The Space Sessions: Ignasi Terazza (Pt 2)

Ignasi Terraza in concert in Spain         photo courtesy El Mundo net

Continuing from the previous post, with our discussion about the perception and temperature of space, we talk for awhile about carpeted spaces.  I learn that a good acoustic makes a warm space, but  lots of rocks or empty walls produces a cold space. Our conversation continues:

RAS – Ignasi, if you go out in nature, is there a different sense of space?  Is it different from internal space? 

IT – I was once in an experiment at a university where they study acoustics – they made experiments and had a *camera which they called an equalikoid (sp?) a structure which had no reverb and no echo at all. It was built with this special foam and some other materials, and when you go in you are suspended in a kind of network, because the ground is also made of the same soundproof material  (*Cámara sin eco: a soundproof room or structure)

RAS And what was it called?

IT – In Spanish it’s called Echoica or No Echo

RAS - Like a No Echo Chamber?

IT - Yeah, no echo chamber....and the sensation there was very strange. It was like being in open air.

RAS - Really!

I T - Yeah, the difference is that you don’t have sense of any information coming back – the one sound with nothing returning. Then, it’s like being in the open air. But the difference with open air is that normally, there is weather.  Like wind. And this is information that you perceive through your skin. So if you perceive wind, it’s because it’s open air

RAS Yes – or you can hear the sound of the leaves rustling

IT – Yeah, like that. And I remember that it brings back the sensation of the open air because what we have is the sense of no echo or reverb.

Celebrated Catalan Jazz man Ignasi Terazza alongside Carlos Puyol from the Spanish National Soccer Team

RAS - Well now, you say that but if you went to the top of a mountain and shouted, there would be an echo coming back – what you call reverb. It exists in certain natural places.

I T– Yes,  of course, that’s an example of an echo coming back from a long distance of space. But there are the little echos that you are having from the wall, for example. This kind of information helps me notice that, there’s a wall there  (to my surprise, Ignasi  points at the wall located right behind us)

And its the information from what that sound makes, which helps me know that this wall is closer then that wall (points at the other intersecting wall to my left)  

I can feel all this through sound.

Ignasi on Yamaha Musicians website

RAS – That’s amazing!  And have you ever had a sense of the vastness of space – internally even?

IT- Normally I used to rate a space in sense of feeling good or feeling bad in that space. That usually comes through a sense of acoustics – whether it was warm or cold. And if no echo, not good. Too much echo is not good either

RAS – You’re talking about it in a practical sense – whether the space is good or not good for music

IT – That's the thing, 

RAS - There is also a sense of space in music as well?

IT - Of course, (in music) there is a different sense of dimensions in space. The music is a kind of three dimensional structure

RAS - Three dimensional....

I T–  Yeah because you have a kind of dimension. Two dimension, for me, is to realise you have – in one moment – seeing what notes, what harmonies – what changes. A change is some notes played at the same time.

RAS -  Uh huh, that’s two dimensional

IT – yes, that’s two dimensional. The third dimension is time. And you can see in music there’s  a sense of space also. What I mean is...the rhythm is a sense of space – you are dividing the time into different units.  You are playing with time. You are building a composition, an improvisation. You build it in time, using a tune, a melody that...when you look at it in another way, you can imagine it as a space. First, second, third....

RAS - First second and third space?!

IT – No, first second and third part. I mean the form in music can be seen as space.

Form means for example, a song...its a melody.  Then, after the melody, the song has three little parts. This part is repeated twice, and then comes different parts and in the end comes again the first melody ....

but you can see it in terms of a construction in space too.

RAS -  I never thought of it that way.....

I T–  A symmetry in space!

And on that note, the interview ends, as Ignasi rushes off to the rehearsal studios, leaving me behind, lost in deep thought, wondering about three dimensional musical compositions in Space/Time.  

Courtesy of Google.ru