The Optic-Fibre Ensemble
End Semester Concert
At the end of the fall 2022 semester us MCT4024 students were tasked with putting on a concert as part of the Embodied Perspectives on Musical AI workshop being hosted at UiO. This was no ordinary concert. It was the second telematic concert where we played together over the net synchronously while being located in separate buildings. Our concert was played between the UiO Science Library and the RITMO Research Centre. To achieve this we used a software called LoLa which makes it possible to transfer both high quality audio and video over the network with very low roundtrip latency.
The Long Journey of Team B and C
We have 4 separate teams in MCT4024, during this concert team A and D were tasked with handling all the technical aspects of the concert while team B and C were the performers. We named our group the “Optic-Fibre Ensemble”. When we first started planning the concert our performance team consisted of 6 people but the week before the concert we down to only 4 performers due to unfortunate circumstances. This meant our concert plans had to be revised multiple times due to an ever decreasing group size. So the program we ended up with was quite different from our initial plans, but we are all happy with the results.
Our pieces
Our final set list consisted of 3 pieces. 2 cover song and an original piece. The cover songs we chose were the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. Our final pieces was an electroacoustic semi-improvsational piece written by one of our team members: Masoud Nikafs. Masoud’s electronic piece consisted of a pulse and drone, field recordings, a layer of synthetic wind that was live mixed to fit the context of the Improvisation in the second part. Emin’s ney played in Saba, while Masoud’s vocals improvised microtonal Persian phrasings. Nino played both the piano and did vocal improvisations in georgian while Fabian added textures to the piece with his no-input mixing technique.
Playing Together
The last two days before the concert we move all our equipment to the different venues where we were playing. This gave us the possibility to rehearse together using LoLa to prepare ourselves for the concert.
One problem we encountered while setting up is that we couldn’t play at full volume at the science library since other people were present reading for their exams. So whenever we got time to practice we had to do it at a low volume. If you want to read more about the experience of rehearsing together with LoLa, Fabian has written a blog post about it
Conclusion
Overall, this was an excellent experience. We had lots of fun (and some frustrating) moments working together and considering the circumstances we are very happy with what we achieved together and are looking forward to another semester with more NMP craziness.