Rylan Gleave

Gulf

Gulf lives on a knife edge, treading carefully through both natural and artificial soundscapes, and seeks to find a relationship between queer and sacred identities. The performer traverses this path alone, the tempermental duet between piano and electronics only ever able to respond to itself. By controlling the effects that alter the sound of the piano, and to a degree, how long the listener dwells in heavy in and lighter spaces, the performer balances on either side of the gap. The performer is also asked to de- and re-attach themselves to both their instrument and their upper body movements, timing moments of change carefully to avoid tumbling over the edge.

I worked with MediaPipe, which is a software framework that can track hand movements. When paired with Glover, the software developed by Mi.Mu for composing music using gesture, they work together along with Ableton software for sounds and effects to translate movement in front of a laptop’s webcam into live sound manipulation. In Gulf, Zubin plays the piano and then uses specific hand gestures in front of the webcam to change primarily the textures of the sound. The most effective in this process was a gain setting on a virtual amp, where Zubin controls the strength of the signal, which adds a distortion/feedback effect. Other effects include controlling the dry/wet setting on a reverb plug-in, which acts as a sort of second sustain pedal for the piano, picking up the tail end of frequencies and letting them decay over a longer period of time. Zubin also worked with static postures, which control on/off switches such as an octave modifier, rather than a dial which needs to be manipulated through a dynamic gesture.

Video of Zubin Kanga performing Rylan Gleave’s Gulf at Sound Festival, Aberdeen, 31 October 2025

Excerpts of the score, showing the notation of the postures/dynamic movement directions and settings used in Gulf: