Thomas Gerwin
A little house music 2 (2020)
Musical explorations of space alone
Your own rooms are everyday, familiar and usual – but perhaps they still contain some undiscovered musical and artistic potential. The following small concept improvisations are intended to encourage you to discover this for yourself in peace and quiet.
The focus should be on different aspects and qualities of a particular place (= a precisely defined place within the apartment). It is important to include all rooms and passageways as well as the bathroom or balcony, storage room, etc. There are no “important” or “unimportant” places for this type of artistic experiment. In addition, in this project we subject ratings such as “beautiful” or “dissonant” to a critical examination in order to arrive at qualities such as “varied”, “interesting” or “harmonious”.
Own tone
Every room has its own tone, a natural frequency that results from the sum of all its circumstances, e.g. the size and proportions of the dimensions of the walls and ceiling as well as the material of the walls and furniture and floors etc. The natural tone can be different in different places in a room.
Try to find the natural tone of certain places in your home with an instrument and experiment with playing it there and moving slowly or quickly away from it and back to it. What happens if this tone is played for a very long time?
Acoustics
Every place is also characterized by certain acoustics that color the tones, sounds or noises produced there in a certain way. The acoustics can also be different in different places in a room.
Play with the acoustics of a place. Find out which tones and sounds come across best there. Experiment with instrumental and material sounds.
Material
Every place can become an instrument itself by making it and everything that is there sound in different ways.
Experiment in certain places with the objects there, including the walls and the floor. Find out in certain places which sounds can be produced particularly well and how they fit together.
Character
Every place also has a certain character, which on the one hand results from its function and on the other hand corresponds to its material conditions and proportions.
Find out the different special characters of certain places in your home, define them and experiment with how certain sounds, melodies, rhythms or other musical structures harmonize with them, disrupt the character or (strangely?) enrich it.
Time of day
Certain places in the home are used or frequented differently and in a certain way at certain times of the day and night.
Find this out for all the places in your home that you have used so far and make a small calendar of what normally happens in which place and when. Experiment with accompanying this musically, counterpointing it or even “transplanting” certain times of the day to the same or other places.
Make an overview of the places in your home that you have discovered so far. Try to find more places that are different to those you have played in so far.
Keep making notes about newly discovered possibilities based on location-specific aspects and their musical message and/or effect.
Try to achieve certain, particularly interesting musical effects again and add the practices used to do so to your musical repertoire.
Now combine different of the five aspects in one place. Create different musical processes of variable lengths from the sequence of musical designs under different aspects.
Now connect and compare two different places by improvising a certain sequence of musical aspects in both places.
Experiment extensively with the musical effect of the same aspects in different places.
Now include your movement in the room while combining different aspect sequences in different places in the overall musical design of your improvisations.
Experiment with how sounds or structures change during the change of location and through the movement itself.
Now improvise a musical choreography from the sequence of different musical designs in different places, either stationary or in motion.
Try to repeat this choreography with movement and at the same time stillness and reflect on the nature of the differences.
Improvise new choreographies according to concept or completely freely. Reflect and compare the processes and results.
Improvise in dialogue with your surroundings.
These conceptual improvisations are – for the occasion – based on “Eine kleine Hausmusik” (10 consecutive etudes to explore the sound of normality and group improvisation with it) from 1987.
…
Klaus Holsten:
In times of social distancing…
… we are challenged to find new forms for a whole series of relationships that we take for granted, and the situation calls on us to examine and appreciatively resonate with many things that we have previously taken for granted.
Many tips on how we can survive the days of social distancing in a meaningful and enjoyable way suggest making more use of electronic media. The fact that this is possible is probably a blessing for many. But how about going beyond that and intensifying the mental levels of perception and communication, entering into lively contact with everything that you are and everything that surrounds you, and letting this experience resonate musically?
You are alone in your room:
- Choose an object that you see, enter into a relationship with it and make music from the experience of this situation.
- Choose another object that is similar or opposite to the first and go through the same process.
- Notice what you experienced – how the two experiences differed or were similar. Observe yourself, the objects and the music you made.
- Find out why you played: for yourself? – for the object? – from the shared presence that you perceived? – because of?? – from ??
- Consciously choose objects that represent completely different worlds, start making music and observe the incredible musical diversity that arises from this.
- Let yourself be touched by aesthetics – and let it sound.
- Let yourself be inspired by the borderline, the ugly and the challenging – and play or sing as you may never have played or sung before.
- Observe what kind of musical form emerges when you let the two musical worlds interact with each other.
- Replace the object from your room with a person you cannot visit – a completely different cosmos will open up. Perhaps the other person will perceive this, without any electronic transmission? Maybe you will perceive the other person completely differently through your playing than if you were to meet them in real life.
- Look out the window and perceive – close your eyes and make music.
- Try to find out whether the tree outside your window can hear or perceive you.
- ?????
- ?????
These suggestions only outline possible steps. Anyone who takes these, similar or completely different steps will notice that if they concentrate sufficiently on one step, the next one follows, and that this may lead in a direction that they had not even thought of – or even to a pause that creates unplayable music or simply silence.
It seems important to me that we take musical steps at all, steps that become our own and create relationships in which the word distancing turns into its opposite. Let’s take it as an opportunity!
…
Agnes Heginger:
Hand music
Look at your hand
…what does your hand sound like?
…is there a sound? A noise? Your breath?
Your hand moves back and forth in front of your eyes, your eyes follow
and with the movement the sound/noise/breath changes
it happens by itself…
Your hand dances
…it moves up and down, turns back and forth…
…is your sound changing?
What does your hand sound like?
What does the dance of your hand sound like?
Your hand is free like the wind, it can dance as far as your eye can see
sometimes it is very close, sometimes it blows far away
and with it your sound, your tones, your sounds, your breath dance
That is hand music! And you can do it all by yourself and it’s much more exciting than watching TV 🙂
…
Reinhard Gagel:
House music – house music
invented or collected by Reinhard Gagel.
These are suggestions for making music online. Situation: everyone in front of their camera in a different home. Connected via Zoom, Jitsi, etc. (I won’t explain the technical details here).
Utensils 1 (Reinhard Gagel)
Get an object that makes a sound from your room in your apartment. Show it, play it.
Make it…
- … a solo: You can use your voice, invent lyrics, whatever comes to mind.
- … a dialogue: Choose someone you want to play with.
- … a kind of round game: At the end of your playing, say how they should continue.
Increase the intensity by imagining scenarios: e.g. there is someone in the other room of the apartment who shouldn’t hear anything. Something happens outside the apartment, react to it.
Wishes (RG)
Wish from the others what you would like to hear, just for you. The others should play for you. Take turns playing this wish game.
Utensils 2 (RG)
Play on your instrument, with an object in the room, with cutlery or pens. Make a rhythm, invite others to join in.
Narrating (RG)
Tell something that is important to you at the moment, something that has to do with the situation of being locked in the apartment. Tell it and let the others act musically. The others choose a strategy with which they accompany the entire narrative. This strategy should not be abandoned, but always modified.
Example:
B tells what she sees on the balcony in the morning.
Ensemble: Someone plays with the narrative every other word. Someone takes on the birds. Someone tries to sense the mood. All of these someones should not deviate from their strategy in the course of the narrative, but find modifications.
Songlines (RG)
We sing a song together that we agree on beforehand. This song can be sung along to, it can be accompanied, it can be caricatured, and so on. It is important that the song remains recognizable and the center of interest.
Drinks (Christian Wolff, Scratch Anthology)
Get drinks in different containers. If you like, drink. If you like, make sounds. The containers can be refilled at any time. (as close to the microphone as possible!)
Image music (RG)
- Show an image that is important to you and explain it in a way that has no words.
- Show everyone an image to the camera. Try to fix the image in front of the camera. Then play a group improvisation.
- Joint improvisation: Use an image as an “instrument”: show the image if it seems musically meaningful to you. Use it as a commentary, as an impulse.
- Tells the picture with sounds without it being visible
Timer (RG)
Play according to a clock. If you have a timer, set it to repeat for one minute. You should always play for 40 seconds and have a 20 second break.
a) Start together, play pieces for 40 seconds and a 20 second break.
b) Start differently: play from there, but play the exact sequence (40 seconds play/20 seconds break). React when others play based on their playing or not.
Instructions (RG)
Say a word, a short sentence that is an instruction:
e.g. “silence” or “play your highest note” or “interrupt someone else” etc.
Do not follow the instruction.
Apartment (RG)
Explain the apartment you are sitting in. Give an idea of which rooms there are, how they are divided, where your favorite place is, what furniture is in them, etc.
Assign one player to each room; they should be in your living room, your bathroom, your bedroom.
Then play. The person who owns the apartment listens.
fish talk (Howard Skempton: Scratch anthology)
(Very close to the microphone:)
Breathe in and out very quietly
when breathing out, make small noises and breaks
with lips/tongue
hard/soft …… long/short
if appropriate: kiss
Favorite music (RG)
Get your favorite music (record, CD, stick)
If possible, play it. Everyone plays at the same time,
take breaks, listen to the others, increase or decrease the volume, change the music….
Goal: Sound collage
Book (RG)
Get a book,
open to page
45 81 134 269 316
and read
the 3rd and 15th lines out loud.
Organize so that it sounds, so that you understand everything, so that you react, etc.
alone for a second (RG)
Play alone for a while (for yourself),
then relate to each other:
leave space, wait, try to understand, drown out, etc.
support piece (RG)
Get an instruction manual,
play some sounds while reading the texts,
read some special terms out loud,
read in other languages too,
give yourself a role.
Corona necessities (RG)
Play sounds that sound two meters apart, imagine it.
(not for online:)
Only play in pairs at a large distance.
a) Play and look at each other, turn away, etc.
b) (for ensembles:) What do you do when another couple comes within your safe distance?
Wash your hands. Again and again. Record the sound or hold the microphone to it…
Chinese Whispers (Ulrike Schwarz/ Carl Ludwig Hübsch/ Sabine Vogel and others)
Play solo and record it. Send the tape to the next person. They record another track and then send it to the next person.
Rule: Only play along once without having heard the tape first.
Play along with the tape without having turned the sound on, record a second track.
Play solo and record yourself. Send the piece to someone who puts the parts together on several tracks and creates an ensemble piece.
House music (RG)
Play a few short pieces wherever you are (with a clock: 20/40/60 seconds), but also without a clock. Record the piece. Send it to someone via WhatsApp.
The recipient(s) should follow on with their own playing, play along, just listen, do something with it that comes to mind.
Sit with the other people’s pieces with headphones in different places in the apartment, room, in different positions, etc.
…
Matthias Schwabe
Improvising alone at home – 3 suggestions
What do you sound like? or “Beyond Mastery”
— Choose an object you have never made music with before: cardboard box, plastic bucket, inflated balloon, corrugated cardboard, stones, porcelain, branches, metal parts, etc.
If necessary, choose tools with which you can play the object: mallets, pieces of wire, sticks, marbles, brushes, etc.
— Give yourself 10 minutes to explore the sounds of the object.
— Then present a solo sound performance.
It can be helpful to have either an audience (or several) or to record the piece.
— Take your own instrument. Play it as if it were completely new to you, with the same attitude with which you played the sound object before. Don’t “master” the instrument, but “question” it: Who are you? What do you sound like? What is inside you?
An audience and/or a recording can be helpful here too.
— Choose a new object that you have never made music with before… etc.
(Variation: Choose the same object again. Give yourself 10 minutes [or more] again, etc.)
Driftwood or “…wherever the current takes you”
Imagine you are a piece of wood floating in a stream. Sometimes it is carried along leisurely, sometimes it gets caught in a whirlpool, gets stuck for a while, frees itself, is pulled away by a rapid undertow, etc.
It is not about representing the water, rather the image of driftwood represents the type of musical development: sometimes gradually, sometimes turning in circles, sometimes extremely fast, etc.
Important: You are a piece of wood and not a boat with an engine and steering. You cannot choose your path, but are moved by the musical flow. Let yourself be surprised by where the current takes you!
Arise – pass away
Improvise solo on the theme of “arise – pass away”.
