Pulse Before Sound: Reimagining Presence and Liveness in Telematic Music Performance through MIDI-Native Collaboration

Authors

• Matt C. Bray, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Abstract

Telematic Music Performance heralds a new paradigm for human creativity, seeking to extend the practical limits imposed by physical co-presence and to permit the cooperative, simultaneous creation of music among geographically remote collaborators. This paper examines how MIDI-native interaction provides a structurally robust alternative to audio-centric telematic systems constrained by latency, bandwidth, and waveform fidelity. Drawing on practice-led research, including over 34 hours of documented improvisation across 91 networked sessions in the SHOALZ series—a longitudinal Telemidi performance research initiative (2022–2024)—the study examines how the Telemidi system employs MIDI as a primary substrate for remote musical collaboration by establishing a synchronized pulse prior to transmitting gesture and temporal intention rather than acoustic output. Central to this approach is a definition of musical synchrony as the processual alignment of intentional musical actions within a coordinated pulse framework distributed across networked nodes. Through longitudinal experimentation, the development of the Latency Accepting Solutions (LAS) framework, and a transcontinental intercultural performance linking musicians in Rwanda with pipe organs in Canada, the paper demonstrates that ensemble cohesion, predictive alignment, and performative confidence can be sustained without relying on the transmission of audio data. By foregrounding pulse before sound, gesture before audio transmission, and intention before acoustics, MIDI-native Telematic Music Performance (TMP) enables distributed performers to co-author musical time across localized nodes while preserving cultural specificity and genre plurality. This prioritization of pulse, gesture, and intention over transmitted audio serves as a foundation for networked musical collaboration and redefines co-presence and liveness within the context of the documented Telemidi system.

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License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Recommended Citation

Bray, Matt C.. "Pulse Before Sound: Reimagining Presence and Liveness in Telematic Music Performance through MIDI-Native Collaboration." Journal of Network Music and Arts 8, 1 (2026). https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/jonma/vol8/iss1/2