gonna have to learn to program

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…….

CataRT and Cecilia

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……

audiosculpt fft and microsound

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.

it was working last time…..

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.

First Blog

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.