Collaboration with performers is indispensable to my compositional practice.
As a composer, I would like to explore how shared creativity between composer and performer can reshape the notion of musical “ownership”.

I define collaboration as the co-creation of musical material and the refinement of both the material and the work itself through performers’ feedback. Through a series of working sessions, performers contribute their technical expertise and assess the practical feasibility of the composer’s ideas. This process leads to a genuine distribution of creativity between composer and performer¹.

Within this collaborative framework, I regard improvisation as a crucial compositional tool. For performers, improvisation represents an act of re-examining their own playing style and redefining the relationship between body and instrument. In my works, I extend this notion of improvisation by intentionally introducing resistance and unfamiliarity.

I aim to create “pseudo-new instruments” by:

These strategies not only challenge habitual gestures but also invite new modes of listening and responding.

My recent work Blue Toe for Two Guitarists with a Prepared Guitar exemplifies this approach. The piece centres on the physical constraint of two guitarists jointly performing on a single instrument and the novel sonic and gestural possibilities that emerge from this shared performance.

In the setup, the guitar is placed horizontally on a chair, with a clip and a pencil inserted between the strings as preparation. The two guitarists perform from opposite sides of the instrument – one from the headstock and the other from the body. This unconventional playing method arose through extensive improvisation during the compositional process.

What particularly fascinated me is how such a configuration enables sonic results that are unattainable by a single performer.

For instance, the pencil preparation between the strings allows what I call the “bi-tone technique”, in which different pitches are produced from a single string when plucked from both sides. During performance, one guitarist subtly shifts the position of the pencil, causing minute fluctuations in pitch. These sounds – emerging only when “two people play one guitar” – embody the essence of collaborative creativity.

The score employs a flexible “box notation” system to further encourage performer agency. Through a combination of textual and graphic instructions, performers are prompted to explore non-traditional techniques and to make personal interpretive decisions. By avoiding strict specification of rhythm, pitch, and duration, the work invites the performers’ individual actions to form the core of the performance.

At the opening of the piece, for example, the first guitarist is instructed to apply a small vibrator to the guitar body. Such personal gestures are intended to engage the performer not merely as an interpreter of the score but as a co-creator of the musical event.

For me, the distribution of creativity should extend beyond the compositional process into performance practice itself. To realise this, a flexible notation system – one that allows performers to determine musical parameters through their own judgment – is essential.

The most fulfilling moment in my practice occurs when performers take the work beyond my intentions and discover new musical expressions within it. The success of Blue Toe would not have been possible without the dedication and imagination of the two outstanding guitarists, Henri Hytti and Mark Reid Bulatović, to whom I express my deepest gratitude.

 

Henri Hytti:

Not being able to rely on traditional playing techniques that one is confident in, but instead having to figure out how to play in a completely different position… In the case of “Blue Toe”, I would go as far as to compare it to learning a new instrument. This comes with some uncertainty and insecurity over how I am playing. What helped a lot was having frequent sessions with the composer and receiving real-time feedback.

 

Mark Reid Bulatović:

Maybe I’d say that learning to use the new tools, especially the vibrator, took some time – trying to get some gestural and expressive mode from it, which is mostly quite harsh and mechanical. The design of the guitar also set up some resistance: frets made strings buzz, and the portion beyond the nut formed strange angles, making a tremolo there tricky. The pencil preparation also degraded over time, changing the effect and generally making it quieter. Playing the instrument with another guitarist was fine for me – it’s also a semi-standard party trick, well established in repertoire since the Baroque period.

 

These reflections highlight the performers’ active role in shaping the work. Their engagement with unfamiliar tools and altered physical relationships to the instrument mirrors the central question of the project: where does the ownership of a musical work lie?

In my view, the creation of a piece does not end with the completion of the score. Rather, it continues through the performer’s embodiment of the work – the moment when performers make the piece their own and generate new creativity from it.

Can a work truly be regarded as the exclusive “ownership” of the composer? I believe not.

 

1. Clarke, Eric F., and Mark Doffman. Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. ↩︎

 

Watch the world premiere of Blue Toe

Composed by Yuto Obata for two guitarists with a prepared guitar (2024-25)
Two guitarists: Henri Hytti and Mark Reid Bulatović | 08.04.2025 | Camerata – Musiikkitalo, Helsinki