Gobsmack Symposium

A symposium (in conjunction with the SPNM) was held prior to Gobsmack in which ideas about new vocal styles and techniques was discussed by a diverse panel of vocal experts.
The discussion panel chaired by composer Colin Riley included Kerry Andrew, Natasha Lohan, Philip Neal Martin and Jenni Roditi.
Here is a transcript of the symposium:

At a time when the boundaries of musical style and approach are shifting constantly, and when the ‘song; is so central to many peoples listening habits, there are exciting times ahead for singers and composers. Five practitioners interested in  this area recently met to discuss issues about new approaches to creating with the voice. Here is some of their discussion.

CR. Just to start with, would you each flag up interesting composers and/or singers who are (or have been) influential to you. Also, what are the key works or albums to listen to?

KA. Meredith Monk's 'Volcano Songs', which juice have performed; All of her work is pretty seminal, and here Monk explores one or two wildly varying vocal expressions in each of these solo and duet miniatures. It's a really good example of exploring the full range of the voice. Camille is currently the biggest leftfield pop artist in France, and she's a fabulously elastic performer, fun, quirky and theatrical. Her album 'Le Fil' mostly just explores her own voice, from simple vocal loops to Zap Mama-esque riffs, beatboxing and rapid speaking, in a vibrant, joyous way.

NL. Definitely Berio's compositions for Cathy Berberian's, ‘Sequenza III’ / ‘Folk Songs’.  Cathy's work with Luciano Berio has changed the course of vocal writing for composers in the past 40 years.  I think not only her vocal agility and her ability to invent and explore sounds outside the traditional canon of Bel Canto style of singing, but also her theatricality as a performer that liberated Berio's approach to the female voice.  Any singer who enjoys exploring the works written for voice in recent years, will want to take on Sequenza, and I think there's as much to be learnt from listening to how she approaches singing Monteverdi and Kurt Weill cabaret and how that particularly playful energy she had inspired Berio in wiriting Sequenza.

JR. I’d have to say Jamila Xymena Gorna, who sings at the piano, but multi-tracks her singing and triggers samples as she’s playing. You hear her voice multiplied, and her ‘shepherdess’ voice has that kind of mountainous, calling in her voice. Her compositions are excellent as well with that kind of mix of jazz harmonies and folk-related melodies coming in there too. I’d also recommend Sianed Jones (voice/violin/electronics), an album called ‘Surrender’, and Jocelyn Pook; her albums ‘Deluge’ and ‘The Flood’.

NL. Personally, I have been highly influenced by Irish sean-nos singing, an ancient style of folk singing passed down through the generations orally.  While the songs themselves can be heard sung in all parts of the country, it is a highly personal style of singing, in which the singer develops their own "versions" through their regional style of ornamentation.  There are many singers still around the country and indeed in any part of the world the Irish have settle.  A personal favorite right now is Iarla O Lionard, who while singing within the family tradition since he was a boy, is now experimenting with creating his own new works in the style. Check out his recent ‘Invisible Fields’ album for a mixture of both traditional and original pieces.  He has also been working very closely with Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy the Crash Ensemble (Irish Electro-acoustic group) to create a work which I feel truly straddles the two strong traditions of Irish music making. Also of course many people from early 70’s Janis Joplin etc, who experimented with the edges of their voices and let that be the sound-world of their poetry.

CR. The stuff I’ve been getting into recently is nearly all Norwegian for some reason. Hearing Sedrel Edrisann’s ‘Merriwinckle’ album made a big impression just for its raw energy and invention. Other voices just seem to seduce me in their directness and richness, most recently Susanna and the Magical Orchestra’s ‘Melody Mountain’, an album of covers.

JR. … and the Shout of course, where composers Orlando Gough and Richard Chew have a very close relationship with singers. They cut the cloth according to the cloak of the singer. There’s a completely human story, they have taken the decision not to use electronics.

PNM. To add to all those already said plus the stalwarts of 20th century vocal writing like Ligeti... other people/groups that I have recently enjoyed include the Jamie Lidell, Finish shouting choir(!), traditional Japanese singing, shomyo (Buddhist chanting), experimental beatbox,  traditional Tibetan chanting, throat singing etc or commercials like the Honda Civic promo last year.

CR. The relationship between composer and singer is varied and complex. Clearly with singer-songwriters this is highly personal and straightforward to an extent, but collaborations are now common, composers working ‘with’ and writing ‘for’ specific singers much more. Can you discuss this a little, and say how your work fits in to this?

JR. It is really only three years since I decided that I was going to be a composer/vocalist - and really mean it!   Previous to that I had been mainly composing, as well as running vocal workshops, and voice movement therapy sessions. However it seemed to me to be imperative at a certain point to start performing my own work.  I think that's because I am looking for embodiment and holism in music and I want to get as close to the musical experience itself as possible. To do that first of all I have to compose, but that's not enough for me. I think that's why a number of composers feel drawn to conducting as well as composing. It's the 'real time' thing which provides so much satisfaction.  Even a bad performance is exhilarating!  Something goes wrong and you think - s**t - How can I get out of this one ?  and - low and behold - when it's your own music you can do what you like to make it work!!    It puts you on the spot. I like encountering the present moment in that way.

Indigenous cultures don't split the roles of composer and performer the way we have done in the West and I think there's a lot to be learnt from that.  I've been very interested in vocal styles from other cultures – particularly the Flamenco and Indian traditions. I've had opportunities to work with musicians from these countries and have allowed something of their essence to seep into my work - both vocally and compositionally.

A seminal influence for me as a composer was to go through an in depth course with the Roy Hart Theatre - a radical vocal 'laboratory' that is based in France. (Roy Hart was the singer that inspired Maxwell Davies to write Eight Songs for a Mad King in the sixties). Encountering my voice on this course enhanced and influenced and my composing no end. It also challenged my way of thinking about creativity generally.  The voice symbolized so much of the creative process in the context of that course - which I did way back in 1989....  We had to explore an uncensored improvisation style that lead to quite cathartic and very emotionally honest work. After that I saw so clearly how my composing needed to root itself in an emotional/feeling honesty before I could do anything really.

Shortly after that I was commissioned by Odaline de la Martinez of Lontano to write and opera called ‘The Descent of Inanna’. I poured all my experience from that course into the piece. It really worked, I think!  In fact I'm reviving the work at the moment and we're looking for suitable singers to cast - if there's anyone out there who's interested....!

NL. As a singer, most of the works I've presented with Crash Ensemble, have been the result of close collaboration with composers.  The nature of the collaboration will be different every time, but by far the most exciting ones I've taken to the stage have developed from a composer having seen me perform before and having a real interest in my particular strengths. Watch out for Irish composer Judith Ring, who writes for instruments and electronics and whose approach to each piece begins with the particularities of the performer she's working with.  For her piece ‘Out Of Your Head’ she and I spent three weeks in a studio, recording my improvisations, which became more and more influenced by her responses to them. This performing/responding approach to generating material pushed me into musical and vocal terrain I probably would not have found in another such collaboration.  And it also put us into a very interesting situation as the composer/performer boundaries became very blurred.  While Judith did the hard slog of sitting in a studio composing with those samples, all the building blocks themselves she had in a sense trusted the ‘me’ as the performer to create.  She really lets the imagination of her collaborator into the process. These kinds of relationships are happening more and more as composers I feel are working closely with performers' personal style.

CR. For me, as a composer who doesn’t sing, one of the things I’m being more interested in is to work with a particular voice and explore the personal relationship with the sound itself, as well as the musical personality of the performer. It fascinates me how when in pop, for instance a song is stripped away from it original singer it can loose or gain ‘so’ much. Classical music has never me like this, until perhaps now. The role of composer is now possibly becoming partly a directorial one. I like this approach.

KA. Every voice is different in a much more extreme way than a bunch of, say, clarinet players or pianists. One way of dealing with this as a composer is to work closely with a particular singer or vocal ensemble and really bring out the individual strengths and quirks. I'm lucky that I have juice to write for and I know intimately how our voices blend. As a trio, we like to collaborate closely with composers so that they know exactly what sounds great with us; they get a feel for our existing repertoire and our personalities. This has happened with many composers, including recently Adam Melvin, Matt Fairclough and Philip. Of course, you can embrace the differences in voices. If you write a song cycle and it gets performed by a number of very different vocalists, it can bring out idiosyncratic nuances in the music, and the music can act as a slightly blank canvas for each singer.

PNM. My recent project “voices of the asylum” for voices, human beatbox, fashion, electronics and space was premiered at the Royal Academy of Art, Piccadilly, London in January 2007 It was the finale of my flagship residency at the London College of Fashion supported by the PRS Foundation: All the sound for the 40 minute show was made from the human voice with electronic transformations. The piece was performed by myself (electronics),Beardyman (the UK beatbox Champion 2006) and the Juice Vocal Ensemble (3 female singers) with a sound/performance installation glass cube containing a Butoh dancer. These elements surrounded a square catwalk for fashion show. I imagined that the only sounds that one might hear in the silenced boxes of an asylum would be noises made by the voice. Everything was produced by the human voice exploring the sound of breath, screaming and vocalizations; encompassing noise, singing, human beatbox and fabricated sounds like whips, animals etc. An example of the electronic transformations were the whips gradually transforming into dog barks and birdsong. An amalgamation of live performance and pre-recorded electronic transformation. After deciding that the human voice was going to be fundamental to the show and the basic architectural environment of the performance space I began to look for 'singers' to collaborate with. I was looking for something very particular, an accessibility to a broad range of music and also the openness to push the voice into all sorts of unimagined spaces. I wanted to create different levels of collaboration between myself and the performers. One example was a recording session with Juice where they improvised in the studio, I then cut all the little noises up to make an electronic track that bore very little resemblance to the session itself and now I'm actually transcribing a version of my electronic track for them to sing live.

CR. In the last fifty or so years, much reference has been made to so-called ‘Extended Vocal Techniques’. What are these to you? How are they actually achieved? And is this term one you would use?

NL. I think the term EVT will die out eventually.  Nothing is ‘extended’  if it is within your own palette of vocal expression.  A singer develops their palette gradually and is always expanding it.  Collaboration with composers who are fascinated by the voice has been the most illuminating thing for me as a singer.  The range of sounds you can create as a singer is limited only by your own imagination, and sometimes it's just great to have someone else’s imagination fuelling the process of invention.

PNM. I just find it funny that some of the EVT are actually sounds that the majority of people can make without having any idea of what a 'vocal technique' is!

KA. EVT is a daft term but is merely useful for those studying singing or composition in order to make them aware that singing is not just about producing a pleasing melodic sound but includes all the facets of the voice. I found it useful to hear Berio's 'Sequenza III' as an undergraduate in order to realise that I could use anything from breath sounds to manic laughter in my pieces. Of course, throwing in as many different vocal expressions as you can into a composition is utterly uninteresting; that's why Monk's work is important; she focuses on a very small number of sounds in an in intense way.

NL. Singing is at its best, no matter what the tradition, when everything the performer does on stage is done for the ultimate goal of expression - so it won't matter how well that top C rings, or how unusual and inventive that new technique you've acquired sounds, if all your audience notices IS the effect itself.  Everything must begin with the imagination and the voice is ultimately the channel for that.

CR. So, does the ‘personality’ of the voice effect the way we listen to it?

PNM. I think it is completely dependant on the context of the music you are writing. A piece for a specific choir (if the difficulty doesn't limit it's dissemination) will be far more easily transferable to other choirs than for example a piece that is written for an individual singer or group of singers exploiting very particular aspects of their sound or technique. I think in this second case the 'original sound' of the piece might be further away from the sound of the first collaboration, though not necessarily better or worse.

KA. To me, it’s what makes the voice interesting; aiming to achieve a pure, clean, anonymous sound doesn't do it for me. I love dramatic voices like those of Bjork, Joanna Newsom, Antony (of the Johnsons) - though equally strong clear voices like folk singer Eliza Carthy. Your voice is YOU, and there is no instrument to blow through or hit, and so it's only natural that your character should come across a little bit.

CR. And what about teaching singing? Does training extend or diminish individuality, originality and creativity?

KA. As I said before, there are many things you can learn - breathing technique, correct use of the diaphragm, ways of visualising the voice in order to produce a particular sound, but after that, I think it should be a process of exploration. There should not be one sound to aspire to and teaching should absolutely encourage that. I've come from a different angle to my fellow juicers, who are classically-trained - and brilliant singers! I've not had a proper singing lesson to date and have simply learnt through performing with juice. I definitely lack technical skills and really want to grasp some of them, but I also like my individuality. Some rules are there to be learnt and then broken!

PNM. … yes, and as the boundaries and plurality of music and language become less easily defined, or as the styles of music within what one calls contemporary concert music become less and less clear, or the pigeon holes relating to musical genre dissolve - which is arguable that in many cases they have – I think many of these questions like ‘is it music’, ‘is it sound’, ‘is it singing’, … or ‘is it EVT’ etc … well then they become less relevant. They’re useful as the building blocks to learn and teach but all these things relate to a bigger question of how one perceives what an artist is creating/performing, how we describe the music and the music industry as a whole.

NL. I think there are very definite elements of the physical mechanism that must be understood in a truly physical way by a performer.  This can be taught, but is not understood until the singer feels it themselves.  Yes, the basics of how sounds is produced vocally are the same for all, but the real mystery and excitement about the voice is how the instrument ‘is’ the person and therefore its subtleties are as varied as we are individually. There are basics of good vocal health that must be taught and there are some amazing new holistic approaches - incorporating movement/balance theories such as Alexander technique, which are about the total person as much as the instrument.   I think it's paramount in teaching voice that a student gets away from the idea that once they've learned a few tricks they've got it and that's that.  It's a life-long journey; as you change, your voice must too.

PNM. There’s also an interesting point here about submersion and the idea of the voice. Its perhaps coming to and end now, but over the last hundred years most of the main English composers have been educated singing in churches, and I went through that. There’s been that very strong vocal tradition.

CR. There’s also that huge tradition of experimental pop music in this country

LN … and the folk scene.

CR … and there’s that delineation between those who are self-taught and those who have been schooled … for both singers ‘and’ composers. I think this is important. There are no easy answers of course, but the same questions could be asked of composition.

Obviously much has changed since the invention of the microphone for live singing performance, but how has this (and other more recent technological developments) changed your own work?

PNM. Great :) Opens up so many other possibilities!

KA. Yes, its only a good thing. You can't beat an unaccompanied voice for electric immediacy, but technology offers a wealth of new sounds which use voice as a starting point from looping to electronic manipulation. juice are working more with live electronics, and improvisation in the studio has been reworked into set pieces, and it's a really interesting development for us. Mic technique is definitely a skill in itself, and one that should be taught to any versatile singer!

CR. Yeah …  I love voices when they’re recorded closely to the microphone. There are obviously particular instances with the full, classical voice in a high register when this wouldn’t work, but its one of the reasons I tend to write lower and lower for the voice, searching out those places where the voice is ‘not’ supported, and where the individual rough areas are released. I love the work of those singers who record by seducing the microphone and I’m less and less interested in those who project into the back row of the audience, real or imagined. For me the voice’s power is that of seduction, and this is best done at close range. The microphone allows for this, big time.

NL. Of course the changes in sound technology have, had a huge impact on vocal style.  In the ‘classical’ world, the use of a microphone opened up the door for new experiments in vocal sounds and in new ensemble groupings within which the voice could work. Being able to amplify sound has brought out elements of vocal style that just could not have existed in the 19th century concert hall. Personally I've had so much fun working with electronics, from singing within a texture of a pre-made electronic track to improvising with live electronics.  I recently improvised with an interesting London-based electronic artist, Leafcutter John.  He develops his own software which can capture and manipulate live audio in real-time.  It is really the first time I've experienced a performing situation in which the electronics felt truly improvised. John would capture my improvisations and instantly create new material, to which I in turn would have to respond. This was as creative and unexpected as it is with any musician who is in command of both their instrument and their musical imagination.  He's also a great singer himself (The Forest and The Sea well worth a listen) and plays with avant-jazz band Polar Bear.

The discussion panel chaired by composer Colin Riley included Kerry Andrew, Natasha Lohan, Philip Neal Martin and Jenni Roditi.