01 Mar The Musical Work, Free Improvisation, and Live-Electronics: Towards an Integrated Musical Paradigm

Paper presentation (video), Midlands New Music Symposium, University of Nottingham, UK (2020) 

Abstract: Slil (in Hebrew: reel, e.g. a tape reel) is a live-electronics work. It can be performed as a solo work for a computer musician or as an interaction between the computer and other instruments. Slil combines different musical processes – composition, performance, and improvisation – and interconnects humans and technology as coexisting actors through the interaction between the musicians and their digital or acoustic instrument. The reciprocal relations between these aforementioned processes and actors continuously (re-)shape the work from one performance to the next, and open up the result to different musical and aesthetic influences.

Slil’s structure remains ever open to absorb musical material. After the computer interface is loaded with audio samples the material is processed in real time, thus suggesting an improvisatory-exploratory process of investigation of the sound properties and hidden possibilities of the original samples. The iterative process of collecting the samples, loading them into the computer interface, and processing them in real time, which repeats in each new performance, becomes a node of interaction between the participating musicians – composer and performer(s) – facilitated by technology.