Andreja Andric  

- Streams

for classical guitar and Pitchbender software.


Andreja Andric (b. 1973) is a Serbian composer and programmer now based in Denmark. Mathematical processes, intuition and chance are regularly explored in his works, which often feature networked laptops or smartphones, as well as traditional instruments and voices. His music has been performed across Europe and in the USA, and he holds a PhD in Music Informatics from the State University of Milan.





Streams was written for Jakob Bangsø in 2015, and uses the computer and live instrument combination to extend the concept of polyphony. The score is a combination of chords written in standard notation with text-based improvisational guides which the performer can navigate in a way that is meaningful to them. There are two meanings behind the piece’s title: one, that it follows a lineage of works throughout musical history that use arpeggiated motifs to evoke images of water; and the second that it is related to digital streaming – here used to transform the sound of a live instrument rather than reproducing a piece of recorded music.

The electronics for Streams are produced through Andric’s own Pitchbender software, which changes the sample rate of the audio input in various rhythmic or glitchy ways using text files containing lists of sample rates and related time intervals, prepared in advance by the composer.

Website of Andreja Andric

Interview with Andreja Andric

#1  Your works show that you understand and know the guitar very well. Can you briefly describe your personal history with the guitar?

Thank you! That's very nice to hear. I have been studying classical guitar privately for a number of years. I am a big fan of the repertoire for romantic guitar, or at least of some composers from that period.
In my spare time I enjoy playing guitar sonatas by Ferdinando Carulli and Anton Diabelli among others - they are really fun to play. I perform my own guitar music in public on occasion, sometimes as a guitar duo with my friend, the Danish guitarist Jakob Bangsø. Most recently I have started a series of pieces as a speaking guitarist, where I tell stories and accompany myself on guitar.

#2 What were your main challenges or considerations when writing for guitar and electronics?

Streams is my first and, so far, most played work for guitar and electronics. In it I was interested in an electronic part that shapes a guided improvisation on guitar. My starting point was the idea of ornament in classical music, where a single tone is embelished with many shorter tones, that either oscillate around it or create more complex shapes. I thought how cool it would be if I made a computer program that makes wild ornaments around every note, by jcapturing the guitar sound, and playing it back at the same time while speeding it up and down in a certain pattern. This speeding up and down is all that the computer does here, but the patterns in which it does it can be very complex: occasionally the changes of playback speed happen every millisecond, creating white noise out of guitar sound. I have created the software for such fast changes in playback speed, first as I don't think it is possible to do efficiently with any existing computer program, and secondly, because it was fun to do.
Intermissions is my second work that explores this same idea, and it is played on guitar using the same software, but it focuses almost exclusively on various types of noise that guitar sound can be transformed into by changing the real-time playback speed extremely quickly, in order of one to several milliseconds.

#3 You have a very unique approach to electronics and programming. Could you tell us a bit more about your background in this area?

I have a MSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and a PhD in Music Informatics from the University of Milan in Italy. Computer programming has always fascinated me as a creative discipline, as it allows you to not just describe how something looks or sounds, but how it works, its inner life, so to speak. It makes it possible for me to set up systems that create something new or unexpected. Computer programming is for me the key means of artistic expression.
Many of my music works take the form of computer programs, that either produce a music score for an acoustic instrument or ensemble (December and Trillium for piano, Meditations for ensemble, Summertide for violin and harp/piano and many more), or provide an interface for guided electronic music improvisation (Pocket Electronic Symphony and Flux, both for a solo performer with a smartphone), or connect a variety of devices into a collaborative electronic music performance / real-time composition instrument (Concert for Smartphone Network, for an ensemble of smartphone-wielding performers), or provide a live electronics setup that captures the sound of an instrument and transforms it in various ways (Streams and Intermissions for guitar and live electronics), or create automatic real-time mashups of YouTube videos (YTConcerto, YTEcho and more).

#4 From the pieces of yours that I've played, I get the sense that your music is very much concerned with mood and atmosphere, and you show a real commitment to the inherent mood of each piece. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on that, or if it's even something you think about.

I am most interested in inner workings of a piece, in its concept or "truth", process or evolution. How its different elements combine for something new and unexpected to emerge as a result. I usually come up with some sort of process that I have a vague idea what it would sound like, and that I want to listen to, but can't because it doesn't exist. That often may result in a certain atmosphere which I usually have an indistinct intuition of at the start of my creative process.

#5 Your scores often contain text instructions, which I find really engaging to work with. When you write in this way, do you feel you are trying to guide the performer in a certain direction, or is this something you place firmly in their hands?

I think it is both! Text scores try to outline a broader set of possible outcomes than a traditional score, but they do give a definite direction to the performer. Also, I see the sounding result of a performance more as a collaborative effort of performer and composer, rather than the composer setting out a definitive, fixed outcome which the performer has to only strive to understand and faithfully transmit to the audience. I see it that way if traditional score is involved as well. I feel that in every piece there has to be something that is left to the performer's creativity and interpretation skills.

#6 You use the phrase ‘listen closely’ several times in your pieces, which is very nice for me because on the one hand it creates a strong connection to the moment, the atmosphere and the sound. On the other hand, I wonder whether it also contains the possibility of interpretative freedom. ‘Listen closely’ can also lead me to follow my ear and deviate from the textual instructions. My question is, when I play traditionally notated music, I know which parameters can be changed by me as an interpreter and to what extent. What is the (tense) relationship between performer and composer in your works?

I used "Listen closely" so far in a very specific context. I used it in works that involve live electronics with guitar, where what you play is transformed and played back to you by the electronic part. Even if you know what you are going to play, you don't know what you will hear as a result of your playing. It is different from when you are playing just with your instrument: when you play a tone, you know what you expect to hear. With the electronic part, it's like a response in a dialogue, and it hopefully inspires you and prompts you to respond back in turn. In this context (I am referring to the scores of Streams and Intermissions, both for guitar and live electronics), the textual scores are relatively brief, giving and overall frame to your improvisation, while the responses from the electronic part give you further prompts and direction in which to continue the dialogue. This direction is more intuitive and implied, whereas the text score gives you, as I already said, a broader frame for the dialogue.
Conversely, even with a traditional score, "what can be changed and to what extent" is to some degree left implied and vague (for instance "ppp" is interpreted differently by different performers), else you wouldn't have many different interpretations of the same classical piece.
More generally, I really like text scores, both because they open broader possibilities for creative input from the performers, but also because I can structure music in novel ways and create new kinds of interactions between performers in ensemble context. I would cite here as examples lengthy text scores of "Meditations", an instrumental cycle for a variety of different ensembles, as well as my vocal cycles "World Is Beyond Repair" an "Poem Based on Coincidence", for a singer and piano or guitar.

#7 Last question: Assuming you are only allowed to take 3 pieces of music to a desert island, what would they be? Or alternatively: Which works by other composers inspire you the most in your own work?

I hope I will never be exiled to a desert island, and I promise I will never do anything to deserve such a fate. But if I am exiled, and if I am allowed the luxury of three pieces of music, I am going to choose the longest ones from my favorites. I will bring with me, first, Roland Kayn's 10-hour long electronic work "Scanning". Electronic music has always been a great inspiration, especially this kind of music that seems to blend improvisation and automatic processes in a sort of a sonic living organism. Next, I will take Music in Twelve Parts by Philip Glass, the three-hour long encyclopedia of Glass' own kind of minimalist music development. I bought his Virgin set of 6 LPs when I was eighteen years old, and I am still listening to it from time to time, and discovering different new sides to it. I think it would be great accompaniment to lying on the beach and watching the slow changes of sea and clouds. As the third, I would take something from the music of the past - Telemann's always fun and fresh-sounding Tafelmusik. In its four-hour run time, it is again an encyclopedia of baroque instrumental forms, from solos and trio-sonatas to concertos and orchestral suites, with a great instrumental variety and invention, fun attitude, optimistic outlook, and all in a seamless connected flow, not unlike my previous two choices. I would also probably try to sneak in John Cage's Music for the Piano, to fit with the sound of rain and waves on the island, and I hope that I am not caught.