Performance 4

For the fourth performance I worked with Bruce, but he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t come to school. Thus for the performance, I didn’t work with a live person but rather a recording of sounds. The composition prepared was one that had an introduction of a recurring beat where the melody of high pitches follows. It reaches a climax where the beat becomes the harmony and the melody becomes the harmony. While it’s hard to describe the composition itself, I felt that the duet aspect with a digital sound was mesmerizing at first and made the process easier and complicated. As it’s electronic and pre-recorded, there’s no chance of improvisation from the computer where the same sound is repeated each time it is played. I utilized an LDR sensor sound to accompany this digital piece, but I realized when performing in a quiet room that the computer noise was lost while my LDR was still emitting strong sounds. I think that this was also due to the balance as stated by Professor Parren where a mixer would make the piece stronger and more harmonious. Moreover, I think that as I was utilizing the circuit rather than external sources of instrument, the control was weak, especially as the frequency of my work wasn’t really controlled. Hence, the recommendation provided was to have more variable potentiometers to adjust the sound being made. If I were to reflect on this performance overall, I think that it was weak in the sense that nothing unique was used or made which reduced the possibility of creating a dynamic performance. Below is the recording of Imaginary Bruce.