I had a gig in the summer of 2010 with Jeff Kaiser at the Jazz Station, a gem of a venue in Eugene, Oregon’s music scene. I played the first set, Jeff played the second and Brian McWhorter played the third, running into the venue directly after playing the offstage trumpet part in an Oregon Bach Festival concert.

Two hours before, Jeff and I set up a pair of speakers in the back of the room, then created a four channel sound system using the house’s regular main speakers and a mixer. For those not familiar with what this means, this is a surround-sound system, one that allows sound to be “placed” not just to the left or right, as with a typical stereo sound system, but the sound can be moved all around the audience, from front to back and left to right. Our brains compare the slight differences in volume and frequency content in the sounds received by our ears, and from that can deduce where sound is coming from in relation to our heads. So, in Jeff’s improvisation, he is able to manipulate the position of the sounds he is generating, by changing the level of sound coming out of a particular speaker in relation to the others, so that they appear to move around the listener. Read More…