One of the exciting reasons I enjoy being both a creator and connoisseur of modern classical music is that we live in a unique time where new music can be presented with live acoustic instruments accompanied by pre-recorded electronics that the instrumentalist plays along to – think of it like really artsy karaoke:)! This tradition of instrument-tape pieces has pretty well paralleled the dawn of Musique Concrète in the 1950s and many brilliant composers have written masterpieces using this balance.

But while I really enjoy combining instruments with electronics, I find the classical music community still doesn’t get how to present instrument-tape pieces properly in a live setting. Over the years, I’ve been to so many concerts where the mix in the hall was atrocious. I can’t hear the instrumentalist, only the tape part…or vice versa. It’s annoying! Sitting in the audience, I can hear spurts of interesting musical ideas and sonorities but I can’t truly appreciate the overall piece.

Issues about the mix in live music settings have been around forever in both pop and classical music. Some bands dread playing in certain venues because they know the “sound man” sucks. Bars and clubs are hard to mix in because they could be in places that are ill-suited acoustically and have lots of people making noise competing with the music. But classical music tends to be presented in controlled spaces and the tradition is that an audience wouldn’t dare make a peep while the performance takes place. So don’t you think it would be easier to get that better under control?

It should be but I think that modern classical music still lives in the shadow of its tradition. I think the culture of classical music has always put a focus and reverence on the pure acoustic amplification of sound. Slapping a pair of speakers behind a performer is foreign and to many, sacrilegious. This attitude is going to have to change if instrument-tape pieces are to flourish. And all that’s needed is one simple constant practice for any and all such performances…

Mic the instruments!! This does happen sometimes, but not nearly enough. It should happen ALL the time!! Let’s say you have a piano-tape piece. If you mic the piano so that the sound of the piano is being amplified through the same speakers that are also carrying the tape part, then a sound engineer could be sitting in the middle of the hall mixing the two parts so they’re properly balanced. Then we get to hear how the piece was conceived by the composer. Maybe the composer should always be in the sound engineer’s seat. That way they can guarantee the precise mix for that room and it would work despite the subtle acoustic nuances of that room. A composer with a laptop could even make adjustments to their electronic part to ensure it will work in that acoustic space…I remember doing that for the world premiere performance of my composition for 2 flutes and electronics, diskriminatsiya, in a very echo-ey hall in London back in 2014.

Now some might argue that this would lessen the experience because we couldn’t appreciate the natural acoustic beauty of the instrument part…it would be just like listening to a bunch of raunchy sounds pumped through speakers like at a rock concert. I think people like this are listening to new music for the wrong reason. They should want to hear it the right way! What is the right way? Answer: the way it sounded in the composer’s head when they conceived it.

C’mon people, let’s get into the 21st century here! We have the sophistication and expertise to make the classical concert hall into a multi-dimensional facility that can accommodate simultaneous acoustic and electronic elements and make it a perfect listening experience for everyone.