Steve’s Stuff

As hoped, I’m starting to get a lot better making music with a lot of gear. I think the trick is having one or two elements that are unobtrusive, but can hold everything together. This gives a sense of continuity as well as providing some musical content that I don’t have to constantly worry about.

Another trick is focusing on one thing and not trying to micromanage. It’s like the first drum set situation - the little drummer has his/her first drum set with all sorts of drums and cymbals and they want to get around to all the different sounds at every opportunity. As expected, this isn’t very musical. For some reason I had to relearn this lesson over the course of a few hours.

Playing two midi keyboards at once is not actually all that difficult as long as you’re not trying to play two radically different things at once. I have it set up so one is usually a bass sound and the other is some sort of pad* or lead sound. The second midi keyboard is significantly more limited because it controls the Roland synth module. The Roland synth module is very very lame. The only usable sounds are a biting square wave, a nasty saw tooth patch, and a mellow pad-like patch. Most of the variety is going to come from Reaktor.

I’m not using the drum machine all that much right now, but Lauren plans to join me at times during the show, so I imagine she’ll put it to good use. The cool things that I’ve found to do with it include running it through the Alesis FX unit and totally overloading the Alesis until it starts freaking out and making “bad” sounds.

The Alesis is a bit tricky to control. It’s old and I’m not 100% sure that it’s functioning properly. It really only has the three controls that one would expect (In, Out, and Mix). I’m getting some interesting results by running a totally wet (meaning totally processed, as opposed to partially processed) signal at extreme output levels. I can manage the overall volume with the mixer so nobody is going to go deaf. When you overload the Alesis it does weird things in addition to the normal feedback and infinite delay effects. Random squelches and squeals are always fun. Always.

This is a sample of my short hand that helps me get things set for a particular piece. From here, I have all the settings that I need to remember. You’ll probably wonder where the notes themselves are. That’s the easy part. I don’t need to write it down.

Song 4
R:SongD.ens
MID1:Equi4
MID2:082Saw
K:PR1
AFX:84
IN:6
MIX:6
OUT:6

*a pad sound is something full and rich in texture that can go on underneath a more active melodic line. They’re typically used for chords and such.

First the music -

As I previously posted, I’ve switched from Pd to Reaktor for the majority of my sound design. This is because it offered a lot of power and flexibility in a short amount of time. Had I had maybe an extra three weeks, I would have probably been able to use Pd instead. See my previous post on Reaktor for more info and for some screen shots of the Reaktor code.

I’ve spent hours composing frameworks for improvised electronic music. The frameworks have a number of components: first comes the musical idea (what I want it to sound like and communicate), second is the tools to produce these sounds, and third is practicing using the tools so that I can adequately realize my ideas.

Reaktor has on average 30-50 controls per instrument. I don’t need to use all of them all the time, but it’s nice to control functions like filter cutoff and resonance, amplitude envelope, formant center, and usually two or three other parameters specific to the instrument. This is the classic electronic music conundrum - the interface presents many options, but they require virtuosic manipulation if real-time sound synthesis is desired.

I’ve mapped a number of important controls to midi instruments to solve some of these problems. I’m controlling Reaktor with an M-Audio Radium 61 keyboard that comes with 8 knobs and 8 sliders. I’m also using an M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2 to control a different synth module (more on that later).

Regardless, control over five+ software instruments plus mixing both within Reaktor and externally for live sound is no small task. Reaktor sounds are fed through a virtual mixer with the resulting submix sent to an external FireWire mixer. At this stage, I’m adding some hardware including an old Kawai R-50 drum machine, an Alesis MIDIVERB II effects unit, and a Roland synth module. I’ve connected the Alesis FX unit through the mixer as an auxiliary send, which enables me to apply it to any track (e.g. the Reaktor feed, the drum machine, the synth module).

I’ve posted a number of experiments on the wiki. I have one week to practice, so hopefully it will keep getting easier with more interesting results. I may hit up a few musical friends if they’re in attendance just to keep things interesting.

Now onto the other parts of the project -

Keith has six light sensors working with his logochip. He’s planning to install a black light in the middle of our area with his light sensors all around. The audience will walk between the light and the sensors and this will trigger his lighting effects. I’m not sure how they’re programmed, but he will probably have more to say on his blog.

Tyler is taking care of the construction of the walls. Our presentation needs to be dark so that our light sensing works and it needs to be closed off so that our lighting effects don’t interfere with other installations. Tyler is also still working on his infinity table.

We’ve already scaled back a couple things. I was hoping to use ultrasonic sensors instead of light sensors so that we wouldn’t have to place a light in the middle of the floor. Keith made some attempts at using an ultrasonic sensor, but opted to go with light because it was much easier. I’ve made a few adjustments as well such as the switch from Pd to Reaktor. I would also have liked to have Keith and Tyler do more with artistic lighting design. As it looks right now, the lights are simply triggered on and off by the sensors. This is a partial victory, but it’s a very simplistic type of interaction (one that almost isn’t work doing). But, it’s what they had time for. I feel like with an extra week, Keith, Tyler, and I could get together on the creative elements of the show. With the time available though, we’ve had to make sacrifices.

Overall our show won’t be a total failure, although it will be more difficult for the audience to see what we’re trying to say (hi/low art). Worst case, people think I’m the DJ for the event - a horrible, experimental DJ playing his own music that nobody wants to hear. Heck - they my not even realize that I’m making the sounds on the spot. I’ll do my best to explain that or have my team mates explain it.

Sorry that there aren’t any pictures. There’s really not much to see. It is, afterall, music . . .

Success! After trying so hard to get Pd to play long samples, I finally decided to learn some Reaktor programming. Reaktor is a modular synthesis environment from Native Instruments. It’s a lot like Pd, but it’s a lot easier to make interesting software instruments. For instance, if you want an array of wave forms to choose from, you just create an oscillator bank whereas in Pd you would need to calculate all of the different waves you want to use, leaving a lot of room for error and such. It’s particularly useful for things like filters and reverb. In Pd you have to design your own filters (lots of math involved), but in Reaktor, you can just drop in what you want.

Yeah, this makes it a lot easier, but that doesn’t make the results invalid - just efficient. I’ve used Pd plenty. I know I can build most of the things in Reaktor, but it takes so long and I don’t see the point when I have a better tool available. Pd is a great learning tool and using it allowed me to jump right into Reaktor without much trouble.

Anyway, the point is, Reaktor has a multi channel “tape player” that stores audio files of any size in memory and can play them back efficiently. Pd just never offered any good way to do this easily, so I’m switching mostly to Reaktor. When I say “easily” I mean, a way that I could figure out in three weeks. I’m sure plenty of people have done similar things in Pd, but they probably have double my programming experience or more. In the end, all that matters is that it works. No extra points for doing it the hard way.

This shows Reaktor’s Tape Player

This is the top-level Reaktor code

This is some lower level code. As you can see, it’s basically connecting modules like in Pd. At its most basic, it has all the same low-level objects as Pd, but it also has a great library of ready-made stuff.

The central idea at work is the mixture of “high” art and “low” art. Where a traditional modernist position focuses exclusively on high art, a postmodern position is open to the use of so-called low art techniques. The term “disco” is being used to refer to a dance club environment and should not be confused with 70s disco music such as “YMCA” and other classics. A dance club is certainly out of place in an art gallery as it is a form of popular entertainment. By contrast, experimental sound design is right at home in a gallery setting. What happens when we combine them?

The dialectical tension between high and low art often achieves explosive results as is the case with the music of John Zorn or the cinema of Tarantino. While the issue is not unique to the postmodern era [William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony” (1930) predates postmodernism by at least 30 years], postmodern philosophy takes a keen interest in the topic. The elitist high art community is a hegemony in need of examination with a very critical eye. Although Still used “blue notes” borrowed from the low art of jazz to great effect more than seventy years ago, this remains a highly controversial technique.

Deconstruction comes into play as we question the binary opposition of high art and low art. The institution of high art obviously defines itself in opposition to low art, while keeping it in a subordinate, inferior position. We are questioning this hierarchical value system as it doesn’t necessarily represent the authoritative position that it would have us believe it represents. Prior to the postmodern era, the ancient standard of quality, as determined by a select group of individuals, maintained a separation that, while effective in filtering commercial and other non-artistic products, also kept certain legitimate art forms from receiving recognition.

Electronic music is one such art form. Though it has roots in the popular dance club traditions of the late 20th century, this says nothing about the artistic validity of contemporary electronic composers working today. With this project, we are showing that although there may be superficial differences between what is commonly accepted as electronic art music and what is widely considered commercial electronic music, they are, in essence, very similar and thus both deserving of artistic recognition and criticism.

The plan for our project breaks down into three sections: music, lighting and sensing.

Music

Steve is composing original music. Some will be in a definite electronic dance music style similar to Techno, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), and Drum ‘n Bass; some will be of an experimental sound design nature consistent with what is typically considered electronic art music; and finally, some will be a synthesis of these two styles freely combining elements from each.

Steve is using a variety of software tools for this composition including commercial software (Native Instruments Reaktor, Pro-53, and Absynth 4), and Pd. Most of the sound generation will come from Reaktor. Pd will be used to create a custom sampler and effects processor for both the live performance and the automated performance. The Pd patch will tie all the musical elements together and will translate sensor input to control various parameters.

Lighting

Since lighting and music is already an established tradition, we will not explain it further at this time. The lighting design will follow concepts explored by the music with the lighting consisting of a conventional dance club light show; a more experimental, artistic use of light; and an synthesis of the two techniques.

The lighting, as with the music, will be controlled by sensors placed around the performance space.

Sensing

We are exploring the use of light, infrared, and ultrasound sensors. The performance space will be divided into a number of segments and as spectators walk through the space, changes in audio and light will follow. The spectator will not be aware of the effect their presence has on the installation other than the fact that it is changing as their position changes. Sensors will not be continually receiving input and will thus be unpredictable to spectators. For instance, walking to the rear left corner will not always have the same effect.

Spatial sensing is difficult with a high volume of people present and will be more effective with a limited number of spectators present at any given time. Because of this, and because we are interested in live performance, the Final Friday show will be a live performance rather than an automated experience and thus will not use the sensor input. This doesn’t change our message and concept in any way. It is simply a different delivery method. Live performance only might even be preferable, but since the exhibit will remain up for some time, it isn’t practical to have an artist doing constant performances.