This telematic concert was part of a workshop on music and AI hosted by the university of Oslo. You can watch a video of the performance here.

The music was chosen to represent a variety of musical and cultural backgrounds. We decided to cover two jazz cover songs in the first part of the concert. Nino has a background in jazz vocals and electric guitar, Fabian has experience playing guitar bass in the same genre, and Emin can perform both on drums and ney. During the first phase of rehearsals, the first two pieces were practiced and fixed. We decided to leave Nino's voice as the leading element and not have Masoud as a back vocalist because Nino follows improvise-like jazz vocal phrasing.

Masoud's electronics embodied generative pulse and drone, a layer of field recording to create a wider stereo image and feeling of space, and a layer of synthetic wind that was live mixed to fit the context of the Improvisation in the second part. Also, while the ney was playing in Saba, the vocals attempted to improvise microtonal Persian phrasings based on a Farsi classical poem that could be fused with the ney's modal gravitations.

Saba is a microtonal scale (maqam) used in both Arabic music and Turkish classical music. Saba is often associated with troubled, distressed, or yearning emotions. (Wikipedia, 2022)

Our team originally started out with 6 people but as time went on 2 people left the program which meant we had to change our plans somewhat to accommodate this change. The final team consisted of Fabian Stordalen, Emin Memis, Masoud Niknafs and Nino Jakeli. Our group had a quite interesting mixture of instruments.

Name	Instrument
Fabian	Bass, No-Input Mixer
Emin	Drums, Ney
Masoud	Vocals, Electronics
Nino	Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard

• 12th October - 1st meeting
  We had a short meeting where we laid out our initial plans and discussed what we might want to play
• 5th November - 2nd meeting
  During this meeting we decided what to play and booked our first rehearsal
• 8th of November - 1st rehearsal
  Started practicing the cover songs for the concert, we also found another song to play while jamming together
• 14th of November - 2nd rehearsal
  Practiced the cover songs again and also tried experiment some with vocal effects we could use
• 17th of November -3rd rehearsal
  We got started on rehearsing the semi-improvised soundscape
• 20th of November - 4th rehearsal
  We worked more on the final tape composition, and also decided on the roles and the flow of the piece
• 21st of November - Final rehearsal and sound check
  We spent most of the day setting up and sound checking in the two venues but we did get some time to practice a little bit
• 22nd of November - Concert
  We showed up early to try practicing using LoLa which really helped us preparing for the concert

We had prepared two parts for the concert. The first part greets the audience with two jazz songs. After a brief introduction speech, we continued with a semi-improvisational piece using a tape that we pre-composed, no-input mixing, and different instruments.

Masoud's electronics embodied generative pulse and drone to create sense of plucked and percussive-ambient minimal regularities, a layer of field recording to create a wider stereo image and feeling of open natural space which was field recorded in jungles of Finland and further spectrally modified to fit the content of the improvisation. Also electronics included a layer of synthetic wind. All the elements that was live mixed to fit the context of the Improvisation in the second part and live distributed in the stereo image.

We used a shotgun microphone for Emin's Ney. It was running through a couple of effects on Ableton: Convolution Reverb and Compressor. We used an audio interface connected the computer. As the ney exhibits very specific timbral attributes and it is considered an instrument to be played in personal space of the player, it was crucial to give it a dynamic boost to make it properly mixed into the content, and make it present.

Fabian used his mixer with his pedalboard running through the FX Send and then output being sent to the sound interface via the phones output on the mixer. The bass was sent directly to the interface without any FX. Inside of Ableton the mixer was heavily limited to avoid any sudden loud noises which might've appeared. The bass was sent through an amp sim and then a limiter. Both signals were then balanced so there would be no sudden volume spikes when switching between instruments.

Masoud's vocals attempted to improvise microtonal Persian phrasings based on a Farsi classical poem that could be fused with the ney's modal gravitations.Furthermore, also during the course of the second part, Masoud used microtonal vocalisations which were fed to convolution reverb to create sense of distance.

• When playing through the network, it may be a different experience in terms of interactivity. Having at least one rehearsal in such a setup is always good.
• We should've asked for talkback microphones for all the performers so we could all communicate with each other more efficiently.

• Losing 2 members of the team shortly before the concert was somewhat stressful at meant that we had to change not only our program but also instrumentation and musical content.
• Spending some time rehearsing between the two different locations was a nice way of preparing ourselves.
• Considering the audience reflections, experimental fusion music was a proper approach for the performers to have their own musical says, as well as developing and hearing each other’s musical content.
• We developed kind of interaction cues and musical practice to follow each individual’s unique musical expression and how to create musical dialogues.