Scott Mc Laughlin: The endless mobility of listening (2016)

Scott Mc Laughlin composed The endless mobility of listening for me in 2016 as a part of a collaborative research and creation project, supported by the Britten Pears Foundation (UK). This portfolio submission (Appendix A, Track 6) was recorded by Scott Mc Laughlin and Pete Furniss at the Stanley Glasser Electronic Music Studios, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK) in December 2018, for planned release in 2020 (label to be confirmed).

The piece can be played in part or in full, giving a variable duration; this realisation of the complete score lasts approximately 70 minutes. Three procedural elements cycle throughout, determining the duration, pacing and form of each realisation: Tuning (omitted from studio version), Seeking/Capturing [eg., 1:10, 21:08], and Chorales [eg., 4:37; 9:45; 19:14]. These procedures are discussed as they elicit patterns of intonation technique relevant to the negotiation of material agency and contingency in the harmonic spectra of extreme scordaturas, and the externalising of integral, internal processes by live electronic infrastructure.

‘Drone Bowing’

The majority of sonic material in this piece is generated through ‘drone bowing’––a method of activating the harmonic spectra of open strings through subtle changes in bow pressure, angle and position, as described by Mc Laughlin (2017):

I found that slow and gentle drone bowing sul pont on open strings allows the string fundamental to collapse and reveal instead one or more higher partials… The string spectrum moves from being whole (single percept of the fundamental) to something more bell-like where partials become audible as objects in themselves, often subtly shifting and overlaid against each other, fluctuating between single and multiple percepts.

The left-hand fingers are largely inactive throughout Endless…, except in the short Chorale sections which demarcate the end of each section, and explicitly connect the harmonic identities of adjacent fundamentals (i.e., the next open string to be bowed). The drone bowing technique was developed by Mc Laughlin across several collaborative projects in which I took part, beginning in 2012 with his string quartet A metastable harmony (see Mc Laughlin, 2017) and following on with Endless… (2015–16).

(re)Tuning

Each of the 14 cycles (tuning, seeking/capturing, chorale) in Endless… takes a different open-string scordatura as the basis for new harmonic content. In live realisations, open-strings are re-tuned in real time at the end of each section––although this process is omitted in the studio recording.¹⁰ The tuning schematic of each string relates to a common anchor pitch––B5 (-14), the fifth partial of G––which appears as a different partial in each new scordatura, as described in Figure 6.6.1. In each section, this B will be potentially present, but may be more or less likely to emerge from the drone, depending on various material or environmental factors, discussed below.

Figure 6.6.1 Tuning structure of Endless…

10 In a live performance, retuning is a discrete event, carried out at a low volume so as to remain embedded in the overall harmonic blanket of the drone. This blend is possible because the violin output is mixed at a similar output level as the electronics, so I can control my instrumental volume much as I would in an acoustic performance. I use a chromatic tuner with a clip pickup (attached to one of my tuning pegs) to tune pitches accurately, without having to hear precise proportions. For the recording, however, the violin feed was taken directly from a DPA4060

microphone, attached behind the bridge, while the electronics were subsequently rendered in the studio. Scott decided to drop my tuning out of the final mix, rather than adjust my levels in post-production, or leave the tuning process too present in the mix.

Seeking and Capturing

Beginning by bowing an open string at a neutral sounding point, I allow the contact point of my bow on the string to drift toward sul ponticello, exploring various angles and degrees of pressure, until clear partials begin to surface amidst the convoluted bow noise. The objective of the Seeking process, in Mc Laughlin’s words (2016), is to ‘allow partials to emerge from the string sound’.

The score directs me to

[u]se subtle changes to bow position/angle/speed/pressure/etc. to coax—but [not] force—partials out into prominence… Seek the B-14c partial, but allow any others to come out. Be generous, afford revelation. (Mc Laughlin, 2016)

The B5 anchor partial is retained in my attention; however, my objective is not necessarily to sound this pitch, but rather, as Mc Laughlin (2017) explains,

to use the B5 as a distant point to aim for, a structuring intention [my emphasis]. Knowing that any partial that emerges confidently is a worthy addition to the piece, but that any emergent partial will have some distant or close relationship to the B5, and this emerging network of relationships structures the piece.

Figure 6.6.2 The structure of Endless… (Mc Laughlin, 2019)

As stable partials emerge, I can choose to capture these pitches using a bespoke looping patch (Figures 6.6.3, 6.6.4), which then sustains and adds the captured material to the continuous looping electronics. Material which is generated as a response to the sounding environment is then integrated into a constantly thickening harmonic texture, and becomes the impetus for new responses (as represented in Figure 6.6.2). Looped material remains sounding throughout the piece, however older samples are progressively reduced (made less frequent) in the mix after fifty captures, effecting a gradual unfolding of harmonic texture across the duration of a performance.

Figure 6.6.3 Looping patch (Mc Laughlin) for Endless…

Figure 6.6.4 From violin input to spatialized output (Mc Laughlin, 2019)

Violin Input

footswitch trigger

visual feedback to

performer

on or off

duration of sample

looping of each buffer

pan/volume management

essentially, older samples are progressively reduced in the mix

reverb/EQ

output/spatialisation

include fade- in/

out poly~

up to 50 buffers

Contingency and Material Agency

Many of my conversations with Mc Laughlin during the Research and Creation phase of this collaboration centred around the relationship between my own enactive body’s exercising of agency (technique) over the instrument, and the violin as itself a resonant body exhibiting its own material agency. Referencing Ingold’s (2013) discussion of materiality, Mc Laughlin (2017) reflects:

in this piece Mira works ‘with’ the string, its material predilections, to encourage material agency.

[…] …a B partial is always possible, but at different levels of likelihood.

Mc Laughlin’s tuning framework, in coming together with the material agency of my instrument, affords certain pressures on my technique. At any point of decision making I may:

1) hear the B (-14) partial, choose to capture it, and manage to

2) hear the B (-14) partial, choose to capture it, but not manage to, and instead something else emerges

3) hear the B (-14) partial but decide I want to hear something else, so continue seeking 4) not hear the B (-14) partial but like what I do hear, so choose to capture that, and manage

to

5) not hear the B (-14) partial but like what I do hear, so choose to capture that, but not manage to, and instead something else emerges

6) not hear the B (-14) partial and not like what I do hear, so continue seeking

The seeking and capturing of pitches are to some degree exercises of choice, and at the same time these choices are not entirely within my control. At any point in any of these above processes, my instrument may behave unpredictably, placing me in a position of negotiating contingency––

whether to continue with an active process, or allow myself to be diverted toward a new process, suggested by the material preferences of the violin. Mc Laughlin reflects that this persistent sense of contingency in Endless… sets the practice ‘against a paradigm of control’ (S. Mc Laughlin, personal correspondence, 16 December 2018¹¹), noting that

11 All comments cited from Mc Laughlin (2018) are taken from an interview conducted 16 December 2018 in London.

rather than trying to ‘get’ anything, your job is to support what the instrument wants to do.

This creates a levelling of agencies… you bow, hear something trying to emerge, adapt technique to accommodate that, let it come out, support it in coming out.

In the same vein, I can push back against the instrument’s material tendencies and decide, for example, that I am tired of hearing certain strong partials and instead support other aggregates to emerge. Such a choice remains rooted in a fundamentally supportive perspective toward the instrument (Mc Laughlin, 2018); in seeking something other than what I am hearing, I am acknowledging that there are components in the sound that I am not hearing, and choosing to support them over what is sounding. The seeking/capturing process leaves in its wake an emergent topology of this dynamic, between my choices (how I responded, what I prioritised, what I sought) and the material agency of the instrument––a process Mc Laughlin has likened to a

‘long-exposure image’ (S. Mc Laughlin, personal correspondence, 7 March 2016).

Figure 6.6.5 Layering of captures in the recording of Endless…

Is this intonation technique? (What I carry forward)

In recent reflections on studio-based Practice Research, media scholar Kim Vincs (2007: 112) reflects on the ‘profound epistemological disjunctions that can occur between artworks of seemingly similar aesthetic, genre, and content’, upon which musicologist Lauren Redhead (2019) has elaborated that questions of ‘genre, form and content do not guarantee a path of knowledge’. By the same token, dissimilarities in these areas, which might set Endless… apart from the other pieces examined in this portfolio, stand to mask profound epistemological conjunctions that connect all these practices through embodied technique.

The ready observability of left-hand fingering can lend disproportional emphasis to this

component of intonation technique, as demonstrated by many practitioners in Chapter 4. In the five works which precede Endless… in this portfolio, left-hand fingering occupies a spectrum from implicit to prescribed action, but nonetheless plays a focal role in defining the patterns of intonation technique present, as well as the outward signifiers (sonic and symbolic) of the

practice. In the absence of any left-hand fingering with which to control pitch, Endless… serves to reframe intonation technique, placing emphasis on recognising tuning patterns and allowing them to emerge. The drone aesthetic and extended duration arise when integral observational and reflective components of technique are externalised and foregrounded by the live looping patch.

These integral components of intonation technique thus become the main carriers of content.

In this respect, Endless… represents another logical conclusion of this research. Like Windfell (6.4), this is a piece about participating in a relational dynamic of intonation through a sustained and rigorous practice of listening. Where the epistemic objects of Windfell are primarily

manifested for me internally, as embodied processes, these processes are made observable through the infrastructure of Endless…, enabling me to interact on an explicit, relational level with my own intonation technique. That interaction can result in new ruptures (to draw on Schwab’s terminology) from which further embodied knowledge can emerge. My practice of Endless… carries my engagement with intonation from what Karin Knorr Cetina calls ‘habitual’

to ‘objectual’ practice––in which ‘objects of knowledge appear to have the capacity to unfold indefinitely’. Such a practice is ‘always in the process of being materially defined’ and thus its epistemic objects ‘continually acquire new properties and change the ones they have’ (Knorr Cetina, 2001: 181).