Chromatic Currents Part I

Posted on April 19, 2009 by John CS Keston

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.

Chromatic Currents

GMS Videos and Interface

Posted on April 18, 2009 by John CS Keston

Today I made two more videos with the GMS using a different technique than in Dodger of Red Lights. This time I wanted to explore what could be produced using visual input that I wasn’t directly controlling. The obvious, albeit cheesy, lava lamp came to mind, so I turned it on and went to work.

I connected a separate video camera via firewire, leaving a screen with all my interface controls available for me to tweak while recording. I recorded the video to MiniDV on the external camera, and as before recorded the output onto my PCM-D50 to free up the CPU for Reason and the GMS. Since I was recording the video on the external camera I had to the flip the video so that the image corresponded properly with the sound. This led me add a feature for toggling the mirroring in the GMS.

Click the image to see a full sized screen shot of the interface. All three videos are available on the Unearthed Music Vimeo account. Here’s an excerpt of audio from the piece titled Sound Globules.

GMS: Sound Globules

GMS Probability Distributions

Posted on April 15, 2009 by John CS Keston

The most recent addition I have made to the GMS is probability distributions for note pitches and durations. The way this works is that the user adjusts sliders from zero to one-hundred for each note in the twelve tone (chromatic) scale.

When note probability distributions are enabled, the randomness is weighted so that notes set to zero will never play while at one-hundred the note has the maximum probability of playing. This way the user can setup any sequence of notes in a scale or chord, then toss in a small (or large) possibility for an altered or dissonant note.

The same is true for duration probabilities except that I have the dotted durations as a separate possibility that is applied to the duration determined by the weighted random function. Here’s an example of the note and duration probability distributions in action with the settings as shown in the image.

GMS Probability Distributions

Mendota Springs Sparkling Water Can Being Opened

Posted on April 14, 2009 by grahamob

Hi, my name is Graham O’Brien and I’m a drummer, audio engineer, and composer living in St. Paul, MN. I play in some really fun bands around town (including Keston & Westdal!) and specialize in drumming and writing for sequenced music. And having gotten a recording degree, I do some work recording and mixing radio commercials at Marketing Architects ad agency in Mineeapolis. I also am building a drum recording studio in my basement that’s coming along really well and I’ll be posting plenty of really cool stuff from there. Now, for my first post to Audio Cookbook.

This is a short but pristine recording of me opening a can of Mendota Springs Sparkling Water (Lemon flavor). I recorded it at the radio production studio I work at, and the recording chain is amazing. First we tuned and sound-proofed the recording booth down to -32dB of isolation. Here’s the recording chain:

Neumann U87a (cardiod pattern, hi pass off)> Great River Electronics MP-2NV Mercenary Edition Class A Mic Pre > Langevin Electro/Optical Compressor/limiter > Pro Tools HD via 192 i/o interface

This recording was done at 44.1Khz, 16bit. The only processing I used is the Massey L2007 Limiter to make it louder: mendota-springs-can-loud