Experiment & Performance by Goutte d'Or (2004)
Tap-n-bass is an improvised tap dance performance where the sounds of wired-up tap shoes are picked-up by piezo contact microphones and remixed live, resulting in drum-n-bass-inspired music.
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Tap-n-Bass Experiment & Performance by Goutte d'Or (2004) Tap-n-bass is an improvised tap dance performance where the sounds of wired-up tap shoes are picked-up by piezo contact microphones and remixed live, resulting in drum-n-bass-inspired music. |
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Description Drum-n-bass is one of the most exhilarating music styles that have emerge during the last few years. Noticing pattern similarities between certain rhythms in drum-n-bass and in tap dancing, we decided to see what would happen if we crossed these two genres. In Tap-n-bass, we aimed at making a tap dance performance that would produce booming bass and fast syncopated rhythms reminiscent of drum-n-bass, while staying true to the genre of tradition of tap dancing and its characteristic sound. The music is produced live by sounds picked-up by contact microphones attached on the shoes. The sounds are filtered and remixed live through a mixer board and custom-made program run on a laptop. The Tap-n-bass performance is improvised and collaborative, in terms of the dialogue established between the laptop remixer and the tap dancers. Background Within the field of interactive dance technology, a number of projects have experimented with dancers producing music in real time from their body movements, as opposed to following the music. In MusicViaMotion (2000) for example, dance movements are captured with a video camera and mapped to sound synthesis in real time. In MIT Medialab's Expressive Footwear project (1998) and Katherine Moriwaki's Music Shoes (2000), the dancers wear sport shoes respectively chinese slippers, equipped with a range of sensors. In Alfred Desio's Zapped Taps, sensors are also used, this time on tap shoes. In all these projects, the sensed movements actuate and modulate artificial sounds. In Tap-n-bass, we took a technological step back and used the actual acoustic sounds produced by the tap shoes instead of sensor data about the dancer's movements. Hardware Piezo contact microphones were attached between each shoe's metallic sheets (one by the toe and one by the heel) in order to pick up tap sounds as directly as possible. For more info about how to wire-up contact mics, see this website. The microphones were connected to a laptop via a mixer board in such a way that each microphone had its own channel and could be filtered in its own way. The right foot would produce 'bass' sounds and the left one 'snare' sounds. Audio processing The contact microphones were connected to a mixer where levels were balanced and all signals mixed into a stereo pair, sent to the input of a laptop. No other sounds than the live input were used (such as synthesis or playback of prerecorded material). As main software we used Audiomulch, a free modular audio platform suitable for live processing. Two different kinds of processing were used: instantaneous (modifying the incoming signal in real time), and time based (playing back sounds from a record buffer). For time based processing we used Bonzai, a custom built VST plug-in that stores all the input it receives in a buffer and divides it into loops of any specified length. The user can monitor the input waveform and select any number of loops to be played back at any given time. This method can be used to create beats from almost any audio material. In this setup, we made it possible to monitor the output of Bonzai in headphones before including it in the mix so that the "remixer" could search for suitable loops while the dancer was performing. We found that it was difficult to monitor the sound from the tap shoes in headphones due to the lack of sustain or reverberation in the sound. Therefore, we added a reverb on the signal sent to the headphones. For instantaneous processing we used two external plug-ins: Geometer and Buffer Override from the open-source destroyFX collection. Performance A 15-minute live act was performed during G-böteborg Dance and Theatre Festival, August 28, 2004 at Club Love, Pusterviksbaren. -A The following structure emerged during rehearsals and was used for the performance:
The structure has the following advantages:
Both dancers are experienced tap-dancers. Although the general structure of the performance was more or less fixed, the dancing and remixing were improvised live during the performance. (A video was recorded — thanks Alejandro! — but light conditions were not optimal. We may upload a short snippet though, or some of the audio.) People Lalya Gaye: soldering/wiring, dancing, documentation (text and photos). Valerie Bugmann: soldering/wiring, dancing. Alexander Berman: live audio remixing, documentation (text). Links Furious contact microphone assembly Working Group on Interactive Systems and Instrument Design in Music Göteborg Dance and Theater Festival 2004 |
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Sound examples Note that these recordings were taken through the mixer board and do not completely correspond to what you would hear in room, as the raw tap sounds are not included. More sound examples to come shortly. » Dance + modification » Dance + modification (II) » Loop + modification » Loop + modification + dance Process photos         Remixer screenshot  Audiomulch and Bonzai (click to enlarge). The input is sent to the Bonzai plug-in (separate GUI at bottom of screen dump). The remixer can then choose (S2Mixer_1) how much of the live audio and the sounds played back from the Bonzai buffer should be sent to the instantenous modifiers (Buffer Override and Geometers). With S6Mixer_1 the proportions between dry (input) and wet (processed) signals can be tuned. The connections below the mixer implement flexible headphone monitoring for the sound card being used (an Audiotrak Maya USB device). |