I am a composer. My training includes classical guitar and music theory at the Royal Conservatory in 1988. After years of training I became interested in improvisation and decided to continue studying harmony, composition and improvisation at the Musicians Workshops Jazz School.

When I began to understand the composition and dynamics of jazz, I started to get bored, so began to experiment with a concept that I defined as playing “pattern-free”.

At that time initially it consisted of detuning the guitar and starting from any type of tuning that reached, and improvising on it. From there I began to exercise by improvising trying to anticipate what my fingers were going to do and trying not to continue down that path. I imagine this somehow confused my neural connections between synapses and drove them crazy.

This led me to an experiential discovery that marked a new direction in my development as a musician, improviser and composer. By forcing this, since it required enormous concentration and energy, sometimes I entered a state in which I was playing the instrument feeling an uninterrupted effortless flow. In my personal experience this was something different from the state of flow that one gets when mastered the instrument and can improvise.

I found this experience so exciting and liberating that I focused all my learning on this concept of liberation from patterns.

To give an example that can explain the state that manifested itself in my consciousness, I like to explain it that way. If you ever experience with stereograms you know that trying to analyze what possible drawing is hidden, the rationalization process itself prevents the manifestation of the hidden image. The moment the control is released and the proper technique is followed, the image is revealed in a deeper dimension than expected.

Years later when I approached to field recordings, I found that listening the sounds of the water provoque me the same effect of perceptive expansion, that years ago I felt with the practice of improvisation free from patterns.

For 5 years I only listened to the recordings of water that I made and I constantly entered a trance state. I can explain it as the effect of perceive the flow of the ever-changing rhythms of water without the analytical mind filtering the experience.

Little by little, this was bringing me closer to a much greater opening on sound conception and working with sound, beyond the rigid patterns that certain styles demanded, and the “limitations” that the guitar as an instrument has innately associated.

From these experiences I learned that the mind has an infrequently used capacity to open up to realities that we do not expose ourselves to on a daily basis. This ability remains hidden or little used, either due to the need that the human mind has to control, categorize, and analyze in order to facilitate survival, but which prevented deepening contact with the naked matter substance of reality, free of interpretations, that unfolds every moment as life.

The liberation of mental concepts and rational interpretations to be able to deepen the connection with the material of that reality is an active work that leads me to moments of full connection without intellectual interpretative imposition over this matter of reality and is very liberating for me.

I share with other creators before me the term active or deep listening, although each one probably experiences and describes it differently or with certain nuances.

My first contact with electronic, electroacoustic and concrete music was listening to classical records from composers Edgar Varesè, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Henry.

Undoubtedly what brought me closer to the field of experimental electronics was the live exposure to the music of sound artists who have been a source of inspiration for me ever since. To name a few Richard Chartier, Asmus Tietchens, Francisco López, Thomas Konner, Mika Vanio, Eliane Radigue, Curtis Roads, Bjarni Gunnarsson, Morton Subotnic, Suso Saiz, Toshimaru Nakamura. From then on, the influence of hundreds of other composers has been a constant and daily inspiration in my personal journey.

I am fascinated by all the sound creation tools available to us today. At the end of the 80s I got an Atari with Cubase and started composing with a Casio MG 510 synthesized guitar connected to a Korg Wave Station A/D. as my main instrument. At that time Cubase still did not process audio only midi.Thanks to the work of pioneers who made it possible ,today more than ever, we’re able to create with much more freedom and discover our own sound universes with far fewer limitations than just a few years ago.

I am sure that in the near future and thanks to the development of AI we will be able to interact with sound in ways never possible before.

The music that I explore, compose and discover intends to set aside a concrete descriptive narrative. I wish to leave it for the free interpretation to the listener. The notes and words I wrote on the editions are my own an other people experiences listening to my compositions. I no way are an attempt to direct the listener towards that same experience. This notes and words are a spontaneous interpretive process of the mind at a superficial level.

I read in an interview with Asmus Tietchens his definition of absolute music that fully agrees with what I am trying to express here:

I don’t try to create moods with my music, and I don’t try to tell stories, and my music doesn’t carry any message except an aesthetic one. “Absolute Music” means that it contains no message except an esthetic one. “Absolute Music” is not connected with any political, spiritual, ideological or educational intention.

The listener is totally free for his own impressions, feelings, possible pictures and thoughts when listening to “Absolute Music”. To me that is total freedom of perception. I am no teacher, no philosopher, no scientist – why should I intrude my thoughts on any other human being? I always try to let the music speak for itself. That should be enough.

https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com

I create compositions that help me free myself from the interpretation of my own mind and let me connect with a more intense, deeper, less limited experience of my own being. In this aspect, sound is the material that helps me the most as a means to achieve it.

My work draws on a wide range of sources, including raw and altered field recordings, analog and digital sound synthesis.

From the technical and methodological point of view, I’m interested on using an exploring complex systems. At the compositional level I use Stochastic and random process, markow chains, Swårmalätørs, Janus oscilators, physic simulations, spectral synthesis, celullar automaton, Chaotic Attractors, fractal filters, “non”-euclidean sequences, spectral crossing and morphing, FFT filtering, phase vocoder, and a combination of all the above.

Complexity science, also called complex systems science, studies how a large collection of components – locally interacting with each other at small scales – can spontaneously self-organize to exhibit non-trivial global structures and behaviors at larger scales, often without external intervention, central authorities or leaders. The properties of the collection may not be understood or predicted from the full knowledge of its constituents alone. Such a collection is called a complex system and it requires new mathematical frameworks and scientific methodologies for its investigation.

https://complexityexplained.github.io/

“There’s no love in a carbon atom, No hurricane in a water molecule, 
No financial collapse in a dollar bill.“
– Peter Dodds

From the listener’s (not the musician) point of view all this technical jargon probably doesn’t make any sense.

I seek in my compositions to explore complex models and systems that challenge me to listen, that intrigue me, that allow me to discover experientially new relationships between sounds. And approach these compositions with a free spirit of exploration, play and enjoyment in the deepest sense of these terms.

I think that if I can talk about some concepts or elements in simple words that I like to explore or discover in my improvisations and compositions, they could be:

Evolution and constant change of sound structures and patterns – dynamics – interactions – complex systems – undetermined events – un preconceived paths – sonic abstractions – release or lack of control – causes and consequences – impermanence -constant change – dissolution – apparent chaos – subtlety – space – movement – depth – irregularities – contrast – symmetries -inter-relatedness, inter-connectedness – interdependence – subsystems – boundaries – environment – surprise – indirect effects – non-intuitiveness – emergence – non-linearity – non equilibrium – bifurcation – long-term non-predictability – uncertainty – sensitivity – butterfly effect – morphogenesis

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved,
but a reality to be experienced.“

Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
–Dune –

Creative freedom & PRIVACY