Greg’s Blog

Coming into this module supercollider was just a blank screen that you typed confusing code into, now I feel it is a useful instrument and eventhough I’m still a beginner I feel I have learnt alot. But it is not just coding I have learnt. From working in our ensembles I have now learnt how to react and compose with other musicians on a completely alien instrument as well as compositional techniques. Some of these include are expectation, audio cues and visual hand gestures. These are especially useful with the more noise based performances, I ama big fan of noise but it did for the most part seem like random improvisation but now from doing this module I realise how noise can be structured and organized.

As mentioned before all pieces are finished so here is the visual representation of the supercollider performance. It represents our piece by having the two cycles of chords (each cycle being Fsharp m, A, D) and how during one parts we each do a certain part. I myself play the three chords but change some of the notes to give it more tonal contrast and to sometimes allow for suspentions between chords changes. Also during this part I have a crackle UGen that changes with mouse movement, i found this just gave the piece some nice background ambience. Then in the second part is when I add in a pbind, this does not change but it adds more to the piece through the second cycle of chords. As the idea for this composition is “An exploration of harmonics with live coding as a reactio to ‘noise’ based equivlents” we decided to shape the visual representation as musical notes, little bit cheesey but it works as it fits with our concept.

Here is my individual part for Ixi composition with notes explaining more of what I do in the performance.

That’s right now both pieces are finished all that needs to be done in the final graphic scores. For the supercollider brief we came up with the concept of it being an exploration into harmony as a backlash to most of the performances on supercollider we have heard being very dark and noise based. Not artistic as such but I feel our piece shows that its not all noise. Since the last post only one part has been added to this. I myself put a random pan on the Pbind, unfortunately this cannot be heard on our recording. Iput it in mostly so as I have a greater understanding of the potential factors that can be inserted into a Pbind. Yael also found a sustain for the Pbind and as we play at similar frequencies the piece in the second half has this very soft bell like sound with this ghostly echo to it, personally my favourite part of the piece.

More will come later when the graphic score is complete.

From doing laptop musicianship there are times when a visual cue is required but they can be quite awkward to perform as you have to look away from the screen. So I was thinking if a network could be set up webcams could be used as all our lovely little macs have them built in. I myself have no idea how to go about this but provided it was a smooth network without lag it could work as all performers could concentrate on their screen.

Also a little apology for the untidy layout of the last post, I can’t get the pictures to work however I try and change it.

Good news, Nick, Simeon and myself have finished our ixi quarks composition! Since the last post I have added an extra part to it, a violin loop. During Nicks piano section I put in a sample of a violin playing some a dissonant chord based on C, Csharp and F. I then put this into mushrooms and reverse it at -0.98. Then mid way through I add some cyberpunk to it to give it a nasty distortion. This leads in well to the new ending we have. From this point we then all come back in with multiple ixi instruments and making one big noisey cresendo. I myself do this by increasing the grain duration and grain density on the sound scratcher on the grain squares mode and on the grain box putting the grain duration and trigger rate on full. I also added a low pass filter to everything as I found I prefered the sound.

This is a screenshot of everything I use during the Ixi Quarks composition.

Here is a graphic score for our piece just to show when each part comes in for each performer. It is very basic as we are each going to do our own individual graphic score for our parts, this is just a rough outline.

The idea behind the piece is suicide, little bit glum but it fits especially with the ending. The first section represents the confusion in a persons mind, all these swirling thoughts going around. The second is the walk to the top of a building while feeling more and more depressed. This is shown by the sad dissonant strings and piano. Finally the jump represented by the noisey cresendo, it gets louder and faster until stopping (impact) with only a rising quite light sound almost as if the soul has just been set free. Due to the theme we decided on calling this piece “final step”.

Over recent weeks I haven’t been updating so here comes a nice big round up of weeks 6, 7 and 8! Over the past few weeks we have been looking more and more into the melodic aspects of using super collider for our compositions. In class we have been using the code:
(
Pbind(
\degree, Pseq ([1, 3, 5, 6, 8,  7,  4, 2], inf),
\dur, 0.125,
\octave, 5 ,
\root, 3
).play
)
From this code we have been looking into how we can expand it with musical theory. Modes(Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian) were very useful for me as I had never understood them before but now have much better knowledge of how they work and how I can incorporate them into music. In our melodic composition we have not yet put this in but I have included this:

(h =
(
Pbind(
\degree, Pseq([0,0,0,0,3,0,0,7], inf),
\dur, 0.25,
\octave, 6,
\root, 6,
\amp, 0.1
).play
))
h.stop;

This sequence works as a ground bass to all three chords used in our melodic piece (F# min, A maj, D maj), with this I use the code I used from the start as well as:
{ Crackle.ar(MouseX.kr(1,2), 0.2) }.play;
The crackle adds a some bright background noise that is not as over bearding and powerful as white noise.

Also in lectures we have been told a lot about how to order a song, use of call and response and how to build anticipation. This helped us reshape our IXI piece as we were able to structure the ambient sounds we use much better. Also in IXI i myself have learnt how to use the grain box. It is like a basic XY pad with little boxes that control different functions such as reverb and pitch.

Still work needs to be done on our compositions but we are getting close to our finished pieces.

Week 5 was another performance but this time with use of Ixi Quarks. During the week i learnt quite a alot more about this software. Learnt how to use the grainbox (effectively an XY pad) and how to use the polymachine (sequencer). I find both of these allow for much more interesting and especially with use of the polymachine, conventional sounding music. Allows for a use of small melodies or rhythms along side the crazy swirling electronics. After this we were show a graphic score to a stockhausen piece. I myself have never known how to graphic score but i feel i have taken alot away from that lecture about how to do it.

Week 2 was a very interesting and enjoyable workshop. I feel that I have sufficiently learnt basic waves how to do basic live performance/improvisation, lots to memorize but hopefully by running over it through the rest of the week it should stick to memory . I really do like SuperCollider, its flexible and with the steps we were shown today not too difficult to use. Working in the small ensembles should be a good chance to freely experiment with SuperCollider.