External Sync Feature Added to the GMS

Posted on April 21, 2009 by John CS Keston

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.

GMS External Sync Test

Six Machines

Posted on March 13, 2009 by John CS Keston

I’m calling this one minute and twenty four second experiment Six Machines, simply because after applying the first round of processing and looping the phrase a vague melody in six / eight time is discernible. The first round of involved applying destructive processing in Audacity, where I was testing how well VSTs worked in the beta version. However, after applying several randomish effects, I realized that I no longer knew what I had previously applied. Sometimes this is good for creative reasons, but if you ever want to repeat what you’ve done, it’s not. In this case it’s ok. This is odd enough that I don’t mind if I never repeat it, but interesting enough to me to post.

Six Machines

Audio Harvested from the Sound Garden

Posted on March 5, 2009 by John CS Keston

The Sound Garden project by Norbert Herber was recently installed at the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. By good fortune I was in the right place at the right time and had the opportunity to discuss the work with the artist at the event.

The installation includes multiple channels of speakers and a variety of sensors where the installation is installed. It is also linked to a web application where sound files are “planted” and “pruned” by site visitors. Visitors to the physical location for the installation influence the audio processing by interacting with various sensors in the space.

A more thorough explanation of Norbert’s piece is available on his site. Norbert gave me permission to capture a segment from the audio stream for the purpose of this article. Before doing so I planted one of my own files from Audio Cookbook to influence the output.

Segment from Sound Garden

Impossibly High Rhodes Sample

Posted on March 4, 2009 by John CS Keston

I took the idea from the last post a little further and tried a different sample; an already high pitched phrase of Rhodes electric piano. I played the sample in the software sampler, Simpler, higher and higher until it faded from an audible range. I kept going until finally, around eight octaves up, I started hearing strange artifacts from the sample. At this stage I created a MIDI clip with a scale of these sounds, then ran it through compression to bring out some of the more subtle effects, equalization to eliminate any canine-hearing-damaging-frequencies, and some processing to randomize the scale. Here’s what I ended up with.

Impossibly High Rhodes Sample

Vocalese Vocoder Technique

Posted on February 27, 2009 by John CS Keston

Pluggo includes an interesting device called Vocalese. Basically, Vocalese is a virtual instrument made up of a collection of phonetic samples. If you’re clever, and very patient, you can paste these samples together to create words, thereby synthesizing speech. I wasn’t really interested in doing that, nor am I patient enough, but I liked the idea of using the instrument to drive a vocoder. In order to do this I created a MIDI sequence that played each one of the phonetic samples in the instrument. Then I used a plugin to randomize the notes in realtime, so the sequence is never the same. Then I directed the output into a vocoder plugin, followed by delay and reverb for atmosphere.