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This is the last blog for laptop musicianship so I am posting my scores and a complete explanation for both pieces:

The first piece:

After Justinas kicks it off the intro with his quanoon in ixi and Mike brings in his ambient drone richard and I bring in our voices. I use sound scatcher to manipulate the voices and ambience of the chatter in the background that my recording captured which creates a kind of dream state feel. I add a really high frequency/low amplitude crackle in SC which is almost so high pitched you do not notice it is there but it is manipulated by the mouse to weave in and out of the overall mix. I also have the scope on so the internal server is booted and I control this but the mul bar in the interbal server box when I need to drop out.

At 1.35 Richard brings in his Pulse as I quickly fade down the crackle and fade up my triad in C which is a SynthDef I borrowed from Julio but added my own midicps in the Pseq. Again my crackle is faded back in which in this second section makes the triad amplitude rise and fall and colors the texture of the section. I also bring back my voices in sound scratcher at 2.45 with more aggression than in the intro section until Mikes zoom in SC signifies that the section is ending and I fade right out.

At 3.20 a third section begins and I reintroduce the triad but at a lower amplitude, the crackle is brought up and I gradually introduce three noises ( pink, white and brown) to build up texture until 4.30 when we hear a reverse zoom and fade out. I feel the piece flows and has continuity but perhaps shows that we were limited when putting it together due to out inexperience of using Ixi and SuperCollider.

laptop-piece no-2 The second piece is based around the F Dorian scale and we wanted to create a piece with space and flow as our first piece had three obvious sections, parts added that were novel such as a piano outro at one stage, lots of noise and busy rhythmns.

Using predators in Ixi Quarks I changed the preset sound to bells and the fixed pitch key to F# (octave 5) and used this percussive sound to create a chiming ambience over the guitar sample. I added waves at 45 seconds to help build the trackup in this first section which I fade around the two minute mark. At this point I use Impulse in SC to build up a ryhtmn being careful to allow space for the guitar strums. I build up the rythmn with multiple Impulses in an array for multichannel expansion and then at 3.20 I add my Trevor Wishart sample in sound scratcher for one minute to create another dynamic to help move the track forward with another texture. Four minutes in I add high frequency Impulses to bring the piece to a close (abruptly) which I physically signal and count to the other performers.

It has been great learning a new instrument and after many years of playing guitar/percussion and also composing in a certain way so it is refreshing to work with new tools and new people. It is odd and perhaps lazy how you stick to the same methods until you have to do something new. This then affects your perception of why and how you make your music and how to put sounds and notes together. The music theory has been essential as I have been away from music education for many years so a it has been not only a refresher but has also taught me new theory.  Having an enthusistic teacher with an undeniable passion for coding has been inspiring I feel sad that the module has to finish as I know we would all benefit from another 12 weeks of laptop musicianship

Lastly I want to mention a Finnish artist who I am working with called HANNU who is an amazing composer who mixes many genres together with technology and orgain acoustic instruments to startling effect. Follow the link and listen to “worms in my piano” and If you like it come grab a copy of his new album that is coming out in 2009 on my label.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=101848181

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In the latest edition of The Wire I recently read about a Danish musician called GOODIEPAL who has been publically sacked from his music technology lecturing job. He is famous for making mechanical musical birds and being somewhat eccentric so after investigating I found this awesome clip. It is in Danish but that does not matter (seriously) and it cheered me up as I have a winter bug. Goodiepal is on a clean cut mainstream monday evening show in Denmark and he comes on after about 10 mins and begins to baffle the presenter. Press play and fast forward to 17 minutes and out comes his latest invention which is incredible….but watch what happens when he moves over to the table and begins to grunt like an orc (keep your eye on the presenter):

http://www.dr.dk/odp/player.aspx?http://www.dr.dk/odp/ActivateLink.html?uniqueid=8F14CFF0-7646-43A5-94DD-05CCEF6870A3&mt=programstab&st=&furl=http%3A//www.dr.dk/odp/default.aspx%3Ftemplate%3Dprogramserie%26guid%3D3975AA2F-D06B-4A99-BD9B-99BE197DB000%26autoplay%3D1%26back%3Ddefault.aspx%253ftemplate%253dprogrammer%23c0&surl=http%3A//www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx%3Fqid%3D372488%26odp%3Dtrue

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Since Tuesday it has been a busy week and very productive as our group got together on Thursday and recorded both pieces from the class. Using two Edirol 24-bit stereo Wav recorders we recorded in pairs but together as a four piece so any spill would add an ambience to our already ambient tracks. I then took them home and mixed them together simply in sony acid pro which i have installed on my pc. Here are the action shots from the session: :: :::

The tracks have turned out well and it was interesting to work with three new guys who share different tastes and music backgrounds from one another using new software. I think these pieces have a fundamental pitch that allows for some improvisation and freedom for expression, spatial depth and character that has been gained by all four of us listening and allowing any ideas to flow into the piece if required.

On a different note I popped down to cafe Oto in Dalstom to witness the Room40 label take over that art cafe space and had a great time. One issue arose that is relevant….why oh why do we have to sit there (us being seated in comfortable chairs located around the room- very pleasant) and watch an artist face us with his head stuffed in his laptop? Surely we can use our imaginations and do something better that that even if the artist is deemed sacred by the crowd who payed hard cash to get in! Lawrence English, who is label boss and a very talented sound designer, played a great set aurally but visually it was a dish water dull live performornace. Dancers, pyrotechniques and explosions, David Lee Roth (Van Halen) style leaps and jumps, fake blood and puppets or clowns on stage isn`t the answer but a careful consideration to the aesthetics of playing a show (it is a show/performance) must be as important as the sounds in this day and age. Technology isn`t that expensive, we have software to trigger visuals in real time, or perhaps we can try to replicate sounds with acoustic instruments perhaps with other performers on stage (which is where many electroacoustic artists get their source sounds from anyway) but we must try harder. I really enjoyed it despite this issue and other acts on the bill had plenty going on but….a guy and a laptop for fourty minutes was frankly a little hard to engadge with despite his awesome music.

www.cafeoto.co.uk

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When searching for a concept of what we wanted to create as our second group piece, that built around the ebb and flow of a guitar in F Dorian, were fairly vague and undecided about what we wanted. My idea was to have dice throw us a random choice that had been assigned to each number. For example number six was silence and number one was clapping. I wanted to add a random element to the music as it was a “nice” ambient piece which doesn`t differ too much from our first piece as it is modal. Unfortunately the space of the track allowed the parts and tones/textures to nicely open it up so this idea suddenly seemed absurd as it may have added clutter and a comedy element to it. Obviously John Cage had random elements and often a sense of fun in his music and slience is what he`ll probably be remembered for in 200 years time (4′33) but somehow it didn`t seem appropriate to add something left to chance.

my score for the first piece.

I had an Idea to hand in the score that was some dice and a board that explained each action for each number to allow it to differ from the Ligeti-esq first score. Justinas offered to make the dice and Richard then had a great suggestion to add it unfolded to our four parts again allowing to differ from the previous score. Also, perhaps this would allow other musicians to perform our piece and draw up a whole new set of ideas such as heckling, humming, screaming, abusive language muttered under ones breath…etc etc. We dropped this idea at the eleventh hour and our piece works nicely as it stands but I thought it was worth sharing that we did think long and hard about adding a concept of chance to it.

If you have never read Luke Reihnharts 1971 novel The dice man you must! It scared and thrilled me and this came into my mind when our group drew up six random elements to add to our piece but we kept them clean for academic reasons

Yesterday was very interesting listening to the contributions of other students who had grabbed something of interest last week and brought them into class. The laptop group pieces also seemed to increase in quality and sounded very interesting. The spatial element of one group (Kev, Tom, Micky and Chris) really worked and I think we will all be fighting for the four corners of the room next week

Tip of the week: The Digital Musician by Andrew Hugill which I borrowed and flicked through for a few days…and need to own so put it on my xmas list! It isn`t a “How to make digital music” manual, it offers insight into how this area of music and technology is expanding (including effects on music education) and there are some amazing interviews in it including the chap who wrote Ixi Quarks, Julio and Nick Collins (toplap).

Oh…and I was rambling on about www.boomkat.com music retailer yesterday but it really is worth checking out as you can listen to loads of music samples and spend hours discovering new artists.

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Right about now I am really starting to enjoy SuperCollider as a new instrument as it has rhythmic possibilities/flexibilities (BBCut-amazing) that I really like. I love that Clicks and Cuts sound (alva noto etc) so I am excited by discovering more. Also the minimal textural sounds, which is naturally something I am drawn to, such as Dust, Crackle and some of the various UGens available will become very influential in the way I compose I now feel. I would like to look into TGrains/Granular synthesis at some point in class too. Everyone is currently limited by our newness to it but I think as time goes on the learning “from the top down” process is the only way to get an appreciation of how this code works and in what context. Yes I am happy although there aren`t enough hours in the day to sit with my headphones on and experiment right now.

Our second group piece is beginning to grow and we decided to structure it as if we were a band so I am looking after the rhythm in SC using Impulses/Lo frequency Pulses that built up from a panned array[0.5, 0.5] (0.5 beats per second= 120 per minute) to [700, 10] at the end that creates a dissonant tone (as it is a quick Impulse) with a dash of ambient melody via the Predators in Ixi tuned to F Dorian and a slight dash of panned WhiteNoise for a wave like effect that I manually affected by playing with the mul. I like these lo frequency noise generators as they add texture that can be subtle as well as dirty and would like to experiment more. Mike provided the melody improvised on ScaleSynth with a Blip in SC using three notes creating a background drone, Richard recorded his acoustic guitar ( arpeggio In F Dorian) in Ixi and added some reverb for melodic ambience and Justinas utilised Ixi for harsher textures as the track built up.

I felt the piece, despite the acoustic not working properly in our performance yesterday, was better in terms of structure and form. Julio`s comments about call and reply shall be considered and applied for next week and I am also looking forward to recording these pieces and playing with the spatial qualities of the work.

Here is what the Screen shot for piece two and spot the Steve Reich Drumming sample I used without kind permission

Finally, whilst writing this blog I have just stumbled across an old cd I haven`t listened to for about four years by Greg Davis called Curling Pond Woods which is a beautiful album if any of you like naturally recorded sounds, the beach boys and abrasive digital textures that sound like ixi tricks to me…folk, digital noise and sublime vocal harmonies to warm your cockles in the chilly November air.

p.s if you like this try his collaboration with Sebastien Roux who is a keen SuperCollider user and an employee of IRCAM in Paris. Oh…and I am lucky enough to have both guys record for my label KESHHHHHH too

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*Week Seven:

Fantastic laptop musicianship class yesterday Julio; I thought that the midi and scales/modes tuition in the early part of the class was insightful and helpful. As a drummer my musical education since school has been predominantly rhythmic based and it was good to back up what I had been reading on www.musictheory.net.

I also started messing around on guitar at an early age:

…and I still do kept company by my laptop

Discussing harmony, scales and the cultural differences of music is so interesting and combined with us performing and providing critical appraisals of each others SuperCollider/Ixi Quarks work is a great balance! All of us want to know how to do things but discussing musical issues is also a huge part of the learning process so that was good.

Our group is going to approach our second piece in a more melodic way than our first piece which is quite ambient and modal. I am really keen to add a rhythmic impulse in the which will help provide a back bone to the group and allow room for melodic progression. I am also going to focus on the very low and very high melodic frequencies allowing the other members to perhaps work in the middle ground (avoiding clutter and promoting space- organisation of sound and silence perhaps). We will be working around the Dorian scale in F and I will keep my scope on as it is really useful as it helps you control your sounds by the shape and size of the visual….especially if you are gradually moving between the pitch and textures via mouse manipulation or improvising. Here is my code for our first piece so you can see what I mean:

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It is November…better get an Xmas list together… :

This is a quite unbelievable, utterly unique sound box from China, which is causing quite a stir worldwide -  Brian Eno bought eight! The Buddha Machine is a hardware loop player, built kind of like a little AM radio, playing 9 different built-in loops on an endless cycle, with one simple button allowing you to fade between them – something that creates an oddly compulsive effect on the senses. Available in 6 different colors (shipped randomly but mine is red and beautiful), the Buddha machine has an Audio out jack for wide screen audio enjoyment, and also an integrated speaker, volume control, and comes with 2 x AA batteries. Simple and beautifully bizarre – the perfect gift you’ll want to keep all to yourself. Oh…and it has nothing to do with laptop musicianship but I am sure Julio would like this. Fun

p.s Resonance FM 104.4 FM are having a BBC Radiophonic workshop special next saturday! I do know that loads of very rare BBC RP albums have suddenly been released on cd…..do i sell my collectable BBC RP vinyl now or keep it? See links for a free stream to the radio station.

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Week Six-

Great to get group performance feedback this week from Julio and I think invaluable advice at this point in learning to use SC for composition and performance is invaluable. The attention and engagement of the audience, or lack of it, is a good point is to remember as our piece drifted and in a live environment it would have been the point where everyone nips off to the bar. Our group lacked a lot the organised dynamics as two out of the four of us forgot their sounds/code…gutted really as it would be great to get the piece polished and perform it some time live.

I was really interested in the way each group has a separate sound despite the fact that we are all using SC and Ixi. I think SC is a very creative music making programme that will suit many people even if it is just textural use within a traditional structure or format.

My score is looking quite plain at the moment as I decided to draw it rather than learn PowerPoint which is quite good (see Mr Lo Bianco) but I will improve it. I rather like some of the scores I have seen from so of the more experimental artists so I may redesign it as we have a few weeks yet.

Good to have a goal with regards to when this semesters work needs to be in and will be good to focus on the tasks.

Finally, if you like Sixties era Pink Floyd go see Syd Barrett’s art and photo`s which are on display in the Ruskin art gallery…..one of my heroes and an inspiration to anyone searching for an original musical identity. RIP SYD.

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After performing our piece we decided to record the work to aid us scoring it and here is what it looked like (ABOVE). The piece is in three sections and the intro section looks louder than the rest of the track. Unfortunately it was turned down whilst recording but, ignoring that, we have a recording to help us score our four parts of SC/Ixi work.

Here is a screen shot of what my mac was doing during the performance and as you can see I had a recording of voices and claps in sound scratcher which contrasted with another group members vocal recording creating nice ambient texture at in the intro. The claps (that sounded more like clicks) were brought in during the section section as the more abrasive and scratchy sounds worked with the rhythm in this part of the track. I also added the Pseq that held different octaves of C and focused my area in the top end of sound within the group as the bottom and middle were taken care of. In the final third my focus was with what SC has to offer in terms of varieties of noise. I added, one by one, simple layers of noise (pink, white, brown, gray) that increased in amplitude. Finally I had the scope on which, apart from looking good, helped to visually control my mouse manipulation of crackle in SC which created waves of texture and could be reduced to an almost inaudible fizz that appeared to float above the track for the outro

This score (above) is inspiring….artikulation by Ligeti: :: ::: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=71hNl_skTZQ&feature=related

Our group have decided to keep our score simple but I am keen to add certain abstract elements, perhaps inspired from the artikulation score, which will help a musician to understand how the layers of texture and noise enter, continue and end within the track. Just writing “look at SC code and enter Zoom at 1.38″ is too vague although probably effective if you are just adding lines or typing in pitches. Within IXI some of the instruments have a certain randomness about them but soundscratcher can be played via a score so I will attempt to articulate my parts clearly.

Finally, check out Ryoji Ikeda if you are interested audiovisual artists who quite possibly use supercollider…to brilliant effect! Mind your hearing

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My excitement for using SC grows:: ::: :::: I am hearing supercollider in loads of my music collection now. I won`t bore you with a list but this is interesting stuff! As a musician and composer I constantly try to find new ways of giving myself challenges or new conceptual ideas on how to let my music expand. Where once I needed a melody I suddenly began to find some melodic music too busy and polite. When once I wanted psychedelic textures I then began to crave space and minimalism. So anyway super collider looks like a natural progression for me

I really enjoyed our group composition this week which involved rhythm, melody and textural dynamics. The low frequencies and low pulses allowed melodic mouse manipulation and my contribution (line) was essentially a timbre created by a SynthDef and by cranking up the tempo a glitch occurs. I added three midi notes to fit with the frequency of our group and added a Prand to give the timbre an ever shifting texture. Gradually this glitch signaled the end of the first section and then, after a slow build again, ended the piece so we had a structure to shape the composition. I found it very interesting how each group had a separate identity going on. Any initial worries I had about SC potentially being one dimensional have gone and I look forward to next week.

I must admit that this kind of seems crazy as one month ago I had never used SClang but suddenly I can see many creative possibilities. The Ugens sound amazing for FX processing, particularly in light of what kind of sounds I personally like to create, and to be able to incorporate in our own sounds with ixi is tantalising. Next week i will mostly be making a nasty but nice textural array using sound scratcher, adding a Xline that sounds like a firework going off and seeing what the waves looks like in scope! Any way of projecting the scope onto the back of a venue for eventual live performance? Well when I went to the barbican to see Insen performed it looked quite similar so possibly….. …. …. .. . (see link pop pickers).

One minor grumble….as there are so many commands for the same task I am slightly confused as to why multiple things do the same thing in SClang. ProxySpace, Hello World, p.pop all give us an environment to create code in, and quite possibly do slightly different things, but surely one command would be easier?

Oh yeah- sound design really complimented laptop musicianship this week…..more of that explanation meets exploration please.

Finally—musictheory.net really refreshed my theory that had gone a little rusty. I also had a good look at the Musimathics book by G.Loy and some of that was really useful for explaining clearly about scales.

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