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At The Spitz London 2005

by Vitor Joaquim, Simon Fisher Turner

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about

This edition encompasses one long track from a DAT recording of the concert, and four pieces created exclusively with samples made during the concert, re-arranged a few weeks after.
Recorded live directly to DAT on 29.11.2005 at The Spitz (London) as part of the Atlantic Waves Festival 2005, curated by Miguel Santos.

The recording was made essentially for future memory and for that reason some tech tweaking was needed, mostly for noise removal. No performative changes were added to the original. I hope you enjoy it.

During the concert, Lia (liaworks.com) was receiving our audio outputs in order to generate exquisite visuals, in a way that only she can do. Regrettably it will not be possible to present her work due to its ephemeral nature. Pieces 2, 3, 4 and 5 are dedicated to her.


CONCERT CONCEPT
The idea was very simple: Simon would play the piano and his signal would be split in two ways: the mixing desk (FOH) and my RME sound card. From there, I could only play with him with "his own sound".
Based on my “glued perception” of his aural content, I needed to make choices at two different levels. The first level corresponds to the appropriation process, and it had 4 major steps: choosing what to sample, i.e. when should I hit the rec, when should I hit the stop and where to locate the sample after being recorded.
After every single sample was located, from a total of 100 samples, I needed to deal with a second level of choices: what to do with what I had and make that decision in a split second while Simon was playing in a constant flow, and new "motives" were also claiming to be sampled. In practical terms, my attention needed to be split, all the time, in two completely different operations: appropriation and treatment.

So, while I was listening to Simon, I was also deciding what to do with what I had: how long should it be? Would I play the complete sample or only a few milliseconds of it? Maybe the transient? Maybe the tail? Was it louder enough? Should I search for a good start of the file based on the visualization of the wave and find also a good end?
What kind of motif is it? Atmospheric? Syncopated? Phrase based? Should I make a triple copy and transpose one to -5 and the other to +7?
Probably I should cut 5 or 6 dB on the +7 copy so that it doesn't turn too much to the foreground and destroy the whole perception?... Should I just listen?
Wouldn't it be nice to pass a certain file through the granular process and drag all that ambiance very slowly to the background so that Simon could improvise over a carpet of samples? And if he doesn’t react immediately, how long should I keep it?
The amount of questions and decisions involved in a sampling-based concert like this is far beyond my memory or imagination. The most important thing that I can say about it is that I love doing it. I've been doing it for 20 years, and for that reason this recording is now being rescued from the archives. No fear, no anguish, only joy and inner peace.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deep thanks to Lia for being part of this and my eternal respect to SFT for being so receptive to the risk - we never played or rehearsed before the concert. Also a big thanks to Miguel Santos for curating the encounter.

June 4, 2020

credits

released June 4, 2020

Simon Fisher Turner: piano, city soundscapes
Vitor Joaquim: piano live sampling & processing, train, sine waves, granular synth, mastering

Track 1: composed by Simon Fisher Turner, Vitor Joaquim
Track 2 ,3, 4, 5: composed by Vitor Joaquim, based on piano samples from SFT
Mastered at Xara during May/June 2020

(C) Simon Fisher Turner / Vitor Joaquim (SPA)
(P) Vitor Joaquim 2020

vitorjoaquim.pt | simonfisherturner.com

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Vitor Joaquim Setubal, Portugal

Electronic experimentalist, sound and visual artist. He started performing improvised music and get involved in experimental art by the mid 80's.
Since then, he has created extensively for dance, theater, video, installations and cross media platforms. He is graduated in sound and film directing and has a phd in computer music.
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