i’ve just been on a great workshop with sound recordist Chris Watson. A group of about twenty people from a wide spread of backgrounds, spent time with chris alongside the banks of the river thames. we explored the different sound habitats, natural and man made, whilst chris shared his enthusiasm and experience with us. We then spent an afternoon at the Museum of Garden History listening to recordings and to chris talk about his approach to recording and sound.

the only downside to the workshop is in the wallet dept, as i can’t help myself buying some better recording kit. i’ve decided its time to upgrade from my edirol r-1, which has been on the blink recently. a few people were recommending the fostex fr2 LE and i was wondering if anyone has any experience of using it ?

everyone was drooling over chris’s nagra aries p-II+ recorder ………. just waiting for that windfall

i’m also looking at getting a good pair of stereo omnis. a few people recommended microphone madness for good but cheap mics, made with the same capsules as sennheiser.

big thanks to chris watson and chris potts

I finally have my midi control surface up and running – BIG thanks to my studio partner Stu Smith (ASMO) for finishing off a project i started long ago and ran out of steam with.       Its based on a Doepfer pocket Electronic board and housed in an old cutlery case. I sourced the knobs over a long period of ebay scouring. I am working towards having a tactile interface for the software instruments running on my laptop. i find that working with a control surface allows me to work far more intuitively as i get to know the instrument physically. its also kind of an antidote to spending painstaking hours programming on the computer. I’m using it to work  on a live incarnation of our Threep project .  

I’ve just completed making this merztin instrument, designed by John Richards. I’ll be performing with Merzbow and the Dirty Electronic orchestra in Leicester and Birmingham.    

I’ve just returned from a week at Steim taking a Supercollider course with Jeff Carey . Its music software which allows you to explore digital synthesis and sound processing using code. i can see its potential for exploring Curtis Roads inspired microsound and stochastic music techniques. i am going to have to force myself to spend some time regularly to learn how to program with it.   

This is some of the outstanding music I’ve been listening to recently

Stockhausen Kontakte
Curtis Roads’ Point Line Cloud
Ryoji Ikeda Dataplex
Alva Noto Transrapid, Transspray and Transvision’
Sawako Hum

I’ve just finished reading a collection of writings of Stockhausen. His depth of knowledge is astounding and is reflected in the fact that the music still sounds stunning 40 odd years on. I am interested in studying his work more closely. It’d be good to listen to his work alongside a written score as a way of learning some tools for analysing others work.

Its going to be a steep learning curve with MAX MSP, i’m very quickly learning that there is a long way to go before realising my ideas. I need to learn how to approaching solving problems by programming. Ho Hum.

i’ve got to the stage now with my MAX MSP patches, using Nathan Woleks granular abstractions and externals, where i’ve been using them to make music in the studio. i’ve built a patch that lets me control the granular parameters with a midi controller.
after using the patches practically i now want to take them further by adding in new levels of control so far
-i’ve hacked the gran.groove abstraction to allow me to scrub through the sample file and control the loop points – the original loops all the way from the start to the finish of the sample.
-built a sub patch for my midi controller

i’ve struggled with the limitations of midi 0-127 controller values – i will have to look into ways to quickly and easily map the midi controller values to the wide values of the granular parameters.

SO – i’m gonna have to learn to program…….i’ll start working my way through todd winklers MAX programming book

i’ve been looking and tinkering with the ircam FTM and Gabor stuff to try to get my head round what on earth its all about – hmmm – still not sure but will keep trying…….

just when i thought i had plenty to be getting on with a fellow student showed me Cecilia for Csound. It has a graphical interface for a good number of sound manipulation tools, including granular sythesis. I’ve had a brief tinker but will have to set aside some time for some serious play……

also on my, increasingly long, to do list is concatenative sythesis. in particular i’ve started to look at cataRT by diemo schwarz at IRCAM. it lets one segment audio files in a number of different ways allowing a non-linear access to the file. it shares some similarity with granular synthesis but the audio can be accessed by measures such a spectral content not just time. multiple sound files can be held within the same database and accessed at the same time. allowing the morphing from on to the other.

i’d best fire up the coffee pot and put sleep to the back of my thoughts……

I’ve been investigating IRCAM’s Audiosculpt sound analysing and transforming software. been using it to extract partial overtones from guitar recordings from the Big Toe project. it has amazingly smooth time-stretching when taken to extremes. i’ve been reading some theory behind FFT in order to make the most of the analysis parameters – to cut a long story short; long window sizes give you accurate frequency information but inaccurate time-based info. and vice versa. somebody or others uncertainty principle. also been doing sonogram analysis of some of my favorite artists work which has been very revealing.

reading through curtis roads microsound this evening to get some background theory for granular synthesis.

after feeling fairly happy with the patch i’d modified, from Nathan Woleks’ granular synthesis abstraction gran.groove, i thought i’d use it on my latest studio project – Big Toe – an album project with James Tarling. what happened when i called up the patch ? it didn’t work of course. after half an hour of tweaking i got it working but it somehow didn’t sound the same – can’t tell whether it was a really sounding different of it was just a subjective thing.
NOTE – thing to do – record the results of each work session to keep a record of progress.

This is my first post on this blog. I’ll be writing a journal reflecting on my work during my research masters degree that i’m studying at De Montfort university in leicester, UK.

My research will be focussed on electronic music composition and performance. After many years of writing and producing electronic music (See Bathysphere) i am looking to develop new skills and tools for composing and playing music. One area of interest to me in granular synthesis.

Today i’ve been playing with Nathan Wolek’s Granular Toolkit externals and abstractions for MAX MSP. I’ve just built the gran.groove abstraction into my own patch for use with a midi controller. I’ve also customised the posCal subpatch to allow me to select a loop from within the whole sample file.

I’ll be working my way through all the abstractions to build my own patches which i can then use and test in the studio. Once i’ve built each abstraction into a workable patch i intend to integrate them all into one patch with a single interface which can switch easily between the different granulation processes.

Other things i’d like to integrate include;
- tempo based controls.
- pitch control from midi keyboard..
- modulation of parameters – envelope, lfo, step sequencer, external signal following, random.