As I spend virtually every spare moment working on the GMS I’m looking forward to slowing down the development of this sequencer so I can start using it effectively, but for now I’m happy to create the odd glitch or space pad here and there. Here’s a glitchy segment of sound created by classic, channel ten drums at high speed.
This electrical crackling sound was made with the GMS while the tempo was set quite high and the note duration probability distributions were set to favor two adjacent values. The speed that the notes were played made the frequency of playing the notes more audible than the pitch of the individual sounds themselves. The randomized durations at that speed created a sputtering quality that, to my ear, sounds very similar to high voltage electrical sparks. Interestingly it turns out that the GMS might be useful for sound design as well as a composition and performance tool.
To create this silliness I set the GMS to play the drums on the built in Java Sound Synthesizer. I adjusted the tempo and duration probabilities to something ridiculous then captured the output on my PCM-D50. Since this experiment I have made a few more that are even more high speed and scattered. Perhaps I’ll post more examples of this nature. I have rare instances of longer durations inabled in the probability distribution, so as you’re listening, every so often you may think that it’s over (finally!) when suddenly it starts up again with obnoxiousness.
Here’s another segment of some experimenting I did with Grant Muller’s GOL Sequencer Bank. One suggestion I would make if you are planning on have a look at his application is to try using some example patterns from John Conway’s original work. Also, when you come across new forms that survive well, document them so that you can recreate them for future sequences.
You might remember me posting an article called Three Phase Oscillator produced using a Ruin & Wesen tutorial on creating a “game of life” sequencer. Well, Grant Muller has run with the idea and created a robust, fully featured, multitimbral sequencing application. I have just started scratching the surface of possibilities that his tool offers. Features include a long list of possible scales, including all the modes, and Turkish to name a few. What I like most is that six versions of the sequencer run in tandem so that you can have separate voices on different MIDI channels and / or devices. For more information, or to download his sequencer visit Grant Muller’s site. Here’s a short example I made with the Game of Life Sequencer Bank Beta.
I’ve already posted a few glitchy sounds created by the GMS in it’s various states of development. Most of them created by some bug, which I love. Serendipity never looses its charm for me. This sound is more deliberate and illustrates how sixty fourth notes sound played on a basic piano sample from twenty beats per minute all the up to nine-hundred and ninety-nine BPM. I’m not sure how accurately the GMS is reproducing these durations at tempos greater than five-hundred beats per minutes, but it sounds pretty wicked anyway.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 was a beautifully sunny day in Minneapolis. This quarter my schedule includes a three hour break, which I usually use for catching up on curriculum, ACB entries or meeting with students, but this time I let Spring fever take hold and got on my bike a rode around one of my favorite city lakes. There’s a nice spot on the lake where I sometimes read or take an afternoon nap. Unfortunately just across the lake from my spot was a work crew using a jackhammer to break up a cement driveway. If you can’t beat ‘um, join ‘um right? Having my PCM-D50 along, I finally gave up on the idea of a few Zs and rode over to the action to make a recording. It took a minute to get the levels right, but I think they were going to be at it all day, so there was plenty of time for a good long recording. Here’s a few passes of the jackhammer engaged and splitting concrete.
With some expert help from Grant Muller I have successfully added the capability of synchronization with an external MIDI signal to the GMS. This feature opens up vast possibilities for performance and collaboration with the tool. To test the feature I sent external sync from Ableton Live to the GMS, which in turn routed note information back through the IAC drivers into Ableton to drive a VST FM synth. I started by live looping a few phrases from the sequencer including a bass line, mid-range arpeggio, and some heavily delayed FM clav, then put it together with a recycled beat into a two minute micro-track. Everything heard, except the drums, are notes output from the GMS via video stimulus.
This second part to “Chromatic Currents” was produced with the GMS by using a string of lights placed into a large glass vase. I moved the camera around the vase to direct the flow of musical phrases with one hand while I adjusted transposition and note duration settings in the sequencer with my right.
You might notice that the video stimulus does not resemble lights in a vase. This is because I applied a negative filter to the video after capturing the performance. Once again I used a pleasant pentatonic scale interspersed with rare dissonant notes and probability distributions in the note durations to give it an eerie awkwardness.
GMS: Chromatic Currents Part II from Unearthed Music on Vimeo.
Here’s a segment of sound from another GMS video I produced yesterday called Chromatic Currents. Once again I was letting the visuals drive the piece, while I controlled parameters in the GMS. On Sound Globules I used the circle of fourths with probability distributions so that C was the most frequent note followed by F, Bb, Eb and so on. I really liked the rare dissonant pitch making its way into the sequence, so I tried a similar technique for Chromatic Currents. The scale was strongly C minor pentatonic, weighted with the Dorian mode by adding less-likely probabilities for D and A. However, every note that was not part of the scale still had a small possibility of occurring. This led to occasional blue or dissonant pitches in the stream of notes. The possibility of having any note within a chromatic scale occur in the stream led me to the title.