Jeremy Bowen and Dr. Steven Ricks, School of Music

On November 28, 2006, I was standing backstage in the Dumke Recital Hall at the University of Utah, frazzled and slightly nervous, with a magnetic sensor strapped around my chest, and its output cable dagling out of my shirt. When I received the signal, I walked out to the stage, took a little bow as the audience applauded, and plugged myself into my computer, which was connected to the sound system. I sat down on a chair, centered on the stage, and took a slow breath. The audience sat riveted, as I breathed in and out, slowly and calmly, but I was more tense than they were as I waited for the anticipated chord to be triggered by the sensor. With closed eyes, but nervous mind, I finally heard the first notes quietly trickle out of the speakers as I inhaled. With a masked intensity, I slowly inhaled and exhaled, controlling various parameters of the audio with the expansion and contraction of my chest. For five minutes, quiet and slowly shifting tones and sonorities came floating out of the speakers as I sat, meditating, on a chair in the center of the stage.

As the final chord slowly faded, I held my breath, raised my head, and opened my eyes, and the audience understood this to be the end, and applauded as I bowed and unplugged myself and my computer. After all this breathing, I finally let out a sigh of relief. It was finally over. What was originally inteded to be a four-movment work had been paired down to a single movement when I realized how much work it was going to be to learn the computer program I inteded to use, called “Max/MSP.” Considering the fact that up until 20 minutes before the premier of my piece, I was fixing problems that I had worked on all through the previous night, my sigh of relief was mostly because it simply worked.

My concept for the four-movement work titled “I Dreamt of David” hinged around four poems I wrote while serving a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, all on the subject of music at a time when I was relatively removed from it. Rather than tackle all four movments, I decided to focus on the first. I titled the first movment, “i dreamt of david // breathe,” and the poem it is based on is about exhaling all the deep, heady concepts I had been learning about and inhaling clouds, heaven and bliss. Rather than try to interperate the poem literally, or to have the text of the poem be integrated into the piece, I decided to take a little more abstract approach. The concept was to take the idea of exhaling and inhaling, and depict it musically. The ideal situation, I thought, would be to have a performer who could control the music purely by breathing in and out. A computuer could then be triggered and controlled by this breathing, and various parameters, such as volume, speed, and stereo panning, could be based on the performer’s breathing.

As I researched and consulted with Dr. Ricks and others, I realized that every detail of my concept was possible. So, starting from scratch, and a little bit of an introduction from Dr. Ricks, I began learning the computer program Max/MSP, which is designed for interactive performance. It is a very complex and powerful program, and I was told that the best way to learn it is by trying to construct something specific. Luckily, I had the concept for “breathe” planned out in relative detail, so I knew exactly what had to happen in the computer. Once I had a sensor (I didn’t settle on what kind of sensor to use until just a week before the performance), I could control the following things in the following ways:

Direction of breath (in/out) = Pitches (Chord A for inhaling, Chord B for exhaling)
Speed of breath = Volume (faster breath = louder sounds)
Expansion of chest = Stereo separation (contracted = mono, expanded = stereo) & Sound Quality (contracted = muffled, expanded = clear)

To summarize, as the performer (which ended up being me) inhaled, a certain set of pitches were triggered, and the volume at which they sounded was proportional to how fast the performer inhaled. As the chest expanded, the tones became less muffled and more clear, and their position in the stereo mix went from all being gathered in the center to being more “spread out,” with different notes being sounded in different places. Upon exhale, a different chord is triggered, and again the volume is proportional to the speed of the exhale, and the notes become more muffled and gather again to the same place in the middle of the stereo spread. In addition, the number of breaths was being counted, and as that number incresed, it would change what chords would be triggered, change their tambre, and turn chords off so nothing would be triggered, and then on again. At the middle point of the piece, the notes started to “spin” around the center, moving from right to left, and then left to right, each in their own distinct cycle.

Even though I had the concept mapped out and rather specific, it still took hours upon hours to figure out how to actually translate my concepts to the computer program. Learning as I went, I then had to figure out how to make it all work together. What started as what seemed to me to be a relatively simple process ended up being an extremely complicated program. I originally intended to record the sounds and simply have two different recorded tracks triggered by the breathing, but, for various reasons, decided to create the sounds within the computer program. This allowed for more control of what was going on.

My primary concern was that through this very complicated and logical process, I would lose sight of the composition itself, and that it would end up being a great concept, but a boring peice. I believe that it still needs a fair amount of work, but it was comforting to receive many compliments and questions at the end of the November 28th performance.

It was extremely valuable to me to learn Max/MSP, and I intend to use it more for future compositions, including the other three movements of “I Dreamt of David.” I intend to add a visual element (projected on to a sreen) to the “breathe” peice that would respond in similar ways as the music does to the performer’s breathing.

Money from the ORCA grant went towards purchasing Max/MSP for my computer, as well as sensors and other equipment needed to translate the sensor signal to the computer. I also purchased a microphone and a pre-amp, which I ended up not needing for this movement, but will be useful for future compositions.

Thank you for this opportunity to explore electronic music. Without the grant, I would not have been able to gain the resources that I have, or had the motivation to complete a project of this scale.