Digital Processing in Performance: Rerebong and Electricity

of Florida as though they were the same as Georgia.A s a consequence much of the ApalachicolaNational Forestwas heavily over-cutin the sixties and seventies.The regional timber quotasand guidelines did not allow for local differences. In the 6 years since I first called the Forest ServiceI have taken my drawings and poetry to many meetings. I perform poems I have written to help protect the flowers and the people in my area who live tightly interlocked upon these stillwild lands. I try when I speak with government officialsand politicians about the rare flora and fauna of my region to mention the people whose livelihoods depend upon intact forests and clean free-flowingwater. I endeavor to seek a common future that would allow local people the economic freedom to employ their talents and resources to nurture this special land. The flowersI draw are caught on “the border of fate.” I work to ensure that it is no person’s “vocation to be their regret” [ 2 ] . References 1. Daniel 8. Ward, ed., Plants. R~WP and Endangered Biota ofFlorida, Vol. 5 (Gainesville, F L Univ. of Florida. by Univ. Presses of Florida, n.d.) 2. Stephen Mitchell, ed., The Selprted Poetq ofRuiner Maria Rilkp (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1984) p. 247. The quoted words are from Rilke’s The Sonnets to wheus, Part Two, 14: Look at the flowers , so faithful to what is earthly. / to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate. / And if they are sad about how they must wither and die, / perhaps it is our vocation to he their regret. DIGITAL PROCESSING IN PERFORMANCE: REREBONG AND ELECTRICITY Neil B. Rolnick, 152 Wittenberg Road, Bearsville, New York 12409,U.S.A. Email : In the last few years, my performances with Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) equipment have gravitated towards ever more extensive use of real-time processing of instrumental and vocal performers. Somehow, it feels as though the integration of acoustic sounds with their electronic results solves two basic problems that have always hung about the edges of computer music: the acoustically generated sources of the sounds provide a richness and variety of timbre that is always lacking in sounds that are entirely synthetic. The livelinessand unpredictability of performers add a subtlety of inflection and interpretation as well as a visual and emotive focus to performance that is necessarily lacking in taped or sequenced music. ReRebong 111,written in 1989,is a work for four gamelan instruments that are processed through three Yamaha SPXSOIIprocessors. The work was written for and recorded by the Gamelan Son of Lion in New York City. The music is an exploration of material from the traditional piece Rebong,which is normally played by the gender wayang (a gamelan instrument played with two hammers instead of one) for Balinese shadow-puppet performances. The processors are programmed so that echoes and transpositions of the notes played by the gamelan instruments will be within the shdro modality (a standard gamelan tuning) of the instruments themselves. The instrumental sounds are routed through the effects sends of a mixer, and processed sound is returned at a dynamic level that competes with the unprocessed sound. Having performed the piece numerous times with several different gamelan, I have developed a real feeling for playing the mixer and processor as a kind of meta-instrument. I conduct and cue the players, while electronically shaping their ensemble sound. I find that I need to have the same kind of physical security with the controls of the mixer and the processors that I need with a keyboard when I perform my solo works. Shortly after completing ReRebong, I began to think of a work that would integrate my experience performing with processors with the other computer -based techniques I have used over the last few years: the use of synthesized sounds, and the use of samples of entire musical phrases of instrumental or vocal music. The result was Electricity [23,for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, sampler , synthesizer and processing. Electricity was written for the California EAR Unit, and was recorded by the New York New Music Ensemble. In this piece the sampler plays samples of the acoustic instrumentsperforming...