Janne Eraker

What is Soft Ice really about?

1/4/2026

Soft Ice is becoming a beautiful piece, and sometimes I worry that you would think it’s just about beauty. But it’s not. It’s about freedom, for me. Fixed form melting into fluid movement.

If you have ever felt how your body relates to the ground when you’re skiing, skating or snowboarding, you know about the speed and flow that comes from gliding over ice and snow.

I’ve spent many many years practicing my tap technique to try to minimize my contact with the floor, and to have the most immediate weight change possible. But tap dance also has a lot of sliding and scraping vocabulary. And it so happens that the sound of metal gliding over wood sounds a bit like snow and ice. I love these sounds and textures. And then it turns out that there are endless possibilities in both sound and movement when you stay in touch with the floor. And there’s a whole set of new techniques to be learned.

Skiing over the snow in the mountains also makes for many different types of sounds and movements. This time, at the cabin, temperatures varied from -8 to -20, and there was old snow, new snow and a frozen lake. The most exciting sound is when you move over the ice and it makes a big, cracking sound when sinks a little bit. Then there’s the hard sound of the icy snow, and the very soft, even sound of the powder snow.

There’s a inherent groove and rhythm to all of these snowy activities. Cross country skiing has an even pulse, or can have a sort of shuffle rhythm when you use faster techniques. Down hill skiing has breaking curves that sound smooth or rough depending on the snow and the speed. Skating has sharp sounds combined with silent gliding, in rhythms that depend on the figure that you’re making. And all of these produce cursive patterns and luscious lines.

When I tap dance, it’s mostly for the music of it. I want to be able to play grooves and rhythms however I want, right there and then. I need to listen deeply to what’s happening, and my body does whatever it needs to do in service of the sound. So much, that it sometimes traps my body.

Some years ago, I was back in New York and took a class with Oliver Steele. He is the absolute master of luscious, 3 dimensional movement, with several axis points around which different bodyparts are swirling. I hadn’t been training with him for years, so I felt like someone had put me in the laundry machine. But for the first time I also perceived all of the movements as sound. Meaning, from orienting myself around the sound I was making on the floor, I now heard the sounds of the movements in the air.

In Soft Ice this sensation is now spreading out to the whole room. Not only down where the feet are, but through the whole body, through space. Socks make it possible to slide even longer. And I still hear the rhythms. To me, this is playtime! This is unlimited. This is some kind of liberation. Similar to how it feels to snowboard down a fresh hill with powder snow.

Dot and Line become cursive writing. Perpendicular balance becomes diagonal fall. Hard melts to soft.

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Et innlegg delt av Janne Eraker (@janneeraker)

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Movements for Listening - all the links to videos and music

6/20/2025

For practical reasons I'm collecting links to all the videos and music here.

See here for all the full videos of all the recordings.
See here for all the teasers.
See here for all the time lapse videos of the art work.
See here for the videos of the release concert.

The music can be found on all streaming platforms, like:
Bandcamp
Spotify

Single nr. 10: Funkverkehr with Ivar Grydeland

9/20/2023

Ivar Grydeland plays a pedal steel guitar, prepared with all kinds of stuff in addition to some interesting loop machines. He has the most beautiful, unexpected sound, sometimes plucking, sometimes long notes, seemingly random rhythms and intervals. I got to know him as a musician when he was improvising with contemporary dancer Siri Jøntvedt, and invited him to teach his improvisation methods to a group of professional tap dancers. Ivar’s melodic music and the rhythmic tap dance is a great match, and there’s an interesting overlap in sort of punctuated dots.

We met at Ugla Lyd, the recording studio in Morten Qvenild’s garden. Already after a quick sound check, I could hear that the tap was sounding just like I wanted. Morten tried out a contact microphone which he held in place with a heavy object, and there were 3 other fancy microphones. Then Ivar and I improvised a couple of short sets, and listened to them right there. We were happy with the sound. It was delicate, nuanced and rich. The next day we played another 2-3 rounds, and then it felt like we were done. Our favorite recording was 15 minutes long, and had a natural stop 2/3rds through, so we decided to cut it there. It was mixed, and that was it!

Improvised by Ivar Grydeland (pedal steel guitar) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on wood, soft shoes, sand, loose taps)
Recorded and mixed by Morten Qvenild at Ugla Lyd

Single nr. 9: Naaktgeboren, with Harald Fetveit

8/18/2023

One of the first recordings for this album was this one, with Harald Fetveit at Blitz. Bjørn Larsen, sound engineer of the house, was working with us. For more or less a day we set up all my boards and pulled out all of the mics we could find. I think I ended up with about 10 microphones, many of them simple SM57’s, but also some old and fancy ones. The one above the water was wrapped in a plastic bag, inside the water was the hydrophone, a microphone for recording whale sounds underwater. Harald had his own mixer and his sound just went straight into the recording booth. The most bizarre thing was that Bjørn had his recording room downstairs in the basement, far away from where we were, and with no sight of us. When we did the sound check we had to phone him, to let him know which microphones we were testing. I would tap, and then hear the sound of my tap through my phone half a second later.

Harald and I improvise from scratch. We might decide how long we aim for. One agreement we had was to use full stops now and then, and to be able to start fresh every so often. The music depends on a certain ease, combined with a huge amount of energy. I can’t spend time overthinking or doubting, it has to be done with commitment.

We have played together many times before, but Harald surprised me with the use of drum machine sounds. I enjoyed the opening and closing sound of many of these, and tried to match them with how I released and stopped my own sound.

We recorded many long tracks, and had a hard time deciding which one would be on my album. We chose our top 3, and mixed each of these together with Bjørn. More than half a year later, when we started mastering the album, we couldn't remember why we had chosen these tracks. We ended up going back and picking a recording that we had totally overlooked the first time around. We edited it a bit, and even added taps from yet another track. Now we love it!

Improvised by Harald Fetveit (noise) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on wood, water container, loose taps, sand, metal shelf)
Recorded and mixed by Bjørn Larsen at Blitz
Edited by Audun Strype, Harald Fetveit and Janne Eraker

Single nr. 8: Sikte på 10, with Kristoffer Lislegaard (a.k.a. =Øy)

8/3/2023

Kristoffer and I have a duo together that’s called Øy, and we’ve been making music for some years now. Our set up works like this: I dance on a couple of wooden boards that have contact mic’s attached to them, and through these, my sound goes into Kristoffers system. Kristoffer will then use this input in many different ways, and I’ll discover what happens with my sound as we play. We both improvise, and deal with whatever happens real-time.

Here are some of the basic methods we have:

my volume can control everything that’s under the knobs on Kristoffers set up, gradually, variably
Kristoffer prepares sequences and an assembly line, which will be played in order if I tap dance loud enough
there are effects on the tap dance sound itself
I can trigger drum samples, like a bass drum and a hihat, similarly to how a drummer can play a drum pad
everything can be changed on the go, Kristoffer live-programmes what I can control, also according to what I do
Kristoffer plays live himself (but usually not a groove or a sequencer with a groove, since that becomes quite limiting).

The exciting thing about working with Kristoffer is that he gives me a lot of new sounds to work with, in addition to offering his own music. I feel a little bit like I’m entering a magical, virtual world, where I get several new color palettes attached to my feet, including all kinds of tones and melodies. Sometimes my electronic sound is on the foreground, and the acoustic tap sound disappears in the back. Sometimes the acoustic sound itself is amplified so much that it gets a whole new character. As I discover which superpower I’ve been handed, and then play around with it, Kristoffer can react to this in several ways. He can always change my sound / effect, or just add more layers of his own. Our mechanics are very different; I produce music by continuously moving. If I stop, my music stops. If I’m playing a groove that the music depends on I can’t stop moving, otherwise the whole thing will collapse. Kristoffer works with many layers, and is building it by live programming it. He can get something started, and then just let it play. Sometimes he will also add something that he plays live, straight on the keyboard. We’re both really IN the music, and we’re looking for the development of it all the time. Where is it going? How will we keep the momentum, or break it, or change it, and when?

As a tap dancer it’s challenging to work like this. I have to be ready for anything. I have to be in the moment, and find ways to use my tap dance so that it makes sense with the sounds I’m getting. Usually I discover what’s “under my feet” at the moment I step on the board. I have some strategies to deal with this. I can start playing something that has a rhythmical value and intention, that sort of adds to any sound I could get. Or I touch the board once, and hear what it sounds like, and then take action immediately to integrate that one touch into something that works. The other thing that’s challenging for me as a tap dancer is that I get a lot of responsibility. For most of the time, the beat and groove of the music depends on me. The consequences of stopping or messing it up are quite big.

Kristoffer and I set up the recording gear in his studio, and improvised for several days. We heard ourselves through (sweaty) headsets, and not over the speakers like when we perform. This way it was easier to work with the music after. We always aimed for 10 minute long improvisations. After some time we agreed on some simple scores. When we picked a track, we didn’t do much alterations, except shortening one transition.

Improvised by Øy / Kristoffer Lislegaard (electronics) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on wood, loose taps)
Recorded and mixed at Metronopolis by Kristoffer Lislegaard

About Kristoffer Lislegaard
Kristoffer Lislegaard is a Norwegian electronic musician and producer based in Oslo. Since 2010, he has created, performed and released music combining genres such as ambient, noise, post-rock, club music and more. He has also worked as a composer and sound designer with projects spanning from contemporary dance, theatre, film, art installations, poetry and performance art. Different spaces and contexts makes his music take on different forms, from calm and meditative ambient music, to beat-driven glitched-out grooves and washed-out noise.

About Øy
Øy is a duo consisting of tap dancer Janne Eraker and electronic musician Kristoffer Lislegaard. The sound from Eraker's tap dance is sent into the electronics and used to modulate different parameters, to trigger sequencers, or as a sound source for processing and sampling. Exactly how the tap sound interacts with the electronics is programmed live on the spot as part of the performance. The result is a two-way communication where they both are reacting to what the other one is contributing. The focus of their collaboration is to work together as one complex unit or as two completely separate parts, and the changes between these two states bring a wide dynamic variation into their artistic expression.

Single nr. 7: Galgeberg, with Hans Martin Rundberg Austestad

6/21/2023

I met Hans Martin a long time ago, when he came to teach me and my colleagues from a contemporary dance project how to yodel. He has an education as a jazz vocalist, and knows several different singing techniques. But actually, he’s even more known for playing the banjo. We’ve jammed together several times, and it’s easy to connect the tap dance with his rhythmical, 16th-notes-heavy tunes.

What’s super interesting about the banjo is that it’s a percussion instrument ánd a guitar. The banjo player also provides the groove, and it seems like the melody is extracted out of the groove. Sometimes I feel like tap dance can do this as well: play a consistent groove, but emphasize and accentuate a melody by how the different tap sounds are coming out of the groove. Banjo music and flatfooting, Appalachian clogging and buck dance are a traditional match from way back, with a great representation in dancers like Nic Gareiss today. Tap dance has evolved from these old time dances, with the two biggest differences being that tap dance uses the heels more, and musically is closer to the syncopated swing jazz music.

I had no intention of pretending to dance any of the old styles, as I am no expert in that. Instead I tried to find the vocabulary in my tap dance that would sound good and be appropriate with the 16th-note-groove that Hans Martin played. It was very important to work groove-based, and mostly stick with either the melody or the groove instead of bursting out with all the steps that happened to be in my legs. Hans Martin suggested a couple of songs, of which one he had written himself. It has some shifts in the accentuation of the melody versus the downbeat, goes in a Sandy River Belle tuning, and seems to never land. When we rehearsed I felt free and inspired, and just wanted to dance, dance, dance. There were many ideas coming out in different steps and rhythms, and we also had several ideas about how to structure the song. Eventually we decided on a form with 10 rounds of the AAB-structure, and a rough idea for what we would do in each set of 2 rounds. It was a great challenge to be a sort of reliable groove-motor, while also contributing and offer some rhythmical ideas.

An even bigger challenge was to decide about which tap shoes to wear. In that little house, so close to each other and with a low ceiling, I felt so loud with my regular tap shoes. At first I got the impression from sound engineer Audun that the hard tap sound would be best, because it is in a different frequency range than the banjo. Later on, this choice would make it easier to mix the tap sound without making the banjo sound muddy. But the hard sound and the slippery and uneven floor made me feel quite self-conscious, next to already feeling a bit intimidated by the whole task. That immediately showed in my sound; the groove was unsteady and the dance was inhibited. After a couple of takes I decided to give the soft shoes (without the taps) a try, and it turned out that it would work fine as long as I would limit myself to the board and not go out on the floor. My mics were on each side of the board, and that way it was possible to isolate my sound more in the recording. Also, I got headphones, so I could hear the banjo and singing even better. I love the sound of soft shoes with the banjo, and I felt much more comfortable in my body, and inspired by the music.

Performed by Hans Martin Rundberg Austestad (banjo, vocals) and Janne Eraker (soft shoes on wood)
Composed by Hans Martin Rundberg Austestad
Recorded by Audun Strype at the Executioner’s House
Mixed by Audun Strype

About Hans Martin Rundberg Austestad
Hans Martin Rundberg Austestad, born in 1983, is a Norwegian singer, songwriter and musician. Educated as a jazz singer, Austestad also plays many stringed instruments and is specialized in American and Norwegian traditional music, with extra warmth towards the five string banjo. He has been a freelance musician since 2006, has released 10+ albums with his own material, and within these years he has participated on over 40 albums as a frontman, studio musician, producer and technician.

Single nr. 6: Three Miniatures for Tap Dance and Percussion, with Anders Kregnes Hansen

6/1/2023

Ever since I saw Anders perform some contemporary compositions in 2011 I knew that it would be interesting to work with him. In a couple of improvised concerts this was confirmed! When I asked him to join the album project he proposed to write a composition for us, which will later be released as sheet music. We met every other month to investigate possibilities with my loose taps, water container and regular tap on a wooden board, combined with his arsenal of percussion instruments. Then we met at Scenehuset and worked on it for 3 days before recording it.

The composition has three movements, each consisting of around three minutes.

Movement 1: water, snare and castanets
Movement 2: rhythm section on boards and drums
Movement 3: carillon of hanging taps, vibraphone, sort of castanets with taps

It was special to try to fullfill Anders’ wishes for the music, as opposed to spontaneously delivering my own ideas in reaction to him. Now it was my task to be as precise as possible within the composition.

For the first movement we put a bunch of taps together and made something like castanets. There was a lot to handle at once, tap dancing in water and shaking those “castanets” at the same time. Tap dance wise the second movement was most normal. The rhythm has a roll in the beginning, and it was challenging to keep time and not rush forward every time I did the roll. In the third movement I was playing my hanging taps with a mallet, as a sort of carillon. This was completely new to me! I love the off-sounding taps combined with the perfectly pitched vibraphone. I felt like I was making a kid's drawing, and Anders was completing my picture as a grown-up professional, together it was beautiful. The room has a little reverb and turned out to have quite some noise from outside, where there’s a tram stop right in front of the door. When we recorded we waited for it to get quiet before starting. Once, the sound of sirens was recorded onto the last movement.

Performed by Anders Kregnes Hansen (percussion) and Janne Eraker (water container, tap shoes on a yoga mat, wood, metal, loose taps hanging, taps as castanets).
Composed by Anders Kregnes Hansen
Recorded by Audun Strype at Scenehuset
Mixed by Audun Strype

About Anders Kregnes Hansen
Anders Kregnes Hansen is a percussionist with a strong focus on contemporary music, performance and innovative genres. He excels both as a chamber musician and soloist. Hansen is a versatile musician who regularly works with most of the professional orchestras in Norway, as well as in the contemporary ensemble Aksiom. He has contributed on several recordings in contemporary music, classical, jazz, and pop/rock. Of these, several have been nominated for the Norwegian grammy award. As a performer he has premiered dozens of new pieces for percussion, and held concerts all over Europe. Hansen has a masters degree in performing classical percussion from the Norwegian Academy of Music.

Single nr. 5: If You Find Yourself Falling, Dive, with Juliana Venter

5/2/2023

Juliana Venter is a voice artist, and has the ability to use whatever material she wants to express whatever she wants. My expectations going into this collaboration with her, was that it would probably be challenging to pick a certain direction, out of all the possibilities I saw coming. Juliana was prepared and came with ideas for some texts to incorporate in our improvisation. We spent some days playing around with material, varying from blues, to poetry, to harsh noise, to rhythms that reminded me of Indian music, and more. On the last day, Audun, the sound engineer, and Sigurd Ytre-Arne, a photographer stepping in for Morten for this one time, came to record and film. Without setting a score, Juliana and I performed 8 improvised pieces. It was an intense experience, exhausting, and very exciting. I noticed that I felt the need to steer the sound with the tension and release of my whole body. I felt the music creeping into my face, making me pull my face in weird ways. I felt more alert and precise in my sound by exaggerating it into my body, and it felt natural to move more than usual.

These days took place in an absolutely beautiful location, namely a former boathouse at the fjord. I got there by taking a ferry, bringing my transport bike including all my tap boards with me, and then biking for half an hour. Along the road there were forests, farms, horses, and even a deer ran alongside me for a little while. The boathouse itself was completely out of wood. The old floor had been taken out, renovated, and put back again. It had a nice bassy sound. The room was completely sound isolated, and the sound of tap dance on that floor, in that room, was so satisfying. The different planks had different tones that I could play with. It was a bit chilly outside, and we had a fire in the fireplace.
When I listened to the recordings later I was struck by the last one. I loved it! In the studio with Audun and Juliana we decided to keep it like it was, except for one tiny part towards the end. There we cut out a bit, so that the build-down of the song comes in a bit sooner. Other than that, it’s truly improvised.
The title is a quote I heard somewhere, and I find it fitting to our collaboration. It’s about surrendering to the given situation, and going all-in.

Improvised by Juliana Venter (vocals) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on a wooden floor and metal)
Recorded by Audun Strype at Naustet
Mixed and mastered by Audun Strype

About Juliana Venter
Juliana Venter is a voice artist who was trained as an opera singer from childhood on. She’s known for her heartfelt voice, broad palette and groundbreaking and sometimes extreme expression. The press calls her “the queen of the South African avant-garde”, but she’s at home in opera, contemporary music, folk music, jazz, noise and free improvisation as well. She was the front figure of The Mud Ensemble from Johannesburg, and reached cult status as a pioneer in avant-garde music in South Africa in the 90s. The Mud Ensemble was also known for its work against apartheid. Venter composes for large and original ensembles, while also making music for her own voice and the various collaborations she has. Also, she has a vast experience in cross-genre performance concerts and music theater performances, and she works as a film and theater actress.

Single nr. 4: Two Miniatures for Tap Dance and Drums, with Michaela Antalová

3/23/2023

Michaela Antalová is a drummer with a great sense for detail, timing and subtlety. I knew her from a couple of improvisations, and was very curious how it would be to record music with her. We met at Urban Sound Studios and set up our stuff. This music studio is a typical one, with several booths for recording, a big window between the sound engineer’s room and the studio, and an enormous console for him to work with. Jock was sitting there, hearing the music through the microphones, and talking to us through a speaker in the studio. Since we wanted to record at the same time, together, not separately, Jock did his best to put up walls between me and Michaela, wanting to limit how much our sounds would bleed into each other's microphones. After a short sound check we started recording, without any preparations or agreements. The only thing we decided on beforehand was to aim for relatively short tracks of 5-7 minutes. We then listened to the recordings, and spoke about what we liked about them before improvising some more of the same material, and then choosing the two tracks that we wanted for the album.

The music I make with Michaela can have a beat and a groove, but more important is the out-of-time placing of sounds that are similar to the other player's instrument. In the end, it’s hard to distinguish our sounds from each other. We both happened to have several toys with us, and a lot of the small sounds are coming from a plastic play drum and a tiny music box. To me, it feels like we’re making microscopic music, hyper aware, with the ears close to the source, full of textures and a feeling of space. In contrast to most of the recordings of this album we listened to the tracks right away, and used what we had heard to make better choices in the next round. We were super sensitive and aware of sound, silence and timing. I felt like I had to be totally ready for anything in my body, but at the same time be very sparse in what I chose to play. There was a suspense and alertness which made me carry myself in a different way. At some point this was released into a rolling groove.

About Michaela Antalová
Michaela Antalová is a Slovak drummer living in Oslo, traveling worldwide to perform solo concerts and to play with different projects. Michaela is an active composer and writes for both bands, larger ensembles and percussionists. Her music contains complex textures arranged with different orchestrations that change gradually with nuances. Leading her own ensemble Mikoo and touring with her solo drum performances, Michaela drifts through genres playing a variety of percussion, hand drums and drum kit. She is occupied by exploring improvisation in many settings and using this experience in baroque, world, singer-songwriter and experimental music.

Improvised by Michaela Antalová (drums and more) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on wood, sand, play drum, loose taps)
Recorded and mixed by Jock Loveband at Urban Sound Studios

Single nr. 3: Cute, with David Arthur Skinner

3/2/2023

David Skinner is an amazing musician, playing old jazz music in new ways. While taking a quick break from renovating his home, he sent me a new 5/4 version of the old standard Cute. Originally, Cute is a tune that’s famous for its drum fills, played by Jo Jones in the Count Basie Orchestra, and, notably; with brushes.

Naturally, I spent a lot of time getting comfortable in the 5/4 time signature. David and I decided that I would play the exact melody together with him during the head, but also fill the breaks in between the melody. This turned out to be super challenging for me. The melody has long notes, and requires me to hold my balance, whereas during the breaks I felt obliged to try to produce fast and intricate rhythms. Shifting gears like this was hard, but after a while I developed a set of groove steps and some more “fancy” steps that I thought fit well. I called my neighbor and drummer Ulrik Ibsen Thorsrud, and asked for some feedback.

Tips from Ulrik were:

Be more consistent in the swing groove
The quarter note is the most important, especially before a syncopation
But be careful of too many heavy beats
Incorporate some slides and small sounds in the long notes of the melody, to keep the flow
Be intentional with the start and end of the slides

Another great insight I got was that I had had the wrong idea about the sound of my stamps. I thought they would resemble a heavy and emphasized note on the drums, but it turns out the stamps are more loud and high pitched than bassy-sounding. Really it is my heel that sounds closer to a bass drum. Adapting all of this feedback caused me to reconstruct how I tap danced the piece completely. I choreographed a whole new part, so that I could do the slides without falling, play the ghost notes and accents, and all the while shift my weight where it needed to be.

Then we went to work at Nynorskens hus, a huge ballroom with a high ceiling, beautiful paintings and chandeliers, where Norwegian folk dancers have their training and events. There were two very different floors there. On stage was a black, raked, non-slip floor, sounding quite muted. The rest of the room had a lacquered parquet floor, quite slippery, with less bass and more high frequencies. On stage my movements were more restricted, because I was more stuck to the floor, and since the sound was more muted I could dance “harder”. There were already a lot of subtle sounds in the floor, for example scraping sounds were soft and nice. On the slippery parquet floor it was easier to tap dance at speed, but the sound was also a bit high-pitched and hard. Nevertheless, when David started playing, adding all of his sounds to the room, the tap dance sound fit better and I liked how it sounded together. Also, we were physically closer, so it was easier to stay connected. Actually, the track we chose for the album was just a joke; we did it at a ridiculous speed, just for fun. Listening back to all the recordings, this one is where I’m the least exact, and many of my sounds disappear in the rush. But we decided that we like it best, because the recording bubbles with energy, interaction and fun.

Performed by David Arthur Skinner (piano) and Janne Eraker (tap dance on a parquet floor)
Composed by Neil Hefti
Recorded by Audun Strype at Nynorskens hus
Mixed by Audun Strype

About David Arthur Skinner
David Arthur Skinner is a jazz pianist, bandleader and composer, who specializes in swing jazz and stride piano. He has released three solo piano albums based on these genres, namely Diagonal Jazz (2013), Cubistic Boogie (2015) and Skinner plays Skinner (2017), in addition to the duo album Look Both Ways (2022) with the drummer Magnus Eide. Skinner is interested in atypical time signatures, as well as other ways to tease and confuse his audience. He has absolute control over the groove, all the while overlaying it with asymmetrical melodies and polyrhythms. Skinner also performs (usually in a regular four beats to the bar) at his own monthly jazz club “Café Society Oslo”, where the best swing dancers in town gather to dance to the music.

Single nr. 2: Chair Variations, with One Small Step

2/2/2023

One Small Step is a trio that I’ve been working in for a long time. It started with a collaboration with Roger Arntzen, the double bass player, when I still lived in the Netherlands. Separately from this I was interested in the combination of Hardingfele (a traditional Norwegian fiddle with a double set of strings) and tap dance, and had begun playing a little bit with Vegar Vårdal. On a special occasion, when the great tap dancers Heather Cornell and Thomas Wadelton were in Oslo for a concert I organized, we played all together, and have ever since. It’s the only track on the album that’s not performed by a duo.

We always improvise, and more or less anything is possible. When we practice, we often record ourselves and listen back together. This gives me a better overview over what actually happened, which choices I made and why, and it teaches me something about my habits and prejudices. For example, I’ll notice that it benefits the music if I do less, or if I keep going with something that I might think is not entertaining enough while I do it. Or it’ll make me listen even more closely to the sounds we are all actually making. When we perform, we always take in account the room, the floor, the audience and the situation. This inspires our performance. Last year we recorded an album, Gol Variations, in Gol Stave Church, where the wooden floor is very, very old and has great tonality and textures. It was tempting to go back there for this recording, but it is more in the spirit of this trio to search for new challenges. That’s why I loved the idea of recording at Emanuel Vigeland Museum, a stone mausoleum with a reverb of about 15 seconds.

It felt like painting with aquarelle and too much water as opposed to crayons. I felt like I could hear how the sound traveled away from us, and how it came back. At some point Vegar sang one note and then another, and they mixed. My own sound seemed to be different where I heard it as opposed to from where someone else heard it. When you do something, it’s going to ring out for a long time. You can’t hide anything, and it’s like it forces you to commit even more to your choices. Everything bleeds into each other, unless you wait for 15 seconds for the reverb to be done. This creates a whole new timing between us when we improvise. It magnifies the moment of the (re-)action, overlap, interaction, start and finish. We tended to take more turns, instead of playing all three. We stayed close to each other, and surprisingly enough it was possible to play in time / groove together. Whenever I moved further away it was so much harder to connect the timing.

Regular tap shoes with metal or wooden taps on a marble floor created a hard, high sound, which seemed to shoot out in space much faster than I was used to. Soft shoes sounded more like normal shoes in a museum or something. I tested a pair of shoes that had metal taps on the heels but none under the toes, thinking that that would give me both options at once. But that didn’t work.

We recorded several improvised tracks, and I’m sure some of the other recordings will come out in some format some day. The recording has not been edited at all. The one I chose for this album is the one where we played the most recklessly, including the chairs of the room in our music. When these wooden chairs are moved around on that marble floor they create something that sounds like a trumpet sound. Of course, the title Chair Variations is a pointer to our first album Gol Variations.

There was a distinct smell, from the mural paintings that cover the walls from top to bottom. There was a marble stone floor, with some dirt and sand. This produced an extremely harsh and unpredictable sound, which totally interrupted and distracted my dancing. I brought a swiffer and made sure there was no grain of sand left on the marble floor.

We were there for two days. Especially after the first day I felt so weird when I went home on my bike. It was almost like being carsick. It was so intense to play in that room, almost like we were in some kind of audible illusion.

Improvised by One Small Step: Roger Arntzen (double bass), Vegar Vårdal (fiddle, voice, chair) and Janne Eraker (tap dance with soft shoes, loose taps, chair, water container, metal)
Recorded by Audun Strype at the Emanuel Vigeland Museum
Mixed by Audun Strype
Video by Morten Minothi Kristiansen
Cover art by Daan Botlek

About One Small Step, the trio of Roger Arntzen, Vegar Vårdal and Janne Eraker
This trio has been working with tap dance as percussion in music for several years, and released its first album Gol Variations on Clean Feed Records in 2022. With a wide-ranging background, One Small Step plays with minimal music, Norwegian folk music, jazz, and, of course, all kinds of rhythms. They challenge each other in their interaction, and launch into musical escapades that consist of textures, tonalities, imaginative ideas and exhaustive stretches. Roger Arntzen is a double bass player from In the Country, Trail of Souls, Ballrogg and Chrome Hill. Fiddler and folk dancer Vegar Vårdal has roots deep in the Gudbrandsdal, but travels around the world with his work and has even played with Camille Norment Trio at the Venice Biennale!

Single nr. 1: Chulas Fronteras, with Knut Reiersrud

1/3/2023

Since I saw Knut Reiersrud performing on national TV in the 90’s, I’ve been a fan. I love the way he plays the blues, and how he blends it with other folk music genres. Needless to say, I’m totally honoured that he said yes to record a tune with me for this album. Knut is a master, and I just tried to catch up and do my best next to him.

We met about a year in advance to practice, and he suggested this 5/4 groove. Knut used his pedals and put a couple of layers on top of it, while I was improvising some swing grooves. When we met again a week before recording we practiced this, and talked about how we would record it. His approach was that we would record the bassline first, then record other parts that would be added on top. This was a completely new way to make a tune for me, and it took me a little while to understand exactly what he meant.

I took the practice recording with me in my studio and searched for ways to play the 5/4 groove in a complementing way. My focus was mainly to get a good flow and a nice swing feel in the dancing. On days where I was more relaxed I managed this better, and on days where I was stressed or impatient it was harder to sit in the relaxed groove. I did not at all focus on any kind of soloing. This song seemed like a steady ride to me, going in on and on. On the day of recording I was constantly in a weird state of being a little bit starstruck, enjoying the music a lot, trying to stay sharp and focused in what I was doing, while also wondering what we were actually doing. Knut is a seasoned pro, of course, and sort of just directed me (and Audun) through it. He seemed to have a pretty good idea of where this song was heading.

First he recorded the bassline for about 2 minutes. He did this while hearing a click on his headset, to make sure that it would be easy to combine, cut and paste later. Then he added a second layer to the bassline. Audun quadrupled the length of this so that we had 8 minutes, and I was asked to do whatever I wanted with this playing in my ear. So, there I was, tap dancing for two rounds of 8 minutes in this big church, while Knut, Audun and Morten were waiting and listening. We concluded that there were parts in there that we could use for the tune. Then we recorded some shorter parts, again with a click. Knut surprisingly brought out a fiddle, and made a beautiful part for the end. I tried to figure out how I could contribute in the best way, and tested out a sequence on the church floor, which I thought was way too brutal-sounding. After hearing the bits we had made again I realized that what I really wanted to hear was the sound of bare feet on the sand. All this time Knut was super supportive, and I felt that I could trust his opinion.

We met again in Audun’s studio some time later, and there we cut and pasted the bits together. Knut suggested the title Chulas Fronteras, which means Beautiful Borders.

Performed by Knut Reiersrud (guitar, fiddle) and
Janne Eraker (tap dance with regular tap shoes, tap shoes with wooden taps and with bare feet on sand)
Composed by Knut Reiersrud and Janne Eraker
Recorded by Audun Strype at Kulturkirken Jakob
Mixed by Audun Strype, Janne Eraker and Knut Reiersrud
Video by Morten Minothi Kristiansen
Cover art by Daan Botlek

About Knut Reiersrud
Knut Reiersrud is a Norwegian blues guitarist. His work also incorporates elements of Norwegian traditional music and African music. Reiersrud has recorded and played with David Lindley, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Rickie Lee Jones, Nina Hagen and Norwegian church organist Iver Kleive. In over 40 years he has played his guitars on countless stages and mesmerized the audience all around the world. King Harald can be quoted; he had never seen anyone disappear into his instrument like Reiersrud. President Tabu Mbeki, at the very same concert, even offered him a South African passport, just to get one more song!

Sound statement

11/23/2022

In the week of mixing and mastering at Strype Audio I got so used to listening to the music on a great sound system that I started to assume that this was normal. But then, when I came home and played the same tracks on my Harman Kardon bluetooth speaker I was shocked how different the music sounded. It seemed like half the tap sounds were not coming through at all, and the ones that were had much less texture, tonality and clarity than I had gotten used to. Similarly, some of the musicians in the project had heard the recorded music on their phone speakers or on other equipment and were positively surprised how much better it sounded in the studio when we heard it over Strypes speakers.

Of course we know that there are good and bad quality sound systems. But when we listen to music we already know, and instruments we already know, we can sort of filter the bad sound and know what it really sounds like, approximately. But the tap sound is not a sound that most people know as anything more than click clacks and noise. So, when they listen to a recording with tap and guitar on a bad speaker, and the tap sound is bad, they don’t even know that that is the case. To paraphrase David Lynch: “People watch a movie on their phone and think they have experienced the film, but sadly that’s not the case at all!”

Now this project is all about making the effort, spending much time and money, and working with experts, to make recordings that do the tap sound justice. All aspects are considered and used to the maximum potential: What does the tap dance sound contribute in each specific collaboration and what does that mean for my tap dance vocabulary, musical role and rhythmical responsibility, how do we use the specific location and sound of the room as well as possible, which microphones, boards, shoes work best, and then how is it mixed and mastered in the studio?

Each recording session was also filmed, and the documentary videos will be available after the vinyl is released. In the meantime very short teaser videos will hopefully make people want to go in and listen to the digital singles that are released online beforehand. It’s a very conscious decision to not release the videos of the recordings at the same time as the singles, because I want people to listen to the music before they see it. All of this to make it possible to really hear the tap dance, to perceive it as a part of the complete music.

So, please, let yourself experience the music, in all its range and complexity, by listening to it on a better sound system or headphones!

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