Creative Strategies for Musical Practice
Using a range of examples from the worlds of popular and experimental classical music, including from my own practice, I will explore the term ‘digital aesthetic’ with reference to Ragnhild Brøvig’s notions of the ‘digital signature’ and ‘opaque technological mediation’. I will demonstrate with musical and visual examples my own term ‘digitally engaged acoustic music’, how this relates to the design of grooves, and how far these designs can be manipulated before a sense of groove is lost. I will show video and audio examples of open score practice which demonstrate how, in my own work and that of others, the collaboration arising from open scores can take a variety of forms.
The second half will be an exploration of how the ideas presented form the basis of my 20 minute work for jazz group and mixed ensemble ‘Fourth Record’ and how this piece can be understood as a response to the research question posed.
‘Fourth Record’ is the fifth piece in a larger project called Loop Work which explores looping material within open scores. Early works were short loops (usually a few bars) accompanied by instructions giving performers different types and degrees of agency over the material (see ‘Loop Work 1’ and ‘Loop Work 3’ video playlists), but ‘Fourth Record’ combines a number of these short loops together into a longer piece. This allowed me to explore how loops can transition from one to another or combine with one another, and it was also an opportunity to work with a larger ensemble.
The piece was written for clarinettist Vicky Wright and drummer Adam Betts, players who were deliberately chosen for their contrasting musical backgrounds – Adam principally works in the worlds of pop, rock and electronic music, while Vicky, as a member of Plus Minus Ensemble, is established in the ‘new music’ scene playing many new and experimental works. Adam and Vicky played as part of a central quintet completed by Benjamin Oliver on piano, Genevieve Namazzi on electric bass and me on electric guitar, but the piece also includes an ensemble of indeterminate size and instrumentation (in the premier performance the ensemble comprised ten people performing on guitar, keyboards, voice, strings, reeds, wind and brass).
The score (see link) is organised as a series of loops each of which is either a ‘main’ loop (with a title) or a ‘transition’ loop. Loops do not have a given number of repetitions but the ensemble moves on to the next when prompted by a specific member of the group (indicated by letters in triangles or circles – more detail about exactly how the score works can be found in the instruction pages at the start). As such, the pacing of the piece is controlled by the players, as are many other parameters varying from loop to loop.
In common with other Loop Work pieces, ‘Fourth Record’ explores the interaction between looping and open scoring, but also engages with the movement and contrast between digital and acoustic aesthetics; live sampling and the recycling of material within the performance; the signification of groove-based genres in a new music setting; and the negotiation of a creatively distributed performance by a larger ensemble and the effect this has on an audience.
‘Fourth Record’ (full performance): https://youtu.be/aBYRNYKOxKM
‘Fourth Record’ (score PDF): https://www.jamiehowell.co.uk/s/Loop-Work-5-Fourth-Record-Score.pdf
Loop Work 1 (three pieces): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDUfNazbL5R66KwEMnebJAPuivkY8ngS2
Loop Work 3 (two pieces): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDUfNazbL5R6uR0i_Ni8G0959TbBfLyrc
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Brøvig-Hanssen, Ragnhild. “Music in Bits and Bits of Music: Signatures of Digital Mediation in Popular Music Recordings.” PhD thesis, University of Oslo, 2013.
Brøvig, Ragnhild and Stevenson, Alex. “Machine aesthetics in recorded and performed music: An analytical framework.” Journal of Music Production Research, 1:1 (2025): 49–69. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmpr_00005_1.
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