Scoring
The graphical score for the Elements piece is based on the diagram for element transitions we found on Wikipedia. Each element has a space which fades in and out, signifying the overlaps of the individual parts in the first section. I scored the water and fire parts, translating the various samples into a graphical representation:
The orange line represents the passage of the piece in time.
Secondly, the Echo score is loosely translated from the table of transitions I drew up initially, which was split into three sections, one for each part of the story:
The ‘clouds’ in the final section show the phrase being resampled and played back, breaking down slightly as ambient noise becomes mixed with the sampled signal.
Performing Echo
“For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.”- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Recently I’ve been watching Leonard Bernstein’s lecture series The Unanswered Question in which he talks about music as a universal language with a grammar similar to spoken languages. Particularly interesting were his ideas about transformation and ambiguity, how with a little amount of musical material you can transform it in a huge number of different ways whilst maintaining a common thread. Also, how by removing parts (deletion) you can create ambiguities and poetic metaphors in the music, making it more expressive. He uses the example from Romeo and Juliet of the phrase “Juliet is the sun”, which is a metaphor because of what it leaves out, the explanation of the way in which Juliet is like the sun (e.g. they are both radiant). Musically, Bernstein says, this is achievable with transformation, such as playing a phrase with the same rhythm but using different notes. He also talks about repetition in poetry and how the repeated sounds of a poem give it a sense of the profound because the repetition signifies time passing, which mirrors the passage of time in our own lives.
So what relevance does this have to laptop musicianship? I feel strongly that the musical tools we’ve learned throughout the course need to be used with the language of music in mind. It’s easy to create sounds with a computer without organising them, something which is much more difficult to do on a piano, for example, because of the direct control you have over every aspect of the sound when playing the instrument. In our two pieces I’ve felt sometimes that it was easy to get lost in control of the software, e.g. with IxiQuarks, without listening to the overall result. In this way, I feel the Echo piece is more successful because it is more musical: it uses pitched sounds based in a musical mode (the Dorian) and uses a small amount of musical material to demonstrate the concepts of the story. The way that the initial melody that I play is then brought back in the second part, faster and an octave higher, makes the ‘tearing apart’ idea more successful because you can hear the transition that the character is undergoing represented in the music.
The performance of the Echo piece seemed to be well received. Interestingly, someone said to me afterwards that they couldn’t work out initially how we were doing the echo section and wondered if our laptops were connected together in some way, and that we were sending the sample between the computers electronically. In order to make the resampling as obvious as possible, I tried to play it so that the phrase I echoed wasn’t looped a whole number of times; then when it was passed to Kev it would sound different from the original material. The spacing worked well although we were limited by speaker cable length – it would have been interesting to try a more separate spacing to highlight the movement of the echo. I enjoyed playing the first and second parts particularly because I was using a synth in Logic and playing the notes directly via the laptop keyboard. This made the experience closer to playing a ‘real’ instrument! I think that the development of interfaces is one of the most important parts of electronic music; much more attention seems to be paid to the creation of new and interesting developments in the final sound (which is also obviously very important) than ways of playing and manipulating sound with the human body, as one does with acoustic instruments.
The Rhythmicon
The Rhythmicon was a machine invented by Leon Theremin which could make claims to being the first drum machine. It’s like a piano keyboard where each key, when turned ‘on’, is repeated at a frequency proportional to the harmonic overtone series. Not bad for 1932.
You can play an online version here (I can recommend putting it in Woodblock mode to create drum beats):
http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/rhythmicon/index.html
James Tenney’s Spectral Variations were written with this idea in mind:
http://www.rhizomecowboy.com/spectral_variations
Algorithmic music
Described as “a musical realization of the motion graphics of john whitney as described in his book “digital harmony”", this site has some amazing process-music style animations.The resulting sound could be described as algorithmic composition, in which the algorithm is beautifully illustrated by the animation.
http://www.coverpop.com/whitney/
I particularly like var. 17 – hand cranked, which you can play yourself..
Tension and release
In last week’s lecture there was further discussion of tension and release in music – something that’s at the forefront of our minds when writing our pieces because with electronic music it’s very easy to forget about the need to change when working with repetition. Often electronic musicians who are non-drummers fall into the trap of looping a drum beat unchanged throughout a section of a song, assuming that this is what drummers do in real life. However, as Steve Reich put it, “it is tiny microvariations of pulse, created by human beings, playing instruments or singing, that gives life to the music”. This expression must be carried over to electronic music!
We have made a multitrack recording of the elements piece which will be playable on 4 speaker surround-sound systems. To make this, we performed the piece live and each performer recorded their part within IxiQuarks. In addition, we used an Edirol RO9 portable MP3 recorder to get the ambient room sound. This was then mixed down to 5.1 surround sound in logic. Because spatial positioning is key to the sound of the piece, it would be a shame to force it down into a stereo mix.
The Echo piece was then finalized – previously we had only worked on the first two sections and needed a third which interpreted the echo idea literally. After reading a comment by Julio which suggested some ideas for incorporating delay or resampling into the echo idea, I suggested using the StratoSampler in IxiQuarks to resample the other performers whilst we played. After some experimentation we found this to be very effective – a sound could be passed from one performer to another, incorporating the ambient sound of the room each time, similar to Alvin Lucier’s piece ‘I am sitting in a room’. Because of the way the StratoSampler works (on a loop basis), the echoed fragment builds, incorporating new sounds each time. This allowed us to create a sequence: Chris to played a short musical idea, Mickey repeated it in a different pitch, I played an echo using the StratoSampler and the built-in microphone on my laptop and Kev played an echo of my echo. This sequence was repeated with different melodies, building on the echoed sound. We have opted for close positioning during performance as Kev and I need to place the speaker of the person we’re echoing very close to our in-built mics. (Perhaps using microphones to sample the other performers would allow us more freedom of positioning).
We’re very pleased with the final piece – it contains a lot of dynamics and some interesting ideas making it satisfying to play. We now need to represent these ideas graphically!
Elements piece – performance and improvements
At the last minute we decided to try and experiment by performing our piece with each performer in a different corner of the room. This way the audience, who were sat in the middle, could hear the transitions between the elements passing around the room in a circle around them. Also, it was hoped, the call and response section would be paticularly effective as sound zipped from one corner to another.
Unfortunately my “Fire” section didn’t go entirely to plan as I forgot to load one of the samples and the word “Fire” was far too noticeable, obliterating the other sounds. Kev has showed me how to use multiple desktops (System preferences > Expose and Spaces) so I can lay out all my instruments before the performance starts. I have also tabled my section of the piece so that I have a detailed individual score to read from next time.
We had some interesting feedback from the performance – a few people suggested that they’d like to hear more combined elements in the piece in order to make full use of the speaker positioning. We’ve decided to incorporate this into the call and response section, having two or more people calling or responding at any one time. Julio also suggested loosening the structure and setting up each element as an ‘agent’ who could accept a cue from another element, play, and the cue up an agent of their choice. This way the piece would be different each time it was performed, more like a section of improvisation in jazz..I think this would be a great idea to try and would make the piece more exciting to play.
We decided to start from scratch again on the synthesis piece. I suggested as a theme the myth of Echo, the Greek nymph, who I recently read about in Bill Drummond’s book, 45. ["45" on Amazon]. The legend goes as follows (from wikipedia):
Echo was a nymph who was a great singer and dancer and scorned the love of any man. This angered Pan, a lecherous god, and he instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and spread all over the Earth. The Titan goddess of the earth, Gaia, received the pieces of Echo, whose voice remains repeating the last words of others.
I thought this story would be particularly appropriate as it has three distinct sections in the narrative and also concerns an aspect of sound (the Echo), which we could interpret literally. We also thought of using a Leitmotif to represent Echo herself, which could be mangled and torn apart as she was. After some planning, we divided the piece up as follows:
| Chris | Kev | Mickey | Tom |
| 1. Echo was a nymph who was a great singer and dancer and scorned the love of any man | |||
| Choir chords: Cmaj7 C9 C6 |
Frequency modulation 3 different waves representing 3 men |
Ward off men by playing versions of Echo’s motif (Dorian mode) | Choir sound, high melody (Echo’s motif) in Dorian mode |
| 2. This angered Pan, a lecherous god, and he instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and spread all over the Earth. | |||
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[Tension: including drum sounds, wind sounds (noise + filters in SC)] |
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| 3. The Titan goddess of the earth, Gaia, received the pieces of Echo, whose voice remains repeating the last words of others. | |||
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[Echoed fragments of motif] |
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when speech becomes music
An amazing (steve reich inspired?) video showing the frail division between speech and music..
Ixiquarks composition – starting from scratch
We decided to start again from scratch on the Ixiquarks composition because we weren’t satisfied with the scrambled nature of the previous one. We knew that we wanted a soundscape of some kind because it was important that the piece had an idea or theme to bind it together and give us something to work around. I was keen that each member on the group took on some kind of literal role – for example, if our soundscape was a beach, each member could become one part (the sea, the gulls, etc) and then the various elements could communicate and react with each other. It would also be pleasing to listen to because the piece would have a strong identity and the listener’s brain would feel rewarded as they comprehended the individual elements and put them together to build a narrative. (A kind of anti reduced listening idea). I’ve been reading Bill Drummond’s book 45, in which he creates fictitious bands and singers with their own made-up background story when he wants to write and release records. This gives him a concept to work with and to fire his imagination.
We eventually settled on the idea of the four elements: Earth, Fire, Wind and Water. This would allow us a level of abstraction (compared to, say, a factory scene or beach) but also some fairly literal interpretations of the sounds. Kev discovered a nice graphic representation of the transitions on wikipedia (which we could use as a basis for a graphical score):
We assigned each of ourselves a role (Water, Metal, Fire, Wood) and left Earth as an ensemble sound. The next day was spent gathering samples from freesound:
http://www.freesound.org/
Freesound is a very useful online community for uploading and downloading copyright-free samples. They can be searched by tag (each sample has multiple tags to categorise it) and vary in quality in an unregulated fashion. I searched for fire sounds and came up with raging forest fires, match strikes, empty lighter clicks and even a sample of someone saying “Earth..Wind..Fire..Water”. This kind of online tool is extremely useful when making a piece such as this, otherwise hours would have to be spent recording the samples from scratch or locating sound-effects records (which the early pioneers of musique concrete would have had to do).
We created an order for the first half of the piece based on the transitions graphic. We used a repeated motif of everyone creating the earth sound to break the sections up. I wanted to add some fast call and response later on, perhaps using the spoken word sample, so that some interactive energy was created between the elements. This was the final structure:
| Chris
Metal |
Kev
Water |
Mickey
Wood |
Tom
Fire |
| Earth sound (low rumble) | Earth sound (low rumble) | Earth sound (low rumble) | |
| Metal sounds | |||
| Audio cue (water sound) | |||
| Water sounds | |||
| Audio cue (wood sound: birdsong) |
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| Wood sounds | |||
| Audio cue (fire sound: match striking) |
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| Fire sound | |||
| Audio cue (fire into low rumble) |
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| Earth sound | Earth sound | Earth sound | Earth sound |
|
Build-up |
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Choppy call |
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More on the ixiquarks composition
After a group re-shuffle the Ixiquarks piece had to be slightly re-thought. I decided to remove the melody line from the polymachine code so we could make the piece more cohesive and concentrate on texture rather than melody, allowing the synth-based piece to be more of a contrast because of its melodic elements.
Instead of the 4 note melody, I chose a klank sound based on the example in the help file:
{
var env, sine, root;
env = EnvGen.ar(Env.perc, doneAction:2);
root = Rand(54,64).midicps;
sine = Klank.ar(`[ [root, root+7.midicps, root+11.midicps, root+14.midicps], [1, 1, 1, 1], 2000, 500, 1000, 2000 ], BrownNoise.ar(0.01));
sine ! 2
}.play
It’s interesting as you can choose which frequencies will be emphasised from the noise, producing a kind of chord.
We made a list of all the sounds each person had to make it easier to organise into a running order:
Initially the piece sounded very chaotic so we decided to simplify things, making the soundscratcher parts shorter and with fewer grains in order to create recognizable patterns. The patterns could then be changed as the first section built up to increase the tension.
We also arranged it so that more complex sounds were backed by more regular, steady sounds from the other group members so the ear could concentrate on one thing at once.
It was obvious, however, that we would need to take a more holistic approach to the arrangement as the piece still didn’t fit together well because despite being pleased with the individual elements, the combination as a whole sounded too confusing. The solution to this was to drop in and drop out parts when necessary.
The overall sound was also hampered by the technology – the cheap speakers weren’t producing the bass sounds we needed and it was difficult to hear the other parts. Chris and I decided we would buy better speakers before the next writing session.
Current score:
| Tom | Kev | Chris | Mickey |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drum loop | Winston churchill | ||
| ambient | |||
| whistle | |||
| “never surrender” | |||
| change | |||
| ambient | Other voice |
||
| Voice bit | |||
| Fog horn – faster drums | engine | ||
| horn | |||
| change | |||
| End voice |
Ixiquarks composition
Because I was absent from last week’s session, my group had already composed their Ixiquarks piece and I had to write a part to fit over it. I had been looking at the Ixiquarks tutorials on YouTube and was interested in the fact the PolyMachine could trigger SuperCollider code:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WYj41okJ0DI
My group’s composition was quite ambient, with no regular rhythms, so I decided to create a rhythmic backing using the PolyMachine. I wanted to use some frequency modulation after trying the examples from the UGens section of the help file, so I experimented with a few different waveforms and modulation values. The result was a low bass sound and a glitchy, popping, rythmic higher sound:
Bass Sound:
{
var env, sine;
env = EnvGen.ar(Env.perc, doneAction:2);
sine = SinOsc.ar(SinOsc.kr(4, 0, 180), 0, 0.5 * env);
sine ! 2
}.play
Higher Sound: (the XLine values and SinOsc mul were changed at runtime to alter the rhythm)
{
var env, sine;
env = EnvGen.ar(Env.perc, doneAction:8);
sine = Saw.ar(SinOsc.kr(XLine.kr(1000, 2000), 0, 10), 0.5, 0.5 * env);
sine ! 2
}.play
The PolyMachine is extremely frustrating to use with SuperCollider code because the code editing is buggy and sometimes it loses an event or resets the code back to the default sine wave. The save feature also only saves tracks one and two, so you have to manually save all your code to a separate file.
Because our piece has two distinct main parts, I wrote a simple four note melody to be introduced when the second part of the piece comes in. This introduced a flow into the piece as the first section built up into the part where the melody appeared.
After performance, some improvements to the piece were noted. The balance between each computer’s speakers needed to be set more carefully so each sound came through clearly. The communication of the second section could have been achieved by an audio cue if we’d had a better balance. Also, it was noted that perhaps not all computers needed to be playing something all of the time, in order to give more variety of texture and volume.
