From: Godman, Robert (r.godman@herts.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Mar 04 2011 - 07:57:21 EST
> > So - how do you document that...? Well, at UH, we are at early stages with that one. Any comments welcome.
> well my take on this is that a document is not a work of art, but a document of it. which implies 2 things in my practice:
I might disagree slightly in that a document may well be a work of art but it certainly isn't the same one that it is alluding to document.
Thanks for the comments here - all very interesting. Yes, I really like the idea of the 'bootleg' - in fact bootlegging your own work is a really fun idea that takes some getting used to! In many ways it does provide a sense of the occasion - more than a polished production might?
We like the idea of the short-run document and have done similar things re. studio recording. Clearly, for whom the document is for is a significant factor. A commercially recorded CD (or whatever format) serves no purpose whatsoever if it sits in a record labels garage/harddrive or the composers own studio.
Cheers,
Rob
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Rob Godman
Reader in Music
Programme Leader for Composition
John Lill Centre for Music Studies
Faculty for the Creative Arts
University of Hertfordshire
United Kingdom
T (44) 01707 284583
E rob@robgodman.com
For more information ....
http://www.robgodman.com
http://www.dmandlr.co.uk
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________________________________________
From: owner-cec-conference@concordia.ca [owner-cec-conference@concordia.ca] On Behalf Of Pierre Alexandre Tremblay [tremblap@gmail.com]
Sent: 04 March 2011 10:27
To: cec-conference@concordia.ca
Subject: Re: Re : play (I said 'play') it live
> So - how do you document that...? Well, at UH, we are at early stages with that one. Any comments welcome.
well my take on this is that a document is not a work of art, but a document of it. which implies 2 things in my practice:
1) I do bootleg audio recordings and garage videos of my live performance when I try to document an impression (very imperfect) of a given moment/performence. They are shared for free on youtube/vimeo as they are a sub-standard subset of what actually happened in the moment - you cannot smell/feel/sense the audience, the venue, the sound, the non-verbal, the transe/dionysiac shared moment.
2) I do studio albums/dvd of a moment in my musical development. I take this as a slight zoom out in the time line, documenting not a moment second-per-second, but a state of my musical judgement, skills and performances, using the studio to make an adaptation of a given musical output to fit the new incarnation/substantification which then becomes a new artwork adapted for differed and repeated listening, not a mere documentation.
I think they are both valid ways of presenting a musical approach. In the former, it brings people in my next shows (you can check my duets recording with Rodrigo Constanzo, or my trio recording with Anne La Berge and Sam Pluta to get an idea of what I've posted)
As a conservative example of the latter, you can check my 50 minute drum piece (la rage, on Empreintes DIGITALes) or the rap piece (binary), for which I made studio edits on versions to come with the best sound version for a cd buyer. Most people who saw them in concert say the fixed version is cleaner, which is not a compliment, but a kind of statement that the performer's sweat is not there. Interestingly, most people who did not hear the mixed piece live enjoy it for the sweat and raw energy that come across.
A more biased use of the studio in this former approach is what I do with my post-free-jazz projects (ars circa musicæ, [iks] and Splice) I usually get in the studio for a week and we are improvising within the album sound. It changes the group dynamic, allows different, generally subtler mode of interaction. I also carefully use post-prod edit to enhance the ensemble's vision as a fixed moment in their live.
Another approach we experienced with was to use the live experience/footage as raw material. For [iks] le cauchemar de l'horloger, a garage-audio-visual-performance, we used different cameras and positions, and recordings, to edit a strange blend between a live gig documentary film and a art videomusic... in this case, I think the DVD is better than the show...
Overall, I think capturing the liveness is more about the perceived liveness for a given listening condition. Bootlegs are good 'factual' documentation, though they reduce the experience a lot so they are in effect not analogous to the experience of the public. The studio rendition is another type of documentation (documenting an artistic vision) which might lead to a better rendition in the conditions of listening, but is certainly not live...
I hope this helps a little. If one listens to the album and the bootleg of a given project (rodrigo for instance) maybe their input on the liveness of each would help.
p
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