Academic literature on the topic 'Saxophone – Multiphonics'

This thesis is part of the result from an explorative venture into understanding how saxophone multiphonics can be used as tools for improvisation and composition. The focus lies partly on how I found these sounds, personalized them and incorporated them into my artistic language, but more importantly, this is an attempt of thinking through art by letting the experience gained from making creative use of accidental occurrences affect future experience in an open-ended artistic process. This is done in two acts, solo-playing and duo-playing. With the solo-playing I listen for what these sounds suggest in themselves, and through this, create open compositions that are embracing their elusive nature. The duo-playing searches for sounds within sounds in a sonic map, constructed from a co-creative artistic process that allows us to zoom in on details, experience deep and spectral listening through vertical musical motion. Apart from the written words and the compositions, the artistic results consist of several recordings, presented and discussed throughout the text together with connected concepts and contexts revolving around saxophone multiphonics, composition and improvisation.

Komposition: Sonic Map

Kompositörer: David Bennet & Vilhelm Bromander 

Medverkande: David Bennet, Saxofon. Vilhelm Bromander, Kontrabas 

Konserten är inspelad och bifogas med det skriftliga arbetet. 

This dissertation analyzes the original composition Radial, which is scored for alto saxophone solo, small orchestra and live electronics. Multiphonics are a common feature on the aural surface of Radial. This analysis will show that alto saxophone multiphonics are also a primary structural element in the work, hierarchically organizing the timbres, harmonies, instrumental interactions and large-scale form of the score. Interestingly, no source suggests how multiphonics can be an independent organizational force. Numerous book length multiphonic catalogues for diverse instruments give fingerings for these sounds and describe them as harmonies so that they can be fitted into harmonic contexts, and a small but significant scientific literature on multiphonics discusses the acoustic principles underlying these sounds, but no document considers their independent structural potential. After providing a general account of multiphonics and their relation to harmonic and inharmonic sounds, this dissertation will propose an answer to that problem by drawing together concepts from American experimental music, spectralism and cognitive music theory, with Radial reviewed as an example of this method in action. Historical issues and a broad range of implications for this research will also be discussed.