The Musical Tracing Ensemble

 

Conceived of and led by Aaron M Fernandez Olson.

An ensemble of musicians is gathered in a performance/recording space. Each musician has their own instrument, means of amplification (if needed), and pair of headphones. All musicians’ headphones are plugged into one outputting sound source (usually an iPod with many headphone splitters and headphone amps). Music (usually a well known song from the popular music canon) is played from the sound source and the musicians are instructed to play something, anything that they hear in their headphones as accurately as they can on their own instrument. The musicians never know what songs or sounds they will be hearing in advance. The audience/listener only hears what the musicians are playing and none of the original sound source, thus creating a “tracing” of the sound source material.


There is no rehearsal, everything is live.