Acoustic and Virtual Space as a Dynamic Element of Music Author(s): Pauline Oliveros Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol.

5 (1995), pp. 19-22 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513156 . Accessed: 06/10/2011 16:43
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ARTIST'S

NOTE

and Acoustic as a Dynamic

Virtual Element

Space
of Music

Pauline Oliveros

ABSTRACT

s a musician, I am interested in the sensual A nature of sound, its power of release and change. In my performances throughout the world, I try to transmit to the audience the way I experience sound both when I hear it and when I play it. I call this way of experiencing sound "deep listening." Deep listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible-this means one hears all sounds, no matter what one is doing. Such intense listening includes hearing the sounds of daily life, of nature and of one's own thoughts, as well as musical sounds. Deep listening is my life practice. In this article, I attempt to relate my experiences as a performer and composer to the development of my interest in acoustics and technology. I have been involved with the use of technology for live performance since the late 1950s. I will review several of my pieces as they relate to the development of the Expanded Instrument System (EIS), described below, which I use in composing both my solo and ensemble performances with the Deep Listening Band. I will discuss my interest in acoustic and virtual space. Virtual acoustics-a perceptual phenomenon-is created with electronic processing within an actual physical space. Simulated walls or reflective surfaces may cause a listener to perceive differences in room size and the tone quality of a musical instrument.

solve this problem. I recorded The author an provides oversmall acoustic sound sources with view herbackgrounda perof as the microphone in the (empty) former composer and interested inacoustics technology. and Her bathtub. discussion from ranges a descripMusic, as I understand it, is tion herpractice "deep of of lisplayed in acoustic spaces. Concert to tening" herwork developing halls, theaters, cathedrals, etc. all theExpanded Instrument Sysact as mechanical amplifiers, tem-which allows performer the control acoustic over greater which, by their architectural dewith space-to hercollaborations sign, capture the sounds of voices other and composers instrument and instruments, and impose builders. resonances, reflections and absorption that color the sounds. Instrumental and vocal sounds are enhanced or distorted by these mechanical amplifiers, depending on the nature of the sound and the purpose of the design. Resonance, reflection and absorption are determined by the relationships and materials of the enclosure as well as environmental factors such as air temperature and humidity. Particular styles of music are often associated with preferred architectural designs. Music that is intended for reverberant cathedrals, such as the Gregorian chant, may not sound well in dry halls, whereas contrapuntal music needs a
Fig. 1. Pauline Oliveros and David Gamper performing with PCM 42s, Austin, TX, 1994. (Photo: Gisela Gamper)

DISCOVERING ACOUSTIC SPACE

Early in my student career as a performer, I noticed that I liked playing in some rooms or concert halls much better than in others. When I played my French horn in a dry hall (a room with little or no reverberation) the sound felt stuffy,and it seemed harder to play. I would wonder why my tone quality seemed to sound poor or very thin in such rooms. More reverrooms with berant rooms always felt better-especially wooden floors and walls as the reflective surfaces. My tone was fuller, richer and rounder, and it was easier to play in these rooms. I learned about resonance, reflections, reverberation and how to play in a room through these experiences. This situation was similar to one I was to experience later as a composer when I worked with electronic sound. When I used dry sounds (sounds recorded directly from the source without a sense of room space), reverberation of some kind was needed to make the sounds seem more musical. In my first attempts at composing tape music in the late 1950s, I used the resonance and reflective surfaces of my bathtub as an approach to help
Pauline Oliveros (composer, performer, musician), 156 Hunter Street, Kingston, NY 10012, U.S.A. E-mail: <paulineo@tmn.com>. Received 31 August 1994. Manuscript solicited by Judy Malloy.

? 1995 ISAST

LEONARDO

MUSIC JOURNAL,

Vol. 5, pp. 19-22,

1995

19

dryer and smaller hall for clarity of all the contrapuntal lines. Good musicians adjust their performances to the nature of the hall as best they can. Seasoned audience members seek out the seats where the balance of direct sound and reflected sound is the most pleasing. Generally speaking, the architectural acoustic space (concert hall) is assumed to be fixed, with relatively unchangeable characteristics. Harmonies, melodies, rhythms and timbres change in more or less intricate relationships, while the acoustic space does not change; it is the container of the music. As my experience of numerous performance spaces accumulated, I began to wish for the possibility of changing the acoustic space while performing. I also wished that I could hear as if I were in the audience while I was performing for it. With the advent of signal processors and sophisticated sound systems, it is possible to tamper with the container of music in imaginative ways. The walls of an electronically created virtual acoustic space can expand or contract and assume new angles or virtual surfaces. The resulting resonances and reflections, which change continuously during the course of a performance, can be used to create spatial progressions, much as one creates chord progressions or timbre transformations by changing the tone quality of an instrument while performing a single pitch. The audience and performers can experience sensations of moving in space as well as perceiving sounds moving through space. They can also experience the relationship of moving in space in relation to sounds moving in the same space while the space itself is changing. Such audio illusions or virtual acoustics can function as a new parameter of music, much as timbre became new with the advent of KlangfarbenMelodie(tone color melody), in which the notes of a melody are distributed to different instruments successively (as in the music of both Arnold Schoenberg, who coined the term, and Anton Webern) [1]. As I gradually became more and more sensitized to acoustic phenomena and its effects on my sound as a performer and composer, I began to listen carefully to each space I encountered. I noted that changes in the position, height or the direction of an instrument could affect the tone quality by enhancing it or detracting from it. I worked back and forth between acoustic and electronic sound.

mic(s)

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Fig. 2. Expanded Instrument System: sample station, 1995. The Lexicon PCM 42 is an analog-controlled digital delay. The Lexicon PCM 70 is a MIDI-controlled digital effects processor. The Reson8 DSP computer is programmed and controlled through a Nubus card in a Macintosh computer. Studio 5 is a multiline MIDI interface and patcher. The Mic and Line mixers are sections of a Mackie 1604 with OTTO MIDI control. Niche is a set of 8 MIDI controlled resisters. PADS is a custom resistor and switch to serial converter.

TAPE DELAY
Beginning in the early 1960s, I strung tape from the supply reel of one machine to the take-up reel of another so that the tape passed the heads of two to three tape machines. This tape-delay process allowed me to return the signal from the playback head to the record head in a variety of configurations to create various accumulations of layering, echoes and rhythms. I used these techniques to enhance electronic sounds and process sounds made with acoustic instruments [2]. A seed idea appeared in my early work TheBath (1966) for Dancer's Workshop in San Francisco (Anna Halprin, director). I wanted to create the music for this dance out of the intentional and unintentional sounds made by the dancers during the course of the performance. I wanted to change the acoustic characteristics of the performance space as well. In order to accomplish this, I used several tape recorders to collect the sounds the dancers made during the first part of the piece without introducing any other sonic elements. There was no accompaniment other than the dancers' own sounds and random room sounds. For the second part of the piece, I used feedback from the playback head to the record head of the tape recorder to cre-

ate a virtual reverberant space that seemed to grow gradually in size as I increased the amplitude of the feedback. At the same time, I continued to record the sounds of the dancers. For the third part of the piece, I played back earlier parts of the piece while selectively overlapping segments of the earlier parts of the piece onto this new version of the space. Repeated material was transformed by the virtual space and the layering. The density and textures grew increasingly complex as the reverberations colored the materials. I worked extensively with tape delay and became quite involved with timbral transformation in real time with delay and mixing techniques. I discovered that repeated layering of a single tone contributed to a transformation of its quality. "Iof IV" (1966) and "ByeButterfly" (1965) are recorded examples of real-time electronic pieces from the 1960s that came out of this involvement.

THE EXPANDED INSTRUMENT SYSTEM

After using tape-delay systems for some years for live acoustic instrument performance, in 1983 I acquired a pair of preMIDI Lexicon PCM 42 digital-delay processors. These instruments gave me the

20

Acoustic and Virtual Space Oliveros,

opportunity to apply my knowledge of tape-delay techniques to my solo accordion performances, as well as the capacity to smoothly vary settings in real time with greater ease. The PCM 42 is a realtime performance instrument. Partly analog in its nature, it has foot pedals that the performer can use to change delay time, allowing the bending of delayed sounds-a phenomenon not easily possible to achieve with tape delay (Fig. 1). Other functions, including mix control, feedback and capture, can be performed by use of the pedals as well. Modulation with sine and square waves can be handled with front panel knobs. Unfortunately, the performance-oriented direction of this processor was I discontinued by Lexicon-although still use it, the PCM 42 is no longer manufactured. I used a PCM 42 delay processor for each hand while playing the accordion and quickly wanted to have multiple delays for each hand. Multiple delays can more nearly simulate the numerous reflections in an acoustically interesting space. I performed using a variety of configurations, sometimes with as many as four processors per hand. I liked the results and called the accumulating collection of microphones, amplifiers and signal processors that I manipulated in complex networks through matrices and mixers the Expanded Instrument System (EIS) (Fig. 2) [3]. I wanted more. I wanted control over the apparent acoustic space represented by the multiple delays. I wanted my maneuvering of the delays of direct sound to be heard as new acoustic spaces. I wanted to stay and dwell in a selected space or change spaces as rapidly as the limits of the processors allowed, knowing that the changes would color the sound or transform the timbre of any acoustic instrument utilized. I was interested in hearing how a bat might perceive sound as it sends out signals on the fly, or listening to the nuances of whale song as it reverberates in great underwater locations. I loved the challenge of increasing the amount of information with which I could deal as a soloist. Whatever I played could come back as a delay and be layered with the present moment or be modified by pitch bending or modulation. At the same time, I had to anticipate the future of the sound that I was making in the present moment. My exploration as a soloist trying to control the equipment while performing reached an early limit. It became necessary to engage others in the process of

developing the EIS. I knew that I would to develop a super-simulated foot-pedal need software and controllers in order to program. We used a custom digital intersatisfy my imagination and advance the face for direct program control of the EIS. From 1987 to 1993, Panaiotis, a PCM 42s, constructed by David Ward of young composer and musical engineer, Pan Digital, Inc., and based on Shaw's helped in the development of the EIS. circuit. I wanted to have a program that My direct and processed sound was fur- would simulate and then go beyond ther processed and routed to multiple what I could physically do with my foot speakers by Panaiotis during perfor- pedal. The resulting program was used mances. We explored endless equipment in a piece called The Lightning Box, for configurations-different configurations four performers. Sound output from offered varieties of sonic possibilities. each player was processed by the comThis work resulted in two compact discs: puter-controlled digital delays. The deTheRootsof theMoment(1987), issued by lay times were changed by the program, Music(1988), issued by effecting transposition and pitch-bendHatArt,and Crone ing in a variety of forms and speeds that Lovely Music Ltd. [4]. During two development residencies, I would have been impossible to accomfocused on control possibilities for the plish with the slower foot pedal. The EIS. In 1989, at the Exploratorium in piece calls for the players, as they are lisSan Francisco, Panaiotis and I experi- tening to their sounds being repeated mented with a foot-controlled track ball and modified, to respond to the modifito send control information to the PCM cations as well as to each other. Each 42s. Larry Shaw of the Exploratorium player could also affect the sound to a limited extent with a foot pedal. Indian interface circuit between designed the track ball and the PCM 42s for direct vidual players' entrances and exits were control of the PCM 42s. The track ball cued by a computer-controlled lighting worked in our demonstration and we design as part of the score. The lighting were able to send control information design was programmed by Colyer with on the x and y axis so that more than one my advice. function would be available simultaneously. The track ball ultimately proved to be impractical. We hoped to have THE DEEP LISTENING BAND more functions available to the per- In 1988, Stuart Dempster invited me to record with him in an underground cisformer with a computer interface. tern at Fort Worden in Washington State. a residency in 1990 at the During Banff Centre in Alberta, I worked with Dempster and I have shared an interest computer programmer Cornelia Colyer in unusual acoustic spaces for many years.
Fig. 3. Computer screen read-out: multifunction pedal programmed by David Gamper using MAX for the Expanded Instrument System. Each function is available by foot switch to a single pedal operated by a performer. The amount of each effect can be set and remembered by the program. A different function can then be accessed.
r 4 File Edit Nel Ma4 Font Windows Options

Oliveros, Acoustic and Virtual Space

21

Dempster's solo trombone recording In IV the GreatAbbey Clement [5] is an unof cult classic. The reverberation derground time in the Great Abbey of Clement is 14 seconds. The Fort Worden cistern has a reverberation time of 45 seconds. Dempster has clocked certain resonant frequencies responding to his trombone at 72 seconds. When I played in the cistern, my impression was that I had encountered the smoothest reverberant chamber ever. It was nearly impossible to distinguish direct from reflected sound. Panaiotis joined us with his voice in the recording session, which resulted in the compact disc Deep Listening [6]. We dubbed this trio the Deep Listening Band and took on the mission of performing in unusual spaces and trying to simulate these spaces with the EIS in our concerts. This also meant a continuing research commitment to evolving the EIS. David Gamper joined the Deep Listening Band in 1990 and begin to help with research for the EIS. The experience of processing more than one instrumentalist presented a new challenge. Panaiotis and Gamper were the central controllers of the processed sounds. There was a growing need for all the performers to independently control their own processing, as I had done earlier. Panaiotis and Gamper experimented with widening performer control through a central computer, which was also being used to control specialized digital and analog signal processing (Fig. 3). The customized interface constructed for the performance of The Lightning Box at Banff was used again to interface the veteran PCM 42s to the computer. This system was used in several Deep Listening Band concerts and for Inside/Outside/Space (1991), a piece commissioned by Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne of Montreal (Lorraine Vaillancourt, director) for 15 players. Inside/Outside/Spaceinstructs the performers to listen for subtle acoustic phenomena: the effects caused by the sounds they are playing and the nature of the performance space. The performer causes and interacts with beats between notes, difference tones (tones resulting from the difference between two frequencies), phasing and other variations. This continuous meditative interaction produces cloud-like textures that move throughout the hall, giving the audience a sense of expanding and contracting spaces. All of the sound is generated by the acoustic sounds of the performers in real time. Each player effects real-time transformations of his or

her sounds with foot pedals supported by a computer program helping to access different functions. During a performance in September 1992 at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, spatial distribution of the acoustic sounds was accomplished by Gamper and Panaiotis at the mixing consoles and by the conductor, who also used foot pedals. The usefulness of this system was limited by the paradigm of centralized signal processing (although we provided somewhat more distributed control) and the lack of visual feedback for the performers.

* Continuing to discover beautiful ways to process live sounds in real time and to shape virtual space as a dynamic element of music. References and Notes
1. For example, see Schoenberg, Five Orchestral Pieces opus 16 (1909; Rev. Ed., 1949); and Webern, Five Pieces for Orchestra opus 10 (1913). 2. See Pauline Oliveros, "Tape Delay Techniques for Electronic Music Composers (1969)," in Softwarefor People: CollectedEssays 1963-1980 (Baltimore, MD: Smith Publications, 1984). 3. Pauline Oliveros and Panaiotis, "Expanded Instrument System (EIS)," Proceedingsof the International Computer Music Conference (Montreal: 1992). 4. See Pauline Oliveros with Panaiotis, The Rootsof the Moment(composed 1987) (Therwil, Sitzer-land: HatArt, 1988); and Pauline Oliveros with Panaiotis, CroneMusic (composed 1988) (New York: Lovely Music, 1989). 5. Stuart Dempster, In the GreatAbbeyof ClementIV (composed 1976) (San Francisco, CA: New Albion, 1987). 6. Deep Listening Band, DeepListening (composed 1988) (San Francisco, CA: New Albion, 1989).

FURTHER

EXPANSION

In 1993, Gamper developed a configuration that distributed audio processing, computer control and visual display of controlling parameters among all performers (see Fig. 2). In addition, he experimented with ways of allowing the performer to control many parameters with one controller. Although this configuration mostly eliminates the option of using individual processing units for more than one performer, it returns total control over the processing to the performer. In addition, it puts many of the interconnection options of all the processing units under real-time performer control. Without eliminating the possibility for each performer to send audio signals to each other, this configuration provides each performer with exclusive control over his or her own sound processing up until the moment the sound emerges from the speakers into the performance space. In an interesting regression, this configuration returns the PCM 42s to their original smooth and beautiful analog control and features them as front ends to the whole signal-processing chain. This decision arose from dissatisfaction with the "sound"of the PCM 42s under digital control. Development of a next-generation interface may finally allow the best of both worlds. Areas of future EIS development include: * Improving hands-free performer controller options (we are currently stuck with foot pedals) * Adding the capability to record and/or play back performer-control
information

Bibliography
Beranek, Leo L. Music, Acoustics and Architecture (New York:Wiley, 1962). Hutchins, Carleen Maley. ThePhysicsof Music:ReadAmerican(SanFrancisco, CA: FreeingsfromScientific man, 1978). On the Sensationof Tone,Rev. Ed. (New York: Dover, 1954) (Originally published in London in 1875). Pierce, John R. The Scienceof Musical Sound (New York:Scientific American Library, 1983). (1911). Schoenberg, Arnold. Harmonielehre

Discography
Deep Listening Band, Deep Listening (composed 1988) (San Francisco, CA: New Albion, 1989). Deep Listening Band, Deep Listening Sanctuary (composed 1994) (Mode 46) (New York: Mode Records, 1995). (comDeep Listening Band, ReadyMade Boomerang posed 1990) (San Francisco, CA: New Albion, 1991). Deep Listening Band, ToscaSalad (composed 19921995) (DL 3) (New York:Deep Listening, 1995). Deep Listening Band, Troglodyte's Delight(composed 1990) (Albuquerque, NM: ;What Next?, 1990). Stuart Dempster, In the GreatAbbeyof Clement VI (composed 1976) (San Francisco, CA: New Albion, 1987). Pauline Oliveros, "I of IV" (composed 1966), included in New Sounds in Electronic Music (32 16 0160) (Odyssey Records, 1968) (out of print). Pauline Oliveros, "Bye Bye Butterfly" (composed 1965), included in New Music for Electronicand RecordedMedia (1750 Arch Records, 1979) (out of print). Pauline Oliveros with Panaiotis, CroneMusic (composed 1988) (New York: Lovely Music, 1989). Pauline Oliveros with Panaiotis, TheRootsof theMoment (composed 1987) (Therwil, Switzerland: HatArt, 1988).

* Exploring sharing performer control with computer control * Increasing interconnection options, allowing the use of more soaudio and digital phisticated devices matrixing

22

Acoustic and Virtual Space Oliveros,