questionnaire

 Alessandro Bosetti
 Alfredo Costa Monteiro
 Andrew Drury
 Axel Dörner
 Bechir Saade
 Bertrand Denzler
 Bhob Rainey
 Bonnie Jones
 Bruce Russell
 Bryan Eubanks
 Burkhard Beins
 Christian Weber
 Christof Kurzmann
 Cor Fuhler
 Dieter Kovacic (dieb13)
 Doug Theriault
 Dragos Tara   new
 eRikm
 Greg Kelley
 Günter Müller
 Heddy Boubaker
 Howard Stelzer
 Ignaz Schick
 Jason Kahn
 Jeff Gburek
 Jeph Jerman
 Jesse Kudler
 Joe Foster
 Julien Ottavi
 Kai Fagaschinski
 Lee Kwang Goh
 Liz Tonne   new
 Lucio Capece
 Mattin
 Michael Renkel
 Michel Doneda
 Reuben Radding
 Róbert Rózsa
 Robin Hayward
 Ruth Barberan
 Sharif Sehnaoui
 Thomas Ankersmit
 Tomas Korber
 Valerio Tricoli
 Will Guthrie

3. What is it that attracts you towards musical experimentation?

Alessandro Bosetti:
      Nothing more than what attracts me towards music in general. I just love music and probably almost every kind of music making requires some sort of experimentation.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro:
      Experimentation means to me, re-inventing reality, escape from pre-established forms or rules of understanding the world…
      We have the capacity to pervert the order of things, to transfigure them, so according to music, experimentation should be part of any creative process…
      In Portuguese, my mother tongue, the verb to try is commonly translated by to experiment. This has to do with curiosity that keeps in itself the capacity to take you to new experiences. And for me, curiosity is one of the most important virtues. It’s a global behaviour or relationship, not only in music…

Andrew Drury:
      I have misgivings about experimentation and am not particularly attracted to it, though lately experimentation has occupied an important role in my work. Drumming is such an ancient and powerful human practice, who needs to experiment? Playing some of the simplest most primal shit can be deeply satisfying and among other things reaffirms my connection to thousands of years of humanity.
      There’s often a trade off between experimentation and craft, and I think there’s a lot of value for improvisation in craft. What turns me on the most is seeing a good musician—good craft—someone working with an object with a nearly sublime level of sensitivity, openness, and ability. Someone working intimately and viscerally with an instrument to facilitate ecstatic states.  I think a lot of people get caught up in the fetishization of experimentation and technology.  It’s really boring to watch this happening on stage.
      What I love and am attracted to is music—music that stimulates my imagination in some way, music that I consider “good.”  Which is ridiculously subjective. Sometimes this involves experimentation, and sometimes it does not.
      I should say my identity as a drummer—as one who plays the drum set and extensions thereof, as one steeped in drum culture—is deeply important to me.  It is deeper than my attraction to any particular style or method of musical practice.  I knew from about the age of 13 that I loved drumming and that I wanted to do this more than anything else in the world.  Pretty much all of my life decisions since then have revolved around or involved drumming. At this point, drumming has shaped me. I feel I belong to a lineage of drumming knowledge and practice that goes back for millennia.
      Necessity drove me to experimentation. 
      I had an epiphany in February, 2002 when playing in a loft in Vancouver, Canada, with the cellist Peggy Lee, saxophonist Wally Shoup, and drummer Dylan VanderSchyff. Peggy didn’t have a pick up—a situation that usually spells disaster for a cellist in a band with two drummers and a horn. I knew from prior experiences playing with cellists (Brent Arnold and Chris Hoffman) that conventional drum set technique is pretty much incompatible with unamplified cello. The drum set is simply too loud and cellists get buried. I had come from New York City to Vancouver to play with Peggy—5,000 kilometers—so the idea of burying her in my sound was pretty pointless and unacceptable. At the same time, I deeply respected the sound of cello and knew that when it is amplified, especially through a pickup, it loses a lot of its character and beauty. After many of these experiences it just seemed deeply unfair to the music, to cellists, and to drummers that cellists should have to sacrifice so much of their sound in order to play with me. 
      I had a notion that a skilled and intelligent musician should be able to find a way to make music in any situation, that I should be able to play with her and have a blast doing so, that a drum set could work with the cello. To me this meant exploring quiet sounds, sounds that exist below the minimum decibel threshold permitted by conventional drumming technique. I needed to abandon conventional technique and embark on a path of discovering and developing new techniques through which to express my musicality. It was a scary proposition but at that point I was ready to try it. And it worked. That path on which I committed my first steps that night in Vancouver has been a primary focus of my work ever since, and has greatly influenced (and helped!) my “conventional technique” playing too.
      Changing gears a bit, there obviously are a lot of ways to experiment with music, or any other activity. It’s all up for grabs. It’s what you make of it.  What are the elements of musical performance with which one might experiment?  Sound, costume, light, body language, space, time, interaction with the audience, on and on. All the signifiers are there to be identified and manipulated. 
      In 1989, inspired by the “Mirror Displacements” project the visual artist Robert Smithson did in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, I began performing drum solos in deserts and other outdoor settings in the western U.S. I did 21 of these “Earth Solos” from 1989 to 1995.  How could I as a young European-American (white) artist who grew up in the rural, western U.S. be true to my experience and operate in an idiom created and thoroughly mastered by African-American artists from east of the great plains or from the big cities?   At that time I tried to address this by experimenting with the geography of jazz history, with the space (desert, wind, cow dung, and barbed wire as opposed to cool dark jazz club).
      Experimentation is a way of keeping things fresh. It’s inevitable.

Axel Dörner:
      Musical experimentation as a first step is necessary for me to develop my ideas and realise them it leads me to results which I wouldn´t get without experiments, after the experiments I work with the results.

Bechir Saade:
      The curiosity to discover new sounds, new movements etc. But also the insistence and concentration on listening more properly to sounds for what they are. In tonal music, textures are sometimes just taken for granted and so we lose sight of their beauty.

Bertrand Denzler:
      I don't know exactly. I even don't know if the music I play is experimental. The music I play with groups such as Trio Sowari just feels like "my" music, although it's a collective work. It seems one of the most evident and exciting music to play at the moment.

Bhob Rainey :
      I am merely trying to find a music that seems truthful and useful to me. It only becomes an experiment because that process involves so much groping in the dark.

Bonnie Jones:
      I experiment with sound and text because I couldn't imagine anything else I'd want to do with my time and energy. The materials I use matter less to me than the impulse to change and be changed, to explore various ways of being in the world. I usually have a tendency to be too cerebral and sound projects release me from some of my verbal trappings while text projects remind me why I enjoy them in the first place.

Bruce Russell:
      I bore easily with 'proper music'. Too much repetition, not enough spirit.

Bryan Eubanks:
      I guess that I am attracted to sounds I find beautiful and experiences I find beautiful. Often, these are both found through examining areas I am not familiar with or by expanding on areas that I am familiar with. I don't remember how I came to making this music, but I think it was a natural evolution out of creating things in the material arts. Working with music allowed me to play with so many elements of composition at once or individually and have nothing left to show for it but the experience itself. I found, and still find, this very appealling.

Burkhard Beins:
      For my feeling working with sound implies a less rigorous constraint for unambiguousness compared to what seems to be possible in the realms of images or words. The „liberation of sound“ from it´s cultural connotations, to be newly achieved again and again though, opens up an ideal experimental field to try out and rehearse non-hierarchical forms of communication and to enhance the capabilities of perception and distinction. More than ever some relevant skills also to orientate oneself in a globalised world with an accelerating flow of information and of increasing complexity.

Christian Weber:
      A great way to communicate.

Christof Kurzmann:
      What attracts me, is the communication. It's the same thing that attracts me when I meet people. Therefore, I prefer to play music in groups instead of solos. I prefer the dialogue instead of the monolog.

Cor Fuhler:
      Well, in order to find the things you have in your head, you have to try things at home. Mostly there is no shop to buy whatever you need, so you have to make your own stuff. For the rest, to keep fresh etc, I spend a bit of time every day just trying things, fiddeling around, hoping to stumble onto something.

Dieter Kovacic (dieb13):
      The fact that pure playback is boring ;-).

Doug Theriault:
      Innovation, making something I have never heard before. Starting from nothing and hearing as the piece evolves into a composition in a live situation, this is very exciting.

Dragos Tara :
      A permanent need to move, to take part in the research of new social relationships, as music is part of a culture that always has to be rebuilt.
I don't want to deal with nostalgy and I believe this world deserves some changings.

eRikm:
      The escape from boredom, as well as an attempt to create a new form (maybe some day).

Greg Kelley:
      Experimental music seems to be the only music that is able to encapsulate all of my various influences, phobias, neuroses... It's an open frame work with which I can add conceptual limitations to my own inherent limitations and hopefully open up some unknown door for my mind. It is also accepting of both Fleetwood Mac and Schimpfluch.

Günter Müller:
      I would be tired to play the same stuff all the time, - and experimentation is stimulating. For me improvisation is very much linked to life, is a kind of concentrated form of life. And there are moments when I get to do new sounds, new combinations of sounds - maybe unexpected - that simply makes me happy. Improvisation is for me the method to reach those moments.

Heddy Boubaker:
     The freedom and depth of expression, the surprise, pleasure and stimulation of the unknown, the intellectual, emotional, sometimes spiritual, challenges and experiences, playing with odd sounds, odd forms, odd, unusual instruments, and often odd interesting nice people, the animal primitive cathartic organicity (?) of the material, the childish pleasure of constant discovery... and the list is far from finished.


Howard Stelzer:
      Not sure really... I just like music, and this is the music that seems natural for me to make. I'm also a big collector of records, tapes, CDs, so I love it all. Not just improvised music, but also noise, musique concrete, post-punk, synth music, whatever.

Ignaz Schick:
      It is the fascination and seeking for the unheard & yet unknown (sound), in my opinion it is the necessity and obligation for each creative being to research for the yet unknown, no matter how painful this research may become, no matter how lonely you will sometimes feel, at times I think I found some of those unknown areas which can even feel so familiar once you’ve dug them out, but mostly I am still searching, not even sure if I will ever find something of real importance.

Jason Kahn:
      What most interests me is the process of finding a way of creating the sounds I hear in my head. It is almost disappointing sometimes when I finally have that sound, finally finish a composition as then this process is, at least temporarily, over.

Jeff Gburek:
      Curiosity.

Jeph Jerman:
      The creative impulse. I think that's the best term for it. I can rationalise my ways of organizing sound, but these rationalisations all come after the fact of making sound, and don't motivate me. Listening is the most important thing, and I think that most conventional musics don't really encourage listening. They encourage thought and emotion.

Jesse Kudler:
      One of the troubling things about my attraction towards "experimentation" is that it feels a bit too nakedly in the capitalist mode - I'm trying to do something that will stand out in the "marketplace." But that's the truth, more or less: cursedly, I've heard so much music in my time, and I've really gotten a bit jaded. The things I respond to seem to exist for some reason, and I want my music to do the same. Ideally, it's there more than "just because I can" or for "artistic expression," but because it's part of a dialogue with the audience that I feel is necessary. That said, it's important that the music comes from a place of honesty. I am more interested in raising questions, or engaging in some kind of experience with the audience than in making statements.
      I think the "honesty" part is paramount. This feels like the music that I should be making and want to make. At the same time, there are all kinds of sneaking suspicions and concerns creeping in: about self-indulgence, about making essentially bourgeois art for a mostly privileged (in the States, at least: white, college-educated, male) audience. This gets into larger questions of how and why art functions, and I suppose that's the point. I hope!

Joe Foster:
      I came to this music from two directions at the same time. As a listener I was being pulled toward metrically and harmonically idiosyncratic music, and as a reader and thinker I was being repelled by orthodox and conformative practices.
      I didn't know anybody who made (or even listened to) this kind of music, so I developed for a while in a vacuum, but before long I met JP Jenkins and Bryan Eubanks, and we developed together for several years (in Super Unity and as a trio) until I left for Seoul in 2002. Working very closely with them, for many hours every day, really made me think and question and play and play, and think and question. It's a little amazing to me now, but all three of us, even as we were beginning, totally committed ourselves to doing this music for life. Bryan and JP still play major roles in my life and my music. Distance matters not to friendship, and there is no such thing as time.

Julien Ottavi:
      In fact, today "musical experimentation" became sound experimentation, art experimentation, social & political experimentation, life experimentation... I think we should start to experiment with the "musical" itself. I think the problem of the musician is that : he thinks as a musician! I mean if we start to think about experimentation in music, we should push and go further by questionning the question itself. Why do we ask ourself this question of our relation to music experimentation ? If we refer to musical experimentation in traditional music, the people who experiment in this field don't talk about experimentation, they will talk about expression, simply a way to express themselfs as a community, as a way to express their everyday life activities, their pain, their loves, happiness...etc. But talking about the occidental european (in the 21 century) point of view, we should go further with this notion, what is behind this simple question?
      I think I am not attracted by "musical experimentation" as such but by the experimentation with codes in general.

Kai Fagaschinski:
      To find something which is my own thing. Something I have a strong relation to, as I’ve learned it by my own experience rather than it having been brought to me by others. The point isn't in musical innovation, for me it's more about a personal way of acquiring knowledge and the specific relationship between the musician and his/her musical material.

Lee Kwang Goh:
      Experimental music is something always new, fresh, and always looking forward. To me it is something fun, interesting, and challenging as well.

Liz Tonne :
      I enjoy playing more traditional forms of music as well. Experimental music is more in tune with the psychic and artistic currents that are circulating in society.

Lucio Capece:
      This approach is based somehow on an idea that became more clear as I was working the instrument through the years. Instead of considering the instrument as a tool to express myself I think it’s a way to understand the frame of the picture where we exist: Space and Time. Preparing them with objects establishes an approach with the objects that are around me everyday, they become a part of my instrumental set. Part of my space becomes with them a part of my instrumental set. These objects take the instrument out of its history as the instrument, and help me to create sounds inspired by the sound landscape where I live (mostly mechanical and electronic sounds). Time is what I work on in a live performance. I think that beyond our actions we are existing in a piece of eternity. I try not to pay attention to the actions and the stories that our actions build but to this piece of eternity. This changes the way I build the music. It’s not based on creating a story with a plot but on a perception of time. It is my wish to experiment in the performance a moment of contemplation of the characteristics of time, and not a pleasant moment based on the exposition of a good story. This is a personal research. I can enjoy people creating good stories and I do not consider my research better or more interesting, it is just what fascinates me. On the other hand I focus on working with detailed sounds and developing our capacity of perception and listening.

Mattin:
      Trying to achieve freedom whatever the fuck that means.

Michael Renkel:
      It's not actually about experiments but about communication with others. Experiments happen while exploring new things when I'm reheasing or practising. Playing means making decisions, finding one’s own way, one’s own language, it means self-organisation - initiating a process and developing it in a group. One cannot alter one factor in a system without affecting all others...

Michel Doneda:
      I prefer experience to experimentation. I think this is what is specific about the improvisational process. I am talking about non-idiomatic improvisation. Improvisation means that the connection between you and your instrument is unmediated, and also, that the connection between players, between you and the audience, with the room where you are playing, is mediated by the music. It also means that you have the responsibility, here and now, for what you are playing/doing.

Reuben Radding:
      I used to resist the word "experimental," because it seemed to imply that what we do isn't intentional or is only about the process, rather than the product. Nowadays I very much embrace the word "experimental," for many of the same reasons that I previously distrusted it.

Róbert Rózsa:
      I’m attracted to the freedom of creating, the phenomenon of  “liberated sound”, the unusual creation and organization of it – the freedom of  being playful in the name of music.

Robin Hayward:
      This is very hard to answer, as I'm not sure it's really rational. Perhaps it's just that I enjoy exploring and discovering - curiosity, not knowing what's round the corner. But why this should be in music rather than anything else I really have no idea.

Ruth Barberan:
      1. Sense of listening: what sounds.
When i was small, I knew the piano index because my sister studied at a higher level than mine, and i remembered the scores when i heard her playing. But with Bartok, I couldn’t memorize, I had to read the score to know if I was playing well. Since then, I have been interested in what sounds strange to me.
      2. Musical attitude: work with listening first, and all the basic things that are part of every kind of music (sound, timbre, dynamics, silence...)
personal and collective expression at the same time.
      3. Artistic attitude: about creativity, research, permanent questioning.
      4. Personal attitude: to value more the artistic quality than recognition, material benefit or fame.

Sharif Sehnaoui:
       The world and our perceptions are in perpetual movement and so should be music and arts in general.

Thomas Ankersmit:
       I'm not sure if that's what I do. Rather than trying to reach something that's unknown to me I tend to try to execute pretty specific ideas, a sound I'm imagining (but then I do usually end up with something rather different). I don't think the music I make is necessarily more experimental than anything else. I'm very much interested in a kind of focussed sound-intensity. The balance between transparency and saturation, making sound elements move together as a whole, to the point where all the small elements become a kind of blur that's still somehow energetic, either with a kind of internal motion or as a line that draws itself. I find the kind of sounds and structures I'm using most appealing, I like noise, rather than more orthodox, popular ways of playing music, but I don't really know why.

Tomas Korber:
      Certainly a sense of wanting to explore and discover something or even more so of wanting to learn about the working mechanisms of music itself (by playing it). But that is what attracts me toward any kind of music, not just "experimental" music.

Valerio Tricoli:
      [not answered]

Will Guthrie:
      For me experimentation in music is not something that belongs only to 'experimental music' or 'improvised music', I could say I have experimented just as much in different styles such as rock, jazz, flamenco etc ... I studied drums formally but it was really trying things and experimenting with sounds and rhythms, playing along with the radio etc, that I really learnt how to play. I guess a lot of the attraction with music for me has always been to try to find a different or personal way of dealing with certain structures and sounds. I am more or less the type of person that has to learn by 'trial and error', not just in music, in everything! So I don't really know any other way to learn other than just trying things, stuffing up, trying again, differently, changing... etc...