Performance Practice of Real-Time Notation

This paper addresses the performance practice issues encountered when the notation of a work loosens its bounds in the world of the fixed and knowable, and explores the realms of chance, spontaneity, and interactivity. Some of these performance practice issues include the problem of rehearsal, the problem of ensemble synchronization, the extreme limits of sight-reading, strategies for dealing with failure in performance, new freedoms for the performer and composer, and new opportunities offered by the ephemerality and multiplicity of real-time notation. 1. REAL-TIME NOTATION The issue of permanency in notation immediately evokes a continuum bounded by pre-determined paper scores at one end and free improvisation on the other. Gerhard Winkler suggests that between these two extremes lies a “Third Way” made possible by recent technologies that support various types of real-time notation [1]. This emerging practice of using computer screens to display music notation goes by many names: animated notation, automaticallygenerated notation, live-generative notation, live notation, and on-screen notation. These new notational paradigms can be separated into two categories: real-time notation and non-real-time notation (see Figure 1). Real-time notation encompasses scores that contain material open to some change during the performance of the piece. Many works fit this definition, from those that use predetermined musical segments that are reordered in performance to those that are completely notated in the moment of performance. Nonreal-time notation accounts for all other uses of the computer display as a notational medium. Both static and animated scores occupy this category. The boundary between these two primary approaches to notation on the computer screen is not rigid and a technique like the live-permutated score can be argued to fit in either category. It is useful to further categorize an on-screen work by its attributes. These attributes are found in both real-time and non-real-time scores: notation style, interpretive paradigm, time synchronization and location tracking management, degree of on-screen movement, whether the performer reads from a part or a score, and if there is non-notational Figure 1. Categories of real-time and non-real-time music notation. interactivity (see Figure 2). Notation style refers to the spectrum between traditional symbolic notation and graphic notation. Many real-time notation scores use graphic notation or a combination of traditional symbols and abstract graphics. The interpretive paradigm of a piece determines whether the performer does strict music reading or uses some degree of improvisation to interpret the notation. The method of time synchronization, location tracking, and the amount of on-screen movement can be important in solo and ensemble pieces reading from a computer screen. Relying on eye-movement research, Lindsay Vickery [2] and Richard Picking [3] conclude that common approaches like the playhead-cursor and the scrolling score are unnatural for the performer to follow. I argue for a bouncing-ball-type tracker that embodies expressive and anticipatory tempo information drawing on a performer’s skill of following a conductor [4]. The question of whether the performer reads from a part or score has implications for ensemble coordination and the visual size of the music. Works using realtime notation often incorporate non-notational interaction through audio or video processing. In addition to the challenge of real-time notation, the performer must grapple with the issues associated with musique-mixte and interactive electroacoustic music. 2. ON THE LACK OF PERFORMANCE