Transmissions, 2020
Nodal Excitation, 1979-2024
Dreyblatt’s Solo Performance program in progress involves a newly constructed amplified “Excited Strings” Bass fitted with an audio transducer system in collaboration with live digital electronics. Recent concerts have included the CTM Festival, Yellow Solo Project Space, Galerie Oqbo and Conservatoire Pierre Barbizet, Marseille, France.
In addition to the new solo project “Transmissions”, Dreyblatt performs a new version of his seminal work “Nodal Excitation” (1979).
In the spring of 1979 I was approached to perform at a downtown performance festival in New York. I had been developing a prepared double bass prepared with unwound music wire, in order to excite the higher overtones.
Over time, I worked on a repertoire of isolated percussive and bowed attacks, and these evolved into a continuous rhythmic technique in which I could excite chords of overtones above the fundamental. This technique is a combination of bowing and striking, in which a short portion of the bow is brought into contact with the string in a forward and backward motion. If the striking aspect is emphasized, the inharmonic nature of the attack overwhelms the sound and little resonance is excited. If a long section of bow hair is brought into contact with the string, the resulting sound is lacking in resonance. This composition is performed as a solo work, and is often the introduction to his ensemble compositions performed by the Orchestra of Excited Strings.
"The performance is a careful consideration of the location and influence of the acoustic Nodal Regions as identified on #12 and #11 unwound Music Wire stretched on a double bass (40.5" speaking length). The integrity of a fundamental vibration is maintained for both strings at all times; all movement of pitch occurs in the overtone structure. A shorter speaking length is never created through "stopping" or "fretting" techniques. Rather, harmonic, partial vibrations are calculated, coaxed, and are occasionally isolated at the nodes of the string." - from program notes, 1979. "Nodal Excitation (Solo)" has also been performed by Bassist Robert Black in a number of U.S. tours and by Arnold Dreyblatt internationally since 1979." - Program Notes, 1979
Arnold Dreyblatt: Electronics
Phillip Sollmann: Turntables and Signal Processing
“...you had to fight through that sound barrier, quite literally, in order to pull out remnants of a remembered sound.” – Glenn Gould, Rolling Stone Interview, 1974
As part of the program "Sound Effects", Arnold Dreyblatt presented a performance in which recognizable musical excerpts are "blocked" perceptually by processed white noise. The chosen historical fragments on vinyl were “performed” by Phillip Sollman and mixed by Phillip Sollman on multiple turntables.
"Sound Effects", curated by Arnold Dreyblatt
December 11, 2021, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
"The evening programme focuses on the artists Crys Cole, Arnold Dreyblatt and Phillip Sollmann who are active in Berlin as well as internationally and whose musical activities have never been presented before at the Akademie der Künste. In responding conceptually to the exhibition “nothing-to-see-ness” at the Akademie, the live performers interface electronic, acoustic, haptic and perceptual audio processes while referencing their diverse musical biographies in an evening of exploratory sonic imaginations."
“Quarantine Concert” produced for "Two Days of Online Music & Visuals" (29 August, 2020)
Regina Greene Front Porch Productions
Hosting by the Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.
Recorded at Arnold Dreyblatt Studio Berlin
“3 Solo Works”:
"Piezo Rumble"
"Transmittance"
"Nodal Excitation"
Amplified acoustic contrabass prepared with music wire, magnetically vibrating wires and sine waves
A drone composition for „excited strings“ Bass and Digital Laptop. Bowed string harmonics are performed against the resonance of magnetically vibrating wires and tuned sine waves in a multi-layered textured drone composition. First premiered at The Kitchen in New York in March 2017.
Arnold Dreyblatt has created a palette of acoustic signals and patterns derived from a recording project involving a Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner (specifically the "Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class") in the Martin-Luther-Hospital in Berlin. Dreyblatt understands this device as a giant Tesla coil, in which the alignment and resonances of a powerful magnetic field are gradually altered by rotating radio frequencies. Under Dreyblatt’s direction, Siemens technicians operated the machine especially for these recordings, searching for software settings generating a desired sonic output rather than as an aparatus for scanning particular body areas, as this machine is normally used. The audio segments were analyzed, deconstructed and grouped as by pitch, rhythm and density. For the resulting composition, these files have been combined and fused, yet they have not been digitally treated or altered in any way. The recordings were originally utilized as the acoustic element of the audio-visual installation 'Turntable History” which was installed at the Singuhr Gallery in Berlin in 2009. Recordings of ”Turntable History" and the later composition “Spin Ensemble” were issued by Important Records as: CD Imprec322 and SAUNA14, respectively; followed by "Magnetom", first performed in 2017.
Computer Laptop
In Calculations, Dreyblatt explores the tuning system which he has developed over many years. A gradual journey though tuned sine and square waves over a layer of resonating string vibrations.
"The first of the two pieces he played at the Point Ephemere used a such tuning in the setting of a relatively recent electronic work, presented as a laptop performance. Well, maybe in the case of an electronic work one should rather speak of the 'range of frequencies used' rather than 'tuning'. The piece consisted in fields of sound that were gradually built up and developed around an E-core, and within which ever changing rhythmic patterns of beatings continue to evolve." - Soundblog in-strumm-end-s january 19, 2005.
Performances: Octopus Festival Paris, Gallery Estatic Torino
