Double Bass Concerto for improvising double bass, virtual orchestra and interactive live electronics

Colour By Numbers originally arose from the idea of musically describing the genesis of a picture, a painting, and witnessing its unfolding, starting with the blank, white canvas, through the priming and the first dots and blobs of colour, to connecting lines, shapes, and structures, until finally the entire picture emerges before the inner eye or ear, whereby the whole will be experienced as more than the sum of its parts in the final movement.

In addition to its associative aspect, Colour By Numbers also has a strong contemporary electronic aspect: the audio signal of the double bass is transformed in real time into MIDI control commands via spectral analysis, which are then modeled on the computer and subsequently fed to the selected virtual instruments or instrument groups for sound generation. The computer therefore reacts to the soloist and at the same time functions as a kind of black box and idea generator, because it autonomously continues, varies and modifies the incoming improvised material with the help of algorithms and probabilities and thus provides the player with new impulses for the improvisation, can surprise him, who in turn reacts to these changes. This feedback loop is ultimately essential for the piece; it thrives on this interaction between computer and soloist, who accordingly has a strong influence on the structural development of the piece.

The aspect of the virtual formulated here can be understood as a kind of alienation in which the observed action can no longer be brought into line with the acoustic result, but at the same time something different and attractive can be experienced: a coherence underlying the internal entanglement between real and virtual sound, between soloist and virtual orchestra, which is immediately communicated.

In this context, I like to recall Jeff Wall's staged photographs, in which these "experiences of unreality" can be experienced despite, or perhaps because of, the depicted reality. Added to this is the proximity to hyperrealism and the allusions and references to traditional works, both positions that are also the subject of Color By Numbers.

The virtual orchestra is therefore not primarily a way of programming a concerto to suit every soloist, let alone an emergency solution because no real orchestra was available at the time, but rather a conceptual component of the composition and the inherent contradiction to be negotiated, the question of truth and reality, ambivalence and ambiguity, in a world of increasing alienation.

The interactive human-machine double bass concerto Colour By Numbers for improvising contrabass, virtual orchestra and interactive live electronics is a four-movement work plus introduction and interlude and lasts approx. 50 minutes.

this is this previous project from Gunnar Geisse: