The performer as a sound-based composition method

Abstract

The equation of musical performance has been reformulated, not only because of the pandemic situation as a contribution for the fasten general interest on technological mediums associated with artistic and musical creation, but as well because electronic and mixed music has never been so proliferous, at the same time erudite contents on sound and timbre are arriving from different under- ground and experimental cultures, non-exclusive of formal education institu- tions. Technology is moving faster than musical practices and we are taking some snapshots of techniques applied in musical composition and performance, tech- niques whose materialities will be quickly replaced with new ones, but whose embodied structures continue and become re-implemented in later technical objects as a recycling of skills. understanding how emerging digital musical tech- nologies trace their concepts, design and functionality to practices in the current cultural epoch will bring to light a study of new-media archaeology, conceptual epistles and performative paradigms, directed, in other words, to the study of how the new technologies of mixed music-making trace their design to the prac- tices of material, symbolic, signal inscription and how practice is transforming and leading to creation. Drawing on the development and technical possibilities of Hybrid Augmented saxophone of Gestural symbioses (HAsGs) as a case study, this paper aims at discussing the optimization of augment instruments and the role of the performance in creating a new repertoire. in the context of a perform- ance practice in which the interpreter is required to be a creative agent within a multidimensional context of sonic manipulation, improvisation and expressive extension and augmentation, HAsGs is shown both as a contribute to the optimisation of this new virtuosity and as a result of its repertoire.