(New version as of Thursday April 14)
I will be editing this further in the future.
This paper provides a broad historical context for the Prana Musical Controller (PMC). First, the paper explores the biological and artistic history of the role of breath in music, the technical study and practice of breathing--both by musicians and practitioners of Pranayama--and the uses of breath in music and art from the 20th century onwards. The second part of the paper addresses research in areas including human-computer interaction in realtime performance, digital music controllers, wearable biofeedback sensors and textile technology.
Part I:
BREATH & MUSIC: AN EXPLORATION OF BIOLOGICAL & ARTISTIC ORIGINS
Breath and the biological origins of Music
Music began with breath. While the development of string instruments physically enables a musician to play music without thinking about the breath, the voice is the most innate instrument; vocal cords cannot vibrate without breath. Furthermore, research has indicated that evolutionary developments that enabled greater breath control in our ancestors were likely in service of both the development of spoken language and song [1].
The importance of breath in music is intuitive for most, but is particularly so for vocalists and wind instrumentalists. These musicians devote significant amounts of energy towards the practice and study of breathing techniques; breath is also a key factor in a vocalist’s or wind instrumentalist’s artistic interpretation of a piece. So whereas in speech our breathing patterns are typically passive and reflexive, in music our breaths are active, carefully planned and calculated for specific musical effect.
Pranayama
While many wind musicians have developed various breathing exercises as a means to an end, Pranayama, one of the eight stages of yoga, is a practice of breathing techniques that is traditionally independent of any performative goals. It is a very subtle but powerful practice, engaging the mind and body together.
While the goal of traditional Pranayama is not performative, the practice is similar, in some ways, to the practice of a musical instrument. The attention to detail, the focus, the repetition, dedication and self-observation are all core elements that these two practices share.
However similar the core elements of these two practices, though, the approach to breathing in Pranayama is quite different than it is for a wind player. In music, the goal of the wind player is to achieve a certain depth of inspiration as quickly as possible in support of the long expirations required by musical phrases. In Pranayama, on the other hand, the importance placed on details of inspirations and expirations and the approach to their execution change depending on the technique being practiced.
These nuances of breath lend themselves to musical interpretation. While not limiting the performer solely to traditional Pranayama practice, the Prana Musical Controller aims to capture the subtleties of breathing as practiced by the performer, and exploit them for performative means. The PMC therefore takes the act of Pranayama out of its traditional context and places it in a Westernized cultural context--that of the traditional concert hall performance. The PMC is therefore inspired both by the innate connection between breath and music, and also by the idea of drawing from the art of Pranayama to a create a musical practice devoted specifically to breath control.
BREATH IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC & ART
Breath in 20th century music
The emphasis on breath in musical performance is not new. Prior to the 20th century, western classical music traditionally left issues of breathing--where and how to breathe--up to the performer. Beginning in the 20th century, however, some composers started to give explicit performance instructions regarding the breath. These instructions implied the composers’ recognition of the breath as a musical act, and fall into a few specific categories: dramatic audible breaths or implied breaths, (sharp inhalations, sighs, etc.), explicit directions on the timing of breaths, (including the use of breath as its own timing mechanism), and the absence of audible breaks for breaths using circular breathing.
Luciano Berio is a 20th century composer whose work provides a fertile study ground for looking at the role of breath in music. His Sequenzas, in particular, as virtuosic works for solo performers, provide a few useful examples for further study.
In Berio’s Sequenza III for female voice, performative breaths punctuate the musical structure. In his performance instructions, Berio designates a backwards arrow with a circle in the middle as “breathing in, gasping”. These gasps happen rather infrequently in the score. When they do occur, they are always placed together in short groupings, and are often designated by evocative markings such as “frantic” or “gasping”. Berio designates a plus symbol as a “breathy tone, almost whispered,” and sometimes asks for “whispered, unvoiced sounds”, which are arguably breath-like in nature. All of these qualities of breath are clearly used to evoke various emotional qualities.
Berio’s Sequenza V for Trombone also gives explicit breathing instructions. Whereas the performer can determine his own breath placement in the A section, in the B section, Berio writes:
...everything written between bar lines constitutes a breath unit: it must be performed in one breath, either exhaling or inhaling (<--o--). Consequently in section B, although the notation is still proportional, the length of each breath unit determines the overall speed. It is expected, for each performer and at each performance, the length of the breath units to be different. The transition between inhaling and exhaling must always occur without noticeable interruptions so that throughout section B there is no break in sound....
What is particularly interesting about this example is that while the breath itself is required to be inaudible to the audience, the breath capacities of each performer in each performance situation directly affect the timing of the entire section. This effect is slightly different than that of Berio’s Sequenza XII for bassoon, which provides another interesting example of engaging the role of breath in our perception of time. Here, the use of circular breathing distorts the listener’s sense of the passage of time. The phrase continues on seamlessly, almost suspending time.
While Berio’s Sequenzas provide very interesting insights into the use of breath in compositions in the 20th century, he is by no means the only composer to approach the topic. Composers engage in the topic with even the simplest instructions, such as instructing a performer to take as few breaths as possible in a section [2] (Nina Perlove, 1998). Alternatively, they might approach the concept of breath more directly, as Mauricio Kagel did with his work Atem (breath). Here, as the title suggests, the breath is the inspirational basis for an entire work [3].
Jonathan Harvey is a contemporary British composer whose Buddhism is reflected in the spiritual nature of much of his work. He recognizes the importance of breath in all music, as indicated in his discussion of the inspiration for his orchestral work, 80 breaths for Tokyo:
Breathing, in one form or another, is behind all music. However distant, breathing always has a relationship to music. Yoga students use it to master the body, Buddhists to master the mind, and therapies of all sorts realise that one must step back from one’s habitual ignoring of the act of breathing in order to become more deeply aware. When a large body of people breathe in synchrony the effect is ritualistic, whether it be sacred or a political demonstration. Neurologists are finding powerful neuronal synchrony in many human rites and social events. 80 Breaths for Tokyo is partly the result of the practice of Zen breathing, and partly the result of listening to slow music and enjoying its power over the mind and body. The orchestra somehow mirrors the infinitely variable, infinitely subtle and coloured ambiguity of breath. [4]
Electro-acoustic music
One might wonder why, when breath has been such an underlying force in music, arguably for its entire existence, it is only in the 20th century that Western classical composers began to ask performers to explicitly manipulate their breathing for performative purposes. Without having done any official research into the topic, intuitively it seems that the advance of recording and amplification technologies would play a role in peaking interest in the topic.
Typically, in our daily experience of sound, we have a source, (an object that creates the sound), and an environment, (a space in which the sound is created). The technology of recording has enabled composers to take a sound out of context--eliminating for the listener both the object that created the sound and the place in which it was recorded. But, because we cannot ever completely extract our concert listening habits from the influence of our daily listening experience, as audiences of electro-acoustic music, we are constantly using our aural imaginations to fill-in contextual gaps. (Suk-Jun Kim, 2010)
In this vein, the use of breath sounds in tape pieces is particularly interesting. Tape music, as a genre, literally takes the human body out of music, in that it removes the live performer. Breath is ultimately are associated with the human body. Using breath sounds in tape pieces, therefore, is one method by which a composer might attempt to retain the sense of the human body in music both in spite and because of the technology we embrace as electro-acoustic composers.
Berio’s Visage is a particularly famous example of a pivotal work in electronic music. In juxtaposing recordings of Cathy Berberian’s vocalizations (including breaths) with electronic sounds, Berio explores an interesting dichotomy of the natural and mechanical worlds.
Out of Breath (2000) by Paul Koonce Interiors and Interplays (1994) by Erik Mikael Karlsson provide two more recent examples of pieces using breath sounds. In Out of Breath, the development of breath sounds resonating through a flute suggested to one listener the concept of a flutist, uncertain at first, growing more confident as she sonically explores a space which unexpectedly resonates her instrument. In Interiors and Interplays, after more than 5 minutes of music has passed the introduction of breath sounds provides a sense of body where before there was none. (Suk-Jun Kim, 2010)
Breath in other art forms
While thus far our discussion has centered around uses of breath and breathing in sound compositions, the theme of breath has been taken up by artists in other fields as well. Two different approaches will be discussed here: breath as control input in multimedia experience, and abstract exploration of the concept of breath. Clearly these are not mutually exclusive paradigms, however they will be explored independently in the context of a few different works.
Canadian artist Char Davies’ works Osmose (1995) and Ephémère (1998) are both examples in which the breath of the person experiencing the artwork is used as a control input. In these works, the interface consists of a head-mounted stereoscopic display and real-time tracking based on breath and balance through which the viewer explores a virtual 3D world.
Poet, author and playwright Samuel Beckett’s Breath (1969) is an extremely short stage work with no dialogue. The curtain rises to show a stage with trash strewn about. After five seconds, a short, faint infant’s cry is heard, followed by a long (10-second) inhalation. After another 5-second pause, there is a 10-second exhalation and a repetition of the initial cry. The curtain closes. As one possible interpretation, William Hutchings points to the work’s similarity to Gustav Freytag’s pyramidical structure, which he wrote about in Die Technik des Dramas in 1863:
The initial pause and first cry representing birth...
The inhalation, a symbol of growth and development...
The pause while the breath is held is the climax...
The exhalation--a metaphor for the entropic decline of the body with advancing age...
The reiterated cry, the “catastrophe” or “resolution” of the play, and a final silence before the curtain descends.
(Hutchings, 1986)
A number of artists have also created film versions of Beckett’s Breath, including Damien Hirst.
Both Davies’ and Beckett’s approach to breath in their respective works provide an interesting context in which to explore different elements of the PMC. The idea of navigating space (in this case musical space) with breath may be a particularly fruitful area for further exploration. Beckett’s metaphorical use of a single breath to represent a life-cycle may provide a potential guide for one approach to the underlying structure of a one composition specifically written for the PMC.
Part II:
BREATH & TECHNOLOGY, MAKING BREATH INTO AN INSTRUMENT
Historical examples of research in creating new digital instruments
As a musical controller, the creation of the PMC will be informed by prior research in the field of real-time human-computer interaction in general, and more specifically that of the creation of new digital instruments.
While it is tempting to think of an instrument as a simple tool with a single outcome, it is important to realize that performer, instrument and performance environment--including the performance space and culture--are dynamically interconnected and work together to create a specific musical outcome. Keeping the same instrument while changing either of the two other characteristics can result in a wildly different musical outcome (Simon Waters, 2007). The PMC is currently being designed for a specific performer,(the author). It draws on the Eastern tradition of Pranayama, but is placed firmly in the performance hall tradition of Western classical music. That having been said, if a different performer were to use the PMC they would likely succeed in molding it to a number of different purposes. [5]
Body in performance
With the advance of technology and the creation of tape music came a shift away from the innate connection between the human body and sound generation in performance. ‘As previously discussed, tape music concerts provide a window into some of the performative issues around music detached from body; music is traditionally experienced both visually and aurally, enabling the audience to connect through ‘kinesthetic empathy and vicarious performance’ (Bahn, Hahn, Trueman, 2001) as well as simple auditory awareness.
Where the connection between music and body is important for an audience, it is essential for a performer. The performer traditionally engages with her instrument not only through the auditory evaluation of the sound she produces, but through haptic sensations. Sensitivity to the haptic/sonic feedback loop is an essential skill for instrumental musicians. (Bahn, Hahn, Trueman, 2001). Rebelo adds:
Haptic sensation recognizes the micro-fabric of performative space. It is with negotiation of subtlety and the recognition of threshold conditions that the performer participates in an instrumental space. At a physio-acoustic level, we can talk about the feedback loop system that is present when playing a wind instrument, for example. The player constantly adapts and configures throat position, vocal cavity and breath depending on the resistance of the tube, mouthpiece or reed. (Rebelo, 2006)
A case study: Pikapika
Pikapika is a performance piece inspired by Japanese Anime created collaboratively by Curtis Bahn and Tomie Hahn. The piece uses a custom made digital interface built into the costume worn by Hahn, the performer. Speakers are mounted to her arms and back so that sounds emanate directly from her body as a result of her movements. Accelerometers on her hands and feet as well as force sensors on her hands enable her wireless communication with a computer running Max/MSP. While breath is not specifically used as an input here, Bahn, Hahn and Trueman do address its impact on their work:
The voice, so centrally located in the body, would seem immune to the impact of electronic instruments. The voice is inextricably tied to breath, while breath is tied to sentience, existence, and intension. It can be “felt” via kinetic empathy between performers, implying a lived experience of a mutually created sonic environment. In our work, the voice has served as an instrument and as a model for the construction of composed instruments, both in a literal sense (via sampling) and in a more general musical sense, guiding our improvisations and our mappings of physical input to sonic output. In turn, we have found in the performing of these composed instruments that the instruments themselves deeply impact how we speak and breathe. (Bahn, Hahn, Trueman, 2001)
For the purposes of the PMC their work provides two particular points of interest: 1. The way in which a performer and a human-computer interface might communicate and gradually result in a shift in the performer’s natural state of breathing. 2. The use of body-mounted speakers, both as a way to localize sound so that it emanates directly from the performer’s body, and also so that it gives the performer immediate haptic feedback.
VPFI
Particularly relevant to the PMC is the work of John Bowers, Simon Waters and others around Virtual/Physical Feedback Instruments (VPFI). The common thread in these types of instruments is that they incorporate a virtual element as well as a physical element that together create some sort of feedback loop. Often, the physical instrument excites the virtual instrument which then affects the output of the physical instrument, and so on. (Waters, 2007) While a potentially very fruitful mode of human-computer interaction, in the case of the PMC there are obvious issues with this model. The breath being internal, and not an external instrument, intuitively it would seem that the loop is never able to start. The coupling of the acoustic and the digital, however, is very interesting, and of potential use as a model for the PMC; the acoustic instrument--the sound of the breath, can be somehow affected by input to the sensors monitoring breath depth and rate.
Mapping
In traditional acoustic instruments the performance interface is inherently tied to the acoustic output. In digital instruments, most often the performance interface exists independently from the sound generator. The art of mapping the performance interface to the sound generator is one that defines the character of the instrument. Research indicates that mapping decisions have a great impact on the quality of the experience of the performer.
One researcher came across a Theremin that was accidentally wired incorrectly such that to make sound one had to constantly keep their hand(s) in motion. Excited by the high level of interaction and sustained interest in those that played with the Theremin, the researcher set out to create a number of experiments in which musical controllers were set up to either require constant energy from the performer to sustain sound--as is the case with acoustic instruments--or not. Overwhelmingly, participants found the former set up to be more engaging. Breath as a control fits very well into this type of mapping. With the PMC the inspirations and expirations can be thought of as the up bows and down bows of a stringed instrument. What will be interesting to explore is how natural pauses in the breathing process are impacted by the performer’s musical goals--sustaining a constant motion from inhale through exhale and back is actually quite challenging.
In the same experiment, the researcher tested two different approaches to mapping: the first, which did not need constant energy input from the user, used a simple one-to-one mapping in which a single fader controlled pitch, and another amplitude. The second mapping required one fader to move continuously to generate sound. This fader also controlled amplitude and had a subtle affect on pitch as well. A second fader had most of the control over the pitch. In all of the test subjects, the time spent exploring the mapping, and the relative engagement of the subjects was much greater in the latter example than the former. (Hunt, Wanderley & Paradis, 2003)
John Bowers’ study of simple design interfaces with complex results is related to the above study. Using interfaces with limited inputs, he achieves interesting musical results in a variety of manners:
Using ‘algorithmically mediated data’ so that there is a layer of manipulation beyond direct manipulation.
Limited input devices control multiple parameters, like acoustic instruments.
‘Dynamic adaptive interfaces’ create mappings that change over the course of time.
‘Anisotropic interaction space’: an input interface that is somewhat predictable, but has unpredictable elements that force a performer to react in real time.
(Waters, 2007)
Given the PMC’s simple interface consisting only of stretch sensors built into clothing to detect breath, this and similar research will provide particularly interesting models and ideas for further research.
Biofeedback clothing technologies
Much research has been done with goal of sensing bodily functions using comfortable, wearable textile technologies as there is a demonstrated need for such devices for use in medicine. Common issues in the creation of effective clothing-technology include comfort for long-term wear, flexibility, durability and washability, as well accuracy in readings in a wide variety of contexts (Dunne, Smith). All of these issues are relevant to the PMC, but especially relevant is the concern for the comfort of the wearer. Many types of wearable biofeedback sensors rely on direct contact with the skin, or skin-tight clothing to achieve accurate results. The PMC may not need skin-tight clothing, but the clothing will have to be tight enough to allow for accurate breath-readings. One prior study used a foam sensor built into one small area of clothing to sense breath. (Dunne, et al.) If the stretch sensors planned for this project make the shirt excessively uncomfortable, foam sensors may be explored as an alternative.
Conclusion
Breath is an important theme in both music and art. The concept and sound of breath carries a lot of weight, both in terms of its symbolic and metaphorical nature. In music, in particular, the breath has played a central and developmental role. The PMC attempts to engage the performer and audience in an explorative dialogue on the nature and musical potentials of the breath.
[1] It is difficult to say with certainty when music was first made by human beings. The first instruments were simple percussion instruments and flutes; of these, ancient bone flutes survived, but it is likely that earlier instruments have decomposed over time. Even more complicated to discern is the first usage of the human voice for song--unlike instruments, the voice doesn’t leave behind any fossils or remnants. But some of the same clues that have led researches to hypothesize about the timing of the development of language provide useful insights into the same for song. (Fitch, 2006)
Modern humans and Neanderthals have an expanded thoracic vertebral canal enabling a greater amount of breath control as compared to their evolutionary ancestors. While various theories exist for this evolutionary development, the most convincing of these is that the development is directly related to human speech. Breath control is a necessary component in expressive communication because it enables the utterance of long phrases with only short, linguistically meaningful pauses for inspirations. (MacLarnon & Hewitt, 1999)
The ties between language and music are well documented and center around syntactical relationships involving sentence structure in language and phrase structure in music. (Patel, 2003) Given this inherent relationship, biological developments that were pertinent for the evolution of language were therefore just as relevant to that of music.
[2] In Brian Ferneyhough’s work for Piccolo, Superscriptio, the composer marks optional breath locations, but instructs the performer to take as few as possible.
[3] Atem is as much a theater work as it is a piece of music. It is essentially an unspoken narrative about an aged wind musician trying to play a musical phrase “while on the verge of expiring”. (http://www.mondayeveningconcerts.org/notes/022210.html)
[4] http://www.fabermusic.com/news/story/jonathan-harvey-takes-80-breaths-for-tokyo.aspx?ComposerId=297
[5] There are a number of different contexts that I’d like to explore in the future. These include interactions with dancers (an early version has been tested) and an installation in which attendants’ breath is monitored.
And the bibliography (in progress)
Bibliography
MacLarnon, Ann M., and Gwen P. Hewitt. "The Evolution of Human Speech: The Role of Enhanced Breathing Control." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 109.3. 1 July 1999. Web. Apr. 2011.
Fitch, W. Tecumseh. "The Biology and Evolution of Music: A Comparative Perspective." Science Direct (2006). Web. Apr. 2011.
Patel, Aniruddh D. "Language, Music, Syntax and the Brain." Nature Neuroscience (2003). Web. Apr. 2011
Iyengar, B. K. S. Light on Pranayama: the Yogic Art of Breathing. New York: Crossroad, 2005. Print.
Iyengar, B.K.S. Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.
Berio, Luciano. Sequenza III, V, XII. Universal Edition. Print.
Mauricio Kagel, Atem.
Performance Ecosystems: Ecological approaches to musical interaction
Hunt, Andy , Wanderley, Marcelo M. and Paradis, Matthew(2003) 'The Importance of Parameter Mapping in Electronic Instrument Design', Journal of New Music Research, 32: 4, 429 — 440
Haptic Sensation and Instrumental Transgression
BIO-FEEDBACK CLOTHING TECHNOLOGIES
Printing Electric Circuits onto Nonwoven Conformal Fabrics
Second-Skin Sensing: A Wearability Challenge
Garment-Based Body Sensing Using Foam Sensors
IMPLEMENTATIONS: SCIENCE OF BREATHING AND MAPPING IMPLICATIONS
The Science of the Singing Voice (LIBRARY BOOK)
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