The Extended Instrumental Techniques. The Experience of Classification

Abstract

In the article we attempt to consider a phenomenon of extended techniques (new playing techniques), to fin d a definition, which allows to distinguish new techniques and traditional playing techniques. We suggest their multidimensional classification, based on several aspects: primarily classification of instruments, kind of playing technique modification and sound result. For selecting necessary classification of musical instruments we refer to experience of organologists, who made fundamental instruments’ classifications: Hornbostel — Sachs, Shaeffner, Mann and other scholars. We build our own classification upon their typologies and try to make it possibly strict in its criteria definitions, possibly universal and possibly relevant to our goals. Considering modification of normal way of playing we try to sort techniques by “amount of strangeness”, or by “radicality”. Finally, speaking about sound appearing as a result, we propose to separate several main sound types distinguishing acoustical and psychoacoustical parameters. So, we suppose that our extended techniques classification is able to become a powerful instrument for creating of “timbre music elementary theory”, which could allow better exploration of timbral phenomena in music and appear as a “ground floor” of timbre composition analysis (like phonetics in linguistics). Higher levels of analysis, focusing on functionality of timbre units, could base on this bottom level.