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

8. When you are recording for a release, does the awareness of being recorded influence your playing, and in what way?

Alessandro Bosetti:
      Yes. I'm used to thinking about the way it will sound once recorded. Recently i've been invited to take part in a recording where everybody was playing very soft, tiny sounds but there was just a kind of cheap stereo mic placed not so far away. I knew that mic since I own one like that myself therefore I had quite a clear idea about the sound of the recording already while playing. And it was clear to me that most of the sound material we where playing would be 'lost in translation'. So why bother? Would have been better just to play and enjoy without recording. A lot of improv records are badly recorded and pay a very poor tribute to the originally played music. In other ways the mood of where and when and with whom influences me, of course.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro:
      I think that every single studio recording has to be done in a different way than a concert; the first point is that we’re not playing for any audience but for ourselves. The audience comes later, so there should be no tension about any kind of immediate value of the music. We are our own and immediate judge. And as I’m being recorded I have to think of the quality of this recording, what I can make audible and would be impossible during a concert.
      A studio recording is also part of what I am as a musician: I’m not just a performer, and I’m still a musician when I’m not performing. In a studio recording I can use many possibilities that are not generally offered in concert; one of them is a temporality divided in three parts: recording, listening and editing. The decisions are very different according to that statement, and are not less “risky” as many people seem to think.
      But because this music is mainly unstable, a studio recording makes sense if it’s perceived as a stage in a more global context.

Andrew Drury:
      Since I record a lot of my performances, and record a lot of the sessions at my house, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with recording. Often I forget about the mic. From some of my first experiences in a studio I realized that if I got uptight about the clock or other factors extraneous to the music (which I saw other people doing) it would kill the vibe. 
      One has to accept that a studio recording is its own thing, that your expectations for it to be anything other than what it is will be disappointed, that things happen there that can’t happen in other settings and vice versa.  I have to be able to allow myself to get silly and take risks and mess around, and trust my musicality and my skill.  Well that’s the ideal and of course I’m far from perfect, but that’s pretty much where I’m coming from.

Axel Dörner:
      Sometimes it does, sometimes it does less. It depends how much I´m used to be recorded. But it´s comparable to playing to an audience, which is in a way different to playing if nobody listens to it. If I know that the recording will be released, I mostly have a higher concentration, because I know I cannot erase sounds I have played.

Bechir Saade:
      I think so yes. But I don't know in which way. Maybe playing is more sober than in concert setting.

Bertrand Denzler:
      Yes, I am sure it does. It's not so different then to play live. There is a special tension when you know that other people are listening (or are going to listen) to what you play. And I like this tension. But sometimes, I also try to record a lot, until I forget that it's being recorded, in order to focus on different things. And this is interesting as well.

Bhob Rainey:
      [not answered]

Bonnie Jones:
      I never seem to notice any difference in my playing while being recorded. Though I do think a lot about the process of recording and revising. I always liked that writing was one of the genres where the playback/the documentation was concurrent with the creation. Like in the case that you are writing and can "playback" simultaneously by simply reading what came before on the page and picking up the ending again. These are just the things that keep my mind busy and content.

Bruce Russell:
      I try to record everything. It does not affect what I play.

Bryan Eubanks:
      I don't record with a release in mind, but rather release something if a recording exists of something I would want to hear again. I have attempted to cultivate a focus and discipline in music making that I enter with each time I play whether privately, publicly, or for a recording. I am not really casual about it, and don't feel satisfied if I am. I don't record too much these days, but i think the question of recording is interesting because it is a delima particular to those of us who have grown up in a world where that technology is readily available. I don't know what my attitude would be towards making music if I never had recorded or this wasn't possible. Although I run a small label and think recordings provide wonderful experiences, I still think that this music is best heard live and in real-time.

Burkhard Beins:
      It can be a tricky situation, because a recording, especially if it´s for a certain purpose, can induce a special importance, so it´s not just an informal meeting, but at the same time it´s missing the intensity of a concert played in front of an audience. Perhaps it´s a conflict due to the fact that a recording of a musical process is turning the process into a completed and reproducable piece of work. It can make you project into the future more than necessary, trying to imagine too much how the completed process will work as a „piece“ while still being in the course of making it. When recording with a group for a release the common strategy to work against this effect is to record quite a lot of material, not only to gradually liberate from the recording situation, but also to have a lot of potential material in the end to sculpture a release from.

Christian Weber:
      I can't deny a psychological influence. That's mostly unfortunate (expectations). I prefer live recordings. There's only one chance, everything has to stand for itself as it is.

Christof Kurzmann:
      Not at all.

Cor Fuhler:
      Yes it does a bit. You just know you have only a limited amount of time etc. It gives more pressure. That's why I created a situation at home where I can record and not worry about time or money.

Dieter Kovacic (dieb13):
      When I play live, there is not much difference whether the concert is being recorded or not. When I record in a studio, I try to catch as many variations as possible and don't care much about form since I can do it later.

Doug Theriault:
      If I am in a studio I go in knowing that i'm going to kick ass, otherwise, why pay somebody to record the music? The awareness makes me concentrate more clearly and focus more intently.
      This can also happen if I record with someone I only see once a year. I usually practice many hours/days before I see that person again. Systems have been worked out in advance and I usually need a refreshing time to get up to speed again with that persons playing style. I like developing the music in duos as it enables me to have a strong working relationship with that person and it moves the music forward much faster.

Dragos Tara :
      As an electroacoustic musician, I feel quite unsatisfied with using this medium only as memory, not using it for itself.
      Recording is something very interesteing for me but reserved for special projects for tape music, electronics, and such...
      As an improviser I feel quite unsatisfied with the idea of transforming a unique thing (point 4!) into a reproducible object.
      This means I always try to record as little as possible, just when it is useful for a project (including the use as a demo).
      I don't think that recording influences my way of improvising. But playing without an audience, on the other hand, is very painful for me.

eRikm:
      Recording improvisation in the studio is unbearable to me. Concert recordings are much more interesting. I think that there have been too many concert CD releases which have been successful or not :)) I often get into conflict with musicians who want to release this or that concert at any cost. I look on these releases solely as testimonies of a certain period of a musical life. In my opinion, composition takes the central place within a discographic release (although I haven’t released any CD of a solo concert. Maybe there hasn’t been one that is good enough ;)

Greg Kelley:
      Without the novelty and theater of live performance, a piece of recording must be able to hold up to scrutiny - be careful! A recording also allows for a kind of environment and sometimes a kind of sound that simply does not carry or work in a live context. I try to exploit these differences on some occasions and on ignore them on others, though ignoring them on playback is difficult. I might hit delete.

Günter Müller:
      Perhaps I try to play more concentrated, but I prefer situations where it is possible to forget about beeing recorded. For me it is very interesting what happens later with the recorded material when working on it on computer. It is a kind of second life that is very much independent from the event when the music was played. Editing and mixing is for me an interesting mixture between improvisation and conceptual work.

Heddy Boubaker:
      There are two kinds of recording for a release: the recording of a live performance, that in fact is rarely planned to be for a release but for documentation generally and if the concert and the recordings were really good it could be used for a release. This kind of recordings do not change at all my playing, in fact in such a case I always forget that I'm being recorded. The second kind is recording in the studio, and here, yes there is clearly an influence on my playing, the only recordings of this kind I did were my solo recordings and even if they were all based on improvisations, each piece tended to concentrate on a specific point, or a set of specifics points, of my playing, in terms of concepts, aesthetics, technique and so on (sometimes many of these things mixed).

Howard Stelzer:
      None, actually. I've pretty much stopped publishing music that's only a recording of a live concert. I used to do that, but not anymore. That mic-in-the-room sound of a group fiddling around is never anything that I want to put on my stereo at home, so it no longer seems appropriate for me to represent my work in a way that I wouldn't want to listen to myself. My current releases are nearly all compositions, even if they're composed from sounds made in performance. So if I'm recording a concert, I'm rarely thinking about it in terms of making a recording. It's more to get source material that I'll use later, or to reference when composing later on.

Ignaz Schick:
      Sometimes, but not in that sense that I play differently, more in the sense of staying aware i.e. of the material that I’m using, that I don't repeat myself or the material in different pieces; it is more like: we have three pieces now, but something is still missing, so how can we manage to reach those areas where we haven't been before.
      It is a bit like in concert situations, that sometimes there is a certain nervousness or excitement that takes over. I think that it is best to go beyond that and forget about it while performing or recording. My ideal is to find a way and to learn how to achieve this tension or special "vibe" which can turn the whole performance into pure magic.

Jason Kahn:
      Maybe when I was younger and had just started to record music I had this awareness. At this point, though, I don't really think about it. I record most of my concerts and when I compose I do all the recording myself. At some time any of this material could be a future release.

Jeff Gburek:
      The awareness of being recorded can have an effect on what I am playing in all cases. But I try to forget. Studio recording is different in that you might think a bit about what kind of sounds will not sound so good reproduced in stereo medium. Recording narrows the range not only of sounds that are possible, but also the range of the dynamics that can be created with space/time itself. Recording for a release often puts you in a double frame of mind. You are creating something to issue into a different space than the one you are creating in.

Jeph Jerman:
      It tends to make me more conscious of what i'm playing. makes the judging harder to ignore. Recording a live performance is a little different. I record every performance I give and have gotten good at forgetting about it after i've turned my recorder on. This is harder when one is in the studio making a formal recording of course.

Jesse Kudler:
      Not if it's a concert. In the "studio" (basement, living room, bedroom), I usually know I will edit things later. So there is more freedom to take risks I might not take in a performance, or to keep going for a long time, even through crappy passages. To me, I want to play well, but it's also just generating material to be reviewed and edited later. I'd rather have more.

Joe Foster:
      No. I record a lot, at home, so I've inured myself to that pretty well. Bonnie Jones and I (English), for example, recorded almost every weekend for a year.
       I have avoided doing recordings specifically for release so far. I don't like the idea of thinking that the music I'm about to make is slated for release; instead, I'd rather play and record a lot, and release music only when I record something that seems to demand it.
       I have nothing material to gain from playing this music, so putting out a lot of releases, or being on well-known labels, or promoting myself doesn't hold a lot of appeal to me. I'm glad other people organize things and put labels together, but I'm not very interested in that aspect of the music, and I doubt I'd be good at it.

Julien Ottavi:
      I should say : depending on the situation of a record. Any activities in a situation of "representation" create a situation where you are playing a role, where the public is waiting for something, where something should happen. The recording situation could be different if it's a TV or a radio, if you are in the situation of musical studio where you record such "live music" or if you do composition in the studio, or if you are making a movie or if you record a live situation : concert, performance, workshop, meeting, conference, nature, animals...etc or at least if you record a family situation : a birthday, your kids, your old grand-parents...etc. All these situations of recording influence your way to express yourself, the way you are for the others.
      For me, in the sound medium, you could do the "photo" of the reality as it is! And show to the others : this is how I am!! thruthfully in your way! or you could also say "this is how I want to be" or this is what I really mean and take time to build your thoughts with a lot of preparation and a lot of compositional aspects.
      But in the same time you could question the medium itself, the way you record and distribute this record, or you could extend by different technological devices the life of your record simply in the terms of time or even the expression of it.
      Also in your question, I feel through the expression of "recording for a release" a single way to work with the recording as making a CD... For me, the CD is still one single way to express sound & music creativity, in improvisation style it is still the way for each person in this field to recognize each other as being part of the "field" or not. And it's not specific to the "improvisation al musical style" it's also the case in every human activities : from scientists who need to participate in publications, for thinkers to write a book, same in litterature and poetry, same in any kind of artistic activity (plastic art to make an exhibition, music to make a cd...etc)... . Today I am more interested in doing webradio installations or performances using sound and extending the musical potential to flux timing (not limited to a CD format time) or making short sounds for my neighborhood... I think we should not limit ourselfs when we talk about expression or creation!! which does not mean that I am completly uninterested in making a CD's.

Kai Fagaschinski:
      Yes, recording does have an effect of me. If you have these expensive microphones in front of you and especially in the studio, when you have to pay a lot of money for it, at least I feel that there’s a certain importance of the situation which forces me to concentrate. It's a kind of pressure, which I find mostly quite positive.

Lee Kwang Goh:
      No. I m too busy to care about the faders.

Liz Tonne :
      Yes, recording can highly influence my singing, especially because of the technology involved. I don't like to record in studios at all. I like live recorded performances. I don't see much reason to record improvisitory music anyway. It is a highly experiential art form for both the musician and audience.

Lucio Capece:
      It affects me in some way. Like when you play in a different place, or in different conditions. As much as that, no more than that.

Mattin:
      Of course it does. When you record you do not have a direct relationship with the audience, you have no idea in which circumstances your music is going to be heard, who they are, or how they got the recording (internet, bought in a shop...). There is a temporal quality that makes the cd a totally different thing from the performance. The listener can listen to the cd as many times as she or he wants, in different stereos, rooms and while doing other things. Basically they are improvising with their own listening environment, whether they are aware of it or not.
      I think it is important not to make clear cut divisions between the musician as the creator of a recording and the listener as just a consumer. Peter Gidal and the structural materialist filmmakers in the 60's were discussing that the film is not happening just in the film but in the head of the viewer, the viewer had to make sense out of it. I think we could think in similar terms about recordings; the real improvisation is happening when a person is listening and trying to make sense of it. Of course I cannot interfere with this kind of “improvisation”, I can only hope that in  the recording there is material for thoughts that is going to inspire the listener for a long time.

Michael Renkel:
      Yes I think so, a recording is a possibility to work out details much more. A release is a possibility for the listener to be very close to the event and I usually record with a very close microphone position.

Michel Doneda:
      No and yes. Because every situation happens for the first and the last time. So I know this session is recorded and I forget about it. Also, most of the time I don't decide to make a record before the actual recording so it is impossible for me to say: I play for the record. I should have to talk about every record of improvisation I’ve made. Of course it is a small part compared to all the music which disappears in the air.

Reuben Radding:
      I don't think this affects my playing much at all. I began recording at the very beginning of being a musician and almost 30 years later it is what it is.

Róbert Rózsa:
      The consciousness exists, indeed. In my case, this “consciousness” does not hinder my playing, I’d rather say that it helps concentrating better and being more attentive, and a kind of a never predictable relaxing for the sake of creative liberation.

Robin Hayward:
      It can help focus things. Actually I haven't recorded that much improvised music though.

Ruth Barberan:
      Yes, of course, that influences me, but still I can choose not to publish it, until the last moment, and this makes me feel even more free to risk than on stage, but unfortunately less than during a rehersal.
      Apart from the way how I play (more or less risky), this influences me in the choice of what material I want to play. New material that has never been recorded and that I want to present.

Sharif Sehnaoui:
       Every context has an influence on me. If I am playing in a small room or in a concert hall, if the audience is near or far, if we have complete silence or not, if we are outdoors, if we are in a studio. Each of these situations have an impact on myself and on the music. A recording session is also a specific context where the time is set and the musicians have a implicit agreement around the purpose of the gathering.
      Yet if the question is about having a different idea of the music simply because it is being recorded, then the answer would be no, I do not play for future listening but always for the time/duration within which the sound is being generated.

Thomas Ankersmit:
       I've never recorded any real-time music with the intention of having it published as far as I can remember, so I wouldn't know. I'd say having an audience has a good influence on my playing because you have to stay with it, you can't start over if the music falls apart in your hands. But that's a different kind of pressure.

Tomas Korber:
      Probably yes, though often not consciously. I can't really tell in what way. Maybe there's more "tension" which can be a good thing. Generally recording and/or concert situations result in more exciting music than unrecorded private sessions, at least for me.

Valerio Tricoli:
      [not answered]

Will Guthrie:
      There have only been very few releases (live ones) i have done where what i actually played has stayed as it was played. Usually I record sound, then work with it, so the whole concept of 'recording live' is not so relevant. For CDS I'm not so interested in live documents, I'd prefer it to be pretty different to what I would do live, being a different medium and all...