A World After Death for Guitar and Electronics Marc Estibeiro

The ways in which performers interact with technology in mixed works for acoustic instruments and electronics provide useful insights into the various boundaries that exist between different aspects of a musical work. This piece builds on previous work in which pitch tracking algorithms were used to trigger and control the electronics. The aim was to empower the performer by removing many of the external control surfaces, movement sensors, and other interface objects where the performer of the acoustic instrument also has control of the electronic part. The intention was to utilise the existing skillset of the performer and minimise any potential distractions that external controllers may produce. These ideas are developed here, but now pre-recorded sound files of the acoustic part are introduced for real-time processing using an environment created in SuperCollider. In addition to exploring issues of control in live performance of mixed works, the piece is a reflection on the boundaries that exist between the acoustic and the electroacoustic, the human and the more-than-human, between a real or perceived “liveness” and pre-recorded or pre-processed sound. The title of the piece – A World After Death – is taken from Jonathan Harvey’s article, The Metaphysics of Live Electronics (Harvey, 1999). In the article, Harvey describes how in his opera Inquest of Love (1992), electronics act as an invocation or a representation of another world. The second act of the opera is set entirely in this other world – a world after death – where, Harvey says, sound is present in the same way as feeling is present in “this” world. This idea of deliberately positioning the electronic part in an explicitly separate sound “world” serves as a useful compositional device which provides an inherent tension and conflict between the acoustic and the electronic, while also, perhaps counterintuitively, lending an organic coherence to the work. Harvey, J (1999). The Metaphysics of Live Electronics. Contemporary Music Review, 18:3, 79-82.