NOISA

Etude Compositions

The concept of NOISA Étude #3 surrounds the exploration of idiomatic writing practises shifting the unique characteristics of NOISA instruments into a more established musical identity. The soundworld of the piece is determined by the individual characteristics of the NOISA, which are emerged from dynamic processing of musical timbre and mixed with live electronics. The real time performance of this idiomatic composition allows the musicians to blend the NOISA instruments and live-electronics, so that each instrument generated audio are merged together into a complex, but tightly mixed texture. In a performance situation, NOISA is treated as a solo instrument, amplified and processed in real time by a MAX patch in a laptop computer. The piece is further developed into a ternary form ABA’ with contrasting character between the first two and a third section that comprises a recapitulation of the first. Having both NOISA and the live electronics communicating with variations of a theme in a larger scale form has been defined as “thematic dialogue" by the authors.

The composition 3 agents + 1 exploits recently developed affordances in NOISA musical instruments. These instruments act as three networked-agents in live performance to maintain and deepen the performer’s engagement with their interfaces in an unusual way. The instruments are extended to incorporate the performance as they become part of the distribution of decision-making, transforming their physical control inputs consistently and communicate with the performer within own acoustic contexts.

“NOISA Etude #1” is a first set of performance instructions created to showcase compelling, evolving and complex soundscapes only possible when operating the NOISA instruments, integrating the system’s response as part of a musical piece. The multi-layered sound interaction design is based on radical transformations of acoustic instruments performing works from the classical music repertoire. This first “Etude” is based on frequency-tuned granular synthesis systems.

“NOISA Etude #2” is a second set of performance instructions. The system is fed with variations of a fixed musical motif, encouraging the system to recognise elements of the motive and create its own set of different versions emulating a human musical compositional process. Also, the Myo Armband is used in a creative way as an independent element for dynamic control, using raw data extracted from the muscles’ tension. This piece is accompanied by a performance score with detailed instructions regarding the performer actions, pauses for system reaction, and different course routes depending on the system’s response.