Gothenburg, Sweden. The sounds produced by a fiddle are not always musical, but the fiddle is still nevertheless regarded as a musical instrument. However, if one uses sticks or car engines to create music — do they become musical instruments?

Is this a matter of deception, perception, or is it a point of departure to somewhere else?


Per Anders Nilsson, PhD, wondered about this sort of thing, devoting his doctoral thesis at the University of Gothenburg to discussing a number of tailor-made digital musical instruments intended for improvisation and created by Nilsson himself. Apart from the text, the thesis comprises video recordings from concerts in which he performs with the improvisation group Beam Stone and the duo pantoMorf, as well as a duet with the bass-player Peter Janson and solos.

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Video courtesy of Per Anders Nilsson and the University of Gothenburg. Time: 00:02:23.

Walking Machine, an instrument that allows Nilsson to play the drums and bass in jazz style, even though he cannot play either of these instruments particularly well.

The game designer calls these virtual skills. One can thus incorporate performance behavior into an instrument, and the musician's role becomes that of controlling the instrument rather than anything else.Per Anders Nilsson's research project is among other things about creating digital musical instruments for special purposes, in his case ensemble improvisation. In practice, the instruments he creates constitute a hyper-instrument: about ten instrumental modules are collected and linked together in a shared computer program. The choice varies and is decided by the context.

The challenge for him has been to create instruments with distinct identities and with limits in precisely the same way as with traditional musical instruments. To become accomplished one has to practise, in exactly the same way as with all other instruments. One can also incorporate musical skills into a digital instrument, making it possible for a musician to play better than he or she has the capacity to do.

The thesis also discusses the two roles of designer and musician — the hypothesis that one and the same person is both designer and musician can have a double effect when playing with other musicians: (1) a direct effect via the interaction of the moment, and (2) an indirect effect since one has decided on the characteristics of the instrument oneself.

A digital instrument is a field of possibilities — in performance, the aesthetic choices made during the design process of the instrument are made manifest.

Nilsson created instruments that appeal to his musical aesthetics and that function well in the contexts in which he himself plays music, and the aim is not total control but more the possibility of surprising oneself.

Yet another aspect brought up by Per Anders Nilsson in his work with digital instruments, is to regard musical improvisation as a game or sport. All games have rules, goals and a play space. In a piece of music, it may be a matter of explicit rules on which chord sequences and melodies etc one may use, or it may also be a matter of tacit rules about what one may not do, the equivalent of "sportmanship".
Per Anders Nilsson looks forward to continuing his research in this field and especially to investigating different musical styles as though they were games. His opinion is that this approach will analyse music from the perspective of the musician, and not from the perspective of the musical score or the composer.

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