Something we can all relate to

28 Pseudo Random Number Generation

Hello,

First up, apologies for not commenting for a little while, I plan on sitting down and go through the past couple of days of posts from everyone after this week is done. Everyone that I've skimmed through in the past week looks great, but I just haven't had the time to sit down and comment properly on something.

So today I did some maxing. From yesterday's pattern searching I needed a bit of chaos to balance things out. Playing a large amount of video games has always given me an interest in random number generation, so today I did a bit of reading a learning about how that works. This was a particularly useful video, and also an amazing maths related channel.



I had a go at making the middle square random number generator spoken about in this video. This is an interesting one because it "ends" depending on a seed. As you watch the numbers appear, they certainly look random, and the sequence of numbers can go on for a long time, but it is always finite. I set up the following numbers to output pitch, in a comparison to the ordinary max random object. Turns out they both sound pretty random :/
Check it out:

<pre><code>
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x63GGuweT75+X3I9k+8m+uPLFTTE
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
</code></pre>

It gets deeper but. Everyone understands the idea of randomness...but if randomness is traceable to a seed, is there anything in the universe truly random? Is the "seed" of the universe just the big bang? And which combination of random objects really does sound most like R2D2?

borrowing ideas

Hey everybody!

Tonight I experimented a bit with Alice's phase/loop situation! I don't know if this is in its final form. I sort of think it's the kind of audio that would be good in a museum setting, just a running loop while people are looking at visual art. I'll have to try doing this loop thing with the youtube vids also, rather than doing it myself. The benefit of doing it myself is that I can put one voice in one ear and the other in the other. ALSO I definitely should have used a nice mic and all that instead of just using my built-in.

If one day I become famous and then die I hope they have a museum retrospective with my writing desk, my fish drawings, selected poems/diaries/letters, my collection of analog telephones, some eccentric outfits I was known for, some handwritten manuscripts, etc. in it, and I hope they'll put this audio in it.

I thought it would eventually line up like at the beginning again, but I think I was mistaken because an hour's worth of loops later and it gets so close! But isn't quite lined up. Which is kind of beautiful in a way.

Here's the text I wrote for this:

"It’s not that I miss it exactly, but that I miss the time then, the old paths I walked, the dry leaves underfoot, the cutting of the wind. I miss the wind-tears on my cheeks, I miss the cold smell of Northern winter. The smell of wet pine by the lake. The library in February. Maybe I noticed the sun more then. I never notice it now. The way I was, the way I wore my hair, the way I dressed, the way I gestured with my hands. The timbre of my voice, a timbre that’s lost to me now. The utterances I reached for, which were different from the ones I reach for now. The thoughts I thought. The inhalations, exhalations, excitations of then, so different from now. So distant from now. Becoming distant, and distant, and distant again with every day."

There is no frigate like a book - for Soprano and Piano

Another little song, this time with noodley free-chosen vowels

There is no Frigate like a book,
to take us Lands away.
Nor any Coursers, like a Page
of Prancing Poetry.
This Traverse, may the poorest take
without Oppress or Toll.
How frugal is the Chariot,
that bears the Human Soul.

Emily Dickinson

27 Larger scale polyrhtyhm slides

Hello everyone, last few days now!

Today's project was to start conceptualising how I could develop a piece out of the idea of polyrhythmic sliding that I was playing around with in the second or first week of MoM. This is just going to be a post discussing some of the ideas I explored today.

Conception:
The idea is two voices begin in a polyrhythmic relationship such as 3:2. Expressed in terms of tempo, such as 120bpm:80bpm, one of the voices accelerates to a tempo to create a new polyrhtyhm relationship. A blurred metric modulation. For example, the 120bpm voice might accelerate 200bpm from the previous scenario to make a new polyrhythm of 5:2 (200bpm:80bpm).

Process determining form:
I'm attracted to a sort of Reich/minimal approach for composing this. I aim to determine patterns of moving between tempo ratios from integers 1-5 that lets the piece unfold logically. It's quite easy to make and compare polyrhythms on ableton. I just set up two midi tracks with different subdivision of a quarter note in each. The logical unfolding I'm hoping will emerge through experimenting with different polyrhtyhms by triggering them in Ableton's clip view. This set up will also allow me to experiment and compare different pitch ideas. For now I'm keeping pitch to arbitrary scalic patterns in opposite directions to help distinguish the voices.

Slide time:
What's not so easy is determining the length of time for an accelerando between tempi. I prefer slow accelerandi that are similar sonically to Reich's acoustic phases. Making these resolve perfectly to a specific second tempo is tricky in itself, but the process gets messy when you have pitch.

After a good couple of hours experimenting and developing a couple of accels between voices. I'm going to leave this project for today and think about something different I'll work on tomorrow.

Peace,
Kurt

Glass Insects

Every MoM I always seem to have something about glass/clear things/tiny things/insects. Glass is such a constant source of inspiration to me. Or an obsession. Some might remember Electrical Glass Ants Put On A Concert from March, made from recordings of Hyung Suk's noble performance of the cruel original.

Well this month's instalment is an Infinity for Dinner version that you can almost taste. I'm really chuffed with how it turned out. If you go through the trek of ticking loop on every video, it's worth it I think.

Also quite nice to listen to at the same time as EGAPOAC, I just realised.

Sorry for lack of browsing your work, friends. I am planning a binge tomorrow.

Love,
Alice

Motet for Sylvia

I've had this music/words combo in my head since May. This is a little motet on a line from one of Sylvia Plath's early poems, found in a letter. I'd like to write some more secular motets like this on Sylvia Plath texts. She wrote some beautiful things in her diary and her letters.

In Memoriam for Soprano and Piano

Today I've got another little morsel for voice and piano, this time for soprano, because who isn't in love with at least one soprano, am I right?

Sad piece:

Score:



Audio:

26 Rainy Morning Melody Reharm

Alice suggested earlier in the month I reharmonise her composition from Day 4, "Rainy  Morning Melody". had a crack at that today. I'd accidently copied the B natural in bar 7 as an A natural...and well fuck I also ended the melody on the wrong note.... Urgh... Sorry Alice :( Hope you dig the different take on it!!

Stille Nacht

A last-minute arrangement for my m8s down in canberra.

25 synthz

I was going to work on something a little closer related to my tempo/max/live stuff, but this was a little aside for me. I'm so into this high energy 140+bpm hyper pop madness from this artist in the US called Louis Cole.


It's like techno meets punk or something, especially from the solo at 2:40.

I just had a play around with some ideas and ran with some some pretty out melody/solo stuff towards the end. I just put a heap of stuff down, didn't really consolidate what I liked and didn't like from it.

antarctic toothfish!

ETA: Updated the midi, which I discovered was 20 ticks slower than I actually wanted! Audio's fixed now!

Antarctic Toothfish is done! Check out the score and midi!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wQ3kGpFxiiRSZle7I4GZO1h4dF5n00nr

Here's that fishy face again. I'll draw at some point also.

[Quick telephone update: my device arrived and works but my prettiest telephone doesn't! (only my weird jokey telephone works. I may start collecting telephones). Fingers crossed that serious non-jokey phone arriving on Tuesday from Amazon works!]

Piano Phase

I had some friends over and served Comfort Music in my room and then this new one on two screens with two speakers, but I made this to show the two together.

I wish the images didn't end up so close together - I'm gonna reformat this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xYrF7J8CkA

Keen to dive back in, mates <3

Vastness of Pines - String Quartet No.4

I've finished the legwork on my other string quartet, the one for four violins. It has a few structural issues I think... but I'll iron those out tomorrow morning. As ever, I'd love to hear what you all think - particularly about the transition into the less tonal material in the centre. I PARTIcularly hate the midi sound on this one, as I wish so dearly to hear those emotional violins...

Score & Audio here

Because I owe him a debt, here's the Neruda:

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,
slow play of lights, solitary bell,
twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll,
earth-shell, in whom the earth sings!

In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them
as you desire, and you send it where you will.
Aim my road on your bow of hope
and in a frenzy I will flee my flock of arrows.

On all sides I see your waist of fog,
and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours;
my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests
in your arms of transparent stone.

Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens
in the resonant and dying evening!
Thus in the deep hours I have seen, over the fields,
the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind

telephones

so I'm a little obsessed with telephones. I built a very crapulous lo-fi extremely-breakable telephone installation in 2013-2014 and have wanted to do SOMETHING with telephones ever since.

and one of my pieces right now is a piece for an old telephone. I'm so happy and excited. I'm working with this amazing percussionist to use the telephone and its beautiful mechanical ringer as a percussion instrument.

So I maybe didn't compose much today in the traditional sense, HOWEVER!

I did research telephone options and eventually ordered a device that will hopefully enable the telephone piece of my dreams??

Fingers crossed, friends. Tomorrow, more fishes.

Circus Project

Hi MoMers - I’m Katie, a viola player from Perth at school with Andrew and Christine in New York. I love what you’ve got going on here. Andrew and I were chatting about a project that I’ve got in the pipeline and he suggested I could reach out to see if anyone is interested to jump on board…

I’m in the early stages of collaborating with a NYC circus performer called Craig. We’re going to put together a small crew to create a show – lots of aerials… silks/rope/lyra plus handstands, etc.

I think we have the potential to do something really powerful – the idea we’d like to focus on is the synthesis between aural and visual. The process of organising sound – from composition to the physical movements of playing – is at the forefront of our discussions of narrative. Using evolution as the fundamental theme we are considering ideas like shifting from black and white to colour over the course of the entire performance (including projections on the walls?) and dissolving the division between performers and audience.

As far as music goes, I’d love make a soundtrack that leaves space for free improv and deliberate silence between new and old compositions. I have viola and electric 5-string violin (with loop pedal and possibly effects if I can get my hands on one). I have a percussionist in mind, and open to suggestions for other instruments but I’d like to keep it to a small group.

You can probably tell this is more a long-term project for us, but I’d love to hear if it sparks some interest.

24 Harmony on accel with steady tempo

Trying to go a bit further with hearing different tempi and assigning them harmony as they progress at different speeds...work in progress. Please excuse trap beat its 3:45am here in syd.

a fish sketch

Antarctic toothfish

I have a few idea cells that I'm playing with at the moment:

Midi here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IOKMRFkDpgbdZ0Svj-2Ix-qE2XqsQhtF

Onward fish!

Madrigal - Eggcetera

Eggs



 audio here

23 Accel Decel

I've been thinking about how we perceive an accelerando whilst hearing a rit in another voice, maybe some kind of tempo counterpoint. Swapping pitches when the tempo changes direction seems to really helped outline the phrases and gives them a definite start and finish.