Improvisation as Tool and Intention: Organizational Practices in Laptop Orchestras and Their Effect on Personal Musical Approaches

Jeff AlbertIntroduction

Improvisation is a practice as old as music. The laptop orchestra is possibly our newest ensemble. How do this ancient practice and this ultra-modern ensemble intersect? Laptop orchestras have developed out of musical situations that are often rooted in the Western European classical tradition (and its experimental fringe). This tradition lost much of its connection to improvisation in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries(Nettl), but the rise of the laptop orchestra has (re)introduced improvisation as a fertile musical practice to many musicians in this tradition. This paper will look at the variety of improvisational practices in laptop orchestras and ensembles, using the reper-toire of the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana (of which I am a member) as a starting point. It will explore the different roles that improvisation plays in the development and per-formance of music for laptop orchestras, and this exploration of improvisational prac-tices in laptop orchestras will preface a look at ways in which this practice has affected the musical outlook of members of these ensembles.

Improvisational practices are currently present in the academic setting, largely in the form of jazz studies curricula. The improvisation that is taught through the study of jazz is often very specific in its technique and approach, and can even be dogmatic at times in its aesthetic orientation. This presence of jazz delineated improvisation is largely lim-ited to the voluntary participants in the jazz programs. Young performers, studying in the academy, can easily traverse an entire academic career without engaging in any impro-vised musical activity. While improvisation was a part of the western art music tradition up to the mid-nineteenth century, it has largely fallen out of favor as a practice outside of the jazz sphere. This paper will show how the growing popularity of laptop orchestras may also have the effect of increasing the prevalence of non-jazz improvisation in aca-demic settings.

Bruce Ellis Benson delineates the difference between a performance and an improvisa-tion as, “A performance is essentially an interpretation of something that already exists, whereas improvisation presents us with something that only comes into being in the mo-ment of presentation” (25). Derek Bailey begins his seminal work on improvisation without even offering a definition of the term. As part of the research for this paper, I conducted a survey of leaders of laptop orchestras, and I was asked by a survey re-spondent where I drew the line between improvisation and interpretation, and I respon-ded:

I would say that interpretation is the leeway a performer has within a set of specifically prescribed instructions. Improvisation, would be at least part of the process, when more general, less specific, instructions are given. For example, if a player is told to play a re-peating rhythm, but the choice of rhythm and/or notes is left to the performer, then I would consider improvisation to be an aspect of that process.

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For the purposes of this exposition I will use the term improvise to refer to any musical act that leaves choices about pitch or rhythm to the individual performer.

A definition of laptop orchestra will also be beneficial to this examination. The terms “laptop orchestra” and “laptop ensemble” are often used interchangeably. The word “or-chestra” will be used in this paper, leaving the in depth discussion of the semantics of that choice for another time. The definition offered by Daniel Trueman works well. A laptop orchestra is an “ensemble of computer-based musical meta- instruments” (True-man et al.).

These instruments, or meta-instruments to use Dr. Truemanʼs term, fall into two broad categories. The first is what I call “direct sound control” instruments. These are instru-ments in which there exists a direct temporal connection between the actions of the per-former and the creation of sound, or more simply put, “when I push this button, sound comes out.” The second category includes instruments that are process or code con-trolled. These are instruments in which the performer launches a process, or sometimes writes the code during the performance (known as live coding), and the process then takes over the lower level control of making the sounds. This removes the temporal im-mediacy from the performerʼs control, but creates a scenario in which musical textures of much greater complexity can be created.

Laptop orchestras range in size from as few as four or five performers to as many as twenty-five or more. Of the respondents to my survey, all of the groups had between five and ten members, with the exceptions of one four member group and one twenty mem-ber group. This paper will look in depth at some of the repertoire of the Laptop Orches-tra of Louisiana, which has nine members, performing from five computer stations, and often uses acoustic instruments in addition to the computer based instruments. The LOL is about three years old and is made up of graduate students and faculty at Louisiana State University. All but one of the members of the group have been affiliated with the School of Music, with self-identified composers and self-identified performers making up roughly equal proportions, although all members perform in the context of the LOL and most compose for the group as well.

Domains of Improvisation

I will look at improvisational practice in laptop orchestras in terms of two domains: im-provisation as intent, and improvisation as tool.

Improvisation as intent is the domain in which the act of improvising is the motivating factor. These are musical events that are driven by the improvisational activity, and the goal of the performers is to find new or compelling expressions and modes of interaction in that specific moment. The practice in this domain comes from the aesthetic lineage that has long been shared by experimental musicians of both acoustic and electronic in-clination.

Improvisation as a tool is the domain that uses improvisation as a way to explore new instruments and modes of operation. This is especially true when these new instru-ments and modes of operation lack a system of effective musical notation. A majority of the improvisation that happens in laptop orchestras and ensembles falls into this cat-egory. It is improvisation as a tool for discovering the possibilities of a new instrument or idea. It is improvisation that also often leads to an agreed upon shape or structure that

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becomes the “piece,” and in these instances the initial improvisatory nature settles into a standardized practice.

These two domains can overlap, and they often do. Five pieces from the spring 2011 repertoire of the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana (LOLs) will serve as the basis for an ex-amination of practices within these domains, and these practices will be placed in per-spective amongst the broader practices of laptop ensembles in the US and Europe through a brief survey completed by the leaders of a number of other active groups.

Improvisations and Transformations is a “piece” performed by the LOLs since 2009. I use the scare quotes on the word piece because Improvisations and Transformations is fully improvised. Its consistencies from performance to performance are technical and conceptual in nature, but the musical characteristics can vary wildly. It is always fully im-provised and always uses some number of acoustic instrumentalists, each matched with a laptop performer using the GUA instrument (Hwang "Gua"). The GUA instrument is a live sampling and manipulation instrument that was designed to be used in impro-visations. Improvisation is the primary aesthetic focus of this piece. It came about as a way to showcase some of the strong acoustic performers who are members of the LOLs, as well as a mechanism to force our instrument design into a place that privileged subtle real time control and performance flexibility. In this case improvisation was a tool to develop the electronic instrument, instead of a tool to explore the instrument. De-cisions about the design of the instrument were made because a particular musical ex-perience led to the desire to add certain functionalities. Instead of using improvisation to find what the instrument can do, then composing for those capabilities, improvisation was used to push the instrument to find things it couldnʼt do, then that functionality was added. GUA is a much more versatile instrument because of the completely improvised musical settings in which it was developed, and it has come to be used in other more structured musical settings, now that it has reached a level of maturity as an instrument.

This piece is unusual in laptop orchestra repertoire, in that it is fully improvised with no other structural ideas in place. It is the extreme example of improvisation as intent. None of the other orchestras that participated in the survey admitted to performing com-pletely free improvisations. I come from a background of free improvisation, and I pushed for this piece to remain freely improvised. I believe that the majority of the mem-bers of the LOLs would prefer to eventually move to a more structured model, and we will see in some of the upcoming examinations of pieces how these structures have been introduced.

5 Screaming Amps for Any Number of Electronic Instruments was composed by J. Corey Knoll and first performed by the LOLs. The piece is part of his series of “5 Screaming X” pieces that began with 5 Screaming Composers. Almost all of the lower level musical activity in the piece is improvised by the individual performers, and the piece is designed to be performable by both pitched and non-pitched instruments. The musical predecessor to 5 Screaming Amps was a group activity called “own instrument improv.” Each member of the LOLs had built/programmed a laptop based instrument. These instruments are as individual as their designers, with a wide variety of controller styles, and an equally wide variety of sounds created. The “own instrument improv” was a freely improvised musical practice that began as a way to explore these new instru-ments, while also forming musical communication skills within the group. We did this in rehearsals, and even performed the “own instrument improv” at an afternoon outdoor concert on campus.

As we continued to do the “own instrument improv,” we began to discuss possible mu-sical shapes or density maps before we began to play. 5 Screaming Amps is Coreyʼs

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codification of these musical paths, and an example of the groupʼs preference for at least some form of structure. The composition consists of two pages of verbal instruc-tions that deal largely with the logistics of performance and an explanation of the graph-ic score, and the graphic score itself, which outlines an approximately seven minute structure in terms of musical density and gestural construction.

Each of the survey respondents acknowledged using broad musical instructions to guide or organize improvisations. This type of structure with broad verbal musical in-structions is probably the most common way of structuring pieces that fall into the cat-egory of improvisation as intent.

Forbidden Butch is a piece I composed in the fall of 2010. It began out of my desire to create an instrument that uses the joystick controllers that we have as part of the LOLs equipment collection. Originally I had planned to devise a notation system for the instru-ment, which would allow me to compose a fully notated piece. This desire for a fully not-ated piece was largely fueled by the LOLs lack of fully notated pieces, and my desire to push myself out of my own comfort zone. I am an improviser at heart, and I enjoy estab-lishing musical spaces from which to improvise, but in this case I wanted to deal with the music in notated form. Of course dealing with notated music requires a system of notation for the instruments for which one is composing. Since this joystick instrument has no real tempered pitch reference, standard musical notation is not a very rewarding way to record the composition.

I went through a few different paradigms of test notation, but never did find a system that felt intuitive to both the composer and performer. Most of the ideas felt intuitive to neither the composer nor performer. I tried a couple of different graphic notations that followed the idea of drawing out a shape that would then be recreated on the joystick. These ideas were fairly successful at communicating pitch shapes, but much less suc-cessful at communicating time components of the music.

While working on this piece, I had a chance to hear Butch Morris. Mr. Morris does Con-ductions™, which are conducted improvisations, in which he communicates musical or-ganization to the musicians through an elaborate system of gestures. Many of the spe-cifics or each musical gesture are improvised by the individual performer, but the overall musical shape and form is rigidly controlled by Mr. Morris. It later struck me that conduc-ted improvisation would be a great means of organizing this piece, in that it allows for the fact that it is very difficult to notate specific musical events for these joystick instru-ments, but it also allows for a coherent organization of the over all musical experience.

The idea of conducted improvisation is common in laptop orchestras, and is used on an-other LOLs piece by Lindsey Hartman called InTwerp as well as in the PLOrk version of Ge Wangʼs Clix. In Forbidden Butch we can see a piece in which improvisation is still an intention, but it is also a tool. It is a tool to fill in the gaps of musical detail that are diffi-cult to communicate or notate more specifically. This idea will be developed further as we look at our next piece.

Concerto Grosso was composed by Stephen David Beck for shofar, conch shell, and four laptops using the GUA instrument. This piece is another example of improvisation being used as a tool to fill in notational inadequacies. The notation consists of high level instructions for each player, laid out in score form on a timeline.

Concerto Grosso was a challenge for me on several levels. First was the notational is-sue of how does one notate for each [shofar, conch, iPad controlled gua]. Rather than try and develop some new notational system that each of us would have to learn (read

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highly-probable-point-of-failure), I felt that simple text descriptors of what I wanted to have happen would be sufficient. On the other hand, I felt that I didn't want to impose too much specificity in the notation as I wanted the piece to feel organic as it evolved. That said, I would not describe the piece conceptually wholly as an improvisation. My goal for the piece was finding a way to create structured control over the gua players, and provide some quasi-notational guidance for the shofar/conch players. The impro-visation was in part a short hand for addressing the local content while using the notation to create the larger and broader structures. (Beck)

In Concerto Grosso the role of improvisation falls squarely into both domains. The piece would be exceedingly difficult to notate or communicate in a way that used no impro-visation, but even if it could be completely prescribed, the spirit of improvisation was also part of the intention of the composer.

WTFreq (pronounced “What the Freak”) is a composition by Nick Hwang. The piece in-cludes an instrument that is controlled by Wiimotes, and instructions in the form of text and pictures that appear on the screen of each performersʼ laptop. When I asked Nick if he would have fully notated it, if that were possible, he responded:

Yes, if I could have fully notated all of it, I would have. Because of time constraints, I feel the written text would facilitate the musical-instruction-giving. AND allowed for simultan-eous INDIVIDUAL instruction. This allowed for different things to occur, without having a 'conductor' give each performer instruction. BUT the I purposely chose open-ended im-provisatory instructions, to encourage an inter-performer interaction, such as "SHAKER: create counterpoint with Performer 4" and "With the LEADER....", etc.

When asked if the improvisation is a way to deal with a deficiency of notation, he replied:

I don't feel Improvisation for WTFreq was a 'solution' to deficiencies in notation. YES: there are few wii-mote pieces out in the world, but there isn't a standardized notation practice for it yet. I feel like using common game control instructions [like you would see in a game manual] could be an effective and easily translatable mode of notation.

And added:

If I were to fully notate it, though, it would have different feel to it. Having the open-ended improvisatory instructions like "WIGGLER: calmy improvise" near the end of the piece al-lows the performers to adjust for how the performance has been going. Mainly, with mu-sicians who are familiar with their instrument and with each other, the sense of improv imbues a more organic performance, compared to a fully-noted score which may seem more rigid.

This places the improvisation in WTFreq more inline with the types of improvisation we all use in our daily activities, as opposed the more common idea of musical improvisa-tion as creation from whole cloth, which is a dubious concept anyway.(Benson) In our daily lives, we have tasks that we want to complete, and we have an idea of the general way in which we will accomplish this, but the finer grain of how we complete many tasks is improvised.

I believe that if more pieces would be developed for the WTFreq instrument, we would begin to reach a point of being able to fully notate them, or at least structure them in an even more specific manner. This is a point that was made by nearly all of the survey re-

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spondents: they use improvisation to explore instruments and ideas, and these explora-tions lead to more structured, less improvised performances.

Jesse Allison (LSU/LOLs):

It's generally through improv that they come to the sounds, effects, textures, and things that they use in the piece. e.g. they build an instrument, then play with it to get a feel for what it can do. Then they compose - either improv, semi- structured, or notated.

Scott Hewitt (Huddersfield University/HELO):

Improvisation has proven itself to be a good technique at the start of the year [to] high-light control problems in the firsts weeks. Often improvisational ideas are developed into pieces…

Nathan Wolek (Stetson University/MPG):

When we first develop a piece, it is usually a complete improvisation. Through repetition, we eventually find a "usual way" of performing the piece and a structure develops. The piece is never completely notated and players maintain latitude to improvise within the structure.

There is another fairly common form of laptop improvisation that is not represented in the repertoire of the LOL, and that is live coding. Live coding is the practice of creating code/process based pieces live, from scratch, in front of an audience. This practice de-serves mention because it represents a significant portion of the improvisational prac-tice on laptop computer instruments, but it was not studied in depth for this paper.

Effect on Performers

One interesting aspect of laptop orchestras is the varied backgrounds of the parti-cipants. When looking at the participants in university sanctioned orchestras, wind en-sembles, jazz bands, and choirs, it is not uncommon to find similar educational and mu-sical backgrounds amongst a majority of the members. The ideas about, and experi-ence of, performance practice amongst the members of traditional academic performing ensembles can be quite homogeneous, whereas the nature of the way laptop orches-tras have been organized has led to memberships with much more heterogeneous ideas about performance practice. Laptop orchestras often have members with more formal computer science training than music training, and it is not uncommon for laptop orchestra courses to be cross listed in music and computer science.

It is also common, at least in my experience, to have performers in laptop orchestras who are experienced performers on another instrument. People who feel completely at home on stage making music with a traditional instrument reading from printed music, or recreating that music from memory. These musicians become prime candidates to discover improvisation via their participation in a laptop orchestra.

One such person is Jhayson Pathak, who was an undergraduate student at Stetson University when he was a member of MPG (their laptop ensemble). I asked Jhayson how improvising in the context of a laptop orchestra affected his musical practice in gen-eral, and he responded:

I think the greatest thing was taking away the fear of improvising. I double majored at University and the classical guitar is a totally different monster. Human error so delicate that it terrified me when I played in front of people. Now you always have computer er-

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rors but you're not alone. You have people next to you who have their roles to do while you get your head on straight or fix your Max Patch =) That's always fun.

Jhayson also commented that improvising in the laptop orchestra has informed his com-positional practice as well:

I can't really consider a piece, say a guitar quartet piece that I write, as something strictly non-improvised. I have to play around with an idea; mold it, look at it in different light to find where it shines brightest. I can't do that without improvising. So even though I end up with a piece for a classical guitar quartet, sans improvisation, I've still used it to write the piece.

Susannah Montandon is a graduate student studying cello at LSU. She came to our group with a great deal of curiosity about, but very little experience with, computer mu-sic, and she brought with her the experience she has as a performing cellist. Susannah was actually asked to improvise on her cello as part of a performance of Improvisations and Transformations, as well as any improvising she did on computer instruments dur-ing other pieces.

When I asked Susannah if improvising in the context of the laptop orchestra changed her view of improvisation as a useful or valid musical practice, she responded:

I used to think that i needed to learn how to improvise to actually make it successful. To a certain degree that might be true, but also one might not necessarily need to know all styles and techniques associated with improvising. Sometimes you just have to start playing and see where the music leads you. That initial first few notes are sometimes the hardest to overcome-- similar to inertia. Now I am not as hesitant to improvise. I will even improvise before a practice session to warm up. Sometimes I will also use impro-visation to test certain characteristics the composer may or may not have put within the music to create an atmosphere about the composition. It's not always that successful, but it's all part of the learning process. I also use improv during my practice sessions to help my hands and body relax when I realize any tension. I would say that improvisation has turned into a useful tool and also a musical practice.

I am not trying to propose that playing in laptop orchestras would turn all of our conser-vatory trained conservative musicians into the next generation of Paul Rutherfords and Fred Andersons. When I asked Susannah if she now considered herself an improviser, she said:

I definitely did not consider myself an improviser before LOLs. I would not necessarily consider myself with the title of 'improviser' now just because I have had some experi-ence with it. I would say that I am more comfortable with the idea of improvising and have assimilated it into my current musical practice. I still find the task of 'doing' before an audience to be quite challenging.

Conclusion

It is unlikely that one of the motivating factors for the founders of most laptop orchestras was to use the group as a way to (re)introduce improvised musical practices to the world of academic music. However, a reality of dealing with emerging technologies, and the performance practices they engender, is that improvisation is bound to be part of that scenario. Sometimes the improvisation is the intent of the music, and sometimes it is simply a tool to help discover its essence or facilitate its performance. In either case, the members of the laptop orchestras can gain valuable exposure to and experience with improvised musical practices, and that may be the most lasting heritage of the early generation of laptop orchestras.

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Acknowledgments

Iʼd like to thank Dr. Stephen David Beck and Dr. Jesse Allison, the LSU faculty members responsible for the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana, for their support and encouragement. Iʼd like to thank Dr. Brett Boutwell, also of LSU, for his very valuable advice at a crucial point in this project. Special thanks to Susannah Montandon, Jhayson Pathek, Nick Hwang, J. Corey Knoll, Brandon Thomas, and to the laptop orchestra leaders who took the time to communicate with me: Dr. Ge Wang of Stanford University, Patrick Borgeat of Benoit and the Mandelbrots, Dr. Nathan Wolek of Stetson University, Scott Hewitt of Huddersfield University, and Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink of Princeton University.

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Ex. 1. J. Corey Knoll, 5 Screaming Amps, excerpt

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Ex. 2. Stephen David Beck, Concerto Grosso, excerpt.

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Fig. 1. An image from the on screen instructions to Nick Hwangʼs WTFreq.

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