By Jacopo Andreini
AAJ: Eric, give us a short and jolly introduction about you and your
music.
EL: I'm an artist who makes and uses sounds that
can be received as art,
music, or noise among other things. I started doing this over
twenty
years ago, when I was a visual art student. I think the connection
of my present-day activity, in relation to my past as a visual
artist, was based on my interest in recorded sound as a material for
making art, for making live art instead of static art objects.
Now I work a lot as a free improvising musician, an electroacoustic
or acousmatic composer, a radio artist, and a sound designer. I've
also described myself as an instrument inventor, but I don't have a
lot of instrument inventions to show you, just the Springboard and
my personal sound studio. These are my instruments.
AAJ: What's an acousmatic composer???
EL: Like musique concrÃÅ¡te, an acousmatic
composition exists solely in
recorded form rather than notation. It doesn't need to be performed
because the composer finished it in the sound studio using sound
recording, and nowadays computer technologies. It only needs to be
played through loudspeakers. I first heard the term used by Canadian
electroacoustic composers.
AAJ: Another deep and interesting description of your
Springboard, if you can.
EL: I wanted to make new and unusual sounds that
weren't purely
electronic or concrete. I was drawn to coil springs because they
were used long ago to create artificial reverb, and they are
sensitive to vibrations. The Springboard began simply as a way to
amplify a bowed coil spring with a contact microphone. I bought two
large eyebolts and a spring at a hardware store. The board was just
a discarded piece of wood lying around my studio space.
The contact mike was purchased at a surplus store for a
few dollars,
and it amplified board to a very high degree. This led me to attach
other objects. I was fascinated by its sounds and I kept working on
it, modifying and performing with it. I wasn't planning on making an
instrument, but that's what evolved.
AAJ: How much do you think the contact mikes have
influenced the production of all this new instruments builded with
"discarded pieces"? My friends Cock ESP actually play live shows with just a
couple of contact mikes plugged into 6 distortion pedals, which allow them
to have a huge amount of harsh noise, they can move and act, and (not the
least...) travel the world with a very small and light
gear.
EL: Well the weak vibrations of many solid objects
wouldn't be audible
without a contact mike. It makes so many more materials and objects
available for sonic exploration, be they discarded or not. It's
interesting to me because this also stretches the definition of an
instrument.
What your friends in Cock ESP do makes me think about not
only using
readily available objects and materials specific to the site of a
performance, but also amplifying the performance space itself; the
stage, the floors, the windows.... If you think of a room as an
acoustic resonator, like a free improvisation, each concert will be
unique to and determined by that site. And so the room can be used as
a temporary instrument.
After I perform sometimes people ask me why I made this
"thing." For
me it's a strange question because I imagine, or would hope, that
its sounds and the way I use them make the reason self-evident. But,
I suppose the question deserves to be asked because I use trash, very
basic and insignificant things to make sounds that do touch people
in unexpected ways. If one is not familiar with the history of
avant-garde art and non-western, or "folk" instruments, it will seem
absurd, maybe even threatening.
Or maybe people wonder why I like these sounds, or why I
play them
in the way I do. I know people are surprised by it just like I was
that very first time: How can something so common and ugly make such
intriguing sounds? I usually explain that percussionists have been
using hubcaps and other everyday objects to make interesting sounds for a
long time.
There's usually no time to engage about the philosophical implications.
It requires technique and practice. I played drums long
ago and I
have been playing the Springboard for six years. So I have learned
what the objects or materials I've selected for the Springboard can
allow me do. The more potential an object or material yields, the
more I'll work with it. It's a physical process, no different from
learning how to achieve a "good tone" or technique with a
traditional instrument, except that these objects are not designed
for music.
Learning how to use it was a long trial and error process
at first.
This meant that I had meet it on its own terms: learn special
techniques; how to control a violin bow and later a cello bow. I
modified brushes to get the right percussive sounds, and I learned
how to use my fingers to drum on it. And as I mastered these
materials and techniques, I added new objects, repositioned other
ones; broke some and dispensed with others. So in the beginning
years the Springboard changed a lot.
Am I rambling on too much? If you don't mind,
I think this experience reconnects me to the physical pleasure of
drawing, which I stopped doing a long time ago. I learned a new word
the other day, haptic, which means understanding or communicating by
touch rather than seeing, or some other sense. I can feel the pencil
and it's pressure on the paper through in my hand. It's the same
with an acoustic instrument. The actions of your hand or whatever
part you use to play, vibrates you immediately and you can feel the
material respond back. It's not just in the ears. You could say my
Springboard experience has taught me how to hold something in my
hand and feel its general sound character.
AAJ: How does a self-built instrument influence
your way of playing? And do you think somebody could play an instrument
built by another person with the same deep understanding? (More or less I'm
asking: what's the relationship between the builder and the musician, if that's
not the same person?)
EL: The Springboard definitely influenced my way
of playing. I couldn't
play it like a drum. Hitting the Springboard with a drumstick makes
a very loud and uninteresting sound. Unlike the electronic
instruments I was using before its invention, it has no keyboard,
keypad, buttons, LCD display, and recently, only one knob instead of
dozens. In other words, I was unencumbered by the constraints of
standardized musical instrument interfaces, by the need for
programming, complicated signal routes, tunings, etc. There was no
standard repertoire to influence me. The Springboard had no history
and it wasn't precious. So I had no worries about making the wrong
sound or harming the instrument.
AAJ: This is interesting. I've seen that you have in your
record collection an album by Hans Reichel (the world-famous inventor of
the daxophone) in which he plays an operetta for daxophone. I heard many others
records by him, and that one has been weird to listen to, because it's like as if
he tried to bring the sounds of his particular instrument back to the "old"
music. I think a new instrument should be investigated for its possibilities
to create new musics. What do you think about this? (I was thinking also about the
first theremin performances, trying to reach the perfect pitch and play some
classical music melodies and so on...)
EL: I don't think there is necessarily anything
wrong with old things,
but I do agree with you. I made a new instrument to explore sounds
that were new to me. And these sounds enabled me to make a kind of
music I hadn't before in terms of its form, structure, timbres,
rhythms, etc. But I'm not a purist either, and so with Hans Reichel's
operettas I appreciate the perverse humor of it, and I'm sure he's
fully aware of its irony. When you listen and watch those tapes of
Theremin and Clara Rockmore performing classical music on the
theremin it's kitsch, pure and simple.
The Springboard has also changed my way of
playing for the obvious
reason that these sounds presented me with musical, compositional,
and aesthetic challenges. Some were easier to use than others. These
sounds make you more aware of your own biases and tastes, as well as
you're your physical abilities.
I have spent years working with them. I suppose that's
why I haven't
built a lot of instruments. This one alone still has so much I need
to master yet. Which brings up an important point. I didn't make the
Springboard with a predetermined sound in mind, like a particular
scale or tuning, or to improve on preexisting designs. I just wanted
to find out what an amplified coil spring sounded like. In fact, I
wasn't intending to make an instrument. It's just what evolved.
Regarding your second question, if the builder is also the player he
or she will always have a more intimate knowledge of the
instrument's sonic possibilities. The builder has that advantage
initially, but that doesn't mean someone else can't learn what these
possibilities are, and even surpass the builder's knowledge. It all
depends on how much time one wants to spend playing the instrument.
However, making your own instrument provides a deeper
sense of
satisfaction than playing one that is made by someone else,
especially one that's mass-produced. And so I think it's most likely
that the builder will also be the instrument's best player.
AAJ: The improvisation mentality and attitude
normally enables very different people to work together. Do you think that this
"language" can now be considered as too old, ...as a language that has exhausted
its possiblities?
EL: If you think of it as a language and not a
style, improvisation
can't be exhausted. It's elementary to human action. Attitudes and
styles will always change, and are changing to suit the needs of
people. People get old, and their ideas can become exhausted, but
ideas and people are also renewed.
My friend Jack Wright said he thought of improvisation as
relationship in sound between people and environment. I understand
the people part of the equation and I'm intrigued by the environment
part. I could add that improvisation is way of working, a method.
For me it is synonymous with the creative process, be it applied to
art or any other form of human activity.
Jack also said we are well connected in most of this playing, and
when we are not we know it. That is true for me. It can be
disappointing when I'm not connecting, because this relationship
depends on trust-in my improvising partners as well as myself.
When I improvise with people I have never played with
before, in a
public performance, I feel as if I'm taking a big risk. It is a test
of your abilities to understand the temperament or style of another
person in an instant. I have to be an artist and critic without
thinking. I have to respond to my errors or misinterpretations
immediately-without regret or reflection-and go on. Improvisation is
about acting without time for thinking. I'm receiving and
transmitting instantaneously. My action is physical while my
listening and interpreting happens on a pre-cognitive level.
I could say more, but maybe I am becoming pedantic now.
AAJ: Is there any kind of sound you feel more adequate
to dialogue with when you play on the springboard? I mean, voice, guitars, drums, synth... or
it's just a matter of who's the other person?
EL: I've played with all kinds of
instrumentalists, except for piano,
and so far I don't think there are any sounds-acoustic or
electronic-that the Springboard sound can't work with. My
relationship to a fellow player makes the difference. My instrument
can do things that traditional instruments don't and vice versa. It
has its limitations and its unique strengths. So it's always
important that whomever I play with we listen deeply and openly to
our similarities and differences. That applies not only the physical
characteristics of the sounds themselves, but also to the way we're
using them. Some people improvisers are interested in a musical
interaction modeled on or even mimicking a verbal dialogue, others
are not at all.
Eric Leonardson's Homepage, pages.ripco.net/~eleon
This article is published courtesy of All About Jazz Italia: www.allaboutjazz.com/italy
