Improvising with Machines: A taxonomy of musical interactions, by Adam Parkinson and Graham Dunning
An article written by myself and one of my PhD supervisors, Dr Adam Parkinson, was published today by the journal Organised Sound. The paper is open access and you can read it here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771824000268
This article maps out some of the relationships between performers and their instruments in live and improvised electronic music. In these practices, musical machines – be they computers, mechanical assemblages or combinations of different sound-makers and processors – act as generators of musical material and sources of unpredictability with which to improvise. As a lens through which to consider these practices, we examine a number of different roles these musical machines may take on during improvised performances. These include running, playing, surprising, evolving, malfunctioning, collaborating and learning. We explore the values of these different roles to the improvising musician, and contextualise them within some broad and historical trends of contemporary music. Finally, we consider how this taxonomy may make us more open to the vital materialism of musical instruments, and offer novel insights into the flows of agency and interaction possibilities in technologically mediated musical practices.
We began writing the paper almost exactly one year ago, so it’s great to finally see it out in the world. This is the first paper I’ve had published by an academic journal, so something of a milestone for me. If you have any thoughts or comments about it, I’d love to hear them.
Graham Dunning 
Hello, for sure you can play improvised music using machines, calling it agents or smth or whatever is a different topic. what brings my doubts about your intentions is first of all the example of Derek Bailey loosing unpredictability while playing solo concerts. well… maybe he should use malfunctioning guitar or any instrument he didn’t knew how to play it, idk… fagot? or just maybe he should try to go out of his own technical limitations while playing well functioning guitar and search for smth new for him . What I mean is not adressed to mr Bailey offcourse, but to the example you constructed using his words in your context. I think even if you will play with your machines and call it agents with energy it will be very different when would you play with another musician and his own machine etc it would be different if you play for a crowds and different if you play for just a few , or just for your own practice like making your machine working as you wish.
what I feel is that the question about technologically mediated musical practices is esential generally for human communication in every mediated form – question is what direction to choose with any of your musical interactions. For example would you like to play for audience being in the same room or hall or to make a recording to publish an album, or to play for live streaming via net or to experiment with social control means like it is said that some improvisors started to do etc. In any possible context if you say that you do improvised music you can ask yourself, how works your instrument, whatever it is, electric machine or nonelectric tool. How, in what enviroment and for what aim you are using it? And whatever you would like to do in your musical activity, how to make it happening in the social context using resources you have?
best
W
(I saw this comment first on Mastodon – adding my reply from there to here.)
Hi, thanks for your comment. There are a couple of points to address here. Our intention is to offer some potential avenues of exploration rather than a universal template. It’s interesting in the process of writing a piece like this how it changes over time through the editorial process: in fact the first version was heavily weighted to case study analysis of our own individual work, rather than linking so much to other artists.
Thinking of Bailey I’m reminded of the fairly recent releases of him improvising along to jungle DJs on pirate radio – this is perhaps the nearest analogy of him performing with something like a machine: it’s only possible to have a one-way flow of influence, so Bailey responds to or takes influence from the semi-unpredictable sonic input provided by the radio. Whether or not he would consider playing with broken or different instruments I’m not sure (lots of other improvisers do, of course). The point isn’t really to apply this taxonomy to all improvising musicians, but more thinking about ways that it can work if you already are working with a ‘machine’.
Regarding your second point I very much agree.
The social, spatial and sonic context makes a huge difference to any improvising. We do mention Simon Waters’ concept of the ‘performance ecosystem’, which is very much concerned with these issues. Though it would be beyond the scope of the paper to open up to all the different possibilities in different contexts. Again it’s a question of deciding on the framing of the paper.
thank you! good luck with your work. You examine important music issues.