types of sound types triggered. The
flexibility inherent in Triple Retort has opened up a number of alternative possibilities for informing the
progression of the work. The ensemble has considered the effect of all instruments responding to any sound
from a laptop. A knock on the cellos soundboard may be easily imitated in triplicate by all instruments,
creating an entirely different responding effect. This type of improvisation involving dynamic form has been
applied to further instrument combinations, for example, for bass guitar, electric guitar and piano, and a
subsequent combination of seven instruments and seven laptops in work currently in progress. The concept
has also been applied in a work for laptops and dancers to investigate how responses to triggered samples
might be exhibited through bodily movements and not through sound. A dynamic form of this nature ensures
each performance provides a different aural experience and affords the musicians certain liberties over how
they develop and expand the resulting soundworld. A sort of controlled aleatory ensues, where chance and
indeterminate outcomes maintain a level of uncertainty throughout the performance.
Sound types
This next slide shows what the laptop performers see and demonstrates the layout of their controls. The
laptop performers have categories of sounds to choose from within their sound libraries, enabling the
dialogue of exchanges to continue beyond the initial imitation from their paired musician.
Demonstration
I would like to demonstrate a number of typical dialogue interactions including direct imitation (a), imitation
alteration (b) and antiphonal response (c) with flautist Gavin Osborn.
Compositional voice and ownership
At this point I feel it is necessary to comment upon the topic of ownership and how ones compositional
voice might manifests itself in works of an improvised nature. Again, the comparisons to acousmatic music
have raked up this point of enquiry and revealed an ambivalence in claiming the work as entirely my own.
Taking a step back to the very beginnings of the work, each musician was instructed to play a range of
extended techniques that they felt comfortable recreating in a live situation. These sounds were recorded,
edited, transformed (in some cases) and loaded into a Max patch. My role as composer appears limited to
these aspects since the piecework of morphological stringing determining the structural progression is
reserved for live performance. Since the sounds recorded in the studio remain as templates to which the
performers respond, the live musicians are bound by their first contributions to the piece their sounds are in
this light not true spontaneous improvisations. This has made me question my role as composer and how
much of the work is mine. Considering varying degrees of fixedness and the limited instructional specificity I
offer has lead to me question whether these factors have any bearing on my ownership of this work and
whether defining Triple Retort as collaborative would be a more accurate label
13
as one might refer to open
form composition and free improvisation. Simon Emmersons states that the roles of the composer and
performer may not be separated when it comes to improvised laptop performance since the material is
created in a live performance and there is no concept of interpretation. In conversation with the

12
Simon Emmerson, Combining the acoustic and the digital in The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music,
p169.
13
Here, indeterminacy at various levels of the compositional process allows the performer to share directly
with the composer in the construction of the music. Open-form composition, then is a collaborations, one
which often takes place as real-time composition, where the player relies on spontaneous performance
decisions. John P Welsh, Open Form and Earle Browns Modules I and II, Perspectives of New Music,
Vol.32 (1), 1994, 255.
Birmingham Laptop Ensemble (BiLE) who focus on experimental music, they uniquely regard their
improvisations as pieces that are composed. Norah Lorway from the group comments BiLE tends to have
a composer-performer approach where we all would write our own patches in Max or Supercollider and [we]
follow a basic set of instructions given by the composer. A lot of the time, I wonder if this actually isn't just
collaborative composition anyhow, since we all contribute our own code and sonic material.
Conclusion
My paper has demonstrated how acousmatic music compositional tools derived from spectromorphology
may also be applied within real-time improvisational situations for instruments and laptops. Working with
short micro-scale samples enables a variety of onsets, continuants and terminations to link and cluster in
many combinations. The audience observes morphological stringing in real-time where each performance
yields a different series of events, maintaining the sense of a live, and in-the-moment performance. This
application of spectromorphology is in itself a useful live auditioning process that has so far exposed a
number of intriguing points of cohesion that I am more used to experiencing in the studio on an individual
basis. These moments provide inspiration to feed into my future acousmatic work, whist simultaneously
satisfying an audiences desire to hear and see a live improvisation. Working closely with the performers has
facilitated a reexamination of improvisation and what it means for my practice of acousmatic music and its
importance in generating material on the fly for more fixed types of composition. The paper has also left a
number of unanswered questions regarding a scale of fixedness and how composer intervention may
directly relate to ownership. When does a work fall under collaborative ownership and at what point is a
work considered fixed? There are also further avenues of thought to explore with regards to conflict and
tension between improvisation and acousmatic music and how one might negotiate these differences in
performance.
Bibliography:
Bailey, Derek, Improvisation its Nature and Practice in Music, Oxford, 1992.
Manuella Blackburn, Composing from Spectromorpholgical vocabulary: Proposed Application, Pedagogy
and Metadata, http://www.ems-network.org/ems09/proceedings.html
Blackburn, Manuella, The Visual Sound-Shapes of Spectromorphology, Organised Sound, Vol.16(1),
2010, p5-13.
Borgo, David, Sync or Swarm, Improvising Music in a Complex Age, New York, 2005.
Emmerson, Simon, Acoustic/electroacoustic: The relationship with instruments, Journal of New Music
Research, Vol. 27(1-2), 146-164.
Emmerson, Simon, Ed. The Language of Electroacoustic Music, London, 1986.
Emmerson, Simon, Living Electronic Music, Aldershot, 2007.
Menezes, Flo, For a Morphology of Interaction, Organised Sound, Vol.7(3), p305-311.
Moore, Adrian, Fracturing the Acousmatic, Merging improvisation with disassembled acousmatic music,
International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) proceedings 2008.
Moore, Adrian, Making Choices in electroacoustic music: bringing a sense of play back into fixed media
works online text, 2007. http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/14/88/3piecestex.pdf
[accessed 28.03.12]
Orton, Richard, From Improvisation to Composition, in Paynter. J Howell. T, Orton. R and Seymour. P, ed.
Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, London, 1992, p??
Welsh, John, Open Form and Earle Browns Modules I and II, Perspectives of New Music, Vol.32 (1),
1994, 254-260.
Winkler, Todd, Composing Interactive Music, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, 2001.