| EAI | |
|---|---|
| Typical instruments | Prepared guitar, laptop |
| Mainstream popularity | Worldwide |
Electroacoustic improvisation (EAI) is a style of music that incorporates aspects of both electroacoustic music and free improvisation.
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Live electronics has been part of the sound art world since the 1930s with the early works of John Cage.[1][2] Source magazine documents the activities of a number of American groups in the 1960s,[3] and in Montreal, Canada, there were two live electronic ensembles in the 1970s, MetaMusic and Sonde.[4] This field has expanded rapidly with the use of powerful, inexpensive laptop computers.
EAI is rather loosely defined, but is sometimes characterized by quiet, slow moving, minimalistic textures, often based on extended droning sounds. EAI drew influence, in part, from the tradition of free improvisation but should not be considered a branch of avant-garde or free jazz. Combined with this was the influence of electronic and electroacoustic music, the music of American experimental composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman and David Tudor, Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète, and the so-called instrumental musique concrète of Helmut Lachenmann. British free improvisation group AMM, particularly their guitarist Keith Rowe, contributed to the development of contemporary EAI.
Cities like New York City, Tokyo, Vienna and Berlin have all been centers of EAI. A variety of terms have been used to describe their music: “lowercase” (a term coined by artist and musician Steve Roden for his own work), “onkyokei” (or Onkyo) (used to describe the Japanese strains of the music), “taomud” (meaning “the area of music under discussion”, an ironic acronym in lack of a better term), “New London Silence” and “Berlin reductionism”. The term EAI is being used more frequently in describing this music, but only in small, confined internet circles. the term is used only very rarely by the musicians themselves, who on the whole dislike the term as it suggests a division away from the tradition of non-idiomatic free improvisation, from where it evolved, and to which it remains distinctly linked, to the point that clear separation is impossible.
The record labels Erstwhile Records, For 4 Ears, Cut, Durian, Charhizma, Improvised Music from Japan, Fringes Recordings, Mikroton Recordings and Mego have released a number of EAI albums.
Critic Arie Altena suggests that a defining characteristic of EAI is its “anti-virtuoso” æsthetic, arguing that conventional instrumental techniques are rarely emphasized in EAI, and thus there are few occasions when traditional technical virtuosity is considered appropriate. Critics also note that many musicians in EAI studiously avoid traditional sounds and timbres, and that “extended techniques” (unorthodox playing practices) appear to be standard in performance.[5] Some EAI music also includes field recordings.
EAI sometimes differs significantly from music associated with the established free improvisation scene. One critic has suggested that a new vocabulary may be required to describe certain aspects of EAI. John Eyles writes,
Similarly, critic Jeff Siegel writes,
A variety of musical instruments can be heard in EAI, but two are prominent: the laptop computer and the prepared guitar.
Traditional acoustic musical instruments are also used, but they are often played very unconventionally, with heavy use of various extended techniques.
A prepared guitar is a guitar which has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques. This practice is sometimes called tabletop guitar, as players often place the guitar flat on a table in order to manipulate it.
Pioneered by Keith Rowe in the late 1960s, adopted by Fred Frith and others in the 1970s, prepared guitar has become very prominent in electroacoustic improvisation.
While computers have been used in music since the 1950s, the 1990s saw two major innovations: increases in processor speeds and software sophistication, and relatively affordable laptop computers becoming commonplace.
With the development of increasingly sophisticated software applications, designed specifically for music and sound creation, laptops can now be used as real-time, interactive musical instruments. Open source software such as SuperCollider and Pure Data are increasingly used for live improvisation, as they afford sophisticated means for enabling real-time interaction. Musical instruments that include artificial intelligence can therefore be built. An example of such improvisation software are the ixiQuarks made by ixi software.
Computer-using musicians like Fennesz, Pimmon, Peter Rehberg and Ikue Mori have also made notable contributions to improvised music.
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In Holland a tri-annual organized Output festival focuses on electroacoustic improvisation. 2004, 2007 and 2010 are the years in which the festival is organized. [1]
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