DigiEnsemble Berlin – music making on mobile devices
Professional musicians with diverse musical backgrounds convert smartphones and tablets into musical instruments. They aim at finding a way of understanding these devices as instruments and at collectively making music with them by exploring different styles. They perform their music live on stage.
The ensemble requires its music to be interesting and musical – by not losing any artistic value. Furthermore, the perceptions of the musicians themselves in the group and while performing are more than interesting for the whole concept of this experiment. Consequently, the DigiEnsemble Berlin is both, a musical ensemble and a research project.
Currently, they predominantly use apple devices (especially for iPhone and iPad). There is a rich variety of music apps with almost endless instrumental possibilities. Nevertheless, they are experimenting with differentmobile platforms. With this they aim at finding ways of using all of these daily devices as music creation tools.
Matthias Krebs founded the DigiEnsemble Berlin in 2010. The trained musicians of the ensemble quickly became aware of the high potentials of these common mobile devices. But this new approach asked for a new way of understanding interactive music making. In the beginning, it was not easy to coordinate the diversity of sounds and concepts. Hence, the musicians came to the agreement to start exploring their new instruments by playing existing music and existing styles. The result is the realization of musical pieces ranging from classical string orchestrations to heavy metal songs. Meanwhile, the ensemble also realized a range of own compositions and avant-garde projects.
The DigiEnsemble gets highly appreciated support from the Berlin Career College of the Berlin University of the Arts.
