Filling and Draining the Sink

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Tonight I’ve decided to share another of my first few Sony PCM-D50 test recordings. It is simply the sound of filling my bathroom sink partway with cold and then the rest of the way with hot water followed by the much quieter sound of the water draining down the plug hole. These sorts of mundane sounds are especially interesting to me once they have been recorded and taken out their context. Do we ever really listen to the sounds things make while we go about our daily lives? Probably not. And for good reason. If we were distracted by the qualities of the typical sounds in our environments we would never survive as a species. Our hearing is tuned to alert us when we hear irregular or unusual sounds. To my ears, ordinary sounds become extraordinary when I focus on listening to them.

Filling and Draining the Sink

Notes From a Hat in C Minor

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I created this sequence of randomized notes using Processing.org with the RWMidi library installed. The notes were randomly selected from a C minor scale. I also randomized the occurrence of the notes to eliminate any rhythmic qualities. The velocity was also randomized within a range so there’s absolutely no consistency to the dynamics either. I could go further into Dada territory by using a chromatic scale, or even random frequencies entering into microtonal realms, but this is just an experiment I did to test some of the functionality within the library.

Notes From a Hat

Pulsar Automata in E Minor

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The cellular automata known as the “Game of Life” originated from work done in 1970 by British mathematician John Horton Conway. Curious about how the game of life sequencer would react to documented patterns, I drew several of them into the sequencer and captured the MIDI output in Ableton Live. In order to use the documented patterns I changed the grid to thirteen by thirteen squares so I could match the patterns exactly. I got some variable musical phrases as a result. A very symmetrical sequence was produced by the pulsar (pictured). Starting the sequencer with the pulsar created a simple, rigid one half bar pattern before all the cells died. Afterward I ran the MIDI into a virtual instrument, looped it, and applied processing to get today’s sound.

Pulsar Automata in E Minor

Three Phase Oscillator

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Another Processing library that I have looked into is RWMidi Processing which is another relatively simple and easy to use set of MIDI tools. To illustrate how to use the library Wesen, from Ruin & Wesen, produced a screen cast on how to make a “Game of Life” sequencer. I decided to have a look at the sequencer to see if I could route the MIDI from Processing to other applications, like Ableton Live and Reason. I accomplished this using the IAC Driver found in the Audio MIDI Setup utility. I routed the MIDI data to Reason to have a listen to the results, then started manipulating some of the behavior of the sequencer. Later I decided to route the MIDI to Ableton Live. After that, one thing led to another and now I have the building blocks for a new track. Here’s a rendered snippet of the MIDI data that I captured and edited for the piece.

Sine of Life

Sequence of Randomized Pitches and Durations

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I’ve been researching audio libraries for Processing recently since I will soon be starting the development of a specialized music application for personal use. I considered using MaxMSP, but Processing seems to suit this project a bit better. If you’re not familiar with Processing, it is an IDE designed for designers, artist, musicians, or anyone interested in exploring new ideas. Although it is mostly used for visual projects there are several examples of music software, like Tiction, which I wrote about in an entry titled Sound For Dali’s Melting Clocks. One of the libraries I’m investigating is called jm-Etude. It’s very easy to implement and use, and makes a few of the features in jMusic, a Java music composition project, accessible in Processing. Here’s some audio from a quick sketch designed to create a random sequence of notes. I also randomized the durations from whole notes to sixteenths, excluding tuplets for the time being.

Randomized Pitch Durations