#springintgut

Andi Otto feat. MD Pallavi - “Bangalore Whispers”

Klingt erstmal, als hätte sich Andi Otto alias Springintgut hier irgendein exotisches Sample gekrallt und mit elektronischen Taschenspielertricks aufgemotzt. Ist aber tatsächlich eine Zusammenarbeit auf Augenhöhe zwischen dem Hamburger Klangtüftler und MD Pallavi, einer Sängerin aus dem südindischen Bangalore - mit der Andi Otto auch schon in einigen Theaterprojekten zusammengearbeitet hat.

Pallavi singt hier laut Labelinfo karnatische = südindische, traditionelle Silben, die in ihrer Wiederholung wie eine Art Synthie-Melodie funktionieren, auf jeden Fall ziemlich hypnotisch wirken. Herr Otto spielt dazu Piano, Cello und Psalterium, laut Labelinfo ein wenig verbreitetes osteuropäisches Saitensintrument. Zweifacher Clash der Kulturen also. Obwohl: Eher ein Consensus, so gut wie hier alles zusammengeht.

Taken from the album 'The Bird and White Noise' by cellist and drummer Springintgut (Andi Otto) and guitarist F.S. Blumm (Frank Schültge Blumm).

Originally, all they wanted was record one mutual track for the Japan tour in spring 2014. On this tour, Springintgut and F.S. Blumm would present their recent solo records in nine cities in Japan, and one duo track couldn't hurt for an encore.

These duo compositions came off surprisingly easy, and in a breath there were seventeen tracks instead of one. Keeping in mind that both solo albums have been six years in the making, the recording of 'The Bird And White Noise' within two months is extraordinary. 

[Please welcome Andi Otto as this week's guest contributor. Andi is a composer, electronic musician and researcher from Hamburg, Germany. He performs internationally under the name of Springintgut, his third album "Where We Need No Map" (CD/LP) will be released on April 15th on the Pingipung label. Here's his artist profile on the label's website, and these are his Soundcloud and Facebook pages. - Tobias]

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Photo by Robin Hinsch

Write about myself? Thanks for the invitation, Tobias, never done that… except for some project applications, of course. You asked me to reflect on my sensor-equiped cello bow, Fello, with which I perform my music. I'll gladly try.

Some background first: I'm a trained musician on cello and drums, producing my own electronic music under the name of Springintgut since 2002. In 2005 I have been invited to develop a stage instrument for my music at STEIM in Amsterdam, and that's where I have been developing my "Fello" instrument over the past few years. I was impressed with the skills and expertise in sensor-based music that is collected within the STEIM facilities, both with the engineers and performers around. Michel Waisvisz, the STEIM director from 1981 until his passing in 2008, had already used ultrasound and tilt sensors to perform with racks of DX7 synths in the early 80s! When everybody else was hailing to MIDI as the new opportunity to hook up one "master keyboard" to several other devices, he used audience-embracing gestures to shape new digital FM-sounds, and later pioneered live-sampling performances on stage:

  Ever since I touched base at STEIM I have on the one hand pursued research in their history (which no one before me ever really cared about) and on the other hand worked on my own musical interface for the Fello. I find that looking back and looking ahead goes hand in hand (there's no new without the old) – both in my academic PhD project on the history of STEIM's sensor-based music and in my artistic works.

After going through a draft period in 2005 in which I tried to use the cello sound as control input in a complex improvisation system (together with Florian Grote who is a brilliant PD programmer), I ended up with an accelerometer on the bow's frog. It was a leftover device sitting on a shelf in STEIM's workshop - Joel Ryan had built it out of a Wii Nunchuck for a dance piece. In the first mapping tests it was connected to a delay, the two axes of the bow changing the time and feedback of the echoes. I remember the magical moment when I first lifted the bow off the strings and activated the delay with a foot switch: the gesture in the space around cello would produce sounds like little rolls (fast delays, high feedback), single repetitions (slow delay, low feedback) or looping structures (slow delays, high feedback), gradually changing, derived only from my sampled cello sounds, depending on the moves I would make with the bow. I spent hours there the first night, then days, just exploring the possibilities with the delay mapped to these gestures. It was as if a magical dimension had just opened, and I have rarely ever played the cello without the sensor since.

Andi Otto: Fello. Live in Kyoto from Fello on Vimeo.

It took me one month to work on the entire mapping of the "Fello" which I left untouched until today. Learning the instrument contradicts the urge to constantly rewrite it. Almost not changing the patches anymore makes the system feel like an instrument which I have to master, not an arbitrary set of variables I can adjust any time for more efficient ergonomics (whatever this may be). The input is mapped to control 8 delays, 1 filter, 1 complex live-sampling patch, 2 freeze reverbs and a crossfader.

Here's the hardware setup I use on stage today:

1 Cello 

1 Piezo Mic, David Gage "The Realist"

1 Accelerometer, 1 pressure sensor LI battery powered

1 XBee wireless sensor data transmitter

1 Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controller

1 NI Maschine

2 foot switches

1 RME Fireface UC

1 MacBook Pro 

Software: JunXion, LiSa, Ableton Live

I use the BCR to activate MIDI channels 1-16 with its 16 toggle switches. If no button is pressed, there will be no data going from the bow to the software. Each button / MIDI channel represents another process. In the delays, the two foot switches combined with the toggle button will activate the time and feedback parameters for the bow. This means that I can "freeze" a certain setting by releasing the foot. Otherwise a delay which constantly changes its micro-timing would generate much noise. STEIM's engineers Byung-Jun Kwon and Marije Baalman skillfully engineered the XBee sensor modules. A force sensitive stripe on the wood of the bow has finally been added in 2010.

The first public appearance of the "Fello" system took place in a dance theatre piece by the choreographer Victoria Hauke at Kampnagel (Hamburg) in early 2009. There was no control in this controller, it felt like taming a wild beast, I was doing lots of brain-worked gestures to move the bow in the right positions to come up with (or mute) a certain sound. The ability to reproduce a sound was demanded by the dancers – a huge challenge which eventually made me play only very simple structures in this first performance.

In these early days I found out that one important feature is to be able to switch the sound off. It's so simple that it's easily ignored in the development. There must be a shortcut to silence in all situations, especially when performing with others.

This piece "()else" was then invited to perform at a dance festival in India. After the show in Hyderabad I met DJ Prashant who uses south Indian percussion recordings on his digital DJ setup, and we played a quick session at a jazz club. Someone from the Goethe Institut saw this and the result was that at the end of 2010 we were invited to play a 3 month tour through India under the name of PandA System.

I went to Kyoto, Japan, in 2011 as artist-in-residenc at the Villa Kamogawa. Three months of intense work in a very inspiring and beautiful environment – it was a blissful gift – made me rehearse, record, and extend the "Fello" system. After shows in Japan I sometimes got the response from the audience that I "do nice dancing to my music". Some obviously couldn't see the interaction between bow and sound, because the sensor was small and almost invisible in my hand. The double interface function for both the cello and the computer is something which the audience don't necessarily see at first. That's why I decided to add a visual element to emphasize the bow gestures. So during the Kyoto residency, I tried to generate video with Max4Live's V-Module tools. It proved to be difficult to create interesting visuals while performing the music. After some concerts I decided not to use my own live visuals on stage, unless there is another artist taking care of it (who could also use my sensor data of course).

Back at STEIM I told them about my idea and this was Marije Baalman's beautifully simple solution: She wired an RGB-LED to the sensor, so that the bow glows in different colours depending on the gesture. It now looks like a piece of technology, even from 50m distance - that was a major advice I brought home from Japan. That green swoosh in my hands can affect all the electronic sounds, and play the cello traditionally, everybody can see that ambiguity at once now.

Photo by Mike Wilfinger

In April 2013, I will finally release my third album as Springintgut on the Pingipung Label. It's called "Where We Need No Map" and is available for pre-order here.

(c) Pingipung Records. Artwork by Jochen Ruderer

It's the first album to feature plenty of Fello recordings, and if you've read through here, you'll know that the title could refer to the software mappings which are no longer in the brain-knowledge but in the body; and it's like swimming to play the instrument, not like reading a manual. 

I've edited and produced the recordings in the studio, played drum machines and synths over them, added field recordings from Japan and India and received fantastic voice tracks from Sasha Perera. She's the singer for the band Jahcoozi (BPitch Control, Berlin) and we spent two weeks together in Sri Lanka in the Soundcamp South Asia in 2012. Here's another short clip, from a solo performance during that stay:

It's funny that I initially made the Fello to be able to play a veritable live concert with my electronic music, and now it's fixed on this record which I can't perform like it is because every sound has been processed and re-built in the studio for hours and days. This means that I have to come up with new interpretations of the tracks on stage which will likely be much more reduced and raw than the studio music. The common element is the Fello, exposed in its simplicity on stage as the source material for the album's sonic identity.

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