INTEGRA OUTREACH REPORT Integra Festival 2011, The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen 28 - 29 September 2011 Hilmar Thordarson – Kopavogur Computer Music Center, Kopavogur School of Music, Iceland Arriving on the second day of the festival, I did miss the first concert and barely made it to the second, straight from the airport. Besides the rush it was a nice landing. The concert was a pleasant journey into the electronic music scene of the 80s, mixed with new works. Since I had just arrived, I had no idea which of these pieces were using Integra Live in their performance and which were not. All of them went very smoothly, except for some small technical difficulties with the Boulez, and it was nice to see and hear how the older pieces had been “recovered” very well. The newer pieces clearly showed how electronic music performance has been developing into areas of live interaction, especially in Fluxus for saxophone and electronics by Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjaerg. The workshop on Wednesday morning was very interesting although I could have used much more time. I had beforehand downloaded Integra Live to my computer and tried it out for an hour or so. To my pleasure I was immediately able to produce some sounds and link some effects to them. But that was all. During the workshop I learned how to use the timeline and link to MIDI controllers. It all looked very promising, not too difficult and relatively easy to understand, but there were some things I missed. First of all, one has to bear in mind that building a program like this is a huge task and there will always be questions and debate about what should be there and how it should be organised. For me personally, and keep in mind that I am an old school composer brought up with pencil and manuscript paper, I would like to have the possibility to use bars and beats, a metronome and time signatures. Another ideal addition would be a MIDI import function to synchronise instruments, notation and electronics. This came up during the workshop and I understand the reason that these things are missing is due to difficulties in the programming process. Another question raised was about the envelopes that you can create; they are all linear and there is no way to create non-linear designs. This for me is also a big disadvantage. It would be a leap forward to introduce exponential and logarithmic curves. As mentioned during the workshop and agreed by all, a lot of work has be to be done on the documentation – a manual, references and hands-on tutorials in particular. A good, easy tutorial providing examples on how to write music in Integra Live is needed. It is rewarding to obtain a musical result, therefore a few video tutorials might work wonders.

       

Still, for me as a Max/MSP, Live and Max4Live user, I have not found an answer to the question “why use Integra Live?”. The only advantage for me at this point is the prize. But I do see the potential and I do share the same dream with Luca Francesconi and Lamberto Coccioli, “to create user-friendly live electronic technologies that musicians could understand and use”. But it is a huge task. I know the feeling of not being able to perform my older pieces because the “system” is too old or the “object” is no longer functioning on this “version”. Therefore I hope that you will be able to further develop Integra Live and for sure, I will be testing it out, both for myself as well as testing it with my students. Please, for my sake and others who don’t like to spend our valuable time on “yet another program”, develop a tutorial as soon as you can. Later that day I listened to a concert of student work and for me it was interesting to discover how easily they had incorporated Integra Live into their compositional needs. It would be far too much for me to go through the remaining concerts in the Festival but in short, I was amazed at the large variety of music there was, not to mention the quality of the performance I witnessed. During these performances I tried to answer the questions raised in the introduction of the Integra Festival brochure – Can human expression be enriched by electronic technology? Can new technologies make contemporary music more relevant for our time? For me the answer is definitely, yes. But as always, you have to understand the media and you have to know how to use it. Afterthoughts: Two things are stuck in my mind as afterthoughts from the Integra Festival. The first is the use of video – I have very mixed feelings. Something is bothering me about this media and the use of it in musical performance. Do music and video distract or add to one other? Is it the amount of information one gets? More than once I had to close my eyes in order to concentrate on the music, or vice versa, I had to close my ears to the music to follow the video. There seems to be a fine balance to strike. The second thought is that it is getting a bit funny to always see the same silver laptops with the Apple logo on stage. At least we have Steinway and Bösendorfer in the other world. Thank you for your invitation and thank you for your work. Hilmar Thordarson Bodö, Norway, 24.10.2011