Tasselmyer’s Gestures

Another gorgeous live performance by Andrew Tasselmyer, who here runs four often though not entirely unidentifiable piano samples through various processes, yielding a piece at once cinematic and immediate, at once widescreen and obscure. Watch his hands as he manipulates the source material. Track motions to alterations, finger gestures to sonic morphing. And if you’re familiar with the central instrument, the Octatrack, then you’re no doubt thankful we don’t hear the familiar clack of those plastic buttons, which would be entirely out of place here. I especially appreciate how his index finger ends the performance with a single tap on the laptop’s touchpad. We’re long past the time of rampant doubt about what it is exactly a “laptop musician” is up to (and the associated “are they really performing?”). Here what we see is the same intimacy inherent in expertise that one might expect of a “traditional” (read: “acoustic”) instrument. Manual skills are manual skills, no matter the tools.