KHSHK

KHSHK is a series of works exploring and unpacking musical micro-timing, how it relates to our bodies and environments, and the ways it can be refracted and recontextualised as a compositional language in a digital context.

How does expressive timing mimic or reflect the sonic patterns of our living environments, both natural and human-made? How can reconstituting an expressively-timed phrase via different sounds change the way we hear it, or reveal unnoticed similarities between genres or between body and environment? How do differently-timed phrases interact with one another when juxtaposed, and how do these timing fluctuations impact the vertical layers of a composition? How can superimposing the tempo fluctuations of one pattern onto another render it strange or give it new meaning? How can humanised timing influence our perception of electronic music, both by enhancing groove and exposing performance flaws? Finally, how does expressive timing reflect the role of the body? By fragmenting and rearranging these performance subtleties, are we also doing the same with embodied musical expression, and can this offer a novel approach to musical storytelling?

In these works, I examine these questions from a variety of angles: via both groove and rhythmic phrasing, percussive sequences and textural contours, conscious and subconscious variations. Through the process, I reflected on how composing with this aspect of musicality tested the limits of the digital audio workflows and tools at my disposal, and incorporated some artefacts of this “resistance” into the final recordings. For sonic material, I chose a mixture of synthesised sounds and processed samples from my daily environment, giving me a complementary spectrum of sounds to work with in exploring the borders of the digital and physical. Not only did this project offer the chance for detailed research on microtiming in digital composition, it also contributed to the development of a broader expressive language, which I applied here and have continued to refine in my most recent work.

MTRL

Non-grid-based timing and microtiming in a deconstructed club context. This track is built from overlapping rhythmic phrases and patterns recorded in free time, with no traditional “pulse”. Can the timing of the patterns themselves make you want to move your body, even without a steady beat?

This work continues research into humanised, embodied timing in digital environments. Patterns were improvised on a MIDI controller, used to trigger processed percussive samples from surfaces and objects in the Radio Nopal residency space. These “material” (MTRL) textures mirror the humanised timing of the performances, but the loops and dynamic rigidity make the digital platform audible, playing with the tension between that which is touchable and untouchable.

Also, what kinds of noises and imperfections are we willing to accept, and which are we not? I believe there is deep, under-recognised pleasure in the grit of our environments and the flaws in our performances. A nod to Laetitia Sonami, on the value of humanised performance and risk-taking in electronic music, and how we can refract and reassemble this as we do with everything else.

Influenced by shows I saw in CDMX at 316 Centro and Jazzorca, and the N.A.A.F.I. label. Based on sounds developed at Radio Nopal en el barrio de San Rafael en CDMX, 2023 and 2024. Muchas Gracias a Diego, Vera, Ale y todos.

SLP (con Elena Solís)

Electro-acoustic & noise piece exploring stretched timing via handmade ceramic instruments crafted by Elena Solís. Based on samples and improvisations recorded at the Radio Nopal residency space in Mexico City during June 2024. MIDI-based phrases are stretched, pulled, and splintered in relation to shapes and gestures emerging from the recorded performances, blurring the borders between the digital and the physical, and investigating the tactile aspects of musical timing.

Samples and improvisations were recorded by Solís and I using six custom ceramic instruments that she built. Five of the instruments were variations on a hollow sphere with an additional clay ball inside which struck or rolled against the inner walls as we pivoted or shook the object. The sixth instrument was a ceramic chain which could be folded against itself or dragged along the ceramic tiles of the room.

I was interested in working with these instruments because the sounds they produced were complex, varied, and slightly unpredictable, while following the shapes of gestures and movements in a way that felt highly tactile and expressive. I had been working on a series of pieces exploring expressive microtiming in electronic music and felt these instruments could offer a different angle on the theme—focused more on phrase shape than individual percussive events, illustrating the expansion and contraction of time in relation to gestural movement, and grounding the work in an embodied relationship to physical materials.

I composed the piece by selecting segments of the improvisations which I felt had an appealing shape, then recorded additional improvisations in response and arranged a series of grid-based MIDI percussion clips based on samples from the instruments. As I constructed the piece, I pulled and stretched the MIDI clips in relation to the timing variations of the original recordings, and also sculpted their timing in dialogue or counterpoint to the rest of the arrangement. I intentionally blurred the line between the original improvisations and digital materials by using samples and timbre transfer techniques. This resulted in rolling, multi-layered percussion textures which pulled and stretched against one another, outlining a shifting, non-metric sense of percussive timing influenced by the continuous shapes of our arm movements while playing the instruments. The title “SLP” is a contraction of “slip” which describes both the sounds of the instruments and their movements.

Un Lugar Como un Bosque (Live Set)

Explorations in microtiming via SP-404SX and contact mic, developed in CDMX and NYC for live performances in mid-2024. This set unpacks the research within a longer format, placing processed improvised phrases and patterns in dialogue with one another through layering, collage, and the physical interface of the sampler. These tracks incorporate a variety of strategies for working with microtiming in a digital context, from subtle variations in pattern and texture emerging from human performance, to splintered, rapid-fire percussive phrasing and stretched MIDI-generated rhythms.

This release is edited together from several improvised performances—each movement unpacks different areas of this emerging territory, offering a deeper exploration of microtiming as a basis for compositional and improvisational language; and how a permeable, playful relationship between the digital and physical can shine a spotlight on the inner workings of this phenomenon. The title refers to the density of sonic voices emerging in this process, chattering like the animals, plants, and natural elements of a national park, filtered through the physical materials of the human-made environment. A cafe, a bedroom, a studio, like a forest.

As with much of my output, this work intentionally blurs the line between high and low art, filtering these ideas through affordable, second-hand hardware in the context of a live noise set. Practice-based research belongs both within and outside of the institution, intellectual inquiry is neither elite nor reactively working class—it belongs seamlessly integrated into the endless jumble, action, and give-and-take of our world: dented and chipped, yet endlessly loquacious and generative, buzzing like cicadas and exposed cables.

Radio Nopal Otoño '23

Radio Nopal residency set from autumn 2023, exploring stretched timing, micro-expression, and the borders of the digital and physical through the CDMX sound- and music-scape. The track builds minimalist phrases and warped loops via samples of the residency space—including floors, chairs, tables, field recordings—exploring the permeable space between human expressive subtlety and its environmental influences.

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The work presented here encapsulates two months of intensive research on microtiming in an electronic context during a 2023 Radio Nopal residency in Mexico City. I placed particular attention on methods for working with non-grid-based timing in popular DAWs, and means of translating environmental and embodied influences on expressive timing in this context. In many cases, I harnessed sounds from the residency space itself, while also incorporating influences absorbed from excursions into Mexico City’s free-improvisation and experimental electronic communities. Mirroring the diversity of the sonic practices I was encountering, and the medium of radio itself, the piece switches frames or channels between these different worlds and experiments.

This track explores the transmutation of live percussive phrasing through digital tools and techniques, various approaches to warping quantized electronic material via non-grid-based recorded patterns, and the consonance/dissonance that emerges in relationships between the digital and physical. During the process, I investigate how far I can push expressive timing within Ableton Live, and explore non-metric bases for conceptions of time and rhythm. The piece concludes by blurring the territory between human improvisation and environmental patterning, leaving the origin of both timing and sound uncertain.