Andrew S Blackburn

In 2015, there are few remaining pipe organs in Malaysia, although many centuries of colonial and cultural occupation in Malaysia, including, in the last 600 years, Portuguese, Dutch and British, pipe organs in Malaysia may be viewed as important cultural markers. Although there is reason to suspect that instruments were imported during the Portuguese and Dutch colonial eras, no trace of such instruments remain in Malaysia, although there are several fine examples in Indonesia. The remaining historic instruments in Malaysia are all of either English or Malaysian origin – a small, but highly significant strand of Malaysia’s cultural heritage. In this article, newly uncovered details of locally built Malaysian pipe organs and their maker, James Riddell, are discussed.

Music scores carry multiple strands of information, both simultaneous and sequential. A score is a set of instructions for the performance of specific tones, pitches and durations. In the music teachers‟ studio, teachers and students take this information and „reverse engineer‟ appropriate gestures to re-create the composer‟s instructions using notation (Tormey p.2). Gestures may be explicitly present within the score - musical and visual. Through discourse with the score, student and teacher learn to become a conduit and contributor of musical ideas, through performance to an audience. In this article, two graphically notated, pipe organ works are considered from the perspective of the performer: Ligeti‟s „Volumina‟ (1961-2) and Harvey‟s „Eight Panels‟, (2007-9). Each work requires a different stance in preparation to make sense of the musical experience. The scores graphically show the gestures required to performatively re-animate each piece. This is a highly efficient and a precise teaching model, vital in the music teaching studio for understanding both explicit and implicit paradigms of instrumental performance.

This paper outlines the background to a research project currently underway in Malaysia that, through spectography seeks to find models that might assist in the future development of a timbral notation. Located within the music creation and performance practices of the researchers, the project has elements of interculturality which both enrich and inform the research. The authors consider the nature of a music score, the explicit and implicit information it carries, and how this impacts on the models being developed. The understandings elicited to date are not only located in music practice, but are underpinned and supported by the theoretical works of a number of recent philosophers and theorists. The overall research project is broken down into smaller discrete sub-projects which are discussed, and the findings of each sub-project are then contextualized in the wider project. These findings include a discussion of the score as artifact and the potential contained within it. The fi...

The emergence of music for organ and realtime digital signal processing (dsp) has signalled major changes to the very nature and structure of music for the instrument, dramatically expanding its idiom and timbral malleability. It has also created new performance practices which mark substantial shifts in the relationship of the organist with the music, the instrument, and with co-performers. Finally, a new 'performative space' is emerging through organ and realtime dsp in concert situations, creating a sonic relocation of the instrument and enabling new audience experiences. This DMA examines organ and realtime digital signal processing (dsp) from a performer's perspective. After tracing the history of the organ as an instrument at the forefront of musical innovation since the 1400s, it focuses on rapid developments over the past fifty years, leading to organ and dsp as a logical next step in the development and repertoire of the instrument. From there, the study revolve...

This paper probes questions of performance space analysis and understandings of artistic interculturality in an electroacoustic context through the prism of Foucault's principles of heterotopia. The investigation focusses on the construction and performance of Memento Memori: A Malaysian Circus on The Garden of Evening Mists [A novel by Tan Twan Eng]. Original composition: John Cage; realisation supervised by Warren Burt, Catherine Schieve and Andrew Blackburn; first performed at the Cage101 Conference at the Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Malaysia, August 23, 2013. Applying Foucault's notion of heterotopia as a research model aims to provide new ways of articulating information in an experimental electroacoustic location. The layering of elements and spaces of performance, when seen through principles relating to cultures, spaces, opening/closing and functional and illusory space, creates a potential for gaining valuable insights into these interactive musical spaces.

Music scores carry multiple strands of information, both simultaneous and sequential. A score is a set of instructions for the performance of specific tones, pitches and durations. In the music teachers‟ studio, teachers and students take this information and „reverse engineer‟ appropriate gestures to re-create the composer‟s instructions using notation (Tormey p.2). Gestures may be explicitly present within the score - musical and visual. Through discourse with the score, student and teacher learn to become a conduit and contributor of musical ideas, through performance to an audience. In this article, two graphically notated, pipe organ works are considered from the perspective of the performer: Ligeti‟s „Volumina‟ (1961-2) and Harvey‟s „Eight Panels‟, (2007-9). Each work requires a different stance in preparation to make sense of the musical experience. The scores graphically show the gestures required to performatively re-animate each piece. This is a highly efficient and a prec...

Ethnomusicologists often face the problem of precisely and objectively describing the characteristics of a sound recorded in fieldwork activities. ln the absence of any other means, written explanations normally use metaphoric words to represent the timbral characteristics of a sound produced by ethnic musical instruments. But to what extent will the reader understand and perceive the sound based on the writer's explanation? This study is part of a wider research project Spectromorphological Notation - Notating the unNotatable? Modelling a New System of Timbral and Performance Notation for Ethnomusicological, Musique-mixte and Electroacoustic Music Compositions. This articlewill explore some of the possibilities of using timbral visualisation in the recognition of the characteristics of Malaysian traditional musical instruments with a view of providing a more objective description of the sound of these instruments. Such analysis of Malay traditional instruments is new. As part o...

The Imaginary Space: Developing Models For An Emergent Malay / Western Electroacoustic Music is a Malaysian Government funded research project being undertaken at the Universiti Pendidkan Sultan Idris, Malaysia. This study revolves around the creation and performance of new works for instruments and electronics by Malaysian composers, incorporating and synthesising elements from Malaysian and Western art music cultures. Through ethnographic, performative and compositional explorations, the project is drawing upon aspects of new music and traditional musics of Malaysia to create connections, new knowledge and new musical works. This paper focusses on the divergent practices of the Malaysian aboriginal nose flute, as heard in the rural areas of Perak and Pahang, and the extended Western flute, as explored and manifest in the performance of a new work for flutes and live electronics. Juxtaposing these two instruments in an electroacoustic setting has generated a new musical context and...

The Imaginary Space: Developing Models For An Emergent Malay / Western Electroacoustic Music is a Malaysian Government funded research project being undertaken at the Universiti Pendidkan Sultan Idris, Malaysia. This study revolves around the creation and performance of new works for instruments and electronics by Malaysian composers, incorporating and synthesising elements from Malaysian and Western art music cultures. Through ethnographic, performative and compositional explorations, the project is drawing upon aspects of new music and traditional musics of Malaysia to create connections, new knowledge and new musical works. This paper focusses on the divergent practices of the Malaysian aboriginal nose flute, as heard in the rural areas of Perak and Pahang, and the extended Western flute, as explored and manifest in the performance of a new work for flutes and live electronics. Juxtaposing these two instruments in an electroacoustic setting has generated a new musical context and...

There are diverse forms of musical communication between composer, performer, and so to the listener, the “reception of [a musical] idea” (Landy) to be found in processes of making and performing musique-mixte (for instrument with electronics) works. The creative process requires a nexus between composer-creator and performer(s) operating across both the acoustic, and electroacoustic realms. Having a system that is commonly understood and accepted as ‘notation’– a common semiotic ontology – for the electronic component of a musique-mixte work, as comparably ubiquitous as the stave and stick or gestural notation within the instrumental paradigm, would assist the composition development process as well as discourse between musicologists.
Presently, there is no systematised, universally accepted form of electronic notation with which to record performance details in a form that can easily be shared between performers. Whilst there are excellent software which can assist analysing music performance after the event (e.g. EAnalysis or Sonic Visualiser), composers usually create individual ‘notation’ solutions to represent the electronics component in a musique-mixte work. These solutions are normally separately tailored to meet the needs of both the player’s performing score (the instrumental score) and the technologist’s score. The ontology of each solution is, initially, pertinent to the musical creation and its creator(s) and secondarily, to the performance environment.
Four musique-mixte works from the first years of this century provide exemplars for analysing the notation of the digital signal processing component of each work. The works are for pipe organ with live digital signal processing and, in each, the acoustic sound of the organ is the origin of all electronic emanations. The combination adds sonic complexity to the already rich sonic quality of the pipe organ, and how this is represented in the notation of each work is the core of this paper.
The semiotic ontologies of each ‘system’ used to represent the digital signal processing permit some conclusions to be drawn regarding the information which is required by each of the participants in the musical performance. With the exception of the work by Thurlow/Halford/Blackburn, the works are scored for an organist and technologist(s). Andrián Pertout’s composition also includes flutes. The electronic notation solutions in each work provide the instrumentalist with a variable representation of the electronic component, which may have a currency beyond the exemplar works. The works are: Steve Everett, Vanitas (2005); Andrián Pertout, Symétrie Intégrante for organ, flutes and electronics opus 394 (2007); Lawrence Harvey/Andrew Blackburn Eight Panels for organ, live DSP; and Jeremy Thurlow/Daniel Halford/Andrew Blackburn, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (2015). The backgrounds of these composers are diverse, though all are very experienced musique-mixte creators. While two of these works (Eight Panels and Ceci n’est pas une pipe) use Cycling74’s Max to create a software patch which serves in part as the ‘notation’ of the electronics score, the others each use different software/hardware combinations including Kyma and Cakewalk. The electronic notations within the organist’s scores are also equally variable, ranging from an indication of a ‘scene’ change to detailed gestural instructions for both technologists and organist. Every work provides quite specific ‘recipes’ for (re)creating the sound palette which the performer/technologist follows in conjunction with the organist’s score.
The compositions provide an opportunity to delve into issues that have been raised earlier. While not intending to provide a solution to the lack of a common electronic notation (which will likely be evolutionary in development rather than imposed), the paper will identify how the issue has been approached in the selected compositions, noting both the commonalities and distinctions between each.

Ever since the Bremen Radio Broadcast Performance – 20 May 1962 – a broadcast that included Gyorgy Ligeti's 'Volumina', Mauricio Kagel's “Improvisation Ajoutee” and Bengt Hambreaus' 'Interference' – all compositions that exposed a whole new world of texture, timbre and musical possibility, the pipe organ has been reclaiming a position of prominence in contemporary art music. The timbral, technical and musical possibilities exhibited in these compositions and the more recent advent of accessible and portable real time dsp (Digital Signal Processing) has encouraged an ever widening range of composers/ performers to write for the instrument, extending both its timbral potential and inherent spatial possibilities. These developments have changed our expectations and perceptions of what a pipe organ musically can be and do. In this paper I shall provide a brief background to this development, focussing on four significant and recently composed works for pipe o...

Pipe organs are often perceived as musically reactionary sites, housed in churches, town halls or major performance centres under the auspices of conservative structures. Contrary to this perception, over the last six hundred years, there have always been composers using the instrument as a vehicle for musically ‘avant-garde’ expression. Recently, composers have incorporated realtime digital signal processing (DSP) into works with pipe organ. Preparing two such works Vanitas (2005), Steve Everett, and 8 Panels (2007 rev 2010), Lawrence Harvey, has altered many of the understandings of this organist as a performer. The new understandings of this organist as a performer are explored in this paper. The emergence of music for organ and realtime digital signal processing (dsp) has signalled major changes to the very nature and structure of music for the instrument, dramatically expanding its idiom and timbral malleability. It has also created new performance practices which mark substant...

Pipe organs are often perceived as musically reactionary sites, housed in churches, town halls or major performance centres under the auspices of conservative structures. Contrary to this perception, over the last six hundred years, there have always been composers using the instrument as a vehicle for musically 'avant-garde' expression. Recently, composers have incorporated realtime digital signal processing (DSP) into works with pipe organ. Preparing two such works, Vanitas (2005) by Steve Everett and 8 Panels (2007, rev 2010) by Lawrence Harvey, has altered many of the understandings of this organist as performer. This paper will position these works within the pipe organ canon, focussing on the new performative techniques required of the organist bringing both pieces to performance. As a practice-led research methodology, this project was illuminating–both of new processes, relationships and performance techniques which evolved during the development and rehearsal stages...

The Imaginary Space: Developing Models For An Emergent Malay / Western Electroacoustic Music is a Malaysian Government funded research project being undertaken at the Universiti Pendidkan Sultan Idris, Malaysia. This study revolves around the creation and performance of new works for instruments and electronics by Malaysian composers, incorporating and synthesising elements from Malaysian and Western art music cultures. Through ethnographic, performative and compositional explorations, the project is drawing upon aspects of new music and traditional musics of Malaysia to create connections, new knowledge and new musical works. This paper focusses on the divergent practices of the Malaysian aboriginal nose flute, as heard in the rural areas of Perak and Pahang, and the extended Western flute, as explored and manifest in the performance of a new work for flutes and live electronics. Juxtaposing these two instruments in an electroacoustic setting has generated a new musical context and...

ABSTRACT The Imaginary Space: Developing models for an emergent Malaysian/Western electroacoustic music is a Fundamental Research Grant Scheme project funded by the Malaysian government in which intercultural investigation is centred within an electroacoustic performance environment. A unique series of music outcomes and potential models reflecting a symbiosis of Malaysian and Western art music through composition and performance are emerging for instrument(s) and electronics. This paper focuses on the first and second phases of the project investigating Western flute, Malaysian serunai and pensol nose flute with electronics. Multi-stranded investigations of connections are identified within the conception, composition, realisation and reception of these works. Performer perspectives are given through two case studies. Our purpose is to illuminate understandings of intercultural connections, to begin to re-conceptualise cultural research paradigms, and to see what we can discover about performance contexts and engagement with individuals, cultures and traditions. The research is contextualised within the philosophical theories of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and Ingold. Investigating the role of technology in this context impels a discussion of how these elements generate a new, multifaceted environment, the space in which intercultural and performative understandings can emerge. This article focuses on how these performance contexts become a place for research and new understandings.