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Extended Voice, Technology, and Presence

Kristina Warren
Liverpool, UK

B.A., Duke University, 2011

A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Facultyof the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree ofDoctor of Philosophy
Department of Music
University of Virginia
April 2017

ii
ABSTRACT

Extended voice is a vocal-electronic practice integrating compositional and performative,
especially improvisational, methodologies. In extended voice, the same single practitioner does
both vocal and technological work. This document is structured in three parts: (1) technicaldiscussion of my hardware, software, and vocal work; (2) analysis of works by seven otherextended voice practitioners (Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF), Marie Guilleray, Stine Janvin Motland,
Maja S. K. Ratkje, Andrea Pensado, Ami Yoshida, and Pamela Z); (3) and critical discussion ofextended voice. Extended voice encompasses a wide variety of sounds, but crucial themes are thedesire for complex, novel interaction between voice and electronics, and, toward this end, thedovetailing of ‘recorded’ and ‘live’ methodologies. Practitioners undertake self-listening tomanage the vocal-electronic whole, which is a cyborg of sorts, and thus evince presence, or
curation of one’s own vocal-electronic sound. Research futures for extended voice center on its
use of creative methodologies to subvert the notion of normative body, and its demonstrated
ability to encourage more diverse participation than that which currently typifies electronic
music as a whole.

keywords:
extended voicepresence self-listening

MaxMSP

granulation

ArduinoPensadoYoshida Z recorded

agencyBela Pd
live

interaction

analogdisability

AGF

cyborgtechnology

digital

Guilleray

Motland

Ratkjenormative inner voice body

iii
CONTENTSACKNOWLEDGEMENTSv

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

vi

I. INTRODUCTION

1

A. Extended voice
B. Defining the field
C. Notes

1
4
6

II. WORK BY THE AUTHOR
A. Bela, Pd
B. Abacus
C. Vox6
1. Pulsar granulation
2. Live signal treatment
D. Liveness, voice-electronics interaction
E. filament
III. SURVEY OF EXTENDED VOICE
A. Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF)
B. Marie Guilleray
C. Stine Janvin Motland
D. Andrea Pensado
E. Maja S. K. Ratkje
F. Ami Yoshida
G. Pamela Z
IV. LISTENING, AGENCY, AND PRESENCE
A. Gender
B. Recorded voice and disembodiment
C. Prosthesis
D. Presence
E. Inner voice and text scores
1. Physical organization – body
2. Number – mixing
3. Listening – agency
4. For soloist… text score, “For one” album track
F. Disability

7
7
10
18
19
23
25
29
31
31
33
37
39
42
45
48
51
52
53
55
58
60
64
68
71
73
77

iv
V. CONCLUSION

81

BIBLIOGRAPHY

84

DISCOGRAPHY

91

APPENDICES

92

A. Voice-electronics performances
B. Spring 2016 patch: Composed control routine
C. Vox6 patch: Rhythmic granulation parameters
D. Vox6 patch: Transposition-delay unit
E. Vox6 patch

92
95
96
97
99

v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful to my parents, who have supported my every academic inclination,and to Paul Turowski, whose support has kept me going. My heartfelt thanks go to my advisor,
Ted Coffey, whose curiosity and humor have made me a better musician and thinker; to Judith
Shatin for making my existence in this field possible; to Bonnie Gordon for her ongoing
mentorship; and to Elizabeth Barnes for her invaluable perspective on my project. Thanks aswell to Anthony Kelley, Kerry McCarthy, and Louise Meintjes, who knew how and when topush me further than I was ready for; to Rachel Devorah for her laughter, music, and perspective;
and to Kevin Davis for his generosity, especially in improvisation. Thanks to Antye GreieRipatti, Marie Guilleray (who also graciously invited me to The Hague), Stine Janvin Motland,
Andrea Pensado, Maja S. K. Ratkje, and Pamela Z for their thoughtful engagement with myquestions; and to Tom Johnson, Christian Wolff, and Amnon Wolman for their text scorepermissions. Thanks to Emily Baker, Ged Barry, Michael Beiert, Amy Brandon, Peter Bussigel,
Liz Dobson, Robin Fencott, Myra Melford, Ailís Ní Ríain, Kimberly Sutton, Travis Thatcher,and all of my friends and colleagues in Charlottesville. Finally, I am deeply grateful for support
from the PEO Scholar Award, which has enabled my travel and research ventures this year.

For Grandma Dorie.

vi
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Laptop-free setup: Bela running Pd, potentiometers on breadboard
Abacus version 3
Vox5 Max patch (with Abacus 3): viewed during performance
Abacus version 4
Abacus version 4, on mic standVox6 Max patch (with Abacus 4): viewed during performance
Vox6
Fake Synthetic Music (Motland 2016), excerpt“dis dance” Bandcamp track image (AGF 2016)

page 8
11
13
14
14
16
18
38
61

LIST OF TABLES

Table 12
3
4
5Mapping: Abacus version 3, Autumn 2016 Max patch
Mapping: Abacus version 4, Vox6 patch
Events after triggering record-and-pulsar
Extended vocal techniques (selected), Warren
Extended voice practitioners’ personal vocabularies (selected)

page 12
15
20
26
62

1
I. INTRODUCTION

I walk onstage slowly, feeling their eyes on me. I breathe slowly, keep everything slow
even as my mind and ears quicken with possibilities. I begin vocalizing meditatively. I think ofOliveros’ Sonic Meditations, and of my diaphragm and intercostal muscles, as I listen to theroom and try to sound with it. I bring up my hand and flip on granulation (all those lovely
sidebands in just eight seconds), but almost instantly decide I need electronics following thevoice instead. In a few minutes I find that spiky vocal shrieks are working, and I start to jitter thevoice-following electronics for noise to balance my shrieks. This electronic base has a strong
identity, which I push off of as I shriek more loudly and gradually transition to ragged breathing.
On a dime I cut the electronics entirely. With my upper teeth on my lower lip, I inhale, yielding ahigh, very quiet, buzzing-squeaking sound with mid-length envelopes. I spend what feels like along time varying the pressure of teeth on lip. Less pressure: only one or two voices. Morepressure: polyphonic, even spectrally noisy. I tell myself to keep it slow, make them listen, findreal depth in this little sound. I move closer to and further from the mic. I am obvious about
including the room and the audience in the sound.

A. Extended voice
This dissertation addresses what I call ‘extended voice’, a term derived from existing
research but by which I imply particular contemporary forms of sound and practice. An
important historical influence on my category ‘extended voice’ is the modernist vocal music of
the mid- to late-twentieth century, which highlighted extended vocal techniques. Composerperformers such as Cathy Berberian and Joan La Barbara used these non-normative acoustic

2
vocal sounds, sometimes with added electronics, in order to explore what else the voice can do.
This stylistic approach went hand-in-hand with an attitude of objective, scientific exploration ofvoice. Some contemporary extended voice practitioners, as I call them, use a similar language ofobjectivity when describing their work.
In addition, recent research by contemporary composer-vocalists underpins my use of theterm extended voice. Marie Guilleray (2012) writes of her musical goals in developing a practiceof “electronically extended voice” using software and novel glove controller. Similarly, Donna
Hewitt (2011) describes how technologies such as her novel instrument the eMic serve to“extend the voice.” Such work inherits from (post)modernist vocal music an attitude of ‘whatelse’ exploration of voice, but significantly deepens the component of self-driven technologicaluse and research.
I define extended voice as a vocal-electronic practice which synthesizes compositional
and performative – especially improvisational – methodologies. To be an extended voicepractitioner is to be a composer-vocalist-technologist, i.e., to be involved in all steps ofactualizing a voice-electronics piece. Extended voice encompasses a wide variety of stylistic
approaches, but all share an aesthetic goal (to achieve a rich, meaningful dialogue between voice
and electronics) and a methodological approach (exploring novel juxtapositions of ‘recorded’
and ‘live’ sound techniques). In fact, the aesthetic and the methodological go hand in hand.
Voice-electronics interaction is grounded in the trans-temporality of using live and recorded
sound techniques together. Deep questions arise from this work: Are the electronics derived froma recording of voice? Do they shape the subsequent vocal or electronic improvisation? Has acertain sound been heard before? Is the sound being heard now vocal or electronic or both? If3late twentieth century vocal experimentation extended the timbre of voice, what I call ‘extended
voice’ continues this thread by using electronics to innovate in the temporality of voice.
Among the many forms of musical activity that contribute to voice-electronics interaction
and live-recorded overlap in extended voice, I find that self-listening is crucial. I define selflistening as listening to one’s own vocal and electronic sounds during performance/recording, forthe purpose of sculpting voice-electronics interaction. Self-listening is important for several
reasons. Its frequent use in extended voice is a marked departure from the eschewal of selflistening typical of bel canto (and of those contemporary Western vocal practices which distillbel canto understandings of ‘good’ vocal sound and ‘proper’ performer engagement). Selflistening unites the soundworlds and musicking activities of performer and listeners, and features
prominently in the creative process. Self-listening is a crucial component of my notion ofpresence, which I define as curation of one’s own vocal-electronic sound.
The first paragraph of the Introduction uses my own practice as an example of some ofthe particular ways in which self-listening can unfold. Self-listening touches voice andelectronics, along with space and audience, in an attempt to coax a complex, artful interaction
among them. The notion of self-listening allows that everyone hears and listens differently (Ihear myself one way, a listener hears me in a different way, another listener hears me in adifferent way still), and moreover treats personalized listening and resultant technology use as
creative acts.
I expand on the concept of self-listening by drawing a connection between text scores andextended voice. Several practitioners identify their unique working vocabularies, which are atonce documentation of their practice and ideas for compositional-performative action. This
‘inner voice’ or internal language use means that several key features of text scores – physical4organization, number, and listening – refract into the extended voice features of body, mixing,
and agency or self-listening.
The final part of this dissertation considers ways in which disability studies can model
thinking about the social work done by extended voice. Elizabeth Barnes’ important text The
Minority Body (2016) posits that defining a ‘normative body’ is a task fraught with individual
exceptions and cultural variations. Likewise, by foregrounding self-listening – a physicalelectronic and necessarily personalized activity – extended voice problematizes the notion of anormative body in sound. Because self-listening is a minority embodied practice undertaken forparticular sonic reasons, and because the agency of extended voice manifests partly as acommentary on genre, extended voice is importantly a social category, like Barnes’ view of
disability. The conclusion to this essay ventures some possibilities as to the sonic and social
futures of extended voice. I am optimistic that this practice will help normalize vocal
experimentation and diversify electronic music as a field.
This dissertation is structured in three parts: description of my recent work (hardware,
software, vocal), survey of several extended voice practitioners’ work, and aesthetic andtheoretical discussion of extended voice as a whole.

B. Defining the field
Seven extended voice practitioners whose work I value feature in this essay. Antye GreieRipatti (AGF) skillfully uses production techniques and lyrics to explore voice-machine identity.
Marie Guilleray makes detailed lines and layers that demand repeated listening even as they flitfrom moment to moment. Stine Janvin Motland uses her extreme vocal stamina to blur the line
between overpowering and absorbing her technology. Andrea Pensado’s nasty noise converses

5intelligently with playful patch control and keen attention to form. Maja S.K. Ratkje creates
grand soundscapes whose precisely timed timbral synergy questions how voice can and shouldsound. Ami Yoshida’s self-described ‘howl voice’ joins subtle but mind-altering loops tointerrogate the sound and temporality of voice. Pamela Z fearlessly juxtaposes bel canto, spoken
word, looping, and other techniques to yield a profound exploration of language and meaning.
Notably, all of these case studies are women. I did not initially intend to study only
women, but elected to do so after noticing that most extended voice practitioners are women. In
addition, I have frequently had the experience of being the only woman present at events in thelarger field of electronic music (not necessarily voice-related), but I have never seen these billed
as ‘men’s events’. By contrast, the women-led events I have participated in are viewed as nonnormative and often billed as ‘women’s events’. Many women also feel intimidated by men’s
technical knowledge. It is not right that potentially half of the population feels directly or
indirectly intimidated or excluded by the other half. In short, my discussion of women is aneffort to counteract the perceived masculine monopoly on technical knowledge or access, which
manifests first as physical normativity or majority presence in a space.
There are many musicians and sound artists making important voice-electronics work
who I do not discuss here. Stylistic forebears such as Joan La Barbara, Laurie Anderson, andDiamanda Galás have already been extensively written about. Others complicate and enrich thecategory of extended voice in ways that are beyond the scope of this project. These musicians
include Björk, Jaap Blonk, Paul Botelho, Nadah El Shazly, Imogen Heap, Holly Herndon, Donna
Hewitt, Kyoka, Amy X Neuburg, Shara Nova, Nichola Scrutton, Amanda Stewart, Reggie Watts,
Trevor Wishart, Andrea Young, and Jonathan Zorn. Continued research is needed to account forthe diverse sonic output of these artists.

6
C. Notes
Audio/video documentation of relevant work can be found at:
http://kmwarren.org/dissmtl.html
Portions of this document have been published as “Notated Control as Composed Liveness in
Works for Digitally Extended Voice” (2017). In attributing countries to extended voicepractitioners, I list their country of residence and, if separate and listed in their professional bio,
their country of birth. Text scores excerpts by living composers are published with theirpermission.

7
II. WORK BY THE AUTHORThis section focuses primarily on my most recent hardware and software work: Belarunning a Pure Data (Pd) patch (November-December 2016); Abacus versions 3 (August 2016)
and 4 (February 2017); and Max patch Vox6 (March 2017). In actual chronology, Abacus 3 withMax patch Vox5 came first, followed by Bela-Pd, followed most recently by Abacus 4 with Max
patch Vox6. But I have chosen thematic rather than chronological organization. I begin with
Bela-Pd because I consider this laptop-free setup different in kind to the laptop-based AbacusMax work. I continue by discussing the two most recent Abacus versions, which have driven mythinking about voice-electronics interactions in performance. I conclude with my current Max
patch, Vox6. MaxMSP has continually been the at the heart of my voice-electronics sounds, andVox6 includes my favorite elements of previous patches along with many new features. At times
these sections refer to each other because of the shared ideas connecting them all.
Notes on terminology: ‘pre-sample’ indicates a pre-recorded audio buffer; ‘live sample’,audio recorded to a buffer during performance. I frequently treat live samples with ‘pulsar
granulation’, a form of granular synthesis which streams an alternation of grain and short silence(Roads 2001).

A. Bela, Pd
In Fall 2016, I developed a streamlined road setup for solo and group improvisation usinga Beagle Bone Black microcontroller with Bela audio shield, and breadboard-mounted physicalcontrol components. I premiered a preliminary version of this setup in an electronics-only set at
Noisevember (London, November 2016) and used an expanded version with basic processing of

8vocal input for Winter 2016-17 voice-electronics performances with the Merseyside Improvisers
Orchestra and the AKA trio.
The Bela-Pd setup is an important lateral step from much of my practice because it does
not use laptop. Using a small but multi-wired electronics setup felt very different (perhaps morehands-on or transparently tech-y) than performing with a laptop.

Figure 1. Laptop-free setup:
Bela running Pd, potentiometers on breadboard

My approach was to use pre-composition to simplify the granulation procedures which I
had explored up until that point in Max. My previous Max patches required me to painstakingly
craft parameters for rhythmic granulation and record the rhythmic granulation output to a buffer
for pulsar granulation. By contrast, the Pd patch for Bela only does pulsar granulation. This patch
pre-loads two sounds from my standard library: ‘inhale gliss’ (unprocessed) and ‘saliva’(rhythmic granulated beforehand). In performance, I simply use breadboarded potentiometers to9control the three important pulsar granulation parameters Start Time, grain Length, and Wait
time between grains. Thus, I pre-composed almost all of the process and skipped straight topulsar granulation during performance.1
Pre-composing buffers for pulsar granulation made control much easier, but, while
performing, the electronics initially felt less live to me. While I sometimes worry that the voice
and electronics are too separate in my work, I felt that separation even more acutely during these
performances. Nevertheless, these extreme limitations on control and liveness were creatively
productive. I later concluded that the dialogue between voice and electronics was actually one of
the most sophisticated I had achieved to date.
Thus, presence in extended voice, which I define below as curation of one’s own vocalelectronic sound, can involve displacing or re-imagining so-called liveness. When using theBela-Pd setup, I set aside my usual expectations that all synthesis procedures occur ‘live’ duringperformance, and this allowed me to achieve a more fluent dialogue between voice andelectronics. This proved highly influential. In crafting my subsequent Max patch Vox6 andmapping control information from Abacus version 4, I made numerous compositional choices toprioritize speed and fluidity and thus to devote more time and attention during performance tovoice-electronics interactions.
Finally, the streamlined Bela setup seems to suggest that solo and group performances
require distinct setups. The current Max patch Vox6 is the fastest yet, but may still be too slow
for group performance (testing required), whereas the Bela setup is less deep technically but
more nimble, and therefore seems suitable for group contexts.

1

In addition to the pulsar granulation unit, the Pd patch includes units for additive synthesis with ring
modulation, and variable delay and bit-crushing on the live vocal signal. All three processing units
receive control information from physical potentiometers.

10
B. Abacus
Building a novel performance interface to control vocal processing in Max had long been
appealing, but this idea was sparked in Autumn 2015. In a private composition workshop at a
November 2015 conference, I performed a short voice-electronics set (then using a Wacom tablet
for control) for New York-based composer-vocalist Kate Soper. Soper provided the astutefeedback that my voice-electronics performance seemed too small and intimate. Soper felt sheshould “give [me] privacy” in which to complete this personal vocal ritual of performing withelectronics. This was apparently a way of saying that my vocal performance ought to include
more big, assertive gestures and sounds.
Upon reflection, I decided there was indeed a mis-match between the bold performance
implied by Western vocal tradition (particularly bel canto, in Soper’s case) and the small, quiet
affect of my performance. However, since I am especially interested in small, detailed vocal andelectronic sounds, I elected to address this mis-match not by performing more dramatically, but
by building a controller to emphasize these minuscule and mouth-centric sounds. The Abacus
evolved through several drafts, with design advice from Peter Bussigel, a composer, media artist,and maker in residence at the University of Virginia. All versions have used an Arduino Teensy,
which sends control data to MaxMSP via USB connection and Serial protocol.
I consider version 3 the first significant Abacus version. It consists of an Arduino Teensy,
eight toggle switches, one potentiometer, and two LEDs. All components are affixed to themicrophone clip using thermoplastic. I gave three public performances with this Abacus in
September-October 2016: the 2016 conference of the Irish Sound Science and Technology
Association (Derry, UK), Radiophrenia (Glasgow, UK), and Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar

11(Charlottesville, Virginia). In addition, my album track “couldn’t” is centered on playing thisversion of the Abacus.

Figure 2. Abacus version 3

Achieving a manageable control mapping between Abacus version 3 and the Max patch
Vox5 was a notable instance in which the physical object prompted evolution of the software.
My early attempts at mapping failed to acknowledge what the patch did well or how it might
effectively develop. For instance, I imagined one processing state in which Toggles 3-4 would
control sounding diatonic interval, ranging from binary output value 0 = mostly intervals smaller
than a minor third, to 3 = mostly intervals larger than a major sixth. The patch was neverequipped to output particular intervals. When I attempted to introduce such precise pitch control
to the patch, I felt I was going too far afield from the existing granulation and noise
specialization.
Ultimately I settled on the following control mapping for Abacus version 3 and theAutumn 2016 version of the Max patch:

12
Toggle 1

Toggle 2

Toggle 3

Toggle 4listen for undertone
singingsolo Layer-2 voices
cyclicallyrandom vocal processing

input to Layer-1 =voice signal / Layer-2

Toggles 5-8 each address a different Layer-2 voice
These toggles control one of two parameters, depending on Patch State:State 1 rhythmic/ pulsar granulation
State 2 (always pulsar) listen to/ ignore larger envelope rhythm
Toggle 5

Toggle 6

Toggle 7

Toggle 8

Layer-2 voice 1

Layer-2 voice 2

Layer-2 voice 3

Layer-2 voice 4

Table 1. Mapping: Abacus version 3, Autumn 2016 Max patch

My memory of this mapping became something of a mantra: “listen – solo – voxproc – route ||1-4.”2 The decision to map Toggles 5-8 to the four voices doing pulsar granulation proved
especially important for both musicality and mnemonic purposes. That decision coordinated withthe creation of two overarching patch states which differed in timbre, rhythm, and tempo.
The physical experience of interacting with the Abacus in several performances provided
much useful information about the patch and the sound, and influenced both how I performed
and how I later developed the patch. Most significantly, using the Abacus to alternate
rhythmic/pulsar granulation brought to my attention that I often preferred the sounds of pulsar
granulation over rhythmic. As a result, the current patch, Vox6, now achieves pulsar sounds
quickly. Likewise, because Abacus 3 allowed rapid alternation between Patch States 1 (fastrhythmic envelopes) and 2 (slow rhythmic envelopes), I readily noticed that the fast rhythmicenvelopes sounded awkward and nervous relative to the patient, contemplative sound of the slow

2

See ensuing discussion about intersections between text scores and the internal language of extended
voice practice.

13
envelopes. This prompted development of a probabilistic rhythm envelope system, nuanced byvariations in tempo and envelope length, in Vox6.
Finally, it is noteworthy that in performances with Abacus version 3, I also engaged withthe laptop. I often looked at the screen, which presented much useful information, including
values of rhythmic granulation and filtering, metering volume level, and recording start/ end. I
frequently hit laptop keys ‘r’ (record), ‘e’ (trigger parameter sets), and ‘p’ (generate pulsar
sounds), and I dragged the trackpad to control gain. Although it was interesting to perform as alaptopist, I desired more visual interaction with the audience and more manual interaction with
the Abacus.

Figure 3. Vox5 Max patch (with Abacus 3): viewed during performance

Abacus version 4 still includes eight toggles and an Arduino Teensy. It adds a button andthree potentiometers (now four potentiometers total), and removes an LED (now only one
present). It also uses less thermoplastic coverage so that some of the wiring is visible from

14
below. I gave two public performances in March 2017 using this version: the International
Women’s Day event of the Yorkshire Sound Women Network (Huddersfield, UK), and the 2017
Guthman Musical Instrument Competition (Atlanta, Georgia).

Figure 4. Abacus version 4

Figure 5. Abacus version 4, on mic stand15
In the control mapping of Abacus 4, control information is variably routed to four distinct
areas of the patch. I flip toggle 1 one, two, three, or four times to attend to the Voice signal,
Rhythmic granulation, Pulsar granulation, or 2d.wave~ processing respectively. There areseveral key points about this mapping. First, redundancy aids memory. For instance,
potentiometer 4 always controls gain, whether of voice, rhythmic/pulsar granulation, or 2d.
Toggle 1 routes control data to: Voice, Rhythmic gran., or Pulsar gran.
Fast-flip Toggle 1 # times to specify routing:1 flip = Voice 2/3 flips = Rhythmic/Pulsar gran. 4 flips = Wavetable
Vox

Btn.
hit =
rec. live
sample

Rhy.
Puls.
2d

hold =
automate
ctl.
masterfade in/out

Toggle 2
process/clean

Toggle 3
rand.
processing

Toggle 4
RESET

Pot. 1

Pot. 2““

un/mute

ST

len

“

“

“

“

“

“

“

“

freq.

Toggle 5transpose

Toggle 6
pong~

Toggle 7
delay

Toggle 8

Pot. 3Vox

Pot. 4
gain

Rhy.

solo

no env.,i.e. pops

ctl. var.

rec. tobuf. for
puls.

tempo

“

Puls.

“

rhythm &density“changebuffer

wait

“

2d

listen ctl.
freq.

LED on/off“

Table 2. Mapping: Abacus version 4, Vox6 patch

In addition, I cluster multiple parameters onto a single component whenever possible. For
instance, when attending to Pulsar granulation, Toggle 6 controls “rhythm and density,” which inthe patch is a constellation of random tempo, tutti versus soli rhythms, frequent or infrequent16
notes likely, and random ratio of sound to rest. The decision to cluster parameters together isbased on my frequent previous experiences of having made too many parameters controllable
during performance, and thus having difficulty remembering all parameters while still attending
to artistry. Clustering parameters and using randomization reduces what I have to remember inperformance, and gives me something interesting and partially unpredictable to respond to.
Finally, this mapping includes blank space, i.e., room to add more parameters.
The updates in Abacus version 4 have greatly influenced my performance practice. The
simple addition of a button and three potentiometers greatly increased control ability. The
accompanying Max patch, Vox6, shows little information in presentation mode, and the Abacus
mapping is deep but memorably structured. Thus, I spend more performance time and energy
engaging with voice, Abacus, and audience than with laptop.

Figure 6. Vox6 Max patch (with Abacus 4): viewed during performance

When performing with Abacus version 4, I have the strong sense that I am playing the
Abacus as instrument, and moreover improvising with the voice-electronics as cohesive whole. If

17
I have a particular sonic idea, I can usually execute this easily through only a few toggle flips.
But equally, in the process of getting to this desired state, I may happen upon a more suitable ormore interesting sound, and I may stop there.3 The Abacus helps me discover unpredictable sonicpossibilities, and demands that I continually work to coax a dialogue between voice andelectronics.
In addition, I increasingly seek out unique choreography for using the Abacus. For
instance, pressing and quickly releasing the button triggers recording and granulation. Butpressing and holding causes the patch to “listen and emulate control variance.” For instance, if I
hold the button and continually vary the Start Time potentiometer, the patch will register this andexecute similar Start Time variation (rate, depth) once I release the button. Notably, thisdemands particular choreography: I must bring my left hand up and over to hold the button while
the right hand manages the control component. On an immediate level, this is a visually
noticeable gesture which signals the onset of automation. In a larger sense, it is, reflexively, aconfiguration of body that highlights the dialogue between technology and body in my work.
The Abacus requires further development. My primary long-term goal is to shift the focus
even more toward the mouth. This could involve replacing manual control with, for instance, ashort-range infrared proximity sensor to read embouchure as control information.4 And/or, I
might remove the laptop from the setup, i.e., replace Arduino with Bela. This standalone Abacus
would be more portable and would permit continued exploration of the controller as instrument
in voice-electronics performances.
3

For instance, when I change patch state, potentiometer information updates to the new state but toggle
information does not. This is a source of interesting unpredictability in navigating the Abacus/Max setup.
4
An important objection to the infrared sensor/embouchure approach is that it may be too ocularcentric.
Scholars including Adriana Cavarero (2002) and Annette Schlichter (2011) have written of the pernicious
ocularcentrism which has for centuries dogged Western culture and, in particular, perceptions of the
vocalizing female body.

18
C. Vox6
Vox6, my current MaxMSP patch for voice-electronics performance, consolidates themusically successful parts of previous patches and expresses several of my musical goals.5 First,
I desire deep, recursive processing that retains something of the input timbre and temporality but
also suggests new timbre and temporality. Second, I desire a rich sonic field, i.e., the ability tomake the sound more or less dry, distant, incisive, etc. I achieve these two goals through a
combination of live sample manipulations (granulation and two-dimensional wavetable) andprocessing of the un-recorded signal (distortion, transposition, delay).6

Figure 7. Vox6

5

See Appendix E for screen shots of the full patch.
From a digital perspective, the difference between ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ sound is trivial or nonexistent.
But from an aesthetic perspective, I use live-signal treatment to give depth of field to complement
granulation’s forward, dry sonic output. This combination of live-signal and sample-based techniques
contributes to my argument that ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ methodologies overlap in extended voice practice.
6

19
Inspired by Sam Pluta’s (2012) discussion of modularity as a key component of his
composition and improvisation practice in SuperCollider, I made Vox6 modular and recursive.
Any of the four modes (voice, rhythmic granulation, pulsar granulation, wavetable) can be
granulated, wavetabled, or live-processed. Since all electronic sounds are live sample-based, thedigital output is fundamentally reliant on input from my vocal body. But I aim for complex
dialogue between voice and electronics: the voice feeds the system but also does much more, andthe electronics have a distinct sonic identity despite their derivation from voice. The electronics
are a prosthesis to my vocal body because they expand and inform what I the composerperformer can physically (sonically) do, and the resultant vocal-electronic body is a new cyborg
whole. But within this whole there are also differences between voice and electronics,
particularly in what each does well, so there is complex dialogue between them.
The ensuing discussion attends to granulation (mainly pulsar, with brief discussion ofrhythmic for context) and treatment of the live signal. I supplement these two primaryfunctionalities with 2d.wave~, treating live samples. I use this wavetable object as a source ofcontinuous sound to contrast the sound of granulation, which on the whole is stuttering and noncontinuous. This object easily accepts scaled potentiometer input as a sort of frequency/timbre
control. The wavetable module in Vox6 resembles my Bela-Pd work in that it is computationallylightweight and easy to perform with.

1. Pulsar granulation
Pulsar granulation sounds best to me when it is treating a buffer consisting of rhythmicgranulated voice, i.e., a buffer which already includes many sidebands and digital audio pops.
Pulsar-granulating a straight voice sample, by contrast, sounds too plain. Thus, I always step

20
through rhythmic granulation on the way to pulsar. Because the probabilistic structure of myrhythmic granulation can yield occasional silences, I use four voices doing the same type ofrhythmic granulation to sum to one buffer, whose consistent volume is effective for pulsar. In
other words, in order to achieve four complex and sonically interesting pulsar-granulation voices
in parallel, I use 16 rhythmic-granulation voices divided into four groups of four.
I begin each performance with vocal improvisation. After some amount of time, I trigger
recording-and-pulsar (Abacus button). From trigger to pulsar takes eight seconds: four seconds
to record a live vocal sample, and four more to do rhythmic granulation,7 which, as it occurs, isrecorded into a new live sample to be pulsar granulated. By default, rhythmic granulation does
t=0s

hit Abacus button to trigger record-and-pulsar
start recording voice (buffer 1)

4sstop recording voice (buffer 1)
send this buffer to rhy. gran. (muted)
random parameters of rhy. gran.
start recording rhy. gran. #1 (buffers 2a-d)

8sstop recording rhy. gran. #1 (buffers 2a-d)
send this buffer to pulsar gran.
hear pulsar gran.
new random parameters of rhy. gran.
start recording rhy gran. #2 (buffers 2e-h)

12 sstop recording rhy. gran. #2 (buffers 2e-h)

Table 3. Events after triggering record-and-pulsar

not send to audio out. Thus, the first electronic sounds, at eight seconds after trigger, are pulsar
granulation of rhythmically granulated voice. Also at eight seconds after trigger, a second roundof rhythmic granulation occurs with different parameters (i.e., yielding different timbre), and this7

See Appendix C for description of rhythmic granulation parameters.

21
records into a new live sample for pulsar. Rhythmic granulation is still muted, so these new
samples are a silent timbral alternative on hand for pulsar.
Once pulsar is running, I often enter a freely navigable phase of using the Abacus to
sculpt the sound. To sculpt pulsar, I flip Abacus toggle 1 three times to enter pulsar mode,
meaning the Abacus components communicate only to parameters of pulsar granulation. For
instance, if I want a more sustained buzzing sound, I lower the value for grain Length(potentiometer 2). This becomes the center length around which each of the four Pulsar voices
jitters (every 8-14 seconds). If I want a new rhythm/density profile, I flip toggle 6. If I dislike thecurrent pulsar timbres, I can switch to the extra set of rhythmic-granulation live samples (toggle8), which were silently recorded starting eight seconds after recording was triggered.
Meanwhile, I can easily switch to another mode, perhaps sculpting the vocal signal. I flip
Abacus toggle 1 once to enter voice mode. If I want transposition-delay, I flip on toggle 5. Thisrandomly selects one of two configurations: short bits of signal, short or long delay, largetransposition (arpeggiated vocoder-like); or long portions of signal, short delay, smalltransposition (flange-like). Then I can quickly get back to sculpting pulsar by flipping toggle 1
three times to return to pulsar mode.
In addition to sculptability, the main advantages of the pulsar functionality are its speed
and depth. In Vox6, it takes only eight seconds to record a source buffer, then do rhythmic
granulation while recording this to a new buffer for pulsar. In previous patches, this process took
several minutes. Initially, I had to vary all fourteen rhythmic granulation parameters by hand. I
found this was far too much to manage while still vocalizing artfully, so I simply composed acontrol routine and stopped bothering with most live control.8 In a later patch iteration, I
introduced the ‘hit e’ functionality, i.e., a single laptop keystroke to trigger a random cluster of
8

See Appendix B for sample control routine.

22rhythmic granulation parameters. But I still had to manually approve each rhythmic granulation
and record it to a new buffer for pulsar. In both of these patch versions – sculpting a parameterset by hand, or blasting random parameter sets until I found one I liked enough to record topulsar – it took several minutes to build up a choir of four pulsar voices.
This slow speed in earlier patches caused an idiosyncratic performance structure. For
instance, in Vox5 (Autumn 2016, corresponding with Abacus version 3), the first few minutes ofeach show were necessarily a preface section in which I established the pulsar voices. This felt
so clunky that I began to experiment with creating the pulsar sounds immediately before aperformance, or doing all the pre-work in my home studio and then performing with only the lastpart of the process, pulsar granulation (Bela, Pd). But along with the performative awkwardness,the slowness of getting to pulsar raised fundamental questions about liveness. Is it more ‘live’ tomake the pulsar sounds at home when rehearsing, or right before the performance, or during the
beginning of the performance? Do certain of these methods particularly enhance or hinder myability to connect with this digital performance partner in real time?
Vox6 is purposefully fast, a fact which is directly linked to the depth of the granulation
system. I use 16 rhythmic-granulation voices in parallel in order to achieve four pulsargranulation voices in parallel. If I do not like a certain sound, my options are to mute it or moveto the next sound. I no longer waste valuable mental energy9 on sculpting the perfectintermediary sound. This speed-depth combination also informs the vocal improvisation I can do.
When the patch was clunkier, I had to record a weirdly varied vocal improvisation – with the full
pitch and timbral gamut represented – so I could be sure to wind up with a wide range of pulsar
sounds. This was not always aesthetically pleasing. Now that pulsar is achieved relatively
9

It is inherently political for a woman to discuss using her “valuable mental energy” for artful
technological manipulation of her voice. This gets to the heart of my term presence, which I discuss indetail later.

23
quickly, I can vocalize in a way that more naturally fits the musical moment. If pulsar becomestagnant, it only takes eight seconds to change this.
Eight seconds to a significant change is certainly fast enough for my solo performances.
To my satisfaction, my solo sets to are increasingly ‘stream of consciousness’, moving smoothly
from one idea to the next, in large part because of the speed and depth of pulsar. I am curious totry this patch in a group setting. My previous attempts at group improvisation (various groups,
various earlier patch versions) were challenging. It was difficult to complement – much lessmatch – other players’ pitch and rhythmic material. But with Vox6 I can more quickly achieve
variations in timbre, texture, and density. I can, for instance, vocally match a pitch from otherplayers, and eight seconds later get this pitch out of pulsar in digitally refracted form (i.e., noisier
and/or with added harmonics). Though Vox6 is mainly oriented toward solo performances, an
important upcoming research step will be to test it in group contexts.

2. Live signal treatment
LiveSig, the part of the patch which processes live signals in Vox6, consists of four
modules: distortion (pong~), transposition-delay (2 settings), reverb (dense delay), and sparsedelay (1-5 taps). Any module can be used singly, or a pair can be used together: either pong~ ortransposition-delay, plus one of the delay settings.
The transposition-delay module, which uses a poly~ object (48 voices), has two settings
with distinct envelope length, delay amount, and transposition amount. The first setting, whichvaguely resembles a vocoder with arpeggiation, treats short bits of signal (300 ms) with largetransposition (several steps up or down) and short or long delay (50-100 ms, or 1000-1050 ms).
The second setting, which resembles a flanger, treats long bits of signal (2200 ms) with small

24transposition (20-50 cents up or down) and short delay (15-100 ms). In both settings, a single
trigger to poly~ actually sends in triplicate, yielding a dense, clustered sound. This moduleachieves transposition and delay by sending a V-shaped ramp to tapout~.10
The transposition-delay module, in other words, achieves transposition via time
stretching rather than by using FFT. Previous patch versions used FFT for transposition without
time stretching, but I disliked the tinny timbres that resulted, and FFT-based work, especiallywhen proliferated in numerous abstractions, was computationally expensive. I generally prefer
the timbres of transposition-through-time-stretching, particularly when transposing by only asmall amount. In the first setting of transposition-delay, which transposes by a large amount, I
combat the timbre issue by using a short envelope length, so the focus goes more to clusteringthan to individual timbres.
I included the pong~ object for several reasons. First, I admire the vocal distortion soundsof, for instance, Maja Ratkje and Andrea Pensado, and pong~ outputs similar timbres. Second, I
felt that the parallel processing in my previous Max patches – EQ, ring modulation, delay, FFTbased transposition – yielded sound output too similar to the input. By contrast, distortion yields
what I consider more complex and interesting sounds, and thus helps me push the boundaries ofwhat voice is and how it can sound. Finally, on a conceptual level, I am interested in the impact
on listeners of female vocal timbre. In the 2016 US Presidential Election campaign season,
Hillary Clinton was criticized for having a “shrill” voice (Khazan 2016). I disagree with thisassessment; pong~ helps me demonstrate how I define ‘shrill’ and how this sound can beaesthetically valuable.

10

Ramp values are calculated using empirically derived regression equations. See Appendix D.

25
D. Liveness, voice-electronics interaction
Liveness is at issue in my work because live samples and live signal are processed tocreate a digital improvisation partner of sorts. In my recent work I consider whether granulation,
specifically the actions of recording and sculpting granulation parameters, does or does notcontribute to liveness. If neither the initial vocal utterance nor the live processing of this live
sample is included in the track, is it really ‘live’? Or, does advance preparation of the buffers-forpulsar, then sudden un-muting of these buffers during the piece, give a greater sense of
spontaneity? In other words, there is a temporal remove or distorted liveness implicit in myAutumn 2016 Abacus3-Vox5 setup. I have responded to this in my live work with the Pd-Bela
setup and the Abacus4-Vox6 setup, and in my album tracks with their varying balances ofimprovisation and composition.
My vocal sounds, ranging from singing to extended techniques, occupy a spectrum of
normativity. In my early voice-electronics performances, pitched diatonic singing functioned as away of contextualizing, or rendering acceptable, the non-normative vocal sounds. But further
performance research (building on extant compositional scholarship, e.g. Wishart 1996) has
revealed additional audio-rate oscillators in the vocal tract, such as air against the hard palate, orteeth on lips. In other words, the vocal folds are far from the only source of pitch in the vocal
mechanism.
Nevertheless, normative pitched singing and speech do serve an important rhetoricalfunction in extended voice, suggesting archetypes such as “opera singer” and “militant leader”(Ratkje, quoted in Elektronski 2017). Most extended voice practitioners, including myself andothers whose vocal and electronic sounds are often noisy, utilize speech or singing at leastoccasionally. This use of a wide range of vocal sounds complements the electronic extension of

26
voice. Technology is an indispensible prosthesis to voice, and, by treating body as a kind oftechnology, variation in vocal techniques in fact highlights the deep, complex relationshipbetween voice and electronics.
PitchedHarmonics (vowel)

slow alternations [u] (harmonics 1-2 above
fundamental)

Undertone singing

false vocal folds (inverted harmonics 1-2 below
fundamental)

Ululation

repeated chest-modal register alternation,
avg. rate 4 Hz, avg. depth P4

Sing on inhale

pure or noisy (resembles bit-crushing withharmonics 1-2 above fund.)Lip squeakmoist lips; upper teeth rest on lower lip; inhale;
polyphonic

Pursed lips

pitched squeak, (sub)audio rate

Pressed exhale
squeakoscillation high in vocal tract/ post-nasal

Unpitched / noisy
Duck callexhale, air resonates in mid-back of hard palatenear right molars

Glottal stop

beginning/end of note

Lip buzz

usually sub-audio rate, occasional audio rate
(octave 3)

Pressed voice/fry

effective with discrete notes; can merge into noise
oscillator

Epiglottal click

in- / egressive, single click or several in rapid
succession

Table 4. Extended vocal techniques (selected), Warren

27
Several of my frequent thoughts while performing, which guide my realization of voiceelectronics dialogue, are: “needs more/ different,” “enough,” “stop,” and “copy.”11 It is difficult
to pinpoint exactly how these frequent self-instructions translate to sound, but I will attempt to
explain by providing several performance examples.

(1) I have been doing short lines (3-4 seconds) of egressive epiglottal clicks, separated bypauses for breath (5 seconds), for about thirty seconds. Slight timbral variety is needed, so I
introduce ingressive epiglottal clicks which occasionally break to short pitched inhalations (halfa second each).
(2) I am experimenting with delay and distortion on the voice (Bela, Pd). I notice thepulsar sounds have gotten a bit stagnant, so I quit vocalizing for the moment. I turn pulsar to treat
only the inhaled sample, and I vary start time. The last 250 ms of the buffer, I quickly recall,were almost silent, so this yields a break in the sound output which I use for phrasing.
(3) I trigger record-and-pulsar, but when pulsar starts eight seconds later it is too busy
relative to the voice. I flip rhythm-density (Abacus toggle 6) several times until finding a calmer
rhythmic state, and lower grain length and wait time to give low-pitch buzzing sounds.
(4) Rhythmic granulation is at a high tempo, yielding a clicking, distorted sound, so I
attempt a messily structured line of consonants and saliva to emulate the digital noise. This
vocalization sounds a bit lackluster relative to the electronics, so I start doing loud popping “dah”
sounds instead.
(5) I have granulated a low-range sung pitch, and the grain length is long, so the original
vocal timbre is audible. I lower the granulation volume and loudly screech a sustained high pitch11

See subsequent discussion of inner voice and text scores.

28(circa C6) for contrast. The second time I screech, I flip on delay. I stop screeching and instead
turn on the 2d module for a similarly high frequency but more markedly digital timbre.
(6) I have a nice, diatonic (roughly), arpeggiated pad going by continuously singing one
pitch and sending this to transposition-delay (first setting). I refine the [u] vowel I am singing,making this tone especially pure. I start sending rhythmic granulation to the same transposition
unit. It sounds as though the digital sounds are clumsily trying to keep up with the vocal. I
alternate flipping the send on and off a few times, every few seconds, to foreground the halting
quality of this poly~ setting.
(7) The whole thing is too much and I want a clean break. I trigger Reset to go
immediately to dry voice only, everything else muted.

After performances in which I use noisy vocal techniques, listeners frequently reportfeeling either mesmerized by the similarity between vocal and electronic sounds, and/or
concerned that vocal injury was likely. These attitudes reflect a Western cultural paradox: nonlinguistic (i.e., noisy or non-laryngeal) voice has an entrancing, almost meditative potential, andyet, almost instinctively, it reads as unhealthy or disordered. There is very little scholarship on
voice-electronics intersections, and popular reviews of extended voice, particularly its noise
potentials, heavily favor demeaning or de-humanizing descriptions of practitioners, such as
aliens or intruders (Attn:Magazine 2014), primal or feral creatures (Moliné 2007), or
menstruating women (Neset 2003). Much of the impetus behind my own extended voice work is
to normalize a wider range of vocal sounds, and to invite inclusivity by suggesting that vocal

29
experimentation can be both healthy (Borch et al 2004) and reminiscent of our daily interactions
with sound (Demers 2010).12
Our impoverished vocabulary for describing our experience of listening to extended
voice runs parallel to frequent ocularcentrism in assessment of the vocalist. For instance, alistener (non-vocalist computer music composer) once commented that they initially felt concernthat my use of extended techniques would be damaging, but on observing my shirt billowing inand out, they realized I was using good diaphragm-centric technique to effect bursts of sound,and injury was unlikely.13
Since my medium is sound, I prefer to be assessed aurally. I dislike musical assessments
based on my appearance, which I believe reinforce erroneous notions of the normative female
body and what can be done with it. One approach I have begun to attempt is didacticism: thesound itself somehow demonstrates to listeners that they should engage with my work aurally,
not visually. But I continue to have performance experiences in which, despite my best efforts,much of the audience seems to care more about how I look than how I sound. Thus, I am wary ofover-reliance on audience perspectives. Instead, I keep returning to the personalized, sonic goalof achieving deep, meaningful dialogue between voice and electronics.

E. filament
My album filament began as a compilation. I imagined that each track would feature
distinct vocal techniques, technical methods, or compositional approaches. But gradually my

12Demers (2010) argues that electronic music is especially conducive to aesthetic listening, i.e.,intermittent listening in which attention may freely turn to extra-musical sound. In fact, electronic music
encompasses seemingly external sounds by acknowledging their aesthetic character. Because we use our
voices in everyday contexts, extended voice has the unique potential to connect to daily sound experienceand participation.
13
Laura Mulvey’s (2009, orig. 1975) now well-known theorization of the male gaze is germane here.

30
thinking about the album evolved. A significant inspiration was Ami Yoshida’s album Tiger
Thrush, whose 99 “howling voice” miniatures contain and articulate pauses which question not
only the sound but also the temporality of musicking. I concluded that artful variation ofsounding and silent durations would help frame the wide stylistic variety I desired for filament.
Another key inspiration was Ratkje’s album Voice (2001), which she co-produced withexperimental duo and frequent collaborators Jazzkammer [NO]. Tracks 1, 5, 7, and 11 (of 11)
each use one or both of two similar materials, which are distant and ethereal, with a looping
organ-like melody line. This multiple recurrence of identical or similar sounds acts as a linking
device from beginning to end of the album. Similarly, I worked to develop sonic continuity
across my album, though not in quite as literal a fashion as in Ratkje’s album. For instance, mytracks “ul” and “For one” both use dense layering of voice, without additional electronics. Other
tracks represent distinct versions of the Max-Abacus setup, or various uses of the Bela-Pd setup.
An important consideration in my album is the idea of voice and electronics as source
material for each other at the DSP level. For the track “quantum,” I did a noise improvisation anda separate vocal improvisation using the Bela-Pd setup, then made several subsequent iterations
using each as the modulator signal for the other, with various smoothing algorithms. For “eager
to die,” my Bela-Pd solo performance (with AKA trio, December 2016, Manchester, UK)became the input to a 2d.wave~ object. I dynamically varied input phase values to the wavetablein order to control timbre. In sum, composition, improvisation, ‘live’, and ‘recorded’ are multiply
combined and re-combined in this album.

31
III. SURVEY OF EXTENDED VOICE

A. Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF)
Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF) [FI, DE] creates work engaging with, in her words, “voice,noise, off-beats and radical sounds and this weird listening aspect involved with club aesthetics”(Taylor 2016). She is prolific, collaborates often, and works in a variety of media including
albums, installations, and field recording trips.14 This discussion contrasts tracks from two of her
albums, and provides brief context about her recent practice as a whole. AGF’s live setup
generally includes laptop, mixer, handheld microphone, and one or more control surfaces. She
has two primary modes of performing, which I term “sound poet” and “DJ,” that involve
different proportions of vocalizing and controlling. In sound poet mode, AGF mostly vocalizes(sing-song speech) but frequently taps a touch pad to control delay and reverb on the voice, forinstance. In DJ mode, AGF vocalizes little and undertakes complex choreography to achieve live
mixing, rhythmic triggering, etc. Both modes can occur in the span of one performance.
The third track on AGF’s 2003 album Westernization Completed, “PRIVATEbirds,” is arecorded manifestation of what I term her “sound poet” mode of performing live. AGF’s acoustic
voice is prominent throughout the track as she sings-speaks the lyrics. The pointillistic
soundscape moves quickly but mostly monophonically from one melodic sound to another. As
the piece progresses, gradually more and longer pauses intervene.
Verses and choruses bear slightly different harmonic material. Verses emphasize
electronically synthesized pitches C and F in a seeming dominant-tonic relationship. There is a
registral division, such that most Cs occur in a middle or treble register, while Fs occur in a bass
14

For instance, AGF writes: “I facilitated the Sonic Wilderness camp in Hailuoto [Finland] 2016” (GreieRipatti 2016).

32
register. Choruses, on the other hand, emphasize diminished fifths. For instance, a progression ofminor thirds after each repeated half of the chorus – E4-G4, G4-B♭4, A3-C4 – creates a sense of
harmonic instability which complements the contrasting desires for isolation or companionshipexpressed in the lyrics.
Textural and temporal choices give “PRIVATEbirds” a feeling of suspended animation.
This track has few sounds at once, and the tonic pedal is elaborated chordally rather thantimbrally. Electronic manipulations of voice, such as granulation and distortion, are infrequentand soloistic. This too aligns with AGF’s “sound poet” mode, which puts voice in greater relief
from electronics than does “DJ” mode, which values the holistic soundscape.
Track 9 of AGF’s 2016 album Kon:3p>UTION to: e[VOL]ution, “Dis Dance,” resembles“PRIVATEbirds” but partly bridges the gap from “sound poet” to “DJ” performance mode. This
track contains a low tonic pedal of about 169 Hz (E quarter-sharp 3). Occasionally, backgroundpercussive sounds and syllables of AGF’s vocal performance are tuned to the mediant at 214 Hz(G 3/4-sharp 3), articulating a major key area. The first minute includes the tonic pedal andvarious background sounds, primarily clicks and scrapes, often with 2-3 seconds of audible
reverb. Enveloped bits of voice singing [ü] occur from 0:07-0:12 at the high subdominant, about452 Hz. Various scraping ostinati, all at differing speeds, occurs starting at 0:25, growing out
from similar rhythmic action in the pedal tone. AGF’s vocal performance begins at 0:52 and,though spoken like much of her vocal work in previous albums, contains an entirely new
optimism. Perhaps this is because she tunes her voice, both technologically and acoustically, tothe prevailing major key. I can imagine her (or my?) face upturned to the sun while vocalizing.15
Rumblings of the lower tonic, two octaves down, enter at about 3:00.
15

Ocularcentrism is, unfortunately, a deeply entrenched response to voice. For instance, Connor (2000)
suggests that listeners customarily imagine the vocalist’s body when listening to recorded voice. I am

33
AGF’s recent work seems to demonstrate particular investment in recorded media anddiscussion-based live formats, rather than ‘live performance’ per se. For instance, theperformances page of her poemproducer website notes, “I try to move less. fly less. love more.
but i still sing for you. …” (Greie-Ripatti 2017c) Likewise, another of her sites, antyegreie.com,
categorizes her work using many types of projects seemingly distinct from strict performance,
including Interpretation, Radio Commission, Performance Score, Curation, Single, and Voice(Greie-Ripatti 2017b). Though the album format has consistently been crucial to AGF’s output,
it is important to acknowledge that her work also innovates in myriad intersections ofcomposition and liveness.
Relative to extended voice as a whole, AGF’s work contains much more obvious politicaland social valence. In the past this has taken a more aesthetic path. For instance, the 2003 album
Westernization Completed poetically considers intersections of language, identity, andtechnology. But as AGF’s social work has become more incisive, for instance through her
female:pressure blog featuring women using music technology, so too have her albums become
more politically direct.

B. Marie Guilleray
Marie Guilleray [NL, FR] is an expert in creating space for subtle vocal sounds and using
electronic extensions to imbue each vocal sound with a unique temporal profile. Her minimal
setup – laptop and microphone, and sometimes her novel glove controller – achieves animpressively wide range of sounds. Guilleray stands relatively still, looking slightly upward
while singing or gazing intently at the laptop when changing presets (laptop interaction occurs at

interested in how extended voice re-values listening instead of seeing. But body is still germane; even I
can’t avoid thinking about it sometimes while making or listening to extended voice.

34
least once per minute). Her streamlined approach to the electronic prosthesis draws attention to
the temporal interactions between acts of vocalizing and acts of controlling, and to the timbral
similarity of their resultant sounds.
Guilleray’s solo composition-performance Entre chien et loup (2012; voice, tape, live
electronics) is a deconstruction of harmonic ideas, vocal timbres, and the act of communication.
The piece is characterized by distinct formal sections, many of which are introduced by a struck
metal sound and/or a recording of crickets. Each section emphasizes either harmonic or
percussive content: possibly a formal-level creative interpretation of vowels versus consonants invoice. Most of the piece foregrounds the indistinguishability of live and pre-composed sound.
The application of memory technologies to the live vocal signal (for instance, delaying
enveloped bits of sound of varying lengths, thereby creating a morphing collage) brings voice
into the digital realm, emphasizing the similarity and cooperation between vocalizing body andelectronic prosthesis.
Early sections are prominently intervallic. For instance, a plucked B4 begins the pieceand quickly decays to a gong-like dyad, during which the voice sings [a] and [u] sounds on F#4,
G4, and G#4. At 0:40, a struck metal followed by a recording of crickets, apparently tuned to F#
and G# in octave 5, marks a new gesture. The next gestural section, beginning at 1:30, lasts
about as long as the first two combined, and uses a sharply prepared by a struck metal both toprepare and elaborate this new material. Gentle vocal hisses and exhalations, multiply layered,enter after the first metal strike. Panning plosive [k] sounds prepare another struck metal sound,
this one thinner in timbre (i.e., more spectral energy concentrated in higher frequencies) thanwere the previous metals. Text seems present but is unintelligible, and each consonant or35
whispered vowel is given unique delay-based treatment. Some delay clouds are brief, whileothers adopt a quasi-pedal function after settling into a quiet feedback loop.
Middle sections become more spectral in that they are less confined to the chromaticscale. The quieter dynamic level around 3:00 is a subtle marker of a new section. Vocal andpiano material take up new pitches and slightly faster rhythms in similar registers as before. At
3:47, a B4 pluck and crickets initialize a gesture similar to the first gesture of the piece. The
voice soon returns, now (4:50) singing [a] on B4 and [u] on A#4, a tonic-leading tone oscillation
which suggests some gravity but, in its spectral rather than functional harmonic context, is more
unsettling than cadential. A high sine tone with tremolo, C quarter-sharp 6, underscores the
microtonal character of this section.
The conclusion of the piece is unique. Ingressive and egressive breathing throughcavernous embouchure, paralleled by continuous salivated lines, occurs during the last minute of
the piece. The cavernous mouth is evocative but mysterious, suggesting something evil, or
perhaps a state of injury or illness. Meanwhile, the saliva sounds are less emotive: primarily asignal of the diverse and unusual sounds the body can make. This embodied juxtaposition ofemotion and quasi-scientific demonstration is powerful, and possible only through the electronic
prosthesis which expands the temporal and timbral capabilities of the vocalizing body.
Guilleray frequently improvises with other electronic musicians. Her performance “Après
la mer” (2014) with frequent collaborator Johan van Kreij is a prime example. In the beginningof the set, Guilleray’s contribution consists of sung downward glissandi beginning around E4.
Variable delay and transposition create a gentle microtonal cloud of digitally processed voicearound her live performance. Around 1:15, the voice becomes more of a cloud, consisting of
distant delays around pitches B3-C4. From the audio recording alone, it is unclear whether this36material derives from live vocalization or pre-samples. Guilleray’s novel glove controller,
designed and built in collaboration with van Kreij, potentially enables either live or sampledwork. (Guilleray’s Masters thesis (2012) discusses both granulation techniques and live signal
treatment.) This sustained texture, which has discernibly vocal timbre and [u] vowel content but
digital-sounding continuity, breaks into enveloped bits of sound at the end of the line.
Next, Guilleray whispers quiet but forceful consonants (e.g., “sah!”), which are delayed;
she then moves to humming B3, then singing pitches around B5 in a thin tone. Chorusing ofthese high pitches begins, and this material again dissolves in short bits of sound. Guilleray
returns to [s] sounds, which are active across the stereo field, for a short time. Pressed-voice
quasi-speech, almost glossolalia, begins about 4:45. Consonants, slightly more salivated than
before and now punctuated by occasional screeches, complement van Kreij’s choppy, quiet,
noise-like material. After this, there are about two minutes of material which is not discernibly
vocal; from the audio recording alone, it is difficult to know if this is a solo by van Kreij, or if
Guilleray contributes some sounds.
At 8:00, Guilleray takes up sung pitches again, beginning with A4-G#4 lines, both live
and delayed, using vowels [i] and [a]. The slightly whiney timbre of this singing alludes
obliquely to the characteristic sound of much vocoder work, a subtle but sophisticated gesture
which instantly puts the voice and the digital into close dialogue. This material transforms into a
vocoded line, which has a slightly sad or introspective character. This line jumps up an octave
and is soon replaced by lip trills and duck call-like hisses produced by breath and saliva. The
conclusion is frenetic, with screechy interruptions to whooshy saliva sounds complicatedtemporally by variable delay.

37
C. Stine Janvin Motland
Stine Janvin Motland [DE, NO] is outstanding in her use of extended vocal techniques;
her stamina and range are exceptional. She deploys electronics with a light touch in order toforeground the voice itself. Repetition, either acoustic or looping, is significant. In addition,
Motland often uses field recordings, which for her act as a point of engagement with voice assolo versus ensemble instrument. Her live electronic setup includes a mixer and one or moreanalog delay pedals; wires proliferate, suggesting that she has pre-composed processing statesand possibly feedback loops. Motland stands facing the audience, singing into the microphone
and moving rhythmically with the music. At important formal moments (at most once perminute), Motland turns to the table of gear at her side and hits a button or twists a knob to change
delay values. That Motland keeps this techy-looking arrangement at lateral arm’s length issuggestive of her desire to treat voice as central.
In her solo voice-electronics “pop experiment” project Stine II, Motland creates loopand-variation textures using vocal samples, synthesized loops, and field recordings. Though
Stine II is a solo project, field recordings contribute to a collage of which the voice is only one
part. For instance, in the track “Born in An Early Age,” the looped text “I was born in a very
early age” gradually draws attention to the melodic content of speech. New vocal loops enter,
containing similar but nonequivalent text, and gradually the voice becomes a rhythmic-melodic
texture unto itself. Though Stine II alludes to work by (broadly speaking) ‘pop’ producers who
use pre-existing vocal samples, Motland’s work has a very different valence because the sampled
voice is her own. In other words, Motland’s work as Stine II alludes to the working methodologyof the independent producer, but has more presence (as I will later define it) because, in sampling38
her own voice, there is no temporal or personal distance to be inferred between producer andvocalist.16
Motland’s piece Fake Synthetic Music (2016; voice, delay pedals) is, in her words:
a driving imitation of melodic synthetic sequences and an outspoken tribute to past andpresent pioneers of electronic music and rave deconstruction. A game of true or false,
psychoacoustic and high-frequency exhaustion for voice, echo, and spatial distribution.
(Motland 2016a)
Figure 7 gives a partial transcription of the NMASS 2016 version (approx. 12’) but Motland’s
website also includes a shorter version, Cynteart 2016, with similar pitch and rhythmic material.
In my transcription, regular noteheads represent acoustically sung pitches; x-noteheads, delayed
taps.

Figure 8. Fake Synthetic Music (Motland 2016), excerpt

Timbre and repetition are of the utmost importance in Fake Synthetic Music. The very
notion of singing breaks down in such a high register and for such a prolonged duration. The
variable delay acts as an aid to listeners’ imagination. Although the audience sees Motland
vocalizing and observes from her stage position that she considers her vocalization central, auralacclimation over time leads to confusion about whether that sound is really voice, and whether it
16

Motland’s album In Labour (2014) takes a related but distinct approach to voice use and authorship.
This album was produced by Lasse Marhaug [NO], frequent collaborator of Maja Ratkje and co-producerof Ratkje’s pivotal album Voice. In Labour unites field recordings and extended vocal techniques(sometimes looped). Here, though field recordings are used in collaboration with a producer, they take abackground position while voice, the soloist, engages with the various indoor/outdoor recording spaces.

39
is emerging from her mouth in real time. Especially in octave six, the timbre of Motland’scontrolled, skillful shrieks is almost indistinguishable from synthesized sound. Though Motland
writes of exhaustion, her stamina is the more salient feature; her treatment of voice more closely
resembles a synthesizer with slight human ‘imperfections’ (microtones, glissandi, etc.) than, forinstance, a vocoded sound which is still centrally vocal in origin. Motland’s nuanced dovetailingof electronic and extreme vocal timbres is a unique instantiation of electronic prosthesis to the
vocalizing body.

D. Andrea Pensado
Andrea Pensado [US, AR] often performs using – along with laptop, mixer, and one ormore hand/foot controllers – a headworn microphone, which few other extended voicepractitioners use. Her vocal performance is highly expressive, ranging from whispering toscreamed outbursts, so the fixed distance between microphone and mouth has practical utility infollowing her motion; it also blurs the difference between voice, electronics, gesture, and control
even more than in other extended voice performances.
In her 2015 album Without Knowing Why and her recent live performances, Pensado
explores a variety of voice-noise interactions. The titular character in “Rondo con Andreita” islikely the doll with which Pensado sometimes performs live (e.g., Back Alley Theater
performance, Washington DC, Sep 2014) and which is mentioned in the album liner notes. In
fact, “Rondo” and the Back Alley performance seem separate versions of the same material,
where the A section of the rondo form consists of whispering or quiet speech, little processed,
while the alternating contrasting sections are much noisier. These noise sections arecharacterized by rapid timbral changes (often 2-4 times per second). The noise initially follows

40
the melodic and/or rhythmic contour of Pensado’s voice but in later non-A sections grows more
independent and increasingly masks the voice. Around 4:30, Pensado foregrounds therelationship between left and right channels, which in one moment are quite similar (perhaps
filtered, delayed versions of the same material) and in the next moment totally distinct.
Every rhythmic line seems hand-touched, as though Pensado is manually controllingsynthesis or deep processing of samples (e.g., granulation). Nevertheless, harmonic structuring
and rapid register changes within the noise material (6:30) imply that pitch- or spectrumfollowing of the live vocal input may partially drive the electronic sounds.
Near the end of “Rondo” and Back Alley, there is a lengthy sample of Argentine tangomusic with orchestral and sung parts (perhaps from the 1950s, judging from recording quality).
Pensado sings along, and her singing and the recording are variably noise-ified. This recalls
Hollywood tropes of garbled communication perhaps through weak radio signal or transmission
from outer space.
The humor and weirdness of Andrea Pensado’s use of a ventriloquist’s dummy
apparently named “little Andrea” augment the questions of control raised in both studio and live
versions of the piece. The voice can be used for both gesture and control, and these functions
sometimes become indistinguishable in Pensado’s sound. The apparent spectral following which
drives synthesis is evidence of hands-free vocal-gesture work. Yet Pensado also uses her hands
to animate the doll as though it is speaking or intently listening (visible in the Back Alley video),
and these motions sometimes seem to trigger sonic changes. The doll may contribute to the senseof hand-sculpted rhythmic content, or this audio-visual link may be completely imagined. The
rapidity of timbral changes further obscures control source.

41
Notably, although the prevalence of and frequent changes in harsh noise timbres suggest
a kind of anarchy, compositionally-trained phrasing lends a held or structured quality. Gestures
are not random, but rather occur within some structure. For instance, the garbled, chorused
speaking voice beginning at 3:07 in the left channel uses quantized, almost vocoded, frequencies
within the range of about a minor sixth. Noisy sections do not begin abruptly, but are instead
prepared by brief, growing interruptions often panned centrally.
Another track from Without Knowing Why, “¿gnunülulúk!,” exhibits freer formal
structure than the straightforward alternating sections of “Rondo,” but shares a similar noise
aesthetic. The low click pulse beginning at 0:50, panned center, grows organically into a soloistic
line, then returns to a pulse, and alternates in this fashion several times. Though much of thistrack is effectively a voice-electronics duet, the electronics in particular are inflected with great
detail so they variably draw more or less attention away from voice. Initially at 2:10, and more
assertively at 2:20, low synthesized lines are introduced with varying harmonics emphasized. At
first these sounds seem to provide stasis against the actively pitched, texted but unintelligible
voice. But within seconds this line begins to be interrupted, for a few seconds at a time, by burstsof distinct noise including “eh! eh!” upward glissandi, which are seemingly bitcrushed vocal
samples. In other words, the electronics line seems deeply conflicted about whether to remain
static or to burst forth into a more dynamic profile; meanwhile, Pensado’s live vocal
performance is arguably upstaged even as her sampled voice is incorporated into the electronics.
Pensado’s frequent changes in electronic timbre are unique in the landscape of extended
voice. They may indicate that she is less beholden to her material than are other extended voicepractitioners, who tend to allow each sound to last longer, during which time the audiencearguably becomes more deeply immersed. In personal correspondence with the author, Pensado

42states, “I try to avoid mannerisms that are associated with the ‘noise aesthetics’, but of course,
sometimes I do them, because I can’t help but being influenced by the material I’m working
with.” From a cybernetics perspective, Pensado’s work may be considered more noisy than
Ratkje’s (who also self-identifies as working with noise) because it contains more uniqueinformation in less time.
This protean quality may arise in part from deep familiarity with the capabilities of hertechnology. Though Pensado identifies as an improviser who takes a “highly intuitive” approach
to "using Max as her main programming tool” (Pensado 2017), there is nonetheless the sense thather utterances are tailored to what the patch does well, for instance speech with larger thannormal frequency range to provide interesting fodder for noise synthesis. Of course, this is not toassert a value difference between different rates of timbral change or different software uses. But
for Pensado and other extended voice practitioners, the relationship with one’s technology
influences the formal and vocal gestures that are accessible and prevalent.

E. Maja S. K. Ratkje
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje [NO] is prolific in solo and group contexts. Her work
involves slow sculpture of form through gradual sonic evolution of the vocal-electronic body.
Ratkje uses a relatively large setup, often including laptop and microphones (stand-mounted andin-mouth), analog synthesizers and midi controllers, and a mixer. Her performances display
impressive choreography to control of this wide range of equipment and sound. Ratkje engages
most frequently with the midi controller and the in-mouth mic, which yield either immediate ordelayed changes in sound. Ratkje’s rich, playful approach to the electronic prosthesis
complicates the temporality of vocalization and relates gestural and control actions.

43
The percentage of performance time spent vocalizing (broadly speaking, that is, includinginter-phrase pauses) varies markedly among Ratkje’s solo voice-electronics sets. For instance, in
her Kontraste (2012) and Punkt (2013) sets, Ratkje vocalizes for about 75% of the time, while inher Kongsberg (2015) set, only about 45%. This parallels variation in gear: Ratkje took moreanalog equipment to the Kongsberg performance and was excited about incorporating these
instruments into the performance, whereas she took less gear to Kontraste and Punkt and thus
utilized relatively more vocal sounds (Ratkje 2016).
Ratkje states that each voice-electronics performance is improvised (Kjus and Dansielson2016). However, some broad rules demarcate the sonic and technical basis of Ratkje’s
improvisation in solo versus group contexts. For instance, the chirping sample which loops forthe first ten (of forty) minutes of the Punkt set also loops for several minutes midway through theKongsberg set two years later. To my knowledge, Ratkje has not employed this sample in group
improvisations; it may not be flexible enough to suit an ensemble’s potentially rapid changes inmusical direction. In other words, improvisation is always crucial to Ratkje’s voice-electronics
work, but the character of this improvisation varies by context.
Ratkje’s solo set at the Punkt festival exemplifies her typical strategy of building up a
detailed loop (often from live vocalization), allowing this to loop for several minutes, andmeanwhile adding more loops or a vocal melody over top. Throughout, Ratkje gives
compositional attention to form: for instance, a crucial break in the action occurs at 32:00, about
three-quarters through the set. Though a section change is prefaced for several minutes with theremoval of the bass and the addition of some scratches and high, LFO-gliss analog sounds, thedeparture of the Ak [u] at 32:16 is the real indicator of a new section. Over two minutes, Ratkje

44builds up a new looped background using a pair of finger cymbals and a high-pitch analog
oscillator. Then she introduces a new mid-range (octave 4) sung vocal melody with unclear text.
A pulsing synthesized line follows her vocal melody a perfect fifth below, suggesting that vocal
pitch following drives this synth. Another synth with grinding, saw-like timbre remains at
ominously low volume but bursts upward in volume and pitch content at 37:15 and 39:05.
The vocal melody reaches its local maximum volume and pitch, E5, at 39:40 while thepulsing synth – which has combined timbral and rhythmic profiles of the earlier voice-following
and contrapuntal synths – vies for attention. This pulse quickly becomes an almost audio-ratebuzz at a low, ominous place in the mix, a transition covered by delayed saliva sounds. In the last
two minutes, there is an ambiguous resolution as the music moves from the previous minor to a
related major key; finally, the electronics drop out and Ratkje ends the set by singing [sa] on theupper tonic, B5. These last ten minutes, which recall the ethereal, longer-lasting loops of the first
three-quarters but form a significant departure through more sensitive voice-electronics
interactions, illustrate something of the formal and communicative sophistication which Ratkje
repeatedly mentions as important to her music.
Ratkje is also prolific in group contexts. The album Rasaka (2016), a collaboration
between Ratkje and the jazz trio Säkä (saxophone, drums, bass), consists of two twenty-minutetracks. Each track is apparently a one-shot recording trimmed out of a longer studio performance.
Ratkje employs two primary techniques: non-exact loops (mostly sampling unpitched noisy
sound, for instance saliva, consonants, or hisses) and processed live vocal signal (either
speech/yelling or non-laryngeal pitched material such as inhaled squeaks). Ratkje uses acontroller mapped to a Csound patch (Kjus and Danielsen 2016) which likely effects the45detailed, non-exact loops, while bussing to distortion pedals permits real-time mixing ofprocessing on the live voice.
Improvisation with non-signifying, often rapid clusters of phonemes, such as “gada-gadaga,” is an important technique in Ratkje’s repertoire. Ratkje undercuts the traditional associations
between speech, intimacy, and the present, however, through looping, such that speech
sometimes overlaps with noisy hisses. Within the recorded medium it is difficult to tell which
vocal sounds are live and which are recently sampled. This speech and looping work is
especially effective in Rasaka since the trio’s often noisy sounds further obscure live versus
sampled voice source (e.g., 6:15 in Track 2).
Some similar details apply to Ratkje’s varied loops and processed live signal, including
spectral variety and distortion, LFO gain envelopes or ring modulation, density variation, andcontrol-rate hard pan alternation (for instance, rate 4 Hz at about 2:00). Arguably the mostskillful part of Ratkje’s work on this album is the cohesion between her polyphonic andmonophonic sounds, which helps her blend effectively with the trio. In solo and group sets,
Ratkje uses both dense looping and more soloistic processing of live voice, but continuous
looping predominates in solo work, while mono- or homophonic real-time processing is effectivein group contexts because the voice and its parallel processing can respond rapidly to the otherplayers.

F. Ami Yoshida
Ami Yoshida [JP] uses a highly streamlined setup in live performance: usually only amicrophone, and occasionally one additional piece of gear such as a looper or effects pedal. Her

46detailed use of amplification reveals her expertise, particularly since her quietest sounds occur
through closed or only slightly open mouth.
Arguably Yoshida’s best-known output is Tiger Thrush (2003), an album of 99 untitledminiatures. Yoshida’s self-defined style of “howling voice,” or quiet squeaking and screechingsounds often produced through inhalation or high-pressure exhalation, joins found objects andenvironmental background sounds in this work. The album lasts 1:07:51, giving an average track
duration of 41 seconds. Timbre and time, particularly with respect to listeners’ musical memory,
are highly important in this album.
Tiger Thrush manifests the timbral alchemy common, in one form or another, in extended
voice. Though Yoshida’s “howl voice” employs non-normative modes or sites of vocal
production, these sounds still register as vocal. Yet several tracks on this album use
miscellaneous non-voice objects as sound sources. For instance, Tracks #24-27 use (perhaps) a
shaken container of mints, delayed clicks as a pencil strikes a table, etc. Furthermore, many
tracks are purposefully ‘poorly’ recorded, so that background sounds including lighting and air
systems are audible. All of this begins to blur the traditional boundaries between voice and nonvoice, leaving some ambiguity as to whether voice is instrumentalized or non-voice sounds comeunder the umbrella of ‘extended voice’.
The vocal tracks of Tiger Thrush explore memorable or monolithic utterance. Some
tracks, such as #8, are single vocal utterances of only a few seconds’ duration. Though suchtracks initially seem to function as non-structural palate cleansers, their presence throughout thealbum suggests that something more is at play. By contrast, other tracks, such as #5, loop asingle vocal phrase, either mono- or polyphonically, for several minutes. At first blush, these
longer tracks seem important formal anchors within the album. Nonetheless, the stillness and47persistence of Tiger Thrush gradually suggest an inversion: micro-tracks come to read as intensesound bytes which eschew embellishment, while longer looped tracks provide a sense offamiliarity and pad the more concise vocal statements.
Yoshida’s exploration of voice-electronics relationships is also apparent in the non-vocal
tracks, of which #45 is a prime example. This track, consisting of looped, high-frequency
background noise, follows shortly on the heels of the previous track and lasts almost fiveminutes. This should be interpreted as a statement about album construction and musicality.
Though long pauses (5-8 seconds) typically separate consecutive tracks, some tracks incorporate
pauses of nearly this length, perhaps 3-5 seconds. Track #45 draws from the same backgroundnoise present in Track #44, which contains several substantial pauses, but articulates a newmusical statement because of its length and subtle variation of loops. Through slight manualadjustments to the time bounds of the loop, the listener begins to question whether the sound ischanging or if this is in fact a perceptual mirage. Yoshida’s intermingling of silence andcontinuity serves to make timbre strange and to unsettle short-term sonic memory.
Delicate reverb and some reversed sounds subtly remind listeners of the presence oftechnology. Though many extended voice practitioners are keen to exhibit control over theirtechnology, Yoshida is minimal in her demonstration of technological control. The subtle
compositional decision of whether to conclude a track partway through a loop or at the end of acycle is one point of engagement with the technology. Other tracks underscore the sonic role ofthe technology itself. For instance, in Track #41 Yoshida’s singing provides a gentle, lowerregister counterpoint to a whistling synth texture; and in Track #49 Yoshida performs a melody
consisting of distorted microphone pops.

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G. Pamela Z
Pamela Z [US] is a renowned composer and performer of voice-electronics works, often
employing digital looping software and novel digital controllers. Her stage work is inflected byboth performance art and bel canto-style engagement with the audience. The strangeness oftechnology is apparent in her sound and body language, for instance when gestures of typing ona typewriter enter into dialogue with sound, or when looping takes on new resonance because ofher hands’ varying proximity to a novel controller. Z makes clear that she considers performancecrucial to her practice (Z 2017).
Analysis of her composition “Badagada” in its album version versus live performance isa useful entry point to her creative work.17 This piece occurs on Z’s album A Delay is Better(2004). On the album, it begins with a mid-range, spoken/ lightly belted “bada-gada-gada-gadaga” loop including rest, soon joined by a lower pitch, murmured loop of similar text without rest,
along with a loop of rhythmic breathing in eighth-notes. Distant wailing glissandi in a higher
register follow, preparing the next line of bel canto singing in a mid-high range, text “I know
you’re not in there.” The piece continues in this fashion until 1:26, when the melodic singing
begins a new “bada-gada” line about an octave higher than the yelled speech which began thepiece. At 2:27, low, grunt-like, multiply delayed “huh, huh” sounds enter, only to stop a few
seconds later. The piece ends at 3:41 after having built up numerous mid- to high-range melodic
and ambient layers, several of which are phonemic (i.e., apparently texted but not clearlysignifying) and seem to pull away from the rhythmic loop structure.

17

Z (2017) states that she considers performance and fixed media separate streams of practice. Though“Badagada” exists on an album and is meaningfully different from the version I heard live, the fact that Z
conceives of her fixed media work in a still separate category suggests that the album is closely related tolive performance. In short, ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ methodologies overlap.

49
In a February 2016 performance I attended, “Badagada” lasted over nine minutes. This
near-tripling of album duration occurred in part because Z used no pre-samples, but rather built
up all loops real-time. She also took more time with improvisational sections, such as the last
third of the piece, which lasts only from 2:30-3:40 in the album version. Some loops were lessprecise rhythmically in live performance than in the album version, which lent a vibrant buzz tothe performance as rhythms phased in and out of synchronization.
Much electronic music scholarship treats looping as a simplistic or unskilled technique;
Baars (2015), for instance, writes that Z makes “straightforward use of technology.” One key
exception to this trend of marginalizing looping is George Lewis’ (2007) argument that Z’s work
constitutes a meaningful intersection of musical, technical, and identity practices, including theBlack aesthetic technique of the cut, the Japanese notion of gaijin or foreigner, and novel
linguistic-sonic experimentation. In its album and live versions, “Badagada” impresses as highly
skilled and not at all straightforward. Z is one of few extended voice practitioners to purposefullyvary the timbre of her normative acoustic voice,18 and her utilization of looping technology
underscores this unique practice. Hughes (2015) also argues for the skilled quality of looping insome popular music, an argument which could be extended to Z’s work, particularly in its
blurring of popular and ‘high art’ idioms.
Z’s large-scale multimedia work Voci (2003) further illustrates her nuanced and skillfuluse of voice and technology. Vocal clicks of various sorts are significant in several movementsof this work. The first movement uses an ostinato of a whispered “ah” sound with an initialglottal click. Though the human ear tends to focus on vowels as important conveyors of18

Some pop singers use a different vocal timbre in each song for expressive reasons; see Lady Gaga,
Joanne (2016). Other extended voice practitioners achieve variety in acoustic vocal timbre primarily
through extended techniques, but their normative singing/speaking usually adheres to a narrow range ofsound comprising their “natural voice” (Looser 2005). This raises complex questions about authenticity
and second-order social matters such as racial coding of ‘appropriate’ vocal timbre (Eidsheim 2015).

50
linguistic meaning, repetition gradually renders the non-signifying clicks even more obvious than
the whispered vowel content. This whisper-click line coincides with sampled narration (ascientific text explaining the larynx) and live singing.
In the next movement, “Qwerty Voice,” Z types on a typewriter while theatricallystumbling through a text containing only consonants. Here, the typewriter’s clicks become
almost an acoustic vestige to her speech, whose consonants become vowel-like throughpurposeful addition of sing-song pitch. Another movement, “Voice Studies,” combines sampled
tongue clicks and live narration of a text of acoustic-sociological voice research.
Z’s intentionally sparse aesthetic is noticeable throughout – few sounds exist besides
voice, whether pre-sampled or live-performed. But, far from evincing a lack of technologicalskill, this sparseness underscores the dual communicative-sonic character of voice. As Lewis(2007) notes, Z uses repetition technology to interrogate the musical traits of language, which arenormally ignored, and in so doing directs listeners’ attention toward her playful re-examinationof contemporary life.

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IV. LISTENING, AGENCY, AND PRESENCE

The voice has historically been situated at cross-purposes with performer self-listening.
Bel canto pedagogy, for instance, discourages vocalist self-listening (Wakefield 2003) andinstead imagines performer listening as embodied feeling (Madaule 2001). Embodied feelingalso underpins vocal idioms and practices seemingly remote from bel canto.19 This transidiomatic insistence that vocal music cultivate a felt body is part and parcel of the historical andproblematic association between voice, nature, Other (often woman), and inarticulacy, which
treats voice as non-agential instrument (Bosma 2013, Weber-Lucks 2003, Weidman 2014).
Practitioners of extended voice, by contrast, utilize compositional and improvisational
methodologies to create electroacoustic works which entail vocalizing, recording and processing
voice, and – crucially – listening, all in real time. Extended voice practitioners use analog anddigital technologies as a prosthesis to the acoustic vocal body. This prosthesis demands agential
self-listening and response. Extended voice works manifest ever expanding body-technology
configurations and vocal-electronic timbres. The use of technology as prosthesis fundamentallychanges the character of voice, demanding listening where otherwise only feeling is permitted,
and encouraging vocal timbral exploration in a dialogue with the electronic prosthesis. Analog
and digital technologies articulate a new cyborg body20 marked by novel acoustic andtechnological configurations.

19

For instance, Girilal Baars, who performs using materials such as folk singing techniques and live
processing in MaxMSP, writes: “It is important for me to retain the physicality of the voice, the bodyitself, and I have come to minimize my use of audio convolution and granulation and their characteristic
shimmering and fluttering sounds, which I feel often detract from the bodily experience of processedvoice.” (2015, 52) [emphasis added]20
I am most interested in understandings of ‘cyborg’ that speak to cultural-technological modifications ofbody, which I consider crucial to extended voice (cf. Gordon 2011, Gourlay 2012).

52
Close examination reveals the contingent, gendered, and power-based character of thedisembodiment presumed to occur when recording voice in particular. Conscious manipulationof technology through self-listening, however, questions this disembodiment and cultivates
agency in voice, which ordinarily occupies a sonic-cultural matrix that privileges feeling the
body and minimizes performer self-listening and agency.

A. Gender
In the Western vocal-electronic composition tradition, a great many works are composedby men for women performers, where much of the vocal content is non-verbal singing. Extended
voice stands apart from this tradition by unifying composer and performer roles and by exploring
fundamental questions of what voice can be and how it can sound, beyond mere inarticulate
singing.
Hannah Bosma (2013) surveys a body of voice-electronics compositions from the latetwentieth century. All works had a division of labor between composer and vocalist, where allcomposers were men, and vocalists were men or women. The compositions for live vocalist andelectronics “show a strong pattern… there are no compositions for singing male vocalist andelectronics, while female vocal parts have a substantial amount of non-verbal singing” (60,emphasis original). Similarly, in the compositions that use vocal pre-samples instead of live
vocalist, “four male voices utter non-verbal sounds while not singing, while none of the female
voices are doing this without singing too” (62). In short, in the surveyed academic
electroacoustic compositions, the female vocalist, both live and pre-recorded, most often sings
non-verbally. Bosma argues that this correlates with traditional associations of the feminine with

53
emotion, body, and powerlessness, whereas the masculine is linked to reason, language, andpower.
Extended voice practitioners, many of whom are women, diverge from academic
compositional approaches to voice. Extended voice practitioners define language more broadly
than do most academic composers (all sung material has some linguistic valence, sinceembouchure maps so closely to vowel content) and therefore use non-normative vocal andelectronic sounds in order to subvert language. Moreover, extended voice practitioners do theirown compositional and technological work. Bosma, by contrast, analyzes compositions in which
composer-technologist and performer were distinct roles, and the composer-technologists were
all men. This division of labor corroborates my experience of academic and non-academic
electronic music. By comparison, extended voice practitioners’ unification of composition,technology, and performance is indeed methodologically novel and agential.

B. Recorded voice and disembodiment
Recording the voice is often thought to result in disembodiment: the acousmatic voice.21“Technology is capable of separating voice from speaker, conversation from community”(Davidson 1997, 103) is a common attitude. Likewise, discussions of tape-recorded voiceinterpret the distinct visual appearance of body and technology as a sign of the gulf between the
two. Voice is uniquely subject to expectations of embodiment and thus susceptible to accusationsof disembodiment when technologies are used for vocal processing. Embodiment is far less atstake when non-voice instruments are technologically processed; technology complicates the21

Cf. Auner (2003), Kane (2014), Zorn (2012). A complementary perspective (e.g., Young 2015)
suggests that recording the voice resituates embodiment in a different but still material medium. Both areproblematic because they treat body primarily as something received, rather than as a malleable
technology curated by the practitioner.

54
sound output but does not fundamentally re-define the instrument or its relationship with theperformer. And while some vocalist-technologists still choose to experience the voice primarily
through embodied feeling, extended voice practitioners’ use of technology demands selflistening in order to manage the sonic whole. This agential expansion of the vocal body interacts
with and subverts the notion of disembodiment.
Vocal disembodiment carries creative and subversive potential in spite or perhaps
because of its relationship to larger questions of power. Weheliye (2002) writes that “therecorded voice in contemporary mainstream R&B… reconstruct[s] the black voice in relation to
information technologies” (30) where Black people were previously excluded from vocaltechnological agency. Arguing that “[p]erceived vocal gender is the primary generator ofmeaning in listening to voices” (134), Vágnerová (2016) suggests that Wendy Carlos’ work withvocoders is especially subversive because it disrupts gender. Anxiety around disembodiment,
therefore, is at heart a patriarchal anxiety that the vocalist is feeling, and expressing, a different
body than their own. If technology use obfuscates the vocalist’s race and/or gender, the vocalist
cannot be (seen to be) engaging in proper embodied feeling of their own sound – thus, thenegative valence of disembodiment is in fact a patriarchal listening bias. Extended voice, then,mobilizes posthuman ideology in a practice-oriented counter to disembodiment fears. Personal
identity and aesthetic motivations, such as timbral-temporal innovations and voice-electronics
dialogue, articulate agency (Bell 2016). The composer-performer mind-body undertakes realtime listening to the cyborg body with the intent of achieving of a rich, meaningful dialogue
between voice and electronics. In sum, extended voice does not altogether dispose of the notionof body, but fundamentally re-frames body as something to be technologically curated throughagential self-listening.

55
Historical studies of recorded voice provide some precedent to the timbral exploration, in
dialogue with electronics, which is central to extended voice. Jacob Smith (2008) contends that,since the inception of the medium, recorded voice has helped push the boundaries of
acceptability, with narrative content used to justify non-normative vocal sounds, including
grunts, screams, and screeches. The 1905 phonograph mini-drama Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isone example. Most scholars, including Smith, assume that recorded voice is necessarily separate
from the audience in time and space. Yet extended voice practitioners often record and process
the voice during live performance, directly in front of the audience. Extended voice practitioners
heighten the real-time character of recording, and question its disembodying effect, by exploring
the spectrum between voice and electronics. For instance, a noisy sound which initially seems
very remote from voice may gradually be revealed as vocal in origin, and meanwhile the acoustic
voice may take up extended techniques which are timbrally similar to the electronics. This
fundamentally alters the vocalizing body, and demands compositional/ improvisational selflistening in order to control the vocal-electronic whole.

C. Prosthesis
Extended voice practitioners subvert the traditional and problematic association of voice,woman, body, and inarticulacy by positing that the vocal body (any gender) can be artfully
extended using an electronic prosthesis. Timbral and temporal exploration, and in particulardialogue between voice and electronics, are considered worthy goals in themselves. The
prosthesis and the vocal body together comprise a new vocal-electronic body. Extant scholarshipmakes some provision for this agential adoption of a prosthesis to self-articulate a new vocalelectronic body. For instance, Hughes (2015) coins the term “autonomized vocals” to indicate

56
vocalists’ agential use of technology, principally loop pedals, for creative purposes. Extended
voice practitioners express agency by juxtaposing voice and technology to create complex soundworks in which boundaries between vocal and electronic timbres are broken down and genre
implications questioned. In this agential use of technology for vocal processing and genre
exploration, there is an underlying assumption that the voice itself is somehow insufficient or
unsatisfying; technology fills this void.
Despite the “autonomy” increasingly granted to voice in some scholarly treatments, manystudies of recorded voice and body equate ‘author’ and ‘composer’, and largely overlook theunique category of ‘composer-vocalist’ and its agential exploration of body. Other scholars
address voice from a primarily linguistic perspective, highlighting text-sound composition andrelated styles which feature recordings of speech. On the other hand, extended voice entails a
feedback loop between body and electronic prosthesis. Electronic extensions demand acoustic
extensions; extended vocal techniques often supplement or replace normative speech andsinging. Live recordings, delay, granulation, and other memory technologies take on a uniquevalence, indicating and questioning the sound of the body more than if they were simply applied
to normative speech or singing without extended techniques. In so doing, these technologies
destabilize the ocularcentrism of many vocal theories by underscoring audition, not vision, as thesense which weighs the efficacy of the electronic prosthesis and its relationship with the vocal
body.
Electronic prosthesis in extended voice bears some resemblance to literary
understandings of prosthesis. Narrative treatments of the non-normative body, argue Mitchelland Snyder (2000), are important precisely because they unite literal and abstract “registers of
meaning-making” (62). Similarly, the text can indicate itself as prosthesis, yearning for the57“personating subjectivity” (802) of the photographic medium or the writerly body (Wallace2008). This subjectivity – an ability to participate in, comment on, and direct the action as it
happens – occurs in extended voice in particular because customary embodied feeling is replacedby performer self-listening to the extended vocal-electronic body. There comes to be a symbiosis
between the prosthesis and the prosthetized; neither could exist without the other. Lakoff (2015)
understands prosthesis as corporeal but also prominently temporal. “The prosthesis is familiar,
but also different: it demarcates the limits to the organic body, but also challenges the solidity of
those limits” (3), and this demarcation and challenge occurs as a temporal oscillation. In
extended voice practice, the electronic prosthesis questions the bounds of body, doing so inmarkedly temporal fashion through timbral and genre exploration unfolding over time.
Although extended voice subverts disembodiment by agentially articulating a new cyborg
body, the underlying dissatisfaction with the timbres of the body, which motivates use of theelectronic prosthesis in the first place, is not necessarily resolved by the prosthesis, nor is theprosthesis even the central issue. As a technique that demands performer self-listening, using
electronics as prosthesis to voice serves mainly to increase performer agency. Gordon (2011)
makes a similar argument when she re-figures the seeming disempowerment experienced byearly-modern era castrati as a contemporary “phallocentric” “squeamishness” (111) about theculturally modified body. Voice is not customarily an agential instrument, but extended voicepractitioners’ use of technology as prosthesis re-imbues agency into voice. Listening becomesthe embodied method by which the composer-performer manages voice-electronics dialogue andthereby posits their own creative agency.

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D. Presence
I define presence as, simply, curation of one’s own vocal-electronic sound. What ispresent is a posthuman mindbody (Herndon 2010) which undertakes agential self-listening inorder to sculpt the sound. Importantly, presence allows spatio-temporal coincidence of theperformer and listeners (extended voice practitioners often perform live) but does not require it(extended voice practitioners also create much recorded sound work, including albums).
Presence, by my definition, derives solely from the performer’s compositional-improvisational
curation of their own vocal-electronic sound, and this curation occurs independent of audiencelocation. The notion of presence has two main theoretical advantages: (1) it sidesteps thepatriarchal listening information implicit in (dis)embodiment, and (2) it accommodates theincreasing overlap between recorded and real-time practices in both extended voice in particularand electronic music as a whole.
In live performance, presence has a certain range of temporal manifestations. Extended
voice practitioners take various approaches to musical form, but all are inflected by the distinct
performance activities of vocalizing and controlling. Impett (2010) writes, “If the past (memory)and the future (invention and projection) are acts of imagination, then perhaps motion – physicalrhythm on some level – has a vital role in the mediating and structuring of both” (87). The bodyis deeply involved in presence, not in the traditional way of embodied feeling of voice, but rather
undertaking motions to control the sound, and this bodily engagement manifests temporally.
Instead of vocalizing continuously throughout a performance, extended voice performers
intersperse moments, or sometimes long sections, devoted solely to listening and controlling the
vocal-electronic body. This listening is crucial to management of the electronic prosthesis.

59
Common parlance would seem to correlate vocal ‘presence’ with vocal sound, so it isperhaps ironic that my definition of presence includes vocal silence when self-listening occurs(of course, curational listening and vocalizing can coincide temporally, but often they do not).
But I am concerned instead with the presence of an agential mind cooperating with an expanded
body in order to explore timbre and temporality in service of rich voice-electronics interactions.
Or in other words, because of the extremely close dialogue in extended voice work between
vocal and electronic sounds, presence must be defined in terms of performer agency, not simply
and solely correlated with the moments when sound emerges from the performer’s mouth.
Contrary, again, to colloquial understandings of vocal ‘presence’, presence as I define it
necessarily involves re-evaluation of liveness. The agential self-sonic curation of extended voice
is by nature trans-temporal. Technology articulates a cyborg body whose utterances include but
are not limited to those sounds emerging from the mouth now. Vocal sound is traditionallyconsidered ‘live’ only in the moment when it emerges from the mouth, but, by my definition, alooped vocal sample is still ‘live’ in that it emerges from the self-curated cyborg body. In otherwords, liveness is associated with diverse embodied actions, including acoustic vocalizing aswell as self-listening and controlling. To put it yet more simply, I argue that ‘live voicing’ could
include, for instance, turning a knob to control processing of one’s own vocal-electronic sound.
Importantly, this version of liveness accommodates the many creative variations within
extended voice practice, including use of extended vocal techniques, balance of voice andelectronics, self-identified position along the composition-improvisation spectrum, and primary
output medium (I am thinking especially of albums versus live performance).22

22

Extended voice practitioners are equally fluent in recorded media (produced full-length albums, selfposted short tracks on Bandcamp and Soundcloud, etc.) and live performance. As a result, I have treatedrecorded media and live performance as roughly equivalent. Nonetheless, there are important differences
between live and recorded sound work. To elucidate the spectrum incorporating liveness and recording, a60
I do not expect that simply informing skeptical listeners about power imbalances inherent
to vocal “disembodiment” would instantly convert them to lovers of extended voice. Though I
hope presence-as-agential-curation prompts some people to reconsider the social stakes of
embodiment, I admit that taste is unlikely to change overnight. Nevertheless, presence isvaluable as a descriptive project: it accounts for current trends in extended voice which aretaking root despite that many listeners find these sounds strange or distasteful.23

E. Inner voice and text scores
Presence, or curation of one’s own vocal-electronic sound, also manifests in the ‘inner
voice’ use of internal language by some extended voice practitioners. I draw on Brandon
LaBelle’s (2014) conception of inner voice as a personating rehearsal with alter-ego: “Self-talk is
precisely the making of conversation, as if in preparation” (94, emphasis original). This alterego is akin to the technologized performance partner. To practice extended voice is to engage
with this cyborg alter-ego and, moreover, to do personating work, because the electronic
prosthesis is a cultural-technological modification of body.
Text scores are characterized by contemplative interpretation of instructions provided by
a composer, who composes ranges of sonic possibilities rather than particular sounds. Thisapproach is mirrored in the agential dialogue within extended voice practitioners in their distinct
but related capacities as composers and performers. In other words, linguistic material in text
fuller taxonomy of extended voice practitioners’ memory technology work is needed. On-stage
recordivity, for instance, provides valuable insight into the varying manifestations of liveness in sound art(Knowles and Hewitt 2012).
23
Further research is needed into two disparate tendencies in extended voice: it is highly personalized, yet
has unique communicative potential, i.e., is listener-driven. Every practitioner I asked said they did notconsider ‘beauty’, ‘ugliness’, or ‘noise’ – admittedly subjective terms – when making work. Yet in myexperience, beauty (aural, visual, positive, and negative) is an almost inescapable metric in many
listeners’ relationship to my work. Guilleray’s (2012) discussion of vocal emotion as a deeper layer of
meaning, for instance, may help craft a new metric of quality, other than beauty, for extended voice.

61scores and extended voice alike aids sonic realization of compositional concept while also
underscoring the sonic uniqueness of the performer.
Extended voice encompasses diverse approaches to inner voice and text. Guilleray,
Motland, and I use particular verbal material as a sort of documentation of creative practice.
AGF considers lyrics themselves a sort of working method, while Z values lyrics but does nottreat them as documentation. Ratkje and Pensado disavow thought altogether.

Figure 9. "dis dance" Bandcamp track image (AGF 2016)

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Guilleraytexture metallique, piquante, veloutée, rude, douce,sombre, granulée, rocailleuseregistressoufflé, airhybrid, unité, dualité, coexistence
densitédynamics (volumes)
intensité
perception, immersion
structure, blocks, sections, superimpositions

Motland“internal monologue while performing” Fake Synthetic Music:
inhale, support, close
A.T
tempo, don’t drop
stay on pitch
embodyforward energy
B.T
embodycheck eqpitch
feedback down
tempo down wait
silenceA.T
go!
tempo, don’t drop
pure tones
backwards
stop

Warrendiaphragm, intercostals, listen[hit r ! hit e ! LV ! hit p] x 4
listen – solo – voxproc – route || 1-4
unhST, len, waitneeds more, needs different, enough, stop, copy

(vocalizing)(Max patch)(Abacus toggles)(undertone singing)(pulsar granulation params.)(improvising, sound mix)

Table 5. Extended voice practitioners' personal vocabularies (selected)

Like text scores, extended voice involves a correlation between certain configurations of
natural language and particular ranges of sonic results. In both text scores and extended voice,there is overlap between descriptive and prescriptive language, and between instructional and63
abstract language. One important difference is that text scores are usually printed and viewed bymany, while the language of extended voice is often unprinted and known only to thepractitioner. It might be hidden as a comment in a software patch, or might only be thought andnever voiced aloud. (AGF’s published poetry is a notable exception.)
This ‘inner voice’ status of extended voice language accords with the non-division oflabor in this practice. Composers are vocalists are technologists, so scores need not be printed forrealization by other performers. Indeed, this ‘inner voice’ manifestation of language pushes text
score goals a step further. Text scores question genre, challenge the status of the so-called‘concert piece’, and shift some traditionally compositional work (shaping form, making parts,
balancing sound and silence) to the performer.
Text scores and extended voice share an emphasis on material exploration of sound.
Below, I discuss three important features of text scores (physical organization, number, andlistening) and how they refract into features of extended voice language (body, mixing, andagency).
Notably, internal language in extended voice is in service of sound. Text scores capitalizeon the distinction between natural language and music-making acts, and this distinction issimilarly important in extended voice. In the moment of sound-making – whether in front of an
audience or not – sound is the foremost consideration. Yet language is undeniably one of thethings voice does well, so internal language is an indispensible part of extended voice.
Furthermore, because inner voice is a personating rehearsal that spans studio, in-home, andperformative musical moments (to name a few), it contributes to the argument that ‘recorded’
and ‘live’ methodologies dovetail in extended voice.

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1. Physical organization – body
I argue that text scores’ physical organization parameter refracts into the parameter ofbody in extended voice. This line of reasoning first requires a re-examination of how best to
approach text scores. These scores’ physical organization on the page is, I contend, a more useful
analytical approach than the customary method of categorizing verbal content as “instructional”
or “allusive” (Anderson 2014) because these categories in fact overlap greatly. For instance, theimperative grammatical mood in text scores, which at first seems instructional, can house quite
abstract content:
Play or sing extremely short events
untileach oneseems like an eternity
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elongation (1976)
Similarly, Daniel Goode’s I ⟷ Ou (1980) begins with instructions for phonemic vocal
chanting, but quickly turns to matters of performer attention. Goode suggests that performers
might consider the universe or God, which I take to suggest contemplation of the act and themeaning of sounding. This somehow renders sound both more and less immediate. In short,
instructional language in text scores can be quite abstract, philosophical, and/or personalized.
Inversely, seemingly abstract language can, depending on performer decisions, yield consistentsonic results with each performance and thus take on an instructional quality.
Instead of instructional versus abstract, a more direct method of categorization deals
simply with the physical organization of the score on the page: Is text all in one paragraph? inmultiple paragraphs? in several single lines? divided by category (instructions, materials, etc)?
Single-paragraph text scores include many of the scores in Christian Wolff’s Prose
Collection, such as Pit Music, X for Peace Marches, and Stones. Wolff values the economy of65
this approach: “a short paragraph of prose to bring about a large variety of performances” (1998,
494). Multi-paragraph text scores include Alvin Lucier’s Vespers (1968) and Pauline Oliveros’
The Grand Buddha Marching Band (1981). Each of these examples gives a progression of
information (respectively: number of players, suggested performance space, materials, task,
process, way of ending, inspirations; and formal shape, who may play, goal, wardrobe, allowable
instruments, player roles) but do not label information by category. Sometimes a new piece of
information is marked by a paragraph break; sometimes multiple pieces of information occur in asingle paragraph. Text score composers who use this style may consider it a casual, direct way toconnect with players.
Text scores comprised of distinct lines often use seemingly abstract language toforeground performers’ role in the compositional process. Single-line works, such as those in
Brecht’s Water Yam, force performers to get to the crux of how to realize the score. Brecht’s
Word Event has yielded a wide variety of performances, but, scholars note, many of these share a
distinctive performance profile consisting of a singular, decisive gesture (Kotz 2001, Pisaro
2009, Robinson 2002).

•

EXIT
George Brecht, Word Event (1961)

In multi-line text scores, stanza breaks aid interpretation:
When you are thinking only of your own playing,play as quietly, gently and as long as possible.
When you sense that another player is thinking of you,play moderately loud, rather agitatedly and moderately long. …
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Communication (1968)

66
Stockhausen’s stanzas suggest a formal structure (players first think of their own playing, thentry to detect whether another is thinking of them, then perhaps attempt both at once, etc.). In
other cases, stanzas are paragraph-like in function. For instance, each stanza in Michael Pisaro’s
fragile being, hopeful becoming (2013) carries different information (timbre/ dynamics/ duration;formal structure).
In sum, the boundary between abstract and instructional language in text scores is highly
permeable. The criterion of text’s organization on the page acknowledges the interactions
between the abstract and the instructional, yet also provides valuable clues as to how composers
present and structure information within text scores.
Text scores’ redistribution of compositional labor is a crucial part of the analogy to theinternal language of extended voice. That is, the page is to text scores as the body is to theinternal language of extended voice. The page and the body are the physical vehicle and thetesting ground for compositional ideas, as well as the interface between compositional andperformative labor. Different arrangements of text on the page, like varying deployments of bodyin response to inner voice, suggest different sonic value systems and desired sonic outcomes.24
To realize a text score, or to respond to inner language in extended voice, is crucially to engage
with relationships between compositional ideas and their physical medium.
One strike against this analogy is its transgression of boundaries between materials. The
body in extended voice may be the medium for compositional ideas, but it is also (a large part of)
the sounding instrument, whereas realizing text scores usually requires separate instruments, i.e.,
the page is arguably not equivalent to the sounding instrument. Nonetheless, the urgent need to24

In non-text scores that inhabit the page, page organization has varying importance. For instance, ingraphic scores, arrangement of material on the page can be extremely important. On the other hand, inscores using Western staff notation, arrangement of staves on the page generally matters little, apart frompractical performance considerations such as ease of page turns.

67
re-examine what the body is and does, along with the deep creative potential of likening text
score page and inner voice body, are ample reason to continue with this analogy. Furthermore, in
extended voice internal language, as in text scores, there is great overlap between the seemingly
abstract and literal. For instance, the imperative mood is not directly correlated to action. My“wait” is not a command to wait, but instead refers to a pulsar granulation parameter, and thus
functions more as an invitation to interact with a physical potentiometer to control the wait value.
Motland’s “go!,” “don’t drop,” and “pure tones” importantly permit artful micro-variations in
tempo and pitch, rather than prescribing exactly the same outcome each time.
Where the instructional-versus-abstract binary breaks down, we can make sense ofcomplex verbal information by considering how text scores inhabit the page, or by considering
how extended voice inner language inhabits the body. One useful notion which is gaining
traction in several scholarly subdisciplines is that spoken language is a set of material
configurations of the body (Faudree 2012, Painter 2008, Shankar and Cavanaugh 2012). I
contend further that the descriptive and prescriptive internal language of extended voice
influences and is influenced by bodily configurations.
Of course, many performing musicians, whether acoustic or electronic, develop an
idiosyncratic internal vocabulary for their own working methods. But the stakes are different inextended voice, in just the same way that the notion of embodiment is uniquely problematic forvoice. Though bodies figure into all instrumental/electronic playing, the burden of ‘embodiment’in its current usage is that vocalists must feel rather than listen to their own sound and must maketheir bodies normatively legible. Likewise, probably most or all performers use some sort ofinternal language for learning and mnemonic purposes. But internal language is uniquely

68
important in extended voice because it describes and prescribes curation of one’s own of vocalelectronic body.

2. Number – mixing
Of crucial importance to text scores is John Cage’s correlation of rhythm, time, andpercussion:
The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of soundbut also with the entire field of time. The ‘frame’ or fraction of a second, following
established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time.
No rhythm will be beyond the composer’s reach. …Percussion music is a contemporarytransition from keyboard-influenced music to the all-sound music of the future. Anysound is acceptable to the composer of percussion music; he [sic] explores theacademically forbidden ‘non-musical’ field of sound insofar as is manually possible.
Methods of writing percussion music have as their goal the rhythmic structure of acomposition. (1969, 5)
In text scores, these considerations often manifest as number and pulse. Michael Pisaro writes
that the notion of number is important because it illustrates “how indeterminacy and exactness inthe writing of music can co-exist” (2009, 36). Some text scores use number to unite parametersof formal shaping and sonic articulation. Pisaro often uses numbers to represent section duration,material choice, or melodic motion. It is noteworthy that number in text scores is a convenientmethod of grouping multiple musical parameters together while still allowing for a wide range ofsonic outcomes. For instance, temporal density has implications for dynamic level andarticulation. Playing six breath-length tones in thirty minutes will probably lead to quiet dynamic
and smooth articulation, whereas playing twelve short tones in thirteen seconds is more
conducive to loud volume and abrupt or staccato articulation.

69
Others use number as an instantiation of rhythmic pulse and prescribed performer choice.
Pauline Oliveros’ Six for New Time (1999) instructs guitarists to “Start a pulse with anotherplayer or players using a pattern on the common tone of G of 3, 5, 7, or 11 in a common tempo.”
Christian Wolff’s Fits and Starts (1970) asks each player to keep a unique pulse in mind, then to
enact any of the available “sequences,” for instance: “One sound or articulation of a soundunderway every twenty-one beats, omitted every sixth time the twenty-first beat comes round”(1998, 474).
Text scores employ a Cagean understanding of rhythm as events in time. By using
numbers, a single text score might permit anything from a very dense realization to a very sparseone. This approach encourages silence to be treated as a musical material, and allows complex
rhythms to emerge that might be very difficult to notate or even conceive. By emphasizing
numbers of sounds, composers of text scores implicitly ask performers to think deeply about
each individual sound. This mindset is also closely connected to experimental percussion musicof the twentieth century, which, unlike the heavily pitch-centric music of the past, places greatemphasis on timbre and time. Indeed, extremely few text scores give any specific information
about pitch; far more require performers to consider the number of sounds played and/or thesesounds’ arrangement in time.25
References to number in extended voice vocabularies address various sound design
activities related to time and texture. My “x 4” and “1-4” refer to Layer-2 buffers in the patch
and Abacus control thereof. Guilleray’s “registres,” “coexistence,” and “superimpositions”
comprise a slightly more abstract use of number to address arrangement of layers and25

I can think of only one text score with specific information on pitch and voicing: Gavin Bryars’ The
Heat of the Beat (1972) (never performed) requires a D♭ major chord with particular voicing.

70
management of harmonic and spectral content. Motland alludes to number in her variation of
feedback values in order to articulate form.
Whereas number in text scores generally gives information on when to play a single
improvised or pre-planned sound, number in extended voice refracts into texture and mixing. I
sculpt and orchestrate clusters of four sounds at a time, and Motland’s “feedback down” yields
few discernible delay taps and, thus, formal definition. Mixing in extended voice – like its text
score equivalent, number – permits co-existence of indeterminacy and exactness. While thetechnical is substantially composed, live mixing is improvisational.
Improvisation is a key consideration. I argue that improvisation occurs in different
moments in text scores and extended voice.26 Performers of text scores generally make numberrelated choices beforehand, then their realization simply consists of executing these choices.
Numbers give text scores the veneer of process piece. Everything is decided beforehand, and thepiece consists solely of spinning out the process. By contrast, number in extended voice permits
improvisational mixing during performance. Although pre-performance choices do occur insoftware/hardware design, equally or perhaps more important are in-performance/ in-studiochoices about how to use the numbers implicit to the setup to vary texture and timbre.
Another perspective on number in text scores versus extended voice is that a single
extended voice practitioner manages a complex soundscape, which is analogous to the totalsound of an ensemble performing a text score. Number in text scores typically treats each playermonophonically, while number in extended voice is fundamentally about density management

26

I wish to bear in mind George Lewis’ (1996) now famous argument that in late-twentieth century
music, what has been termed ‘improvisation’ is Afrological, while what has been termed ‘indeterminacy’is Eurological. Furthermore, my own ability to identify as an improviser is evidence of various academic
communities’ growing, if not uniform, incorporation of improvisation. In addition, non- or partial text
scores (e.g., graphic scores, combined graphic-text scores, etc.) which engage with improvisation and/orindeterminacy complicate and challenge my argument but are beyond the scope of this study.

71
work by a single performer. To put it very simply, text scores assume a direct correlation
between ensemble size and sonic density. Number, which prescribes action, is more or less ascalar multiplier to this correlation.27 By contrast, extended voice values texture variety, andnumber is a means for complex real-time management and documentation of this variety.
Number is both descriptive and prescriptive because it relates to both performer action and thedesign affordances of the electronic setup.

3. Listening – agency
Many text scores emphasize listening, imagining, and remembering as much as playing:
Keep the next sound you hearin mindfor at least the next half hour.
Pauline Oliveros, For Annea Lockwood and Alison Knowles (1975)
The last vibrations of a friend inhaling and exhaling his sighs. It’s a resounding soundcomparable to a wheeze but emanating from his mouth. It is climactic and dramatic, fullof exertion yet effortless. Time dissolves. …
Amnon Wolman, January 4, 2001
Play a soft low note and listen to it. …
Imagine that you are playing a soft low note, and listen to it in your imagination. …
Tom Johnson, Imagining (1967)
Field Trips Thru Found Sound Environments
An audience expecting a conventional concert or lecture is put on a bus, their palms arestamped with the word listen, and they are taken to and thru an existing soundenvironment.
Max Neuhaus, LISTEN (1966)
27

Though this claim about number in text scores is admittedly broad, it is supported by many text scores’
lack of specification of number of players or even distinction between mono- and polyphonic instruments.
Some text scores specify particular instrumental forces, but these are the exception rather than the rule,and even in these cases number still functions as a compositional method of scaling textural density up or
down.

72
Oliveros’ and Wolman’s text scores often feature listening and the memory of listening;
Johnson’s, playing and the memory of playing. Neuhaus’ text scores similarly address listening
and more explicitly involve the audience as participants in sound.
In many text scores, listening and imagination come to replace the act of physicalsounding. Of course, this is partly related to the understanding, inherited from Cage, that true
silence never exists. Yet text scores also display a unique emphasis on the conceptual: often, theunderlying concept or experience of a piece is more important than the resulting sound. Text
scores might well be rehearsed several times and perfected, but subsequently do not need to be
performed and can instead be thought or experienced through their conceptual content. Many
text score composers explore and develop similar concepts across numerous independent works,interrogating the very notion of organizing principles in music. James Saunders (2011) writes:…serial work presents multiple articulations of a central formative principle or group ofprinciples. …Serial approaches challenge the need to address why only one prioritized
result of the creative process is required… (498)Though text scores place a heavy burden of interpretation onto the performer, this interpretive
work aims to get at the conceptual heart of text scores, and frequently involves practices oflistening and imagining.
If the distance between compositional and performative work is shortened in text scores,
it is all but erased in extended voice. Text scores’ use of natural language promotes listening,prioritizes interaction in and with the moment, and increases the authorial status of theperformers. These functions are refracted into extended voice practitioners’ agential, listeningbased work in performance. Inner vocabularies of extended voice mention listening either
explicitly, as in my own vocabulary, or implicitly, as in Guilleray’s “perception” and73“immersion.” Even Pensado, who disavows conscious thought about or during her practice,evinces listening-via-intuition through statements such as “My way of using the voice is very
intuitive. I just let it go” (Pensado 2017).
In short, listening is a tool for performer agency. Listening increases performer agency tosome extent in text scores, and to an even greater extent in extended voice, aided by the nondivision of labor between composer and performer. Even for extended voice practitioners who do
not rely on inner voice or internal language, listening is an important thematic link to the musicmaking world of text scores.

4. For soloist… text score, “For one” album track
The score of my piece For soloist and any number of musicians (2015) is reproduced
below in its entirety. The composition process was valuable in understanding some of the
motivations behind text scores, how these scores can drive specific ranges of performer action,and how this can in turn relate to extended voice practice. This piece was premiered in April
2015 by the University of Virginia New Music Ensemble (flute, oboe, clarinet, piano, guitar,
violin, cello, pipa, voice), with guest performer Paul Botelho as vocal soloist. The piece was
performed again several months later, with Botelho again performing the soloist role, and asmaller subset of the UVA New Music Ensemble performing as “Others.”
This piece evolved over several months through rehearsals with the ensemble. Early
drafts used “If-then” verbal structures (e.g., “If the river runs over the moor, babble”) and
improvisation.” Middle drafts retained the “If-then” structure and experimented with various
means of graphically representing text. In its final version, the piece uses columns instead of “If-

74
For soloist and any number of musiciansSoloist: Begin. Vocally improvise on the italicized text below.
Others: Listen. If you notice that any condition is true, you may choose to enact (in any way) acondition from the other column.
Duration: c. 8’
river running over the moorridge exceeding the scararm being underneath the quiet
one person being diligent

babbling
getting twangierbellowing (really bellowing)
another being vigilant

listener looking boredbuffering

the time being longgoing easythen” structure, and replaces the “group improvisation” statement with the more direct
instruction to listen for and enact the various conditions.
Creating and refining this piece clearly illustrated the conceptual nature of text scores,
and that the concept can be a uniting force despite a wide range of performer interpretations. For
instance, each of the New Music Ensemble performers stated that they considered a few
conditions ‘dead zones’: some performers loved “arm being underneath the quiet,” while others
hated it and chose never to hear or play it. But everyone understood the general sort of reactivity
that lay at the heart of the score, and in order to achieve this central concept, each player
developed a unique bank of sonic materials to facilitate enactment of the verbal conditions.
Performing this piece also exemplified the audience confusion that often occurs in text
score performances. The premiere performance ended compellingly but abruptly, after which
there was a long silence (maybe 15 seconds) before one of the performers began the applause. In

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re-figuring genre and the very status of the ‘concert piece’, text scores often lack or renderunnecessary the formal and behavioral elements audiences have come to expect (e.g.,
recapitulation of early material in the final section of the piece, or an audible exhalation at theend). As composers such as Neuhaus, Oliveros, and Wolman demonstrate, many text scores lie atthe boundary of the ‘concert work’ category, and their Cagean incorporation of ambient sounds
makes it difficult to distinguish a performance from its surroundings.
To imbue a creative perspective into considerations of how text scores refract into
extended voice, I created an album track, “For one,” using this score. First I recorded 16 separate
vocal improvisations on the italicized text of the score. I did not listen to previous recordings orlook at their waveforms while improvising (as I did during “ul”), so these 16 tracks are mostly
disparate. Any moments of cohesion derive solely from my memory and intuited timing fromprevious improvisations.
Next, I layered and mixed all these recordings. I purposefully retained most of thematerial, adding detailed gain automation for balance. I removed only a few highly aberrant
moments from particular layers. This summed sound represents the Soloist, who is instructed
only to improvise on the text, not necessarily to listen to anyone else. Subsequently, I recorded
three more vocal improvisations, now playing the role of the Others, i.e, ensemble members. In
the first of these three Other improvisations, I listened only to the Soloist part (no Others existedyet); in the second and third Others, I listened to the Soloist and to the previous Other(s). This
corresponds with the original score’s emphasis on the listening done by the Others.
Although “Soloist” seems to imply louder dynamic level and more forward mix position
than that of the Others, “For one” inverts this relationship. In treating myself as a polyphonicsoloist, I magnified the almost complete freedom of this improvisation, which is limited only

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slightly by the text. This also necessitated a quieter mean volume level so that the Soloist could
be heard texturally. By contrast, the Others come forward in the mix and seem almost clone-likein their similar mic placement and EQ treatment.
Alternatively, I might have used a more intuitive balance: one Soloist foregrounded in themix, and many more Others in the background. But this, I believe, would have contradicted thecentral concept, and concept is crucial in text scores. The Soloist needs to have a very obviously
unique role – improvising and not necessarily listening – and I achieved this by multiplying thesoloist many times over and sending it back in the mix. The Others, by contrast, are listening andresponsively sounding according to rules, which is somewhat different from improvising. The
Others’ awkward, non-improvsational timing and timbral logics are obvious because they are
few in number and forward in mix position. If I had mixed a lone Soloist forward and several
Others backward, the difference between improvising and following rules would have been lessclear.
“For one” engages with electronics primarily through digital studio methodologies.
Though I could have performed the Other role using electronics, I felt more fluidly able to soundout the italicized conditions when using only voice. I made two central observations in realizing
this album track: (1) A ‘small chamber’ realization of the score (polyphonic Soloist plus three
Others) feels more nimble than the previous large chamber realizations, but shares a similar feelof sonic conversation. (2) The number two, which is implicitly important in the text score(Soloist versus Others, left column versus right), came to bear heavily on performance andmixing. For instance, the mix uses left and right channels to point up and play with theconversations among various voices. In several Soloist run-throughs I found myself articulating
two materials and exploring similarities and distinctions between them. Although more research

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is needed to clarify how number in text scores refracts into mixing in extended voice, it isnoteworthy that this refraction occurred across media and through a seeming re-imagining of theforces of the For soloist… score.

F. Disability
Thus far, the idea of a normative body has been implicit in my discussion of(dis)embodiment, self-listening, and presence. I will unpack this idea using insights fromdisability studies, bearing in mind both the potential similarities and the crucial differences
between disability and extended voice. Elizabeth Barnes (2016) argues that being disabled is “away of being a minority with respect to one’s body” (6). This is, I take it, a way of questioning
body normativity while re-valuing social aspects of non-normativity. Self-listening and agency
are two primary features of extended voice which problematize the notion of a normative bodyand figure extended voice as a social category, similar to Barnes’ view of disability.
Many Western vocal traditions, including bel canto and its stylistic descendants,
discourage performer self-listening. Self-listening is an embodied practice but, importantly, aminority embodied practice. Furthermore, I have argued that self-listening renders voice agential,
but have avoided defining agency. Myriad scholarly precedents exist, but few if any account for
the ways that vocal embodiment has historically diminished the agency of certain voices. Thus, it
is useful to ask: What exactly is vocal agency?28

28

Of course, there is some debate about the value of agency. John Robert Ferguson (2013) writes, “A
relevant question might therefore be: to what extent does a musician perform the technology or does thetechnology perform the musician?” He goes on to quotes Hayles (1999): “Conscious agency has neverbeen ‘in control’. In fact the very illusion of control bespeaks a fundamental ignorance about the nature of
the emergent processes…” (141) I am reminded of Hannah Bosma’s (2013) incisive question: “isn’t itironic to be declaring the composer ‘dead’ just at a point in history that more female composers arecoming up?” (43). Just as the ‘death of the author’ excluded women authors at a convenient moment,

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Voice studies has begun to define vocal agency as thoughtful, personalized play.
Eidsheim (2012), who is interested in questioning ostensible givens about race and vocal timbre,
writes, “a person’s voice is an accumulation of experiences which allows us to find and articulate
individual agency within a structure that itself consists of many nuances” (23). Computer music
composers, by contrast, tend to think of agency in terms of sonically parametric decisionmaking. Simon Emmerson (2007) writes of live compositional work by DJs: “The participants
might then judge that there are indeed intentional decisions being taken (on the basis of choices)
and ascribe this to an agent. The studio has thus moved out on stage” (26; emphasis original).
I aim to synthesize vocal-theoretical and compositional definitions of agency. I define
vocal agency as both articulation of sonic self and commentary on genre: knowledgeable
articulation of ‘me’ relative to ‘us’. I draw from Joanna Demers’ (2010) definition of genre as “away of cultivating an us-and-them attitude that divides the public into those who know
something about a given music and those who do not” (136).29 This genre-bending aspect ofagency has, for instance, driven a change in the dialogue around Cathy Berberian (1925-1983).
Berberian has for decades been famous as an avant-garde vocalist, but she is increasingly
understood as a composer because of her various genre-questioning projects including the piece
Stripsody, the album Beatles Arias, and the patently campy recital series “À la recherche de lamusique perdue.”30 I do not intend to imply that ‘agents’ and ‘composers’ are equivalent.
Nevertheless, it is largely on the merit of its genre-bending character that Cathy Berberian’s
work is being re-assessed. Likewise, extended voice practitioners evince vocal agency because
agency’s teeth are being drawn just as vocalists are starting to gain real agency. Thus, I am cautious about
caution about agency.
29
I argue that simply doing the genre well is not equivalent to commenting on it. For instance, aknowledgeable listener may have special appreciation for an opera singer’s skillfully executed messa divoce, but the singer has not commented on the operatic genre (if there is such a thing) simply byexecuting this technique well.
30
See Karantonis et al. (2014)

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their quest for voice-electronics dialogue gives rise to novel soundworlds and performeraudience relationships that cross, question, and re-draw genre boundaries.31
AGF unites myriad vocal and electronic sounds under a banner of fractured clubaesthetics in order to engage with political themes, such as the complexities of global capitalism.
Guilleray’s detailed vocal and electronic gestures seemingly vie to out-subtle each other,troubling perceptions of the boundary between live and pre-composed. Motland deploys
electronics with a light touch in order to highlight the quasi-synthesized timbre and duration ofher extended vocal techniques. Pensado lets noise overwhelm or mask the voice at times, andinstead relies on the rhetorical strength of whispering (Li 2011), found recordings, and dollbased performance as a counterpoint to noise. Ratkje engages in complex vocal-control
choreography to deploy two techniques to articulate form: loops (sometimes deeply transformed)
and direct following of voice. Yoshida’s miniatures – some containing loops (with or without
micro-variations) and others not – combine howling voice and silence in a way that confuses
listeners as to when exactly she is musicking. Z juxtaposes bel canto and spoken word delivery
with composed loop textures using variably clear arrangement of phonemic content, exploring
the typically unheard musicality of language and voice. My own work explores various types ofcontinuity, noise character, textural simplicity, and forwardness in sonic field in an effort tomake body at once strange and somehow similar to the machine. These distinct creative
approaches are all vocally agential: they articulate a distinct vocal sound while navigating among
and commenting on various genre spaces.

31

The experimental idiom and particular uses of technology in my case studies of extended voice are not
relevant (or, unfortunately, accessible) to everyone. But I think my definition of vocal agency has broader
relevance. It could potentially include, for instance, vocoderist-multinstrumentalist Casey Benjamin andcellist-vocalist-electronics artist Audrey Chen. In short, I think it’s the frame-alluding latter part of mydefinition – “commentary on genre” – which in future research has the greatest potential for inclusivity.

80
Like Barnes’ argument for the social character of disability, the social (self-listening,genre-bending) view of extended voice withstands scrutiny where customary body-based notions
do not. She writes, “What is interesting, worthwhile, useful, etc. about disability as a category is,
I contend, that it’s a social category that people have found useful when organizing themselves ina civil rights struggle” (41). Both disability and extended voice upend the notion of thenormative body. Extended voice, which is highly personalized, works directly on the creative
and technical possibility space opened up by self-listening. No longer a one-size-fits-all rulecircumscribing sound and action, the body now becomes one of several technologies curated by
the practitioner. The voice-electronics dialogue resulting from this curation is importantly social
in that it crosses and re-imagines genre space.
Of course, it is important not to overstate the similarities between disability and extended
voice. Broad-scale ableism and lack of physical accessibility profoundly impact the lives ofmany disabled people; extended voice practitioners cannot be said to face comparable prejudice.
It is crucial to engage practices of empathetic listening and dialogue to begin to understandcomplex issues of intersectionality, for instance the distinct class profiles of disability andextended voice. Ongoing study will further illuminate both the similarities and the importantdifferences between disability and extended voice, insofar as both are social categories whichtake important steps toward destabilizing the notion of the normative body.

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V. CONCLUSION

Through technical description of my work, listening-based analysis of other extended
voice practitioners’ work, and critical discussion of embodiment and agency, I have argued that
presence – crucially enabled by self-listening – accounts for the sonic and social advances ofextended voice. I hope that, in time, vocal-electronic experimentation will be popularly
normalized. Though ‘extended voice’ per se is mainly a creative phenomenon, technology
increasingly inflects our functional communicative acts. Thus, it is not too difficult to imagine
that vocal-electronic self-curation, i.e., presence, will diffuse into popular activity.
My upcoming voice-electronics research will incorporate analog electronics. I havebegun to investigate sending digital voice-electronics output as a control voltage input to analog
synthesizers, e.g., Buchla and Serge. I am interested in how the physical understanding of voice
as voltage can advance the twin goals of enriching expressivity and empowering voices of theotherwise silenced. Furthermore, I am curious to explore both sparser soundscapes, and control
that is simpler yet more precise. In various scenes and subcultures, including electronic music,
instrument building, and extended voice, I perceive what I call a ‘pressure for polyphony’. Yet I
increasingly understand my sound as effervescently monophonic. I am curious to explore thispotential. Similarly, I will continue to refine the Abacus, with the aim of developing a precise yet
fluid body language for control. Proximity sensors to read embouchure, locking-position (e.g.,springless) joysticks, and accelerometer and/or spectral feature data are several potential methods
for control precision-yet-ease, which might in turn contribute to detailed monophony.
I have argued that extended voice, like disability, is importantly a social category whichsubverts the notion of the normative body. The next critical and creative step will be to delve

82
deeper into the notion of normative body, especially its dual sonic-social character and how it
contributes to and learns from theories of intersectional identity.
Thinking adjacently about normative technological extensions of voice will help clarify
what ‘normative body’ means in sonic contexts. To simplify and summarize, we can assume thatexceeding or questioning the temporal limitations of breath and vocal stamina is an important
goal in electronically extending the voice. But if we follow a disability-conscious perspective,
we must acknowledge the vast range of so-called ‘disabled’ and ‘non-disabled’ bodies in theworld, and thus accept the fallibility of blanket assessments of breath and vocal stamina. Possible
creative and critical interventions include: (1) treating electronic sounds’ potentially infinite
duration as a drawback, which can be overcome through addition of human-like phrasing andpauses; (2) giving greater attention to humans’ varying breath lengths, to better understandsimilarities and differences among bodies; and (3) re-valuing the sonic changes attendant to theinevitable depletion of stamina in long-term vocalization.
Through self-listening, which is necessarily highly personalized, and resultant presence,extended voice undermines normative notions of body and foregrounds posthuman mindbody
instead. Motland’s use of whistle tones and my use of noisy harmonics, for instance, point
instantly and immediately to questions of bodily weirdness and aesthetic motivation. Nuanced
and challenged by electronics, these sounds further gesture to second-order matters of genrecrossing. Extended voice takes crucial steps toward creatively manifesting Cavarero’s (2002)
argument in favor of vocal individuality. This is itself a posthuman endeavor, underscoring thatthe mindbody is at work making choices to electronically extend the voice.
Extended voice is a valuable sonic practice because of its unabashedly personalized
experimentation with ‘live’ and ‘recorded’ methodologies, its innovation in timbral and temporal83interactions between vocal and electronic sounds, and, therefore, its demonstrated ability towelcome and cultivate more diverse participation than that which currently typifies electronic
music overall. Continued research and creative work will help elucidate the ways in which
extended voice fundamentally re-calibrates the relationships between listening, sounding, andvaluing.

84
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Saarbrücken, Germany: PFAU-Verlag. 2005.
Woloshyn, Alexa Lauren. “The recorded voice and the mediated body in contemporary Canadianelectroacoustic music.” PhD dissertation. University of Toronto, 2012.
Young, Miriama. Singing the Body Electric: The Human Voice and Sound Technology. London
and New York: Routledge, 2015.
----. “Latent body – plastic, malleable, inscribed: The human voice, the body and the sound of its
transformation through technology.” Contemporary Music Review 25(1-2) (2006): 81-92.
Z, Pamela, email message to author, January 26, 2017.

91----. “A Tool is a Tool.” In Malloy, Judy (ed.), Women, Art, and Technology. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2003. 348-361.
Zorn, Jonathan. “Voices in the Electronic Furnace: Towards an Analysis of Electroacoustic
Vocal Music.” PhD dissertation. University of Virginia, 2012.

DISCOGRAPHY
AGF, Kon:3p>UTION to: e[VOL]ution. AGF Producktion, CD, 2016.
----. Westernization Completed. AGF Production, CD, 2003.
Guilleray, Marie. Entre chien et loup. SoundCloud. November 2012.
https://soundcloud.com/marie-guilleray/entre-chien-et-loup. Accessed 17 December 2016.
Guilleray, Marie and Johan van Kreij. SoundCloud. Après la mer. October 2014.
https://soundcloud.com/marie-guilleray/apres-la-mer-stereo-mix. Accessed 17 December 2016.
Motland, Stine Janvin (as Stine II). Born In An Early Age. SoundCloud. Februrary 2016.
https://soundcloud.com/stinejm/stine_ii_born-in-an-early-age. Accessed 4 January 2017.
----. Fake Synthetic Music. 2016. https://stinesthetics.com/2016/09/12/fake-synthetic-music/.
Accessed 4 January 2017.
----. In Labour. Pica Disk PICA033, LP, 2014.
Ratkje, Maja. “Maja S. K. Ratkje live at the Punkt festival 2013.” YouTube. 17 October 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VDc0ac6PLg. Accessed 17 December 2016.
----. Voice. Rune Grammofon RCD2028, CD, 2002.
Ratkje, Maja and Säkä. Rasaka. KBA002, CD, 2016.
Yoshida, Ami. Tiger Thrush. Improvised Music from Japan IMJ-504, CD, 2003.
Z, Pamela. A Delay is Better. Starkland ST-213, CD, 2004.
----. Voci (excerpts) [video]. PamelaZ.com. http://www.pamelaz.com/VociMov.html. ODC
Theater, San Francisco (2003). Accessed 18 March 2017.

92
Appendix A

Voice-electronics performances

2017
May 25For amiA Coruña [ES]May 4Charlottesville, VA
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
March 8Atlanta, GA
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
https://soundcloud.com/kristinawarrencomposer/intlwomensday2017
March 4
Huddersfield [UK]
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
https://soundcloud.com/kristinawarrencomposer/yswn_intlwomensday
January 28
Liverpool [UK]
Merseyside Improvisers Orchestra: conduction, free improvisation, open works

2016
December 16
Manchester [UK]Improvised set, AKA trio: Ailís Ní Ríain (prepared piano), Amy Brandon (guitar, electronics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6LzcSySEXc&feature=youtu.be
December 15
Improvised set, AKA trio

Liverpool [UK]November 30
London [UK]Improvised voice-electronics sets
https://soundcloud.com/kristinawarrencomposer/30nov-perf
November 26
Liverpool [UK]
Merseyside Improvisers Orchestra: conduction, free improvisation, open works
October 1
Charlottesville, VA
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
http://medie.kmwarren.org/warren_wcw.wav
September 16
The Hague [NL]
Is There Timehttp://medib.kmwarren.org/IsThereTime_loos_mix.wav

93
Appendix A (cont.) Voice-electronics performances

2016 (concl.)
September 10
DNR

Glasgow [UK]September 8
Is There Time

Derry [UK]May 15 - June 4
New Smyrna Beach, FL
Daily group improvisations (Atlantic Center for the Arts)
April 23
Charlottesville, VA
Improvised set, Aorist: Rachel Devorah (horn, electronics), Kimberly Sutton (cello, electronics)
April 22
Charlottesville, VA
Who Freed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwoAf2hlMNQ
March 23
Charlottesville, VA
Improvised set with Kevin Davis (cello, effects pedals), Rachel Devorah (horn), Marc Mazique(drums)March 18
Charlottesville, VA
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8796oDeluU
February 13
Statesboro, GA
Baltimore Sits
http://medie.kmwarren.org/BaltimoreSits.wav

2015
October 29Charlottesville, VA
Solo improvised voice-electronics set
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRm6ODYls4k
October 17Charlottesville, VA
Schemer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbkX8SBE7l8

94
Appendix A (concl.)

Voice-electronics performances

2015 (concl.)
September 30
Denton, TX
Look the Other Way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnVMHuVnm_E
July 3
Charlottesville, VA
Improvised set with Kevin Davis (cello, effects pedals), Rachel Devorah (horn)
June 24
New York, NY
Look the Other Way
https://vimeo.com/133399480 (excerpt)
April 18
Look the Other Way

Charlottesville, VA

2014
November 14
Look the Other Way

Fredericksburg, VA

November 6
Charlottesville, VA
Look the Other Way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTORGvxyh-8

95
Appendix B Spring 2016 patch: Composed control routine
My Spring 2016 Max patch had 14 control
parameters – ranging from spectral treatment, togrammar for rhythmic playing of grains – which
could be sent to any combination of the (4)rhythmic granulation voices. It was too difficult tomanage this complex system while performing, so
instead I composed routines for automated control.
The table below contains the routine used for myMarch 2016 performance at the Twisted Branch Tea
Bazaar (Charlottesville, Virginia).

Time
load
(0:00)
0:32
1:11
1:31
2:04
3:00
3:19
3:37
4:05
4:30
4:47
5:19
6:03

6:52
7:25
7:37
7:43
8:43
8:59
9:07
9:21
9:45
11:01
11:08
11:49

Event
voices 1234: STg = 4, collST = 5, no louddownbeats = 1, adv thru ST coll 11x
voice 2: gain = 2
voices 34: playgrammar = 6
voices 134: gain = 1.5
voice 1: playgrammar = 2, (2:07) 5,(2:20) 2, (2:26) 5
voices 14: playgrammar = 2, (3:10) 5
voices 13: playgrammar = 2
voices 1234: gain = 2
voice 3: playgrammar = 5
voice 4: playgrammar = 2
voices 1234: playgrammar = 2
voice 4: lineshape = 14, (5:25) 4,(5:30) 3, (5:33) 4, (5;46) 3
voice 2: lineshape = 12, (6:18) 3,(6:24) 12, (6:30) 13, (6:32) 12, (6:35) 13,(6:37) 12, (6:41) 3
voices 13: gain = 2.5
voice 2: playgrammar = 3
voice 2: gain = 3
voice 2: adv thru ST coll 1x, (7:46) 1x,(7:48) 1x, (7:54) 1x, (8:35) 1x, (8:37) 1x
voices 1234: adv thru ST coll 1x
voices 134: gain = 2.5, (9:01) 3
voices 1234: adv thru ST coll 1x,(9:09) 1x, (9:11) 1x
voices 1234: gain = 0
voices 1234: playgrammar = 4,
spectral = 3
voices 14: gain = 1
voices 1234: phraseRest = 1
voices 23: gain = 1.5, (12:20) 2

Time
12:24
12:45
12:58
13:17
13:31
13:55
14:19
14:41
14:56
15:01
15:19
15:53
16:11
16:26
16:45
17:03
17:17
17:28
17:52
18:09
18:22
18:47
19:00
19:15
19:24
20:10
20:24
21:03

Event
voices 14: gain = 2
voice 3: playgrammar = 2
voices 1234: adv thru ST coll 1x
voice 3: spectral = 1
voice 3: playgrammar = 2, (13:46) 3
voice 3: muteGrainLen = 1, (14:26) 0,(14:57) 1, (15:28) 0, (15:59) 1
voice 3: adv thru ST coll 1x, (14:22) 1x,(14:24) 1x, (14:26) 1x, (14:29) 1x
voice 3: lineshape = 2
voice 4: playgrammar = 3
voice 4: spectral = 1
voices 12: gain = 3
voice 1: playgrammar = 3
voice 2: spectral = 1
voices 34: gain = 3
voice 12: gain = 4
voices 34: playgrammar = 1, (17:07) 3
voices 1234: trigger random ST 1x
voices 1234: playgrammar = 3
voices 14: lineshape = 5
voice 1: gain = 3.5, (18:10) 4, (18:12) 4.5
voices 34: gain = 3, (18:24) 2.5, (18:32) 2,(18:35) 1.5
voices 124: spectral = 3
voices 124: gain = 4
voices 34: gain = 3.5, (19:18) 3
voices 12: gain = 5, (19:27) 5.5, (19:45) 6
voice 3: spectral = 2
voice 3: gain = 3, (20:26) 4
voice 4: spectral = 1; (21:06) voice 2,
spectral = 1; (21:10) voice 1, spectral = 1;
(21:17) voice 3, spectral = 1

96Appendix C

Vox6 patch: Rhythmic granulation parameters

Vox6 has sixteen voices doing rhythmic granulation, divided into (4) groups of (4) voices each.
In Groups 1-2 there is a mono flanger after each granulation voice, while in Groups 3-4 there isno flanger. Upon trigger (Abacus button), 4 distinct random parameter clusters are generated,i.e., one parameter cluster per group. There are four parameters which can be affected:
Start Time in source buffer
LengthTempo
Flange preset (Groups 1-2 only)(Vox5, an earlier patch, used these parameters along with two more: Rhythmic grammar andTransposition (FFT-based). However, Vox6 eliminates rhythmic grammar because variations
were not clearly audible, and eliminates transposition because it was too computationallyexpensive.)
There is a 25% chance that one parameter will be affected, 50% chance two, and 25% chance
three parameters will be affected. Start Time, Length, and Tempo can all receive either a single
random value or one of a few pre-composed Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs), while flange
receives a random 1 of 5 pre-composed presets.
For instance, a single trigger might output the following four parameter clusters:
Group 1

Tempo = 1060 bpm
Flange = preset 1

Group 2

Tempo = 675 bpm

Group 3

Start Time = 1300 ms

Group 4

Tempo = LFO #2
Start Time = LFO #3
Length = LFO #1

97
Appendix D

Vox6 patch: Transposition-delay unit

When an input signal is sent to tapin~ and a V-shaped ramp is sent to tapout~, the input istransposed and delayed. I repeatedly triggered a bit of sound (sine wave) to tapin~ with different
ramp values to tapout~, and measured tap delay time and fundamental frequency (using Tristan
Jehan’s pitch~ object). I observed the following for ramp format [y1, y2 tR y1 tR] :Particular ramp slopes give particular transposition intervals:
ratio = tR/ | y1 – y2 |by transposition direction and intervaltranspose down
m2
M2
m3
M3
P4
+4

20
8.75
6.3
4.55
4
3.5

P5
m6
P6
m7
P7
P8

transpose up
3
2.72
2.5
2.3
2.15
2

m2
M2
m3
M3
P4
+4

20
8
5
4
3
2.3

P5
m6
P6
m7
P7
P8

2
1.7
1.5
1.3
1.15
1

Initial ramp value and tap delay time are linearly correlated:tD = a*y1 + b
tD = delay time y1 = initial ramp valuetranspose down
m2
M2
m3
M3
P4
+4
P5

m
1.052
1.311
1.19151.27951.33391.39851.498

b14.42513.14810.451
15.17
12.00616.106
14.614transpose up
m2
M2
m3
M3
P4
+4
P5

m
0.95350.88920.8356
0.79830.75050.6966
0.6713b-3.1243-1.2294-3.2577
1.619-0.15074.34367.0204

98
Appendix D (concl.)

Vox6 patch: Transposition-delay unit

Finally, I summarized this information to allow calculation of ramp values using desiredtransposition (cents) and delay time (ms). Notably, since empirical measurements drove
calculation of regression equations, ramp values yield approximate, not precise, transposition anddelay values. I enjoy this slightly detuned and a-rhythmic sound, so I have maintained theimprecision.
Given c = transposition (cents) and tD = delay time (ms),calculate ratio = tR/ | y1 – y2 |and y1 = (tD – b) / a(let | y1 – y2 | = 200)
Transpose down
Ratio
1505.2c ^ -0.956

a, b for y1
a = 1.0037e^0.0006cb_avg = 13.703

Transpose up
Ratio
4132.3c ^ -1.168

a, b for y1
a = 1.0045e^-0.0006c
b = 0.016c – 4.6711

99
Appendix E Vox6 patch
Vox6 presentation mode (viewed during performance)

100
Appendix E (cont.)
Vox6 patching mode (for editing)

Vox6 patch

101
Appendix E (cont.)

Vox6 patch

This chart shows nested subpatches within Vox6 in order to explain the ensuing screenshots.
Redundant or self-explanatory subpatches (e.g., 8.3 grps2-4) are not pictured.
1
2
3

4
5
6
7

8

puls-L1-VL
gain (vox)routeEvthg
1 voxCtl
2 t3-to-randVox
3 LiveSig
1 pong
2 trDel-Short-Long
1 trDelAll (poly~)
1 decideDelsendDelTransp
2 ramp1 transpDown
3 verb4 del
4 pan
RECORDlayer1
switchBfrs
rhy-dens
PulsarTempo
1 SoundingQtrs
2 RhyPhrases
1 rhyPhrase
L1&multiL2
1 RecL1then4xProcessing
1 g1ranpro-flange
1 LFO-ST
2 grp1tempo
3 grp1
1 meteredPlay-v2-grp1
1 presetsQtrUnits
1 odds-gate
2 detgridlendecideActualen
1 detgridlen

2 decidelen
2 kw-pulsarvoice3
1 jitterST
1 jitST
2 play1 jitterLen
3 flanger_mono
4 route1 grp1solo
2 toLS
4 vary-pgST
5 lsn-ignRhy
1 bigEnv1
1 maxgainTime
6 ROUTE
1 pulsSolo
9 hearRhy
1 g1ranpro-flange-L1only
10 ABA
1 serial
2 led
3 slowFast
4 RESET
5 fastFlip
6 t2route
11 ST-len-wait-bigenv
1 ctlvar
1 ctlvar_store
1 mean-stdev
2 ctlvar_do
2 send-ST
12 2d
1 2dvox2 randBfr

102
Appendix E (cont.)
1. puls-L1-VL

2. gain (vox)

Vox6 patch

103
Appendix E (cont.)
3. routeEvthg

3.1 voxCtl

Vox6 patch

104
Appendix E (cont.)
3.2 t3-to-randVox

Vox6 patch

105
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3 LiveSig

Vox6 patch

106
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.1 pongVox6 patch

107
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.2 trDel-Short-Long

Vox6 patch

108
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.2.1 trDelAll (poly~)

Vox6 patch

109
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.2.1.1 decideDel-sendDelTransp

Vox6 patch

110
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.2.1.2 ramp

Vox6 patch

111
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.2.1.2.1 transpDown

Vox6 patch

112
Appendix E (cont.)
3.3.3 verb

3.3.4 delVox6 patch

113
Appendix E (cont.)
3.4 panVox6 patch

114
Appendix E (cont.)
4. RECORDlayer1

5. switchBfrs

Vox6 patch

115
Appendix E (cont.)
6. rhy-dens

Vox6 patch

116
Appendix E (cont.)
7. PulsarTempo

Vox6 patch

117
Appendix E (cont.)
7.1 SoundingQtrs

7.2 rhyPhrases

Vox6 patch

118
Appendix E (cont.)
7.2.1 rhyPhrase

Vox6 patch

119
Appendix E (cont.)
8. L1&multiL2

8.1 RecL1then4xProcessing

Vox6 patch

120
Appendix E (cont.)
8.1.1 g1ranpro-flange

Vox6 patch

121
Appendix E (cont.)
8.1.1.1 LFO-ST

Vox6 patch

122
Appendix E (cont.)
8.2 grp1tempo

Vox6 patch

123
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3 grp1

8.3.1 meteredPlay-v2-g1

Vox6 patch

124
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.1.1 presetsQtrUnits

8.3.1.1.1 odds-gate

Vox6 patch

125
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.1.1.2 detgridlen-decideActualen

8.3.1.1.2.1 detgridlen

Vox6 patch

126
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.1.1.2.2 decidelen

Vox6 patch

127
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.2 kw-pulsarvoice3

Vox6 patch

128
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.2.1 jitterST

Vox6 patch

129
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.2.1.1 jitST

Vox6 patch

130
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.2.2 play

Vox6 patch

131
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.2.2.1 jitterLen

8.3.3 flanger_mono

Vox6 patch

132
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.4 routeVox6 patch

133
Appendix E (cont.)
8.3.4.1 grp1solo

8.3.4.2 toLS

Vox6 patch

134
Appendix E (cont.)
8.4 vary-pgST

Vox6 patch

135
Appendix E (cont.)
8.5 lsn-ignRhy

8.5.1 bigEnv1

Vox6 patch

136
Appendix E (cont.)
8.5.1.1 maxgainTime

Vox6 patch

137
Appendix E (cont.)
8.6 ROUTE

8.6.1 pulsSolo

Vox6 patch

138
Appendix E (cont.)
9. hearRhy

Vox6 patch

139
Appendix E (cont.)

Vox6 patch

9.1 g1ranpro-flange-L1only

Unlike 8.1.1 g1ranpro-flange, this patch adds the parameter jitSTodds, i.e., the likelihood that aplaybang will cause jitter around the Start Time value from the slider (values = 5 or 10%). Thisparameter is not available when creating buffers for pulsar granulation because if Start Timejitters frequently, audio sidebands are disrupted, preventing desirable low frequencies from being
created by pulsar.

140
Appendix E (cont.)
10. ABA

10.1 serial

Vox6 patch

141
Appendix E (cont.)
10.2 led

10.3 slowFast

Vox6 patch

142
Appendix E (cont.)
10.4 RESET

10.5 fastFlip

Vox6 patch

143
Appendix E (cont.)
10.6 t2routeVox6 patch

144
Appendix E (cont.)
11. ST-len-wait-bigenv

11.1 ctlvar

Vox6 patch

145
Appendix E (cont.)
11.1.1 ctlvar_store

Vox6 patch

146
Appendix E (cont.)
11.1.1.1 mean-stdev

Vox6 patch

147
Appendix E (cont.)
11.1.2 ctlvar_do

Vox6 patch

148
Appendix E (cont.)
11.2 send-ST

Vox6 patch

149
Appendix E (cont.)
12. 2dVox6 patch

150
Appendix E (cont.)
12.1 2dvox

Vox6 patch

151
Appendix E (concl.)
12.2 randBfr

Vox6 patch