I Hate Demos / Today's Improv/Composition

[Hal McGee]

Well...
after today's music, I have the serious intention of turning my apartment in a concert venue, much like the tiny DOTOLIM in Seoul.

YES

I did something similar:
http://halmcgee.com/apartmentmusic6.html

[Wombatz]

Yeah, the ability to edit everything in real time is what makes it so useful..

Soundwise...yeah not the best, but given the malleability of the thing....I can live with it.

ok, I know it's not interesting, but the pleasure of playing again after some time is making me chatty. I think you're sounding good on this thing, it's just that I need a certain warm fuzziness which the pedal can't deliver. I've suddenly found a solution in the Behringer Tube Amp Modeler, which I got for my woman to make her synthesizer a little more unpredictable (which it does beautifully, show me the amp that unstables sounds so ridiculously. Oh my, one more gadget to fight over who may use it.) I get a mad amount of background hiss from the boosted static, but with the pedal one can actually play this (to a point) and it sounds almost breathy. I am now officially the Ben Webster of aimless guitars.

[Alastair]

Not sure if it should go here, or in the mix thread, or anywhere really, but I put this together almost as a by-product of something else I was doing, and felt like sharing it. So, "audition babel 80-85". Caution, 20 minutes long:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/RmNB ... c0ozZUE9PQ

[Nim Chimpsky]

Not sure if it should go here, or in the mix thread, or anywhere really, but I put this together almost as a by-product of something else I was doing, and felt like sharing it. So, "audition babel 80-85". Caution, 20 minutes long:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/RmNB ... c0ozZUE9PQ

The voices! The voices! Make them stop ... please

[cheerios]

"My house is now a concert venue"...I've heard that one before.

But that's awesome, maybe we can create an underground blah blah blah.

I love you now!

Sorry I'm in a bitchy mood, will someone let me in on the whole music networking minutemen/sst movement? I mean maybe there should be something like that going on in the east coast, no? like a whole new 80's punk rock/rockabilly underground DIY thing over here

[snailed]

"My house is now a concert venue"...I've heard that one before.

But that's awesome, maybe we can create an underground blah blah blah.

I love you now!

Sorry I'm in a bitchy mood, will someone let me in on the whole music networking minutemen/sst movement? I mean maybe there should be something like that going on in the east coast, no? like a whole new 80's punk rock/rockabilly underground DIY thing over here

sorry, but - what exactly is the point of this post? let's keep it to the thread topic, please.

fwiw, some of the best shows i've seen have been at DIY venues. sometimes it's the most sensible option in any given city/area even when there are other options.

s

[grisha]

not today, but february 15th.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/w0w2sx

a mistake in the file name there

or flac

http://www.sendspace.com/file/lb53yc

[snailed]

not today, but february 15th, live set.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/w0w2sx

a mistake in the file name there

or flac

http://www.sendspace.com/file/lb53yc

just wanna say i had the opportunity to listen to this before grisha posted it, and i really enjoyed this track a lot. there's one thing i don't want to spoil before you listen to it, so if you plan on listening, do it now before you read the rest of my post

on my first listen to this, i had a pretty unique experience. i was almost positive it was recorded as a composition, edited, mixed, etc. the piece seems to move in such a elegant way that i couldn't help listening to it with this mindset (not that compositions are inherently more elegant - it just seemed to be controlled to the point that it seemed to be done in post-production). when the applause comes at the end, my whole perspective changed... it was kind of a beautiful moment. wondering if anyone else had a similar experience.

[grisha]

thanks, steve.

[faster]

Yeah, that's thoughtful and interesting throughout. Nice, Grisha.

[visa tapani]

I've built a Max/MSP-patch that uses Markov chains (among others) to drive 3 granular synthesizers, where key parameters are controllable by a midi-controller. I'm planning to develop it into my laptop live setup. I've made some demo-improvisations with it, for instance this one.

How does this sound to you guys?

[Moon]

I've built a Max/MSP-patch that uses Markov chains (among others) to drive 3 granular synthesizers, where key parameters are controllable by a midi-controller. I'm planning to develop it into my laptop live setup. I've made some demo-improvisations with it, for instance this one.

How does this sound to you guys?

It's difficult to listen to granular synthesis to me, I fall too easily into technical listening, especially at the speeding up and slowing down of grains.
But as you use it to get to interesting textures and sometimes even some random rhythms, it's not a big deal. It's a good setup as it is, too, in case you want to practice on it more before evolving it.

I can see it making another musician happy to play with you, since it's quite percussive and doesn't 'steal' the room that, say, a prepared guitarist, feedback mixer etc., would occupy most of the time.
Hope that makes sense, sorry I couldn't figure out more to say.

[flies]

I've built a Max/MSP-patch that uses Markov chains (among others) to drive 3 granular synthesizers, where key parameters are controllable by a midi-controller. I'm planning to develop it into my laptop live setup. I've made some demo-improvisations with it, for instance this one.

How does this sound to you guys?

yo'uve made a very dynamic instrument. your ability to introduce rapid changes and varied textures is great.

my main criticism is that the textures are all percussive (or else very thick) in nature - grains can be great for producing wispy, ethereal sounds which your setup doesn't seem to do. I imagine you could use your same grain-scheduling apparatus with a different grain synthesis method (or source file to granulate) to get that kind of effect. this improv seems to lack in space, it's pretty 'full', and some thinner sounds would enable you to relax the tension without going all the way to silence. One way to do this is to use delay line granulation that feeds back its own output (you can make a delay line granulator with tapout~). Another is with band-pass filters, and another is to vary the grain amplitude envelopes.

another thing i'd recommend is some sort of 'grain-masking', ie silencing every n'th grain or producign a xxoxooxxoxoo... pattern (microsound talks about this in its pulsar section). setting two masked grain synths against each other produces random rhythms that would integrate well into your setup. (you could set one of your midi knobs to select between a list of masking patterns and/or randomly mask grains.)

adding fx like delay, reverb, phasing (allpass~'s notch output is great for phasing type effects) may be useful, but they often sort of identify themselves, which is annoying.

Finally, some kind of tones or tone clouds would be another kind of sound element to the pallette.

how are you producing your grains? is it sound-file granulation or synthesis?

having worked a good deal with max and stuff, i'm very impressed with what you've got here.

[visa tapani]

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Moon and flies, very useful!

my main criticism is that the textures are all percussive (or else very thick) in nature - grains can be great for producing wispy, ethereal sounds which your setup doesn't seem to do. I imagine you could use your same grain-scheduling apparatus with a different grain synthesis method (or source file to granulate) to get that kind of effect. this improv seems to lack in space, it's pretty 'full', and some thinner sounds would enable you to relax the tension without going all the way to silence. One way to do this is to use delay line granulation that feeds back its own output (you can make a delay line granulator with tapout~). Another is with band-pass filters, and another is to vary the grain amplitude envelopes.

Yeah, I guess it's quite full... Some of the other clips here are maybe a little more relaxed, 'Short Impro No 3b' in particular (which makes use of reverse exponential envelopes). Almost all of them use the exact same soundfile (yup, it's soundfile granulation) of a construction site, though, which predetermines to some extent the palette. And maybe triggering sets of parameters with Markov chains somehow encourages percussive material, not sure. One thing I'd like to do is make the instrument more stratified - having different layers of sound at differing perceptual distances. Now everything is quite in-your-face, which makes it sound a little monophonic...

What do you mean with delay line granulation BTW? Something else than having just a delay after the granulator? I'm not sure how I could feed the output back into the granulator, as the sample needs to be stored in a buffer...

another thing i'd recommend is some sort of 'grain-masking', ie silencing every n'th grain or producign a xxoxooxxoxoo... pattern (microsound talks about this in its pulsar section). setting two masked grain synths against each other produces random rhythms that would integrate well into your setup. (you could set one of your midi knobs to select between a list of masking patterns and/or randomly mask grains.)

That's a good idea, I'll give it a try.

adding fx like delay, reverb, phasing (allpass~'s notch output is great for phasing type effects) may be useful, but they often sort of identify themselves, which is annoying.

Yup, I think I should add some effects - I'll probably try to avoid straight reverb, but comb-filtering (and other filtering), delays, allpass etc would be useful in extending the palette...

Finally, some kind of tones or tone clouds would be another kind of sound element to the pallette.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that too. I was considering incorporating the possibility of utilizing acoustic feedback into the system via a microphone, it might be handy in doing ghostly ethereal tones...

how are you producing your grains? is it sound-file granulation or synthesis?

As mentioned above, it's sound-file granulation. There are actually three granulators (2 of them using bufGranul~ from GMU externals) - one is driven by Markov chains (a graphical UI I made with multisliders to feed data to 'prob' quickly and intuitively), another by Lehmer's Linear Congruence Formula (x(t)=[x(t-1)*a+b]%m) providing some high sparkle and a third one not really controlled that much, just providing some simple bass boom when needed.

having worked a good deal with max and stuff, i'm very impressed with what you've got here.

Thanks for the encouragement!

I can see it making another musician happy to play with you, since it's quite percussive and doesn't 'steal' the room that, say, a prepared guitarist, feedback mixer etc., would occupy most of the time.

Hope so, I'm playing a gig with a guitarist I've never met with this instrument in Shanghai soon!

[flies]

What do you mean with delay line granulation BTW? Something else than having just a delay after the granulator? I'm not sure how I could feed the output back into the granulator, as the sample needs to be stored in a buffer...

delay line granulation is what the DLGranulator in audiomulch does, or the KTGranulator (link) vst does. Instead of granulating the contents of a static buffer, you continuously update the buffer just as you would in delay. you can mix the output of the granulator back into the input for reverb-like effects. in computer science terms, the buffer is a queue since you remember recent audio and 'forget' audio once it's <buf size> old.

it's possible in max to make a granulator that uses tapout~ as its buffer - you read out from it with a signal in a fashion somewhat similar to wave~ or groove~. The main technical difference is that instead of moving the index signal in order to generate sound, keeping the "read head" (index signal) in the same place produces playback at original pitch. moving the read head changes the pitch (the algebra for how to get x semitones pitch shift is a little annoying but hardly impossible). I tried to make one once, got as far as figuring out this algebra, but then got frustrated trying to make a signal-based asynchronous grain scheduler and gave up (which is pretty much my story when it comes to using max).

You can also just use KTGranulator, which is a great plugin, though it has a lot of controls that you might want to stream-line in some way for live use.

delay line granulation produces an effect reminiscent of reverb in that you get dispersed replay of the input. when a delay line granulator is outputting at a fixed pitch shift and you've got some feedback, you get a chord of stacked intervals, which can sound pretty if you use 5ths or 4ths (or very dense if you use an interval of 2 semitones or less).

[concreteisland]

Here's some electro-acoustic ambient collage type of thing I've been working on for a while. Last night I decided it to be sort of "finished". If anything could ever be...

I hope this flash-player works

http://soundcloud.com/repetitiondistrac ... ns-le-gris

All opinions are very welcome

[grisha]

So this is my set from the 4th Tapes Festival, which takes place about every half a year at the Zimmer in Tel Aviv. i wasn't very satisified with it, but the recording turned out to be rather nice, though in my opinion a couple of sections drag a bit. i played one more set this saturday, but the recording sounds a bit strange, so i need to find out what it is before i decide whether to upload it or not.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/biqlfs

[anasara]

A couple recent pieces:


http://soundcloud.com/eppleyca/charles- ... maged-life


http://soundcloud.com/eppleyca/charles- ... g-midnight

[yonhosago]

Ensamble Majamama's show last saturday. Some 20 minutes of music. It's a room recording (minidisc) with a lot of people talking in the first half. We played along a video made specially for us. I have no pictures of the evening to post here. Maybe in the future we'll made a decent recording of music to put with the video.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/2qffrl

Nawito Morales: electronics
Edén Carrasco: electronics
Ulra Díaz: motors, objects, contact mics
Álvaro Ortega: tape, radio, electronics
Nicolás Carrasco: electronics

[Dohol]

Today's improvisation..

http://webmail.windstream.net/do/redire ... Mld4dnc9PQ