Poetics of musical machinery 
(part of the master thesis: Embodied composition)


Interview with Pierre Bastien

To define musical practice of Pierre Bastien would mean at first to escape the conventional understanding of what a composer is. Bastien makes music which is not to be played by people, but by the machines that he builds himself and that are the main and sometimes the only members of his ensemble. Composing the music, means constructing them first. These machines are small mechanisms, built to play independently or to accompany him as he improvises on one of his numerous instruments. He casts the most original sounds from the sources such as folk or classical instruments or everyday objects, and he automatizes the musical process by assigning the performance to a custom-made mechanisms. 
To listen to his music is to listen to a story, to get into a child-like world where each sound is a character speaking in a clear musical language understandable to classically educated musicians as well as to the experimental music enthusiasts, and to hear an enchanting and above all, a very personal story. And to see Pierre Bastien live in a concert, is nothing but an oddity -a man on the stage, holding a screwdriver as a baton to conduct his orchestra by turning the screws in order to literally fix the music - to change a chord, add a note to a melodic line, complicate the rhythm. It is the smallest orchestra, a machinery fitting a table, looking like a bug nest with each rotor and motor acting as insects with a small task in a net of musical duties resulting in harmony of rhythmical and melodic patterns changing on top of each other. And when all the fine-tunings are done and the sounds are set to flow uninterruptedly, the soul of the machinery speaks through the pocket trumpet of Pierre Bastien. It resembles a song, it resembles a solo, it resembles a musical performance - but it’s “just” a man and his machines, a delicate manufacture of music and acoustic sensations that happens in front of our eyes and ears. An oddity for sure, but a profound and beautiful one.

I chose to look carefully into the work of Pierre Bastien in expectation to find an explanation why experimental musicians resist the standardized sound sources and playing devices and also in order to see in what way the affective musical content can be expressed through physical objects other than standardized musical instruments.  I find Bastien’s work to be a rare combination of custom made mechanical instrumentarium which includes everyday objects as well as the instruments from Western, African or any other musical tradition, mixed with live improvisation coming from popular music genres such as jazz and blues among others. Although mechanized, his music resists the reserved expression often imposed by the use of technology, and moreover reveals remarkably humane qualities in a way I find unusual for experimental music in general. His own playing of trumpet or any other instrument along with the machines, although it gives away the influences of jazz and free improvisation, it escapes a clear stylistic definition and captivates the listener with its simplicity and indifference towards virtuosity. What keeps all these different parts together is appreciation for the tone quality and uniqueness of performance. And it is a sound which is very specific, that which tells about the ways it is being produced. Composer’s style is being expressed through the medium of sound, but its origin comes from the technology itself:

“I think the machines have a certain style. I think I got a style from my little machines.”

It is inevitable to draw close parallel between the work of Pierre Bastien and that of Jean Tinguely. Some of Tinguely’s kinetic sculptures produce sound as an accidental outcome of the moving parts, but many of them (and especially the later ones), are made with a clear sound/ musical intention such as “Meta - Harmonie II” from 1979, which incorporates real instruments to be played by metal wires and turning wheels of the giant mechanism. Although Bastien adopts many functional principles from Tinguely’s sculptures, his work is of a significantly smaller scale, and of very much different aesthetic quality. In terms of sound, while Tinguely was passionate about loud squeaking noise of intense quality, Bastien’s machines are rather leaving the impression of something more organic, delicate and pleasant to the ear. 

Pierre Bastien’s departure from the use of conventional musical instruments and firstly from his primary instrument which is a double bass, started most notably in improvisations and recordings he has made in the group “Nu Creative Methods” during the 1980’s. Albums such as “Le marchand de calicot” from 1981 reflect strong connection with free improvisation and free jazz. At the same time, unfamiliar sounds of different objects and instrument preparations are audible, and the general sound quality of this record and even more of the album “Superstitions” from 1985, announce the features of Bastien’s original style which will evolve through the years until it receives total distinctiveness coming from his custom-made mechanical orchestra called Mecanium. First instrument (machine) which will become part of this orchestra, Bastien built in 1979, and until today he kept multiplying them and modifying, so nowadays Meccanium is his main and often the only accompaniment in live performances and in the recordings as well, counting more than 80 members.

To build his machines, Pierre Bastien uses the “Meccano” technology. This is a construction set invented at the beginning of the XX century and intended for educational purposes, to teach children and adults the basic principles of mechanical construction. Main parts of it are metal plates, strips and wheels, which can be connected with the use of screws and bolts. Mechanisms can be put into motion with the use of small electric motors running on batteries. Screwdriver is the main tool used for building of models, so the whole construction process is meant to be easy and also affordable. This technology is inseparable component of Bastien’s music. His constructions are being made to replace a human performer, to trigger another musical instrument or object, or to produce the sound themselves. Any action of a real musician can be automatized - machines can be made to work like percussion instruments by hitting an object, they can pick strings or move a bow over them, or they can be used to push the keys on keyboard instruments. There are also  countless options of getting the sound in combination of mechanisms and everyday objects. 

In concert, musical performance is followed by the visuals which are always projections of the Mecanium from the outside and inside, cameras being attached to the moving parts. The machines, how they play and the way Bastien is tweaking them while playing, are important aspects of his live performance. He also exhibits his machines in a group of few in installations, and in some editions of his CDs, photos are given, to inform a listener how the sounds in the recordings are being produced.  This visibility of the production process is of a great significance for Bastien:

To have no mystery about sound sources is my preoccupation. I am lucky with my three dimensional music.”

Simplification and reduction of expressive as well as the functional elements in Bastien’s music is its dominant characteristic. To deconstruct musical form, instrument, and even the notion of a performer by replacing it with a toy-like machine, is to emphasize what’s left - the variety and vividness of sound and expressiveness of a very few, basic, musical elements such as rhythm, melody, harmony. This narrowing to essential, is in tie with the rudimentary qualities of music made by primitive cultures. Bastien’s music reveals many folkloric elementsthat are recognizable in the prevailing monodic style of his compositions, repetition of simple rhythmical and melodic patterns, but also in the numerous folk instruments that he uses to mechanize or play with. Album“Musiques Machinales” from 1993 reflects the most clearly Bastien’s appreciation of African music. Plenty of different percussion instruments, xylophones and harps are used, and references to African culture can be found in the titles as well. One of the most lyrical pieces from this album is “Mangbetu”, named after the instrument of the same name which is used in this piece and comes from the people from the villages of Congo, who are famous for their incredibly rich musical tradition. 

In the album Meccanoid from 2001, thumb pianos and xylophones meet looped vinyls, trumpet solos, bass lines and keyboard chords, making this album the most original fusion of styles in Bastien’s opus. In this work, Bastien has also explored the musicality of the machines themselves, letting them play no instruments or objects, but to produce the sounds alone by turning, clicking and crackling while being amplified. With the record “Pop”, made in 2005, Bastien has taken the fundaments of pop music - simple chord progressions, appealing rhythms and melodies and made them sound through the most unusual and unconventional sounds of winding-up mechanisms and toy-like sounds, making the clear and simple musical message delivered in the most captivating and innovative way. 

In the interview that follows, I wanted to find out more about how does Pierre Bastien approaches making music - what are the relevant facts that he takes into consideration when composing a piece or constructing a performing set made of machines, and how the two entities of composition and mechanical construction, of sound and source, relate in his opinion. 

Q: Where does your composing process most often start from - a musical idea that you start transcribing into mechanical action, or from the mechanism that you start building and than composing the rest of the elements in relation to that, or from the choice of sounds (objects or instruments) that you want to use in a piece?

A: In general, when I want to compose music, I need to build things first. I don’t remember how was it at the beginning, but nowadays a new composition would be just the continuation of the previous one. For example, now I am building a new machine, a new system. It’s a set of machines  I will be playing with for the following two years. Basically, I base my construction on the previous construction. I am trying to improve them based on my experience with previous machines. For example, the current system has a small bass player made of rubber bands, elastics. I pull the elastics one after another (8 strings), and I can make different bass-lines. There is a mechanical finger which is turning and plucking the strings. Now, I am building a new automatic bass player, and this one will have 20 strings instead of 8, and I will have a good range to compose some bass-lines. 

Q: Are you ever inspired only by an object that you found interesting and decide to base the whole piece around that object? If so, what kind of object is it, and what attracts you about it - its shape, the function, the sounding possibilities or something else?

A: I have been making music for long, so all the options happen at some point. Some 15 years ago, I built an orchestra made of household (daily-life) objects, and I mechanized them. These were scissors, teapot, pliers, tooth-brushes, leather-scale...There were 8 to 10 objects. I remember choosing scissors because they are sometimes used in African music, as a percussion instrument. The teapot because the lid can open and close like a hi-hat. Tooth-brushes were used as brushes on a drum set. This was more an imitation of instruments. Nowadays, I choose objects because I like their flexibility. When I chose those objects, I’ve read a famous book by jazz musician Art Taylor - “Notes and tones”. He has interviewed his drummer colleagues, asking them if they tune their drums. Most often, they would say no, they just do it at random to make basic differences between high, mid and low tones. I liked the idea, and decided to build this little bass-player in the way that the strings wouldn’t be tuned. I also remember reading about the Taraf, Romanian gypsy orchestra. Musicians say that they basically don’t mind if the bass doesn’t play right notes, as long as it’s used to play the right rhythm on it. They use bass like a bass-drum basically. My bass-player made of rubber bands is made in a similar way.

Generally I use objects to build the machines, like I use Meccano. I also use paper, a lot of paper. 

I use plenty of existing musical instruments. I have something like 200, 300 instruments, from Africa, Asia, America, from everywhere and I love the different tones and the types of fabrication. Also I have conventional instruments like violins, cellos, trumpets, tubas etc., but I mostly use folk instruments. 

Q:Are there particular ways in which you can get certain sound results from these objects, that you have learned and that you repeat in different works? 

A: Yes, recently I’ve tried to amplify that practice and to develop it a bit. I’m trying to use paper in different ways for example. The last installation I made was “Paper orchestra”. But, I started with paper-organs before, which are harmonium chords played through a blowing systems. A sheet of paper is waving and clicking on top of it. Than I had sheets of paper flapping on drums. Recently I used long sheets of paper 2, 3 meters, which I called paper-snakes, activated through the blowers but more powerful long cylinder blowers which turn and blow air. And the paper is running very fast, in a very high speed and I cut the paper at the end into 10 straps, 10 paper-fingers which would hit the wooden floor like a very fast percussion.

Q: Once there is a musical idea - a rhythm, melody, harmony or any combination of these, and let’s assume it’s not the most simple one, and you start setting up the robots to perform it - how many compromises with the musical content do you have to make in order to make it work practically? Does this idea become sometimes completely different from the one you started with, being caused by the difficulties in realization? To narrow the question even more, how much the mechanical and musical construction influence each other and in what way?

A: I’m making a lot of compromises along the construction and afterwards also. I remember making the cylinders which were pushing the keys of a keyboard, and I was reducing the chords as much as possible, trying to fight agains the length and the number of chords because my cylinders weren’t big enough and turning slow enough to have many chords programmed, so I even had to reduce the number of bars from the original idea. At that time, I was building those cylinders from the cardboard rolls from the kitchen, and putting the pins on them. I was trying to measure as well as possible to put the pins in the right spot, and since the white and black keys on the keyboard are not on the same hight, I had some troubles. Sometimes I was putting the pins on the wrong spot, but I was getting some better rhythmical ideas coming form the machine, from the cylinder. Sometimes a simple idea becomes more complicated by some irregularity which occurs accidentally, which makes the music more interesting.

Q: Artists use robotics and mechanics most often to achieve the impression of “unmistaken”, of brilliancy which is unreachable to a human musician. On contrary, your music displays intentionally this roughness and imperfection although it is performed by machines. How do you achieve to preserve this quality and how is it possible for a machine to be this slightly out of tune? Is it related to the Meccano technology, and would you consider using something more advance as for example Lego robots or anything similar? Do you think you could achieve the same effect with it?

A: I think it is better for me not to use the modern technology, because I would loose my soul probably. Even in human playing I like when it’s a bit loose and not completely perfect. My machines do it naturally because I’m not that handy, even if I make measurements, it doesn’t turn out that perfect. For example I use electro motors and rubber rings, the same way the record players are made, and they play perfectly. My machines for some reason don’t and I’m happy with that. Generally after I make machines, I’m making the improvements to get rid of imperfections. Still some remain, and I am happy with the remainings. But the imperfections I do not program, it’s the fact I’m not very handy. There is also the fact that I’m using only a screwdriver, soldering iron, pliers , knife and rudimentary tools, so that’s probably why it’s never perfect.

Q: Your music is three-dimensional as you said yourself in some of the interviews. Although with some of the recordings you provide photos of the Meccano instruments, and you project live video of what you’re doing on the stage, what do you think it is being lost in the recording when the visual aspect is eliminated? Could you consider composing only concrete music and never exhibiting your instruments and showing the way you create music? How do you think this physicality of your instruments and the sound as an airy, intangible thing, relate? 

A: Any music lover knows through experience how to reconstruct the physical reality of a recorded music. As a music lover myself I enjoy that game when I imagine the instrument I am listening, and even the gestures of the players. My own recordings put the listener in a slightly different position, still an interesting one: he/ she is as if contemplating a shadow from a cave and trying to determine its origin. Obviously the mechanical line sounds different from a human score through its fragility, its ability to repeat a certain hesitation, its very particular sobriety. In this sense, yes, I could consider composing without showing: for example doing a remake of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" and replacing "who is playing what?" with "how is it done?"

Q: Roto-rhythm from “The box #3” - it is an automata made of Meccano parts and violin. Is it a musical sculpture, an instrument or a piece of music (composition)?

A: I think it is a piece of music, on a CD at least. When I exhibit it, in installation it is always with other “brothers and sisters” and a lot of them, like 20. And when I record, I pick one of the machines and play with it, sometimes 2 or 3. 

Q: Building your own small mechanical orchestra that you play along with, contains something incredibly personal in it - like a child creating the imaginary world from a set of toys. This setting and also the way of realization draws for me the similarities with the Circus by Alexander Calder. He makes these objects which will become “mobiles” later, but at that point they are still “representational”, they are characters, and he creates this narrative around them by moving them around, singing along and talking. This child-like world of his or the Jean Tinguely’s works, do you think there is similarity with what you do?

A: I hope, because I love Alexander Calder, he is my favorite artist. But, at the time I started, I knew only the big sculptures, not the Circus, but I think it’s very close to what I do, the same kind of activity. About Tinguely, I knew everything from him when I started. I started with a lot of hesitation because I was afraid of repeating what he have done. But I was wrong, it is completely different. There are many who continued his tradition, before me someone who did fantastic work was Joe Jones. At the time I started in ‘70s in France, he wasn’t that famous, and I didn’t know about him. Among others, there is also Pierre Berthet, Belgium artist who makes music with water drops, long strings and reversed vacuum cleaners. I particularly like artists who are working with simple things, not so much with high technology. 
When musicians go to a shop and buy the last Roland or Korg, they just take the music in the middle of the process I think, instead of taking it from the beginning. When you go and buy a robot or a machine or electronic device, you just forget half of the pleasure. It’s good to start with the origin and design your own sound sources and than play with them. I think it’s good to handle the whole process. But, at the same time when I say it, I think I may be wrong, because the violinist wouldn’t build his own violin. I think I’m closer to the African tradition where a musician builds his own instrument. For example there are some tiny instruments and some very big ones, with thick keys. I have the sanza from Cameroon with thick keys and big gaps in between each key, so probably the musician who built and played this instrument was a big man, a giant, and was able to push the keys easily. But for me, I have small hands and it’s more difficult. And I also have a tiny sanza and it was probably the other way around - the builder was small, much smaller than me and it is also difficult for me to play it. So, I like the fact that you build, you build and design your instrument or your sound device according to your possibilities, to your body.

Q: When I analyzed how Cage used objects in his prepared piano pieces, I came to the notion that it is a quite peculiar situation - that when we are listening to some very lyrical piece of music for prepared piano, that in this abstract, emotional experience that  we have as listeners, these things are taking part, such as screws and bolts, by modifying the sounds of a piano to achieve that certain color which stimulates our senses and emotions. What do you think about it, is it weird to compose a lyrical piece of music, and to make it for a machine, a robot to play it. I think there is some kind of conflict between the two, which is in my opinion a bit ironic and a if not a bit humorous sometimes, but also very delicate and beautiful.

A: No, I don't see any conflict. Just irony as you say, and paradox. Have you ever seen this special part of a violin, the one that amplifies the sound and modifies the tone which is called the sound-post? In French we say "âme", the soul of the violin. It is also paradoxical to realize that this soul is just a small piece of wood taken from a spruce, one of the most common trees. I remember when I first mechanized the violin. I studied the double-bass, and during my studies, my teacher was always focusing on the pressure of the bow on the strings. Himself  was a soloist at the orchestra, and he was always searching for a better pressure, position, better attack etc. When I mechanized the first violin, bowing the arpeggio on the violin, I noticed I could get the right pressure in one second by bending more or less a piece of metal that was in front of the bow. This shortcut to be able with a very simple mechanism to go over the years and years of studies and exercises, it was really pleasant to do it, instead of studying for years, just bending a piece of metal, “hop” and you get it.




Interview was made by Svetlana Maras, via Skype on 10.06.2011, audio recording, transcribed