• trymanta1   (mp3 format; 2:36 -- 3.1 Mbytes)
• trymanta3   (mp3 format; 4:07 -- 4.9 Mbytes)
• trymanta5   (mp3 format; 4:10 -- 5.0 Mbytes)
• trymanta2   (mp3 format; 3:06 -- 3.7 Mbytes)
• trymanta4   (mp3 format; 6:48 -- 8.2 Mbytes)
  

Jeff's dissertation focuses upon the development of control interfaces for performing music, especially music using alternative tunings (one of Jeff's strong interests). The manta is interesting because it is capable a great deal of expressive control, but is also quite malleable, allowing it to be easily configured for particular musical tasks. In the five pieces above, I developed software interfaces designed to use different features of the manta. I used the ever-popular Max/MSP development environment to do the interface programming (Jeff and I wrote the original [manta] USB interface object for Max/MSP). The sound synthesis was accomplished using physical models in RTcmix via the [rtcmix~] object -- no sound samples were involved. This gave me a lot of control over the sounds being deployed by the manta.

Each piece was improvised, performed live in our upstairs living room. Doing computer music these days is so much fun! For those interested, here are the patches I used:

• bradmantapatches.zip   (113 Kbytes)