First time collaboration with NY based composer Guy Barash. We’ve played two concerts,  in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem.

Guy Barash – field recordings
Davidovsky – amplified bicycle
January 2013

Listen to the recorded set:

Ido Bukelman – guitars and banjo
Ofer Bymel – drums and objects
Daniel Davidovsky – electronics

Visit EFT’s page

Review by Eyal Hareuveni – All About Jazz

The sophomore release of the Israeli Electro Free Trio—EFT— continues where the impressive debut (OutNow Recordings, 2011) stopped. An aggressive and experimental hybridization of spontaneous, free improvised approaches, real-time electronics who draw inspiration from noise and industrial music, all spiced with references to progressive and metal rock. This tough blend of sounds was solidified in many live gigs during the last year… Read More

In cities with a lack of parking, almost everyone has a bicycle. It’s a known fact that bicycles are the green answer to transportation as well as the healthiest form of city commuting. Bicycle riding in urban areas may be considered an innocent, yet subversive act at the same time.  Critical thinking along with a passion for music and bicycles is what generated the idea of linking both worlds.

Project Description:

Daniel Davidovsky converts his bicycle into a musical instrument. By attaching a contact microphone to the bike’s frame and applying various physical gestures and techniques, it is possible to amplify the sounds produced by the different parts of the bicycle.

In his work, “Music for Amplified Bicycle”, Daniel seeks to challenge our notion of the “musical instrument”. This challenge is powered by taking an object, the bicycle in this case, out of its natural context and through exploration of its sound qualities and the development of gestures and playing techniques that reveal the musical potential of the object.

The choice of a bicycle as a musical instrument is not accidental. The bicycle provides a closeness to the rider, in a manner very similar to the relationship between the musician and her instrument.  Equally important is the fact that the bicycle offers a transparent mechanism where everything is exposed and visible.  In consequence, the approach when exploring the sound qualities is intuitive and the results are immediate.  Despite, or perhaps as a result of the bicycle’s limitations, the variety of sounds and the playing techniques are very similar to “conventional” musical instruments.

Background:

“Music for Amplified Bicycle” is the continuation of Daniel’s series of works characterized by the use of inexpensive sound sources and Low Tech resources. These works constitute a critical stand against consumer culture, the almost religious devotion to technology and the silent addiction to its mass produced products.

“Music for Amplified Bicycle”  is an artistic melting pot of music, social and environmental thinking and the passion for bicycles.  The connection between music and bicycles has been examined (and it’s still nowadays) by many artists in many different ways. In this context, “Music for Amplified Bicycle” finds a precedent in the work of the American composer and sound artist, Richard Lerman – “Gamelon Travelon” (Folkways, 1982) –  a piece for amplified bicycles performed by a group of 20 people riding their bicycle slowly in public spaces. While moving in a parade- like formation, the bikes produce a polyphony of rhythmic sound textures emerging from loudspeakers attached to them. Lerman also created a concert version of this piece for a three bike/six percussionist ensemble. In both variations, Lerman recreates a sonic reference of the Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra. However, Daniel approaches the bicycle as a musical instrument, disconnected from the action of riding and the public space in favor of a personal, patient and exhaustive investigation of the sound variety of the bicycle.

From a music perspective, Daniel expands the instrument’s boundaries with timbre diversity leading the investigation. This approach traces its roots in Frank Zappa’s famous apparition in an American TV program in 1963 in which he played an improvised piece for two bicycles, magnetic tape and orchestra.

Daniel reaches timbre diversity by playing varied techniques and by using different sorts of objects like bows, brushes and scrapers. Sporadic real-time sound process is also applied, blending the raw sound of the bicycle into occasional electronic realms.

These procedures contribute to produce a wide range of timbres and sounds, propitiating the maximal utilization of the bicycle’s parts,  while there is yet always more to be discovered.

Workshop:

Daniel Davidovsky conducts a “hands on” workshop dedicated to bicycle playing. Participants in the workshop explore the unique sound qualities of the bicycle and experiment with the development of playing techniques and composition and notation techniques specific to bicycles.

At the end of the workshop, the participants, together with Daniel, create a Bicycle Orchestra piece to be performed in public performance at a selected space.

The workshop is open to musicians and non-musicians alike, and is limited to a maximum of 15 attendants.  Participants are required to bring their own bicycles and additional objects to be used in the development of playing techniques. A list of suggested objects is supplied in advance.

“Music for Amplified Bicycle” invites even those who are not musicians to approach a non musical object with a musical attitude.  The accessibility to a musical act through the use of a non musical instrument, by definition, allows one to remove the fear of failure and the reverence that conventional musical instruments may provoke among non musicians.  On the other hand, experienced musicians will come upon a vast variety of sounds and discover that conventional playing techniques and musical notions may be applied to bicycle playing.

 Media Examples:

Daniel Davidovsky - Music for Amplified Bicycle

Related Post

Guy Barash & Daniel Davidovsky

Mon. 6/5 – EFT

Tue. 7/5 – 3 Solos
Ido Bukelman – acoustic guitar
Davidovsky – amplified bicycle
Nadav Masel – contrabass
Hachanut Gallery Theatre, Tel Aviv – 21:30

Tue. 4/6 – EFT 
Ido Bukelman – guitar and banjo
Daniel Davidovsky – tapes and electronics
Ofer Bymel – drums
Uganda, Jerusalem – 21:30

Tue. 11/6 – EFT 
Ido Bukelman – guitar and banjo
Daniel Davidovsky – tapes and electronics
Ofer Bymel – drums
Reality Rehab Center, Tel Aviv – 22:00
Sat. 29/6 – concert @Hateiva

Thu. 20/6 – Davidovsky hosts friends 
Tuna Pase (Istanbul) – electronics
Illi Adato (London) – electronics
Roy Carroll (Berlin) – electronics
Davidovsky (electronics)
Nadav Assor (NY) – live video
Zimmer, Tel Aviv – 21:30

Yael Barolsky – violin
Daniel Davidovsky – electronics,
Shmil Frenkel – cellobass
Hateiva, Jaffa – 21:00

Stripping: Nadav Assor & Daniel Davidovsky

Hyde Park Art Center, July 20th 2012, 7pm-10pm, free admission
Guest performance 7:30pm, Stripping performance 8:30pm

Additional events:
Artist Talk & Open Studio at Hyde Park Art Center, July 12th, 6pm-8pm (talk starts at 6pm)

Stripping is a live performance, set to take place on the 80’ long Jackman Goldwasser video wall of the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and within the center and its surroundings. The performance is the present culmination of a long term project, called Strip: a series of large scale, panoramic video pieces that Assor has created over the last 3 years. The latest piece in this series, Strip / Lakeshore East, is currently installed on the Center’s video facade, as part of The Hairy Blob, a show dealing with Time and curated by Adelheid Mers.

Stripping takes the essential process and panoramic audio-visual output of the Strip projects, and manifests it in real time and scale. The visual mechanism utilized in these projects involves a single camera, mounted sideways on a bicycle, shooting a continuous video of the artist’s path. The long, strip-like panoramic projection is comprised of many adjacent “windows” into this continuous, moving shot. These window-slices combine to resemble a long cross section of the street that expands and contracts with the rider’s velocity. In the performance, Assor combines pre-recorded footage, shot in the process of creating Strip / Lakeshore East, with live feeds, broadcast from a lo-fi, manually operated “Drone”: traversing and “scanning” the crowd, the center and its surroundings in real time, revealing micro and macro tableaux. A journey through cross sections of a place, of a body, of a social situation, of the insides of an art show- all composed on the fly and output back into the street via the video facade.

The sound performance is an equal part of this process. Daniel Davidovsky generates sounds through multiple live and pre-recorded, analog inputs. Central to his performance is a contraption hybridizing a road bike and old reel-to-reel tape decks. The tape loops played on these contain sounds recorded on both artists’ traversals of physical paths, cutting socioeconomic cross-sections through Chicago and Tel Aviv, and are mixed with audio gathered, via special microphones, from the magnetic fields generated by machines and structures encountered in these travels.

The performers attempt to strip the live environment, to render it flat via the spectacles of continuous motion, of the stitched together scan and record of the here and now with the then and there. They keep on mapping, while never managing to present a fully coherent picture of space- instead stripping down the process of electronic surveillance and scanning itself.

Media files will be available soon

Daniel Davidovsky: Amplified Soprano Sax and Effects

This one is the whole evening recording. Sorry guys, i was busy and got no time to cut it in parts, its heavy shit (1gb)
12/2 concert – sky bazimmer + Bukelman/Masel

These ones i get already separated from Guy – (aprox 500 mb each)
20/2 concert – part1 – Stale+Daniel
20/2 concert – part2 – Stale+Daniel+Ido

Please tell me when u r done in order to erase the files from the server. Have fun.

d