Sara Galán – Incidencias

Sara Galán started to play cello at a very young age. Since then she has been studying music on a classic basis until she was 18. After so many years of hard training as a classic cellist, she stopped playing it asphyxiated by pressure, and the impossibility of leaving the path of “perfection” of classic music training. After a few years away from the cello she joint forces with Edu Comelles on a collective endeavour called Cello + Laptop (releasing so far two recordings of live concerts, one in this very label and another at Colección de Emociones). As Cello + Laptop got more into experimentation with cello, Galán started to ask questions and confront her background with what was happening on a experimental level. All those conflicts and questions lead to a project that was thought to be a metaphor of her learning curve. A few months later and after various gigs and rehearsals as Cello + Laptop she engaged on it’s master degrees final project. This was an attempt to create a system built to lose control of the cello and fight against a randomised / gesture detection system that affected the sound of the cello. During summer 2011 Galán developed a software built in Max MSP and supported by the Kinect that analysed her movement while playing and this movement affected the sound of cello building sound structures that unbalance her performance. This is a system built to force the performer (her) to react to the glitches produced by software and built to enable her to forgot what she had learned and embrace an experimental work in process based on error, glitch and malfunction. Finally after various attempts she managed to create a sound pattern based on recording and repetition of small parcels of sound and a semi-controlled Granular Synth that tweaked in real time the sound of her performance. This album aims to be a testimony of those recordings made on summer 2011. Those are a series of very short pieces in which Galán explores various sound possibilities of the cello being affected by the system built in Max MSP. Download it for free @ Audiotalaia!