Cómplices

This piece was written for Ausias Garrigos, bass clarinetist with the Riot Ensemble. It is part of the Riot Ensemble’s partnership with the Zeitgeist project during lockdown. Below is a description of the process used in the creation of this piece which I have documented for anyone interested. This was the first time I have used quite such a collaborative way of working with someone else and it has left me wanting to do more of it.

I decided to leave a lot open when I started this piece; only holding on to the general notions that it would involve improvisation and live playing mixed with a digital aesthetic as per much of my other recent work. So, I talked to Ausias about a collaborative, to-and-fro approach which he was very happy with. The process went as follows:

• First I created a track which communicated something of the aesthetic world I am interested in. It used three samples from the drummer Richard Spaven who is a live drummer heavily influenced by electronic music. Two were samples of drumming, the third was his voice. I then put these samples into my RC-50 looper (which I have used in a number of pieces before) and performed an improvisation on it which included slicing audio, reversing, slowing down, reducing sample rate, and deleting audio. I then sent this track over to Ausias and asked him to improvise to it. I gave him no further instructions as I wanted to see if the track would stimulate him to play things which had some elements of groove, digital signatures, and free improvisation. (None of the Spaven material was used in the final piece)

• I received a track back from Ausias which I went through and selected the parts which most spoke to the sound I was after. These parts were broadly of three types:

  • Single shot, short sounds

  • Repeated patterns

  • Continuous sounds

I took the samples and put them into Ableton Live where I could control them from my Launchpad midi controller. This enabled me to ‘play’ the samples as if I were playing a drum machine or sample trigger, so I began to improvise loops using the samples and recorded the ones I liked the most (around 6 or 7)

• I then sent these loops back to Ausias giving him about a minute of each one, and asked him to improvise over them in a looping manner. I made some suggestions:

  • A dubstep bass line

  • Percussion

  • A riff

  • Repeating ‘samples’ (played live) which sound like ‘normal’ clarinet playing which has been chopped up and edited down to snippets

  • Blocks of noise

  • Anything you can imagine that loops!

• Ausias sent me back the results of his recording and I began to work with his new looping material. This time I focused on electronic manipulation using primarily time stretching, pitch shifting, reversing, and extreme EQ to create sounds which I could broadly categorise as percussion, bassline, synth lead and noise.

• At this stage I put together a rough form and started to think about what the overall piece could actually be. I worked in a very intuitive, improvisatory manner, not working to any preconceived idea about structure, but instead simply ‘making sounds I liked’

• I then sent this track back to Ausias and asked him to improvise once again, this time in an expressive way, as if playing a jazz solo. He produced two versions which I listened to simultaneously and the effect was a beautifully compelling duet.

• I kept the moments where his playing against the track fitted well, and I also extracted some of the best duet moments. I combined two of these parts into an improvised quartet which I loved so much I left it as it was and found a place for it in the centre of the track.