CD – Helical

The idea of an orchestra made of automatized instruments is not new in the history of music and technology. It’s a connection that in the nineteenth century created a craftsmanship of high specialization, modeled according to the knowledge derived mostly from mechanical sciences. The management of the controls at that time was happening through wooden or perforated paper rollers and now Leonardo Barbadoro in Musica Automata uses digital pulses sent with a computer to run a larger number of parameters, who not only set the single notes, but also the dynamics, the sound loop, the microtonal control, and several other things too. The whole set of robots comes in part from the Logos Foundation in Gand (Flanders), a cultural center focusing on robotics and experimental music, scrupulous in the implementation of new tools and proud of his authentically multimedia vocation. Leonardo Barbadoro added other instruments, both classical and unconventional, to organize twelve cold compositions for the biggest existing robot orchestra. The impact, also from the visual point of view, is simply majestic, with more than fifty carefully located instruments, whose sound has physical characteristics that make the uniqueness of every single event very charming. The exact control of the parameters plays as an opposition to the risk and to the infinite “vicissitudes” of an acoustic sounds, what the author reminds us to be subject to a certain range of variables and “imperfections”. So, the performance becomes a multisensory experience somehow like a concert played by a real orchestra, but what we listen to is exactly what was imagined by the author, who now also becomes the executor of what he designed. In post-production no elaboration was added, and the echoes of the instruments are the ones recorded in the actual environment. Same story for the sounds the robots make while moving, who become a part of the same music, which does not hide its contemporary classical matrix, since the harmonic and rhythmic aspects seem to be preferred to the conceptual and experimental elements. The human touch is clear in the action these machines do, because they play a hypothetical alternative to the electronics of drum-machine, synths and samplers, and they emphasize the emotional part of a musical construction, the physical action of the execution and in some cases they push over the limits the intrinsic possibilities of the instruments.

 

Leonardo Barbadoro – Musica Automata