Small Pieces
hardware:
SGI Indy/IRIX,
Sony Multiprocessor HR MP5
software:
RTcmix,
Mix,
ceres
I hadn't done much computer music for a awhile, and I was feeling frustrated.
So I decided to sit down, just like the olden days when I was working
at the Zounds recording studio, and crank out a piece each night during
the month of August. Well, once I got going it took longer than a single
night for each of these, but the few days I spent on each one was
once again great fun. I also was using the opportunity to experiment
with 'flying' sound out of my SGI and through a processor. I just
love to process them signals, and the new Sony unit had some interesting
sonic capabilities.
In retrospect, I think these pieces reflect a kind of stasis that
I don't think is all that bad.
My comments on the individual pieces:
number 1
I sat down at the piano and played this short passage. That was the
start. I love the guitar-feedback sound at the beginning; it's from
Charlie Sullivan's wonderful extensions to the Karplus-Strong algorithm;
implemented as the RTcmix instrument STRUM.
number 2
So this was an attempt to do a tiny little "song". I was also feeling
guilty because I had all my old keyboards lying around the house, and
Jill was asking "what the heck do you need those keyboards lying
around the house for?". A lot of the sound material came from
my Micromoog synthesizers as a result. The 'talking chords' are from
that wonderful
ceres
program originally written by Oyvind Hammer of
NoTAM
and ported by Johnathan Lee and ported again by Stanko Jusbazic (the link
is to Stanko's page). The "whomp-whomp" downbeat sound is a rubber band,
plucked and held against one of those goofy SGI mics that came with the
machine.
Oh yeah, the string chords are from a recording of Beethoven's Op. 132
string quartet, the slow movement. Love that piece.
number 3
I had to rock out. All STRUM, driven by one of my style-models, except
for the choir-chord background. I think that was sampled from an
early-music choral piece, stretched and processed by running through the
various sounds on the Sony processor. The squeaky sounds towards the end
are from this intruiging toy train that my son Daniel had. You bashed
on the heads of the corrugated train passengers, and out came these
sounds. What do you suppose we aim to teach our children with this?
number 4
After rocking, get mellow. Really mellow. The strings were done
by stretching a long note from some orchestra recording (same as with
number 1 above). The insects are all totally synthetic. I
wanted to see if I could make my own swamp. I'm pround of the clicky-bugs
that randomly appear. The wind comes from Perry Cook's Slide Flute
physical model, done in RTcmix.
number 5
These little pieces didn't come together as a 'set' until I did this one.
I got lazy, recorded the piano part and then decided to layer it with
sounds from the previous pieces instead of making new ones. The result
is one of my favorite pieces. I really felt that way at the end of
summer, 1998.