Philosophy towards my playing of electronic music

For me. Music is about expression and about telling a unique personal story. This comes back in all the facets that play a role in my music making activities. As a composer I want to make music that does not resemble music of other composers but that has its own characteristics be it harmony, melody, rhythm or sound. As an improvisor I try to use sounds, note material and  rhythms that other (trumpet)players do not use and I hope to play with an energy that reflects my personality.

The same principle holds for me when I make electronic music. As a designer I want to make an instrument that can do things that other instruments can’t. As a sound developer I try to use sound processing techniques in combinations that are not (often) used by others. As a player I like to have expressive control over the sounds that I produce so that I can tell the story in the moment (as opposite to a recording).

As a player of electronic music control comes first, than comes the intricacy of the sound used, the subtlety and only than the ‘coolness’ of the actual effect. In designing my patches I rather spent a long time building on one sound making it respond in a natural way to control and using well sort out presets then having a large pallet of different effects. The sound of the effect should in the same way become a personal flavor as the way I have my own sound on the trumpet.

Thinking in this fashion it was a logical step for me to look for a way in which I could play the trumpet as if it were a double trumpet. Both acoustic and electronic. With a good mapping between the hardware and the software I hope to accomplish a hybrid instrument that feels like a natural acoustic instrument. Though I hope to be able to play the electronic and the acoustic instrument ‘through each other’ the most important thing now is that the combination of sensors on the trumpet together with the mapping of these sensors to patches form a controller that feels like an acoustic instrument.

At the same time I strive for sounds and processing that can be traced back to the acoustic trumpet as the sound source. Although I like physical modeling and some sorts of synthesis I don’t use these in my music unless it is used as a model to do sound processing with.