Lee Cheng - Facilitator of Little Big Voice

Lee Cheng - Facilitator of Little Big Voice

The music from Little Big Voice is made by Lee Cheng and performed by five students from iLOrk (www.iLOrk.com), an electronic music ensemble from The Education University of Hong Kong. They created 10 tracks for the performance today utilising synthesisers and mobile technology to reflect on the content of each piece, bringing an additional emotional element and interpretation to the overall production.

What is your theme and what inspired the theme of your piece?
I am doing the transition music in-between the 8 dramas, so the theme come from those stories. For example, if the story is about body image and dance, I will then make dance music. I created the music by applying the knowledge with music technology to fit into the themes from the stories - technology as the background, theme-based music as foreground.

What were the biggest challenges of creating your piece?
We all know how powerful the technology is in making music, however there is no standard format on how you do this. Yes, you have an iPad, some touchpads, and then a keyboard synthesizer - so what you are going to play with, for example, a group of 5 musicians? The most challenging part of making music for this theatre work is therefore three-fold: (1) How to make use of the technology to turn ideas into music; and (2) how to balance between the musicians' technological + music instrumental skills and what you want them to do; and (3) how to make an understanding of my musical ideas with musicians and audiences.

Compared with other type of music, what do you think is the power of electronic music?
Other types of music, for example, jazz, classical, pop, rock, they all have standard formats. For example, if you are a conductor and you want to play Beethoven Symphony no. 5, just take the scores and distribute the scores to the players, they all know how to do it. Electronic music does not have standard formats. You can play everything you want - this is actually both a pro and con. We sometimes failed to play something but the resulting music is not what we expected. But at the same time, because you are free to do anything, you can apply your creativity there. Your electronic music then does not only limit to a performer-audience concert hall practice, but also interdisciplinarize between different art forms such as collaborative theatre works, digital arts, and mulit-media.

How do the students respond to electronic music-making during the workshops?
Most music students learnt their instruments since very young in Hong Kong, yet they are mostly bounded by the examination syllabus and therefore lack of other important musical competencies such as improvisational skills, ensemble skills (i.e. playing music in a group setting), and creativity. The first thing they are not familiar with in the very beginning is playing music without their own instruments, and try to play music with something they are not familiar with. Gradually they learnt more about music technology, how it works, and the empowerment of it, and finally feeling interested on what they do using technology to unfold the possibilities in music-making.

How are you using electronic music to convey the theme of your piece?
To me, electronic music is not only about the art of music, but also the art of sound (we call it sonic art), and a combination of both. I try to include the sounds that we encounter in everyday life and turn it into part of the music, and therefore making meaning out of the ambient sounds and try to make the audience aware of the beauty of every-day sounds. Much of the music in this theatre work therefore incorporates both music and sonic arts.