One Player, Two Instruments

With the rise of more user-friendly music technologies and the accessibility of these tools, more acoustic instrumentalists explore the world of live electronics in relation to their own instrumental practice. These range from working with effect boxes (digital or analogue), to the use of hybrid/extended instruments, to performing with autonomous improvisatory systems, or a variation/combination of the above. The use of live coding in combination with one’s own instrumental performance is not excluded from this movement although it is less prevalent. This paper analyses three examples of works which require one player to both play an instrument and live code before: Xavier Riley’s Don’t Drop The Bass, Alexandra Cardenas’ Feedforward, and Nick Collins’ Robot Schumann. The analysis focuses on how the performer interacts with the two individual performance practices during their performance, how they overcome the physical challenges of shifting between two interfaces and how they deal with performance flow and continuity.