The Act of Patching #
In June 2025 I defended my doctoral thesis “The Act of Patching: Musicking with modular systems” at the Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology. The dissertation focuses on a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as metastable, modular musicking systems. In applying such an understanding, it seeks to gain knowledge in the transformative process found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems. At the core of the practice lies how instruments can be designed and customised to fit aesthetic and technological aims as well as how existing tools and mindsets inform the musician’s agenda. Utilising traditional patching techniques in combination with live coding, both as concepts and actual practices, the research aims for a deeper understanding of when, how and why instrumental setups change and co-evolve together with him as a composer-performer.
Compilation Thesis #
The PhD project is a compilation thesis, comprised of written publications and artistic work, presented in the form of a book and a Research Catalogue exposition.
The following sections is quoting the first page of the RC exposition, outlining the structure of the thesis as divided into a set of systems and patches.
Systems #
The systems described include the live coding environment Paragraph and the modular DMI Parsimonia, a serial, modular compositional tool called EMP Triangle, and the Sinew0od system, which is a feedback network, originally composed for a piece with the same name in 2008, re-purposed and re-contextualised for three new pieces, included in this thesis.
Patches #
The patches are application scenarios that can be understood as pieces or performance setups, where most of them include combinations of more than one of the systems.
The TCP/IP Quartet #
Patches 1-3 are projects made within the TCP/Indeterminate Place quartet, formed with an aim to explore hyperorgans and telematic performance. This quartet has been central for my explorations of live coding and the development of the Paragraph system. Thus, this system is described from my perspective and the role I had in the quartet during a performance that was part of the NIME conference (further described in Petersson (2023) and Harlow et al. (2021)). The next two projects presented are further explorations of algorithmic and telematic scenarios made with this quartet where we used a MIDI file player algorithm developed by me in order to work with precomposed structures and to do improvised readings of scores.
Re-patching Bach #
Patch 4 presents the Re-patching Bach project which entails an interpretation approach in which an old piece has been deconstructed, modularized, re-patched, and recomposed into a new work.
Triangular Progressions #
Patch 5 describes the piece Triangular Progressions and how the EMP Triangle system have been used to generate material by creating internal connections between musical properties, and further re-patched for live performance.
Sinew0od #
Patches 6-8 outlines the three versions of Sinew0od, manifested as different actualisations of the feedback system. Originally composed to be an integrated part of a piece where the technical setup cannot be separated from it, the system has been artistically explored using transcription as a method.
The TCP/Indeterminate Place Quartet #
The TCP/Indeterminate Place quartet was formed with an aim to explore various types of interactions with hyperorgans and how telematic performance situations shape our musical understanding and interplay. In the quartet, we design scenarios that involves several geographically dispersed hyperorgans, controlled by our respctive instruments, and often with a notion of distributed instrumentality. This entails that Robert Ek’s clarinet fitted with a motion sensor on the bell (Ek, 2024; Harlow et al., 2021), the electric MIDI guitar played by Stefan Östersjö, and Federico Visi’s Sophtar (Visi, 2024), are interconnected in various ways.
This quartet has been central for my research in live coding and the development of the Paragraph system, and examples of our performance scenarios include:
- The NIME 2021 performance – in which the quartet was on site in R1, Stockholm, playing both the local Wurlitzer Cinema Organ and the Utopa Baroque organ in Orgelpark, Amsterdam.
- Sestina – a remposition of Claudio Monteverdi’s choir piece for hyperorgan, vocal ensemble, guitars, clarinet, and electronics.
- Reconcilitation – a scenario in which the quartet were split up in two duos, telematically interconnected between Kapelle der Versöhnung in Berlin and Orgelpark, Amsterdam.
- Music of the Indeterminate Place – a 4-way scenario, in which the quartet members were all spread out in different venues. Östersjö plyed the bell tower in Kiruna, Visi was at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, Ek in Piteå playing the Acusticum organ, and myself in R1 controlling the Wurlitzer Cinema organ.
About the Name #
TCP, in the name of the quartet, refers to the combination of Telepresence and Copresence. As such, the word Tele-Copresence describes our sense of presence in the musical interactions that are enabled by the telematic performance situation. The Indeterminate Place, refers to the experience of place in tele-copresence as sometimes characterised by a mediated, liminal space. Of course, TCP/IP is also the foundational protocol stack of the Internet, which is a pre-requisite for this quartet’s work.
Back to the Future! #
Back to the future! was a three-year artistic research project financed by the Swedish Research Council and housed at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. The project was led by violinist George Kentros, and the other participating researchers were composer Ida Lundén, pianist Rei Nakamura, and myself. Within the project we explored strategies for norm-critical interpretation of classical pieces of music. Being specialists in different areas of contemporary music performance, the conceptual and methodological approach was to apply strategies and techniques found within new music to re-interpret and re-compose historical works.
Activities #
Within the framework of this project, we had regular meetings, discussing the subject matter both internally, and with invited experts contributing to the discussion and knowledge production. We also organised the Back to the future symposium on interpretation at KMH, Stockholm, in March 2023. The artistic outcome of the project comprises several solos, duos, and quartet work, in which we explore ways of interepreting famous classical works. This includes Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, mediated by vinyl record cut-ups into a transcription that shows a completely different facet of the original. Further, my solo piece within this project, was an interpretation of Bach’s Chaconne in d-minor, originally for solo violin, here performed and re-composed on a Buchla Synthesizer, with a modular approach towards both the composition and the instrumentality of the piece.
Re-patching Bach #
Besides being my solo project within the Back to the Future project, this piece was also included in my doctoral disseration, outlined above. The approach adopted for my interpretation of Bach’s original also aligns well with the methods developed during other projects within the PhD thesis. The text below is an edited version of the description found on the thesis’ Research Catalogue exposition.
Acknowledging the social, cultural, and immaterial aspects of musicking, but also the cybernetic perspectives on musical instruments, the Re-pacthing Bach project applies an expanded understanding of pieces and instruments as interactive modular musicking systems. Using this mindset as a conceptual framework, and applied as an analysis of the famous Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita in d minor for solo violin, BWV 1004, a new ‘radical interpretation’ has been made resulting in a re-composition of the original piece. By deconstructing and modularizing the system that the score, Bach’s composition, the instrument, and the performance practice comprise, the aim was to re-patch the agencies of the components of the system, in order to reshape the Chaconne into a new piece, but also to make an interpretation of certain aspects of Bach’s compositional methods.
The re-composition method #
Technically, the re-patching process of the Chaconne involved the following steps:
- Analyze the original score based on the practical use of the different strings of the violin.
- Make a new four part score, based on the events and gestures of each string.
- Export the four-part score as separate MIDI files.
- Send the MIDI file data to a modular synthesizer on four separate MIDI channels.
- Patch the channels to four different oscillators, corresponding to and tuned as the violin strings.
- Sample the violin’s resonant body, the strings, and various secondary and extraneous sounds, e.g., hits, scratches, and bow hiss.
- Use these secondary sounds as impulse responses to create a virtual resonant body and as sources of modulation for the modular synthesizer.
- Add a performative layer of live patching to play the piece.
For the first part of analyzing the score, I consulted the violinist George Kentros, who marked up the score with different colors, according to the string on which the notes are played. For the second part, I worked in the Sibelius notation software and used the marked-up score to split up the events and phrases into four separate systems – each representing a string.
The performance #
The first performance of the piece took place on March 28, 2023, at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. It took the format of lecturre recital, part of the Back to the Future symposium.
Back to the Future! at the Frequenz festival #
Some of the interpreted and re-composed pieces created during the course of the project, including our large-scale quartet piece Van-ish, based on all the nine symphonies by Beethoven, was presented at the Frequenz festival in Kiel, Germany, in 2024. A video recording from that performance can be watched below.
Reference group #
Chris Cutler, musician and researcher
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, professor emeritus, King’s College
Anna Lindal, violinist
Karin Hansson, professor, Södertörn University
John Swedenmark, translator
Stefan Östersjö, professor and artistic researcher
Toby Kassell, dancer and choreographer
Pontus Steenshäll, actor and director
Sonic Practices #
The Sonic Practices Working Group is a collaboration between KTH, KMH, and Konstfack, led by Ludvig Elblaus, Mattias Petersson, and Ida Lundén, representing the three universities. The working group organizes activities open for anyone interested in the big variety of sonic practices present in our community of artists and makers in Stockholm. Our goal is to share knowledge and resources, open up academic spaces to independent artists, and to create new opportunities for collaboration. Sonic Practices is organized as a working group at the NAVET Centre for Research in Art, Technology and Design.
Activities #
The Sonic Practices seminar series have during our first year included presentations and discussions on live electronics, sound and sculpture, instrument design, composition, and building and playing workshops. For the latter, we collaborated with EMS Stockholm and invited Tom Whitwell from Music Thing Modular.
The Sonic Practices Computing Café runs every Tuesday afternoon during the semester at 5PM at KMH. Intended as an informal meetup for sharing knowledge around various computer-based musicking and code, it is open for anyone interested. Show something, help someone, or just get your coding done in excellent company.
The Sonic Practices Conference 2026 At the end of the year, the Sonic Practices Working Group invites you to a three-day, single track conference on Live Electronics at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH) in celebration of the 20 year anniversary of the KMH Live Electronics Ensemble. The conference will feature paper presentations, lecture performances, and live concerts.
List of Publications #
Harlow, R., Petersson, M., Ek, R., Visi, F., & Östersjö, S. (2021, June 1). Global Hyperorgan: A platform for telematic musicking and research. NIME 2021. NIME 2021. https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.d4146b2d
Ek, R., Östersjö, S., Visi, F., & Petersson, M. (2021, June 1). The TCP/Indeterminate Place Quartet: A Global Hyperorgan scenario. NIME 2021. NIME 2021. https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.7714e834
Petersson, M., & Ek, R. (2022). Exploring Sinew0od. ECHO, a Journal of Music Thought and Technology, (3). https://doi.org/doi:%252010.47041/QPSR1612
Petersson, M. (2023). Live Coding the Global Hyperorgan: The Paragraph environment in the indeterminate place. Organised Sound, 28(2), 206–217. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771823000377
Petersson, M. (2024). A new Morphology: Strategies for innovation in live electronics performance. In J.-O. Gullö, R. Hepworth-Sawyer, J. Paterson, R. Toulson, & M. Marrington (Eds), Innovation in Music: Technology and Creativity (1st edn, pp. 310–327). Focal Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003118817-22
Petersson, M. (2025). The Act of Patching: Musicking with modular systems. Luleå University of Technology.
Visi, F. G., Östersjö, S., Ek, R., & Petersson, M. (In press). Reconciliation: A telematic double duo hyperorgan performance. Contemporary Music Review.
Petersson, M., Visi, F. G., Östersjö, S., Ek, R., & Unander-Scharin, Å. (In press). Deconstructing Monteverdi Through Algorithmic Performance with Hyperorgans. Contemporary Music Review.
