Afterimage (EP) 2022 (~ 26 minutes) is a study on the reimagination of known instruments and electronics as electroacoustic collaborations. The goal of this study is to preserve the liveness of acoustic music while also utilizing to the best of my ability the potential of electronic sound creation and manipulation. I strive to integrate electronics that afford the instrument new musical roles and performance methods. I started working on this idea in 2019 after running into the problem of wanting to harmonize as a pianist can while playing a monophonic instrument-saxophone. For my 2019 piece-Akousmatikoi-I composed for the new instrument that was the collaboration between saxophone and Max MSP devices. This collaboration allowed me to present a fully harmonized solo performance, only deriving sound from my one monophonic instrument. The collaboration I had created for that piece was only prototype number 1 for this idea. Since then I have built many iterations of similar devices, working to increase spontaneous playability, and truly achieve the liveness, immediacy, and performability of an acoustic instrument.
An afterimage is a vivid recollection of a stimulus after it has ceased. When you close your eyes after staring at a bright image, you will see the negative ingrained on your eyes for a time. Likewise, if you turn off a screen after it has lingered on an image for too long, you will still see its ghostly burnt memory. I chose this title because the only thing keeping us-humans and machines alike-from this scorching experience is change. Screens flash between images, usually at 24-60 times a second, and humans see change at around the same rate. These ideas of afterimage and phenomenal sample rate are reflected and explored here, by means of my main electroacoustic collaboration-rapid arpeggiation. This partnership of instrument and electronic recomposition is employed on sounds that we know. Sounds that have been ingrained in our memories are here flashed between so as to promote crossing over from perceiving the individual instance to perceiving all instances timbrally together. My other main electronic collaboration is granulation, which similarly cuts and flashes sounds that we know, but presents them at a slower rate, out of order, and much more clearly as a united texture. Both of these methods realize change in instances, just like humans and machines. I explore both representations of sound in instances, individually and collectively. I think of afterimage as a recognition of the difference between these configurations of sound: unaltered, granulated, and arpeggiated.
Released February 2022