Pragmatic Concerns in Mixed Music
Introduction
Professor Pierre Alexandre Tremblay is a practitioner of mixed music working in multiple roles as a composer, performer, curator and technician together with numerous collaborators. He focuses his research on trying to understand and facilitate the cross-pollinating practices of the contemporary techno-fluid generation. The wider context of cultural practice is challenging traditional boundaries between different roles of production and performance pushing further the limits of the language of mixed music and creating new challenges and problems.
Recent developments
Practicing conditions of mixed music are very much different today compared to twenty years ago:
- ‘Digital Natives’ (Prensky) are now an active force in the field, and their approach to technology is radically different to previous generations of practitioners
- The capacity of computers and other technical means needed for making mixed music is more powerful, portable, accessible and faster than ever
- The electronic music concert experience is changing, diversifying and with a strong focus on concerns with ‘liveness’ and performativity
Research Tools
Huddersfield Immersive Sound System
Professor Tremblay is the director of the Huddersfield Immersive Sound System (the HISS). HISS was initiated with the support of HEFCE's SRIF programme, and the University of Huddersfield's School of Music, Humanities, and Media.
HISSTools (Dr Alex Harker and Prof. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay)
HISS Impulse Response Toolbox Tutorial #1 - Creating an Impulse Response from Pierre Alexandre Tremblay on Vimeo.
This project aims to create powerful, yet lightweight, modular and accessible tools to address specific issues related to the composition, performance and presentation of electronic music. HISSTools’ first release is a set of tools for working with convolution and impulse responses in MaxMSP. This set of objects addresses various tasks, including measuring impulse responses, spectral display from realtime data/ buffers, and buffer-based convolution, deconvolution and inversion.
Electric Spring Festival
Professor Tremblay and Professor Adkins are the co-directors of the annual Electric Spring Festival. Also see the Archive of Electric Spring 2005-present.
Performance with Electronics
Professor Tremblay is a member of ars circa musicæ (Sophie Aime, Paris), Splice (LOOP Collective, London), L.F.O. Orchestra and de type inconnu (Ora, Montreal).
Publications
La marée is Professor Tremblay’s fourth album on Empreintes DIGITALes, a double CD of chamber mixed music for soloist and electronics, featuring Peyee Chen, Jean-François Laporte, Sarah Nicolls and Heather Roche.
Professor Tremblay will be presenting the findings of the HISStool teams at IRCAM, as part of the Forum event (20th to 22nd of Nov 2013). In a paper co-written with Dr Alex Harker entitled Rethinking the Box: Approaches to the Reality of Electronic Music Performance, the potential creative use of impulse response, facilitated by the HIRT is assessed under musical terms.