Polytempo Music: Compact disc and digital download, 2024. Available from www.otherminds.org and www.bandcamp.com, and as a mobile app for Apple and Android users.   Living Room Pieces: Available from info@ chaikinrecords.com.

Reviewed by Ross Feller
Gambier, Ohio, USA

New forms of computer technology, or approaches to their usage, can offer computer music composers new platforms to explore, involving sound design, spatial attributes, environmental factors, or crossovers into the plastic arts. Some of these devices challenge notions such as fixed media, interactivity, artificial intelligence, or questions of aesthetic value or function. Many of them build upon concepts first encountered in Futurist or Fluxus activities, happenings, and what composer Erik Satie called Furniture Music (musique d’ameublement).

The following review focuses on two sound designers who treat sound as part of a larger, multimedia environment in which the listening space has been pre-composed and redefined. Both projects are represented by Steven Swartz’s dotdotdotmusic, a public relations agency that attempts to spread the word about current, innovative contemporary music projects. In the case of the two composer/sound designers represented here, Michael J. Schumacher and Brian Baumbusch, new media are used to create their work and from which they take their inspiration. Baumbusch’s Polytempo Music utilizes the concept of multiple tempo streams that speed up and slow down independently. This idea is somewhat reminiscent of Conlon Nancarrow’s work with player pianos, wherein the embedding of tempo is related to meticulously measured holes punched into the paper role itself. But Baumbusch’s work also borrows from video game technology that can include the use of VR goggles or head tracking headphones in order to heighten the sense of realism.

In the case of Polytempo Music, the composer sought a way to spatialize recordings of his dense ensemble music, so that the listener could “actively choose how to hear the music” (according to his liner notes). Since the recordings lacked visual cues that might make sense of the various layers of complex, cacophony, Baumbusch created a virtual sense of three-dimensionality, utilizing “animated depictions” that resembled or tracked the movement of his sounds through space, while also allowing for the listener to actively traverse this space to alter what could be heard by changing the proximity to each instrument. The result was what the composer describes as “a through composed choreography of 12 instruments swirling around a 3D stage.” The animated, visual depictions will remind many of screen saver programs from a previous era.

As for the music itself, it largely resembles the tonal music of minimalist composer Philip Glass, as well as soothing efforts from a cadre of mainstream, twentieth-century, orchestral and film music composers. We hear an abundance of arpeggios and scalar lines moving at different speeds. It is telling to compare this music with that found in popular video games such as Mortal Kombat or Injustice. The video game music functionally pushes, challenges, and accompanies the player throughout the game, whereas Polytempo Music invites the listener into a privileged aural viewpoint of a familiar and comfortable sonic backdrop.

As mentioned above, the listener’s interactivity within Polytempo Music is limited to spatial proximity to the recorded instruments. The effect is palpable, creating a fluidity to the sound that many will find exhilarating. But this listener would have preferred additional controls to alter instrument choice, pitch collection, application of extended techniques, or instrumental voicing. These additions could be triggered by using an Xbox-like controller, or perhaps via specific head movements, which would transform the experience into a dance between the composer and listener. I mention this because Baumbusch states that one of his goals was for the listener to “actively choose how to hear the music.” This worthy aim or acknowledgement, one that John Cage focused on in his 4’33”, could, in theory, create a new flexible music in which the boundaries between composer, performer, and listener could be finally eroded.

To hear Polytempo Music as intended, you will need access to a current version of QuickTime Player or the Apple Music app (using macOS Catalina 10.15 or more recent) and head tracking headphones such as Apple Airpods Pro, Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra, etc. The Atmos recordings contain the multichannel information required, and Head Tracked mode must be selected in your audio driver settings.

Michael J. Schumacher’s Living Room Pieces is the latest in a long series of his Room Pieces that stem from the 1980s. The Room Piece concept borrows heavily from ideas brought into play by composer Erik Satie, as well as Futurist and Fluxus sound artists. Living Room Pieces is essentially a sound installation designed for an individual’s personal living space, which sets it apart from Schumacher’s earlier work. The listener experiences the sounds/music in a much more intimate manner than in his previous pieces. Such work is normally found in gallery spaces, potentially encountered by a large number of museumgoers. Here the idea is to release a small number of hand assembled units, each at a fairly large price tag of $300. For this sum you will receive a small hardware unit powered by a Raspberry Pi that you connect to your audio device through a stereo RCA cable.

The audio for this piece, drawn from a massive and diverse sound library containing 7000 sounds, described by the Vimeo trailer for this piece as “composed musical shapes, textures and gestures,” is played out over a seven day cycle produced by a complex algorithm that creates a different sonic framework every 24 hours by changing volume levels, channel delay, and playback speed. Each cycle is unique and never repeated. Materials for each cycle are sequenced and altered in real time by the Raspberry Pi computer. These materials are drawn from a variety of sound categories such as noise, pitch, ambience, voices, etc. There are also long periods of silence, which serve to focus and refocus the listener, providing continual surprises.

Listeners who have experienced this piece for long periods of time have reported encountering a sense of disorientation, wherein they were unsure what they heard and where the sounds were coming from, spatially. Sounds were ambiguously heard, and not necessarily attributed to the Raspberry Pi hardware. Some listeners have pointed out that a work of this kind significantly depends on basic components such as a stable electric grid or time stamping. Others (such as Joseph Sannicandro in www.acloserlisten.com) describe serendipitous connections between the sounds of Living Room Pieces and other music or film music that simultaneously occupied the living space. He even recounts an occasion in which he thought he was hearing Schumacher’s piece, when in fact it was the engine from a neighbor’s car. Ultimately these experiences serve to offer listeners opportunities to reconnect with their environments, paying attention to sounds that they might have previously missed. This is, of course, also one of the points of Cage’s 4’33”. According to the Vimeo trailer: “Michael Schumacher’s Living Room Pieces is a genuinely innovative way to enhance the experience of listening, enrich one’s sonic environment, and provide an endless source of contemplation, discussion and inspiration.