Timothy Roth is a percussionist, technologist and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. As an artist and researcher, he has a diverse range of interests ranging from topics in live performance, music analysis, and archival musicology. As a performer–both behind the mixing board and in front of it–he enjoys tackling works for performers with live electronics, both new and old. Tim has presented his research at conferences in North America, Europe and Asia and performed at the 2023 New Music Gathering in Portland, Oregon and the 2022 Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium in San Diego, California. Holding dual Masters degrees in Percussion Performance and Music Technology/Digital Media from the University of Toronto, he actively contributes as a research assistant at the Technology and Performance Integration Research (TaPIR) Lab while also serving as an Adjunct Instructor at SUNY Niagara.
As part of an ongoing project documenting older works for live electronics, Tim Roth put on Alvin Lucier’s sound sculpture Music On a Long Thin Wire (1980). The work involves using a magnet to drive a wire stretched across the stage while an oscillations at different frequencies are driven through it. The work was shown at MacMillan Theatre at University of Toronto on December 11, 2022.
This study compared the effectiveness of
in-person and remote (virtual) musical
training in percussion by measuring motor
output, performance quality, and student
satisfaction. Using videoconference technologies such as
Zoom may help reduce accessibility barriers
to in-person music training (Biasutti et al.,
2021, Lancaster, 2007). The inherent visual expressivity of percussion
performance is ideal to study the effectiveness
of remote musical training (Hartenberger,
2016, Schutz & Lipscomb, 2007)
Mikrophonie I Dual Fader Filter
Sonic Canvas
Sonic Canvas is a multidisciplinary digital improvisation performed by visual artist Jasmine Tsui and music technologist Tim Roth.
The work uses a colour-retrieval patch created in Max, a visual programming language, to generate information about the size and location of colour on a screen.
The performers negotiate the sound world together: the artist creates illustrations on the iPad illustration app Procreate that set command values, and the technologist scales these values and assigns them to different parameters of a synthesizer. Unlike traditional collaboration between musician and artist, the artist now has first-person control over all the sounds produced.
Video information from the iPad can be transmitted to the Max patch over the internet, resulting in a work that is best consumed digitally and adheres to social distancing guidelines.
This project can accommodate numerous digital artists from a variety of mediums and has much room for expansion.
https://youtu.be/MAkIPuBWhNs
The Theatre of Schizophonic Performance in John Cage’s Cartridge Music
John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960) was one of the first works to break the acousmatic tradition of electronic music by incorporating live performers. Where, in acoustic performance, gesture and sound are typically concatenated, performance with live electronics makes this link less immediate and at times inscrutable. This alienation of sound from performative gesture, described by R. Murray Schafer as “schizophonia,” creates a unique theatrical scenario (Schafer 1969). In the liner notes for the first recording of the work, Cage wrote that one of his objectives was “to make a theatrical situation involving amplifiers and loudspeakers and live musicians” (Cage 1962d). Although the work developed into one of Cage’s most flexible compositions, there are a number of restrictions in the score that limit the theatrical potential of the electronic framework.
We propose to perform a historically-informed version of Cartridge Music for four musicians with a number of modifications to Cage’s original framework. We created hand-held versions of the phono and piezo pickups which allows us to assemble a diverse array of sounding objects for producing “auxiliary sounds.” We suspended a number of these instruments, expanding the performance frame beyond the typical tabletop setting of the piece.
The results of these modifications are twofold. First, the sonic palette is significantly expanded. Along with additional “auxiliary sound” objects, freestanding contact microphones and pickups allow for creative variation in the placement and usage of the sensors which contributes a significant textural and timbral depth. Second, incorporation of the pickups as implements and extension of the performance frame unfetters the performing bodies, opening up the piece as a more dynamic theatrical vehicle. In this way, our interpretation refines Cage’s goal of creating theatricality in a live electronic environment while maintaining the integrity of the original framework.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VSMi_fn_0Q
Mikrophonie I
https://youtu.be/Ufq3HOXadgE
compound. oblique. transverse.
compound.transverse.oblique. explores concepts of fragility and fracture through simple electronic instruments built with Arduino microcontrollers and percussion instruments.
The Arduino instrument’s exposed circuitry presents a vulnerable and fragile aesthetic that became the central focus of the composition.
Throughout the work frail sounds dissolve as delicate textures breakdown and snap under pressure, creating an abstract composition that is intense and unpredictable.
compound. uses simple speaker electronic instruments that are extremely precarious both in their playability and its sound. Two percussionists coerce cracks, whispers, and buzzy screeches by scraping amplified coins across Almglocken while one percussionist plays a large woodblock with a vibra bullet and another rips large pieces of paper.
In oblique. a single timpano is used as a resonator for the Arduino electronic instrument speaker and the performer’s voices. Multiple percussionists perform overtone singing into the drumhead and manipulate its tension to create a delicate polyphony between humans and machine.
transverse. is characterized by electronic and acoustic sounds that are melted down and synthesized to create a bright, sharp timbre. Pitches begin in unison and gradually shift by microtones to illustrate harmonic cracks and fractures.
https://youtu.be/2OakfU9b6kM
Three Roses
Three Roses is a quartet for percussion, incorporating two technological devices to give the performers control over lighting and sound design. First is the MUGIC, a gestural sensor developed by violinist Mari Kimura, which you can see on each of the players’ hands. Second is the Arduino which controls the lights, and through the software Max MSP can respond to the gestures of the performers captured by the MUGIC. This piece was commissioned by Aiyun Huang for the TaPIR lab in the early stages of COVID, and as such has gone through multiple iterations from live concert performance, to remote collaboration, and eventually settled as an in person recording project.
https://youtu.be/NPQ4NWxeiL4
MUGIC
For Mari’s MUGIC workshop, Tim composed a piece for bell tree and mark tree. This piece uses MUGIC, attached to the hand of the performer, to track the playing motion of these two instruments and manipulate parameters of pitch shifting, filtering, and delay.
Click here for more information on TaPIR Lab’s MUGIC workshop with Mari Kimura
https://youtu.be/3lB56el1zoc
Arduino
These four lab members (Tyler Cunningham, Timothy Roth, Joyce To, and Jasmine Tsui) were living together at the time of the workshop, so they opted to work as a group. They added a second breadboard to one Arduino Uno, making for a total of eight buttons. The buttons on one breadboard controlled pitches that blinked on and off at regular intervals, and the buttons on the second breadboard controlled the speed of the pitches. They built a second, similar instrument and performed with one person on each breadboard. The quartet performed a three-part étude featuring different styles. The first part featured a shifting melody-accompaniment relationship between instrument pairs; the second part generated musical ideas using time signature 7/8; the third part explored the instrument’s timbral extremes.
https://youtu.be/c_Zvedmvf00