(updated July 2025):
ARTIST TALK: LIVE SOUND PROCESSING, MULTI-CHANNEL SOUND & SOUNDWALKS.
ARTIST TALK: AESTHETICS AND APPROACHES TO MULTI-CHANNEL SOUND
HANDS ON:
LIVE ELECTRONICS ENSEMBLES / ORCHESTRA
VOICE-ACTIVATED / VOICE & ELECTRONICS
LECTURE/WORKSHOPS:
LIVE PROCESSING STRATEGIES
HUMAN VOICE AND INTERACTION
Max/MSP workshops also available on a variety of topics and levels from beginning to advanced levels.
WORKSHOP: LIVE SOUND PROCESSING STRATEGIES
“Live Sound Processing” means to alter and affect the sounds of acoustic instruments. live, in-performance, with the goal of creating new sounds with each instrument’s (and performer’s) unique identity in the musical tableau of the performance. The difference between “Live Sound Processing” and other electronic music practices has often been misunderstood by audiences (or even many musicians). In recent years however, it is no longer simply the domain of a live sound engineer (sitting in the back of the venue at a mixing desk, but Live Sound Processing is increasingly a role for a composer or performer on stage. Both performers and audiences have become more savvy and can recognize many of the techniques as they have become ubiquitous in many musical genres.
This workshop will explore various live sound processing techniques and strategies through performance, lecture and presentation, and gives participants a foundation to develop their own work.
Dafna Naphtali uses live sound processing techniques in her work for over 25 years — processing not only her own voice, but also the sounds of the musicians in her performances. Her lectures/workshops were first given at Harvestworks in NY in 2012 http://www.harvestworks.org/may-12-live-sound-processing-strategies/ with Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) and Robert Dick (flutes). The course material was expanded to a five-day course Dafna taught at UniArts Sound Academy, Helskinki (2014), and through courses she teaches at New School and New York University.
She has been writing about Live Sound Processing since her grad school days, published a series of posts on the subject for New Music Box in 2017, and is currently working on a book for Taylor & Francis / Routledge coming in 2026.
WORKSHOP: LIVE ELECTRONICS ENSEMBLES / ORCHESTRA
By the beginning of the 21st century circuit bending, no-input mixers, laptops, analogue circuitry, network sniffers and many other creative ways to produce sounds electronically have become a normal way of expression for the artistic community. We can see electronics as instruments among other instruments, but larger ensembles are seldom built entirely from circuit-benders or laptop musicians. This workshop can be used as preparation for a performance of an orchestra of electronic musicians for between 10 and 15 people, and is based on exercises used in Naphtali’s Electronic Music Performance ensembles at New York University and New School for over a decade.
VOICE ACTIVATED WORKSHOP \\ VOICE & ELECTRONICS
This workshop is for adventurous people ages 10 and up (singers and non-singers alike)
who want to use their voices and electronics to make fun and unconventional music.
We will learn basic vocal warm-ups and then explore how to use our voices for music/sound with microphones/electronics, delays, and other kinds of electronics processing to make fun and compelling music, using physical gestures with smartphones, and other devices to control rhythm, tempo, melody and other aspects of a musical composition or improvisation, as well as the parameters of electronic and electro-acoustic sounds. Workshop was first given Nov. 2013 in Burgos Spain as part of Festival Audio Tangente in Burgos which focused on the human voice and live electronics/processing, and is part of a larger project of Naphtali’s to bring contemporary vocal music and electronics to new audiences. (past workshops include Festival Audio Tangente (Burgos, Spain) 2013, Meridian Gallery San Francisco January 2014 (with Shelley Hirsch), and 2020 at Women in Sound (Brooklyn, NY).
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ARTIST TALK: {KALEID-O-PHONE} — LIVE SOUND PROCESSING AS INSTRUMENT, MULTI-CHANNEL SOUND, SOUNDWALKS.
Dafna Naphtali discusses her wide-ranging compositions and projects for the past 25+ years when she first started using live sound processing on all the instruments in her ensembles as well has her voice, in projects as diverse as What is it Like to be a Bat ? (digital chamber punk with Kitty Brazelton), to chamber music, to avant-jazz improvisations and in open form compositions, and recent work for vocal sextet and electronics and LEMUR and BRICOLO music robots, as well as more recent work in audio augmented reality soundwalks (Walkie Talkie Dreams), and multi-channel sound (Audio Chandelier).
Dafna’s work has been commissioned by American Composers Forum (1999, 2009) and supported by New York Foundation for the Arts (2001, 2013, 2022), NY State Council on the Arts (1999, 2018), Brooklyn Arts Council (2018), Franklin Furnace (2008), and was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition. Dafna has done artist residencies at MacDowell, Montalvo, Signal Culture, STEIM, Harvestworks, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and has received travel funding from American Music Center and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M3) https://dafna.info
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ARTIST TALK: AESTHETICS AND APPROACHES TO MULTI-CHANNEL SOUND
Dafna first worked with multichannel sound in the early 2000’s as a Max programmer for Engine 27, a 16-channel sound gallery in New York, where she gained experience and perspective on possible aesthetic approaches to creating multi-channel sound works. In 2010 she began developing and presenting her Audio Chandelier projects: at Diapason Gallery, Issue Project Room (Floating Points Festival ’05 ’10) in New York, at SAT Society for Arts and Technology [SAT] in Montreal (2017), FAMU in Prague, a Harvestworks residency to develop an installation and sound sculpture for Governors Island with custom speakers created in collaboration with metalsmith Ayala Naphtali for an summer long installation on Governors Island (NY, Harvestworks (2021), and a 2023 COST residency at APO-33 in Nantes, France culminating in a multi-channel audio and 4-channel video work on bird migration patterns.
Her workshops are flexible in the technical setup — she gave a hands-on workshop/performance in Hamburg Hochschule for Musik und Theater (2012) using their 220 speaker Wavefield Synthesis system. Her workshops gives and overview and history of various techniques including point-source, ambisonic, 3-D audio and surround (as well as Wavefield Synthesis), as well as aesthetic implications and possibilities for the work.. Requires a sound system with a minimum of 5.1 (6 speakers), but preferably with a minimum of 10 speakers.
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INTERACTIVE SOUND ART
The course is an overview of various ways interactivity is and has been used in performance, sound installations and other interactive public exhibitions and interventions. Discussion, examples of artist works and projects will be given that investigate live audio processing of sound, music and voice through triggering of audio cues, loop pieces, score following; multi-channel interactive sound works and live performance. Students will learn about the basics of psychoacoustics, and new stratetgies for listening, thinking about (and creating with) audio, and create their own works as a final project. Course includes hands on training in Max/MSP or PD.
Because of her background as a performer/composer in this field, Dafna can give a unique focus and perspective on incorporating live sound processing, the human voice, and musical structure into interactive audio projects that the students will create. If a more hands-on longer version of the workshop, student projects will be completed in Max/MSP (her main teaching tool for many years). The course will also provide practical information about sound equipment and hardware issues that must be addressed when putting together a sound work.
Below is a sample of topics, which may change depending on the background / interests of the attendees.
Sound installations (historical overview and look at current work)
1. Using multiple speakers–point source vs. replication of audio
environments: looking at work from sound galleries in NY and Europe. As well as tools for Max/MSP tools such as IRCAM spat~, ambisonic sound.
2. Using physical structures and sculpture or speakers as part of a visual
element (Ligeti metronome piece, Steven Vitiello)
3. Other artists (i.e. Ariel Bustamente, Tristan Perich, others)
Interactive sound in performance
Tape pieces converted — triggered audio cues Loop pieces
Live audio processing as instrument
Contemporary classical approaches vs. electronica
(this course was offered at TransArt Institute in Berlin summer 2013)
WORKSHOP: Human Voice & Interaction
This workshop looks at the use of voice in interactive sound projects and interactive media both as an input / control source (i.e. voice activated experiences), and as content and a sound source). Through a combination of lecture and student activities, participants use the human voice (preferably their own) as a primary element in short live performance experiments, to incorporate pre-recorded sound or as a control source for live performance. Depending on length of workshop, topics include:
• Human voice & audio processing: how processing can create various physical and abstract effects, how it can change the sense of space. emotion, gender, and identity. A look at the human vocal ability to mimic and create non-human sound. There will be both discussion as well as hands-on learning about compression / pitch shifting / spectral modification / autotune etc.
• How the voice works: The mechanics of vocal production and the human vocal apparatus. Discussion/lecture and readings from the literature in vocal science and pedagogy and acoustic phonology. Moving away from the intellectual, I also plan to give the class some basic vocal and breath training as well.
• Building interaction using the human voice: A look at work using and choosing the best audio from the voice for triggers and control – text, pitch. volume, spectral information, amount of activity, etc, will all be investigated and used. (examples will use Max/MSP but the students can program in whichever program is best suited for their projects).
• How the voice is used today: A survey and comparison of the use of the voice in experimental sound works and theater, western and non-western singing and vocalising, with a special focus on the unusual. (readings from 21st century voice by Michael Edward Edgerton).
Dafna brings to this course, not only her experience as an electronic musician and vocalist, but also her work as a voice teacher and training/ Level III certification in Somatic Voicework with Jeanie Lovetri / Shenendoah University.