Lecture with (Washington based) American composer Bruce Hamilton and (Frankfurt based)

German percussionist-composer Max Gärtner

14/03/24, 9:30; Academy of Music UL, Kazina palace, 2N16
Lecture synopsis by Maj Brinovec
Bruce Hamilton
He promotes himself as an eclectic composer, things like that (such as many influences ranging from
rock, jazz, contemporary …) show up in his composition proccess. He likes using tonal (and modal)
centers, lately also gravitating towards microtonal approach to composition. He is fond of the Lumatone
keyboard, to which he can map all sorts of different tuning systems.

Fly out for Cake (2005) for vibraphone and piano

His piece from 2005. The piece is playing with unison, parallel and disjunct textures; in this piece in the
sense of rhythm. It is really beat based, where the coda introduces a completely different sense of time-
flow (aleatoric and not bssed on strict time). No specific tonal techniques are involved; the piece starts
with a G moving outwards.
»I don't have a common mode of operation […] It's hard to have a career where you're eclectic.«
»I don't care about meter, I care about phrases«.
A lot of times he therefore starts without barlines and put them in later.
»I think more in terms of gesture«.
Tonal elements are more intuitive than anything else.

Simon1 asked about his famous pieces for percussion and tape.
Not much of a system, just playing around. Young and cafenated. Eclecticism comes out beautifully.

»Still jetlaged …«

Simon asked about simple rhythms in his music; the most complex rhythm is a septuplet.
»I usually write what I feel cool […] What physically feels cool«.

The other Simon2 asked about writing intuitive.

Make a plan.

Max Gärtner
Electroacoustic
He missed shaping the sound of the instrument after hitting it. How to do things like that with percussion.
He saw the solution in dabling with electronic elements in music performance. Classical musicians are
not comfortable with using electronics because of fear of not working. His disertation focuses on
electroacoustic music.

1
Simon Klavžar, professor for percussion at the Ljubljana Academy of Music
2
Simon Kravis, composition student at the Ljubljana Academy of Music

1
Most pieces for electronics use a tape. Live electronics aren't that popular on the fact, that they are quite
complex to manage. You can still control the tape using a MIDI controller.
Ex.: moving the sound around the audience.

Prepared percussion
Putting everyday objects on the vibraphone plates; this produces some interesting sounds. This is a
facous in a piece by Sarah Nemtsov, professor for composition at Mozarteum in Salzburg.
Ex.: Pine cone – amazing harmonics.

Playtron
A device to control and play around samples live with analog sound interface. Quite expensive.

A lot of experimanting with the microphone; altering the sound after hitting the plates on the vibraphone.
Just doing some crazy shit.
Swinging microphones. Okay, Mr. Stockhausen!

On music by Sarah Nemtsov

A new piece by Sarah Nemtsov uses this swinging microphone technique. Her music focuses on specific
situations or events so accordingly she likes to use personal objects in her music.
She used pre-recorded audio by Max to create samples Max then plays live using a MIDI controller
(Pearl Malletstation).
Special non-standard looking notation in use when considering this microphone swinging technique.

Lan3 is interested about tin foil on the vibraphone plates.

Depends on the situation.

Matej4 is concerned about the rhythmic ambiguity.

They worked together with the composer by her listening to his recordings.

Resources on the different instruments in use by Bruce and Max

Links to the instrument supplier sites:
Lumatone Isomorphic Keyboard:
https://www.lumatone.io/
Playtron:
https://shop.playtronica.com/products/playtron
Pearl Malletstation (malletSTATION EM1):
https://pearldrum.com/eu/products/electronics/malletstation/malletstation-em1

3
Lan Podletnik Ašič, composition student at the Ljubljana Academy of Music
4
Matej Bonin, theroy professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Music