Assignment 6 for Wednesday, September 28

If you haven't already done the Sampling and Recording tutorials for MSP, please send that to me. Additionally, for Wednesday please read through and try out the "Filters and Subtractive Synthesis" tutorials. Edit your sampling patch to use some kind of filtering, and please send it to me by midnight on Tuesday, Sept. 27.

Assignment for Wednesday, September 21

Please go through the MSP tutorials on Additive and Modulation Synthesis; you don't need to send me anything for Wednesday, just study the tutorials. There are some good explanations of basic synthesis techniques here, elegantly realized in Max. After you finish the FM tutorial, do take a close look at the X.FM~ example synth, and go out of presentation mode. The guts of it (which are actually closely related to the tutorial patch) are in the sub patcher [p DSP]. You can also get to this by clicking the About... button at the bottom right of the patch. Definitely worth checking out!

Then for next Monday, I'll ask you all to go through the tutorials on Sampling and Recording; these will be useful for your performances.

Our group name is "Too Many Chefs" and consists of Eric, Kyle, and Kerrith.

Kerrith will play flute. Everyone will contribute some patch modules to use in accompanying or live processing the flute. Maybe a triptych made up of each "chef"'s patch?

0ctober 6th Gig

This group consist of Jeeson, Paul, Yiran,  David, and Zhaoyu.  Jeeson will play the keyboard and Paul will play the guitar either a 6 string and/or 7 string.  Yiran will be the main engineer but David and Zhaoyu will help.  The composers are David and Zhaoyu and they might take the Cage approach where they trade off writing measures.  What we want is Max to do certain modulations to the two instruments together to create a composite sound through live processing and and processing of prerecorded ideas.  The piece will go through events that the engineer(s) will trigger through a qlist.

First gig--Nikita, Kolten, Andrew

Nikita, Kolten, and I will be building a piece that relies on modules of motivic ideas triggering atmospheric changes built into our Max patch. Both Kolten and Nikita will be performing their respective instruments, engaging in an asynchronous dialogue while I initiate electronic atmospheres that are dependent on the materials being performed. Both instrument signals will also be subject to live audio processing.

Assignment 5 for Wednesday, September 14

Please come prepared to perform in class for at least one minute. You can play with an instrument, or the laptop can be your instrument; you will need a patch that makes sound, that you can control. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it has to work. You can perform either solo, or as a duo - nothing larger, at least not yet. Audio is required, but if you like you can use video as well.

Your performance can be improvised, but you need to have some kind of plan for what will happen. If you can't get something working after one minute I will have to give you a bad grade.

You can either use the desktop Mac closest to the sound controls (the "teacher workstation") or you can use your own laptop. The audio cable for the Camil loudspeakers is digital; it works with Mac laptops, but you should test it with your own machine to make sure it works, before the performance. If you want to use a mic, you will need to download the driver for the Saffire firewire audio interface, available here:

https://us.focusrite.com/downloads?product=Saffire+PRO+24

Please rehearse before class, especially if you want to use a mic! Because our mics are locked, I'll have to open the cabinet for you, so we'll have to find a time together. Right before class won't work, because Prof. Carrillo teaches class.

This is meant for you to have fun, but there is a little bit of pressure because it has to work: I'm trying to get us ready for live performances. Good luck and have fun!

Assignment 4 and patching tips

Here are a few things I've noticed going through your assignment patches:

• You only need one dac~ (digital to audio converter, the loudspeaker icon) per patch. This turns the audio on or off for the *entire* patch. The danger is, if you have two or three ezdac~s scattered around your window (or even off the edge of the screen if your window is too big), you will be making sound without understanding why.
• Always use a volume control (I recommend live.gain~) as the next-to-last element in your patch, right before the dac~. You really need a way to control the volume.
• It's a good idea to have some kind of preset value (either loadbang, loadmess, the preset object, or pattr) to initialize your number boxes, volume sliders etc. Especially with volume, you can do damage if you turn on the audio at full blast. Personally I think of this like Han Solo coming out of hyperspace with his shields up - you don't want to get killed as soon as you hit the on button!

October 6th Gig

My group includes myself, Natalie, and Cassie. Natalie will be playing an electronic harp which we can hook up directly into a max patch that I will build. I hope to use different kinds of distortion and possibly some sort of looping with delays. Cassie will be composing a part for Natalie to play on the electric harp.

Assignment 4 for Monday, September 12

Please go through MSP tutorials, focusing especially on synthesis and delay lines. Try to make your own delay by modifying either a tutorial delay or my own ping pong patch.

Also, figure out what performance group you will join for the October 6 gig. As a team, write a post to the blog giving a quick intro to what you think you will do for the performance. This can be tentative - you don't need to know exactly what you're going to do yet, but you should work together to come up with some kind of tentative idea.

First gig October 6

Hello everyone - it looks like our first gig will be October 6 at the Beckman Institute, from 12:20 - 12:50 pm.  That is coming up very fast, so start thinking now about possible pieces and projects. We need to come up with about 30 minutes of music, all together. We have 15 or 16 people in the class; if we split into groups of three, and each group does about five minutes, we will be set.

We need a name for our group! Just as a placeholder I put in Ensemble Max. Please comment on this post with suggestions, OK?