HASGS: its repertoire recurring on Live Looping

Abstract

This article is based on the Hybrid Augmented Saxophone of Gestural Symbioses (HASGS), an Augmented Instrument developed by Henrique Portovedo over the last years six years, the repertoire created for the system by different composers and how live looping has been integrated into those works. While being a digitally augmented instrument, HASGS was intended to retain focus on the performance aspects of the acoustic instrument, keeping gestures centralised in its habitual practice, and reducing the use of external devices to control electronic parameters in mixed music. Taking a reduced2 approach, the technology chosen to prototype the system was developed in order to serve the aesthetic intentions of the pieces being written for it. This strategy proved to avoid an overload of solutions that could bring superficial use of the augmentation processes, which sometimes occur on augmented instruments, specially prototyped for improvisational intentionality. Here, I discuss how the repertoire, hardware, and software of the system can be mutually affected by this approach. One of the key aspects analysing the repertoire developed is that live looping is a constant musical resource throughout. This project is an empirically-based study which can both serve as a model for analysis, and provide composers and performers with pathways and creative strategies for the development of augmentation processes.