Re: [microsound] Using PD for microsound (newbie)

[andrew benson <cloudmachine99@xxxxxxxxx>]

David,
I suggest starting small.  Come up with one slider
that does something really nice, or a randomizing
sequencer.  In my experience, an intensely complex and
algorithmically sophisticated patch is too much to
handle in a performance setting.  It's not like hiking
the wilderness.   You don't have to prepare yourself
for every possible music situation.  Make a patch that
is specific to an immediate need.  I always dream of
the all-purpose monolithic performance setup, but it's
frankly unrealistic.  The point of making your own
tools is that you can tailor them to your specific,
idiosyncratic needs.  Leave the all-purpose stuff to
the people at Adobe.  
When you get down to it, everything in max or pd is
about sending numbers around and manipulating those
numbers.  Some of the most fascinating sounds can be
implemented just by doing math on oscillating signals.
 Also, think of ways to get some numbers into your
patch from the analog world (i.e. contact mics,
joysticks, keyboards, etc.).  
Hope that helps.

andrew


--- David Powers <dpowers3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Derek,
> 
> This was a helpful post.  I guess it's number 3 that
> I'm most
> interested in, events over time.  The effects
> processing would really
> need to fit in with this, as I already have the
> ability to do a huge
> variety of effects processing in other programs. 
> For that matter, I can
> work with microsound easily in sound editor programs
> (Sound Forge/
> Cubase/ Audacity etc), it's just that I can't do it
> in real time - I
> can't improvise with it!
> 
> What I'm most interested in is turning PD into an
> "instrument,"
> something that I can play and feel inspired in the
> same way I enjoy
> improvising on a piano or synth.  I want something
> that I could use to
> improvise with next to a live saxophonist, and not
> feel I've exhausted
> my possibilities in, say, ten minutes.  One problem
> is perhaps that
> although I can "hear" things in my head, logically
> programming them is a
> bit beyond me.  Perhaps my background in jazz has me
> relying on
> intuition too much - and honestly, I wouldn't really
> be that keen on
> having to build my own piano, I'm glad that
> instruments already exist to
> some degree.  But obviously, going deeper in
> performance/composition is
> going to require custom interfaces.
> 
> I think I'm obviously going to have to master the
> wavetable aspects to
> really get something exciting this way, as there's
> no need to replicate
> a synthesizer.  I also think that I may actually
> need to figure out how
> to interface PD and Python, since coding certain
> things in Python might
> be more logical, especially for certain aleatoric
> tasks.  What is most
> clear to me is that I have to design the interface
> compositionally, to
> allow for a variety of nuanced expressions, from
> dense to minimal, from
> music to noise, with the same range of expression
> that I would have if I
> were writing a piece for string quartet.  This seems
> like the real trick
> - to come up with one neat sound effect is fine, but
> to have enough
> processes built into the interface to respond to
> every kind of improv
> situation seems quite daunting!
> 
> ~David
> 
> 
> >>> derek@xxxxxxx 04/03/05 06:52AM >>>
> Hi David,
> 
> David Powers wrote:
> >  What I'm wondering is, conceptually, what kinds
> of patches have
> people designed using PD? 
> 
> Frank Barknecht's RRADical patches, Roads'
> "Microsound" book and my 
> Particle Chamber patch are all good places to start
> looking, as Frank 
> and Charles both noted.
> 
> I usually start my workshops by showing the big
> white blank of the PD 
> interface, and then explaining that alhough you can
> run part of a 
> webserver, do a VJ set or make your own version of
> Reason with the
> exact 
> same software, the best part is that the interface
> doesn't tell you to
> 
> do any of that. You really have to bring your own
> ideas, and your 
> knowledge about how to execute those ideas, to PD or
> else it won't do 
> anything for you at all.
> 
> For any kind of performance patch, there's a few
> areas to concentrate 
> on, and these are the things I think about for all
> my work in PD:
> 
> 1) Live signal processing: take sound from the
> soundcard or another 
> sound app in realtime and do something to it.
> Something like building 
> your own VST plugins. Many effects are possible from
> the creative 
> application of time delay: echoes, reverb, phasing,
> comb-filtering, 
> pitch-shifting, granulation, etc etc. The rest are
> mostly done with 
> filter algorithms (themselves sometimes based on
> delays). Understanding
> 
> not only how those effects work in the analog world,
> but also how the 
> computer actually handles sound (as samples) is
> essential to building 
> any kind of Digital Sound Processing effects. Look
> at Roads' "Computer
> 
> Music Tutorial" or Charles Dodge's "Computer Music"
> for basic computer
> 
> audio know-how. The Roads book is for math nerds,
> the Dodge book is not
> ;-)
> 
> 2) Static soundfile processing: take a soundfile
> from the harddrive and
> 
> do something to it, a sampler or loop-player being
> the most primitive 
> example. My Particle Chamber patch takes a soundfile
> and granulates it,
> 
> with an XY table to determine what part of the
> soundfile is being 
> chopped up and how fast or slow the files gest
> "scanned" through. 
> (Incidentally, this is the exact same method Live
> uses to time-synch
> all 
> the loops you put in it, but the granulation is
> hidden from the user).
> 
> Much of what you can do with static soundfiles can
> also be done with 
> realtime delay lines. Essentially, all you are doing
> is locating
> various 
> points within a table, and telling PD to start and
> stop playback at 
> those various points.
> 
> 3) Events over time: this is another way of talking
> about such things
> as 
> sequencers and envelope generators--they are simply
> a description of an
> 
> event over a duration (i.e. play a note, start a
> loop, turn the volume
> 
> up and down, change the pitch, lengthen the
> delay...). There's an 
> interesting thread about sequencers on the PD list
> right now, with 
> people discussing everything from the traditional
> piano roll and bar 
> staff to using data structures. Generative or
> algorithmic event
> creation 
> also falls into this area, i.e. things like neural
> networks and so on.
> 
> My patches generally combine all three of these
> things, and I find that
> 
> the most challenging part is the last one. Making
> and using one effect
> 
> in PD does not constitute a "performance" (a filter
> sweep does not a 
> techno track make). Finding creative ways of
> controlling that one
> effect 
> brings you a lot closer to making art with it.
> 
> good luck!
> derek
> 
> -- 
> derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl 
> ---Oblique Strategy # 189:
> "You are an engineer"
> 
>
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Andrew Benson
www.cloud-machine.com


		
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