Live by Øy

What happens when you plug a tap dancer into the computer?

K: Øy is our project where we are exploring a particular way of playing music together. We often call it a hybrid collaboration because we act both as individual musicians with our own instruments, but we also in a sense play on the same instrument which is a combination of the two of us. We’ll try to explain briefly how this works.

J: There’s a contact microphone attached to the floor where I dance. Through this, my tap dance sound travels to Kristoffer’s setup. Of course my rhythms are my main way to express myself and give input to Kristoffer, but I can also play with how hard I hit the floor, how close I am to the microphone, and whether or not I “block” my own sound vibration from reaching the microphone by sort of standing in its way. I also have small microphones attached under my shoes. These make it possible to hear the actual tap dance combined with everything it’s triggering and everything Kristoffer is playing.

K: When Janne’s contact microphone sound comes into my computer (actually for this period I used two computers hooked together) I use a combination of tools that I have made in Max and Max for Live to let Janne control parts of the setup. Techniques like clocking of sequencers, drum synthesis and using envelope followers that quickly, while we play, can be routed to every parameter make for a very interesting instrument setup. For me as an electronic musician this gives a pretty different flavor to especially timing because the computers are following the humans instead of the other way around. It also introduces a very organic human-like expression to sound manipulation.

J: Until now, we have always improvised everything, with our only framework being the amount of minutes that we aim for. It’s an adventure, each time. We are working on building the music, live, and each of us has a different way of doing this. Still, listening, trusting, and letting go of preconceived wishes is something we both have to do. When I start dancing, I never know what sound or effect I will generate in Kristoffer’s setup. Sometimes there’s nothing, because he is still busy programming it. Or it’s programmed so that I only trigger something when I dance louder. Sometimes I stumble into a loud sound that I didn’t expect at all. My challenge is to create with this, and have fun with it. The longer we play, the more music can be “attached” to my tap dance. If I stop dancing, maybe everything will stop? I have developed strategies to deal with this, like working with breaks, repetitions and testing variations of the motives I’m playing. At the same time, Kristoffer never knows what I will do. He might be wishing for a certain groove, but maybe I’ll dive into some absurd rhythms that create something completely different with his sounds. One of the most challenging things is when I want to keep time and have a steady rhythm, while I am also listening for new choices, ready to react to anything that comes my way. Also, this process can make me do steps I have never done before, and when I realize this and try to understand what I’m doing, I often fall right out of it.

K: So this album presents 5 of these improvised parts cut from different concerts we played in 2023. We hope you like it!

What happens when you plug a tap dancer into the computer?

Øy is a duo consisting of tap dancer Janne Eraker and electronic musician Kristoffer Lislegaard.

Kristoffer: https://kristofferlislegaard.bandcamp.com/

Janne: https://janneeraker.bandcamp.com/

oyduo.com