Nodal 1.7.0

Well we’ve been working away on Nodal and I have to say I actually rather excited by what has emerged. Anyway here is a demo of what will be the final version. It features keyboard triggering so that you can play the networks and MIDI controller information so that all of the parameters that are part of the MIDI world can be sequenced.

Nodal @ HandsFree 3 @ Guildford Lane Gallery

Dear Students

I’m performing some improvsed computer music on Wednesday night using Nodal. There will be some interesting and talented people playing – it would be nice to see you if you can make it.

Peter Mcilwain

Hands Free III – 17/03/2010

Hands Free is a night about software doing things. Musicians and programmers come together in duets between instrumentalists and pieces of software, along with other experiments in autonomy.

This month we have works by Peter McIlwain, Mark Pederson, and Isambard Khroustaliov, who will be delivering a live system from the UK, and performances by Brigid Burke, Adrian Sherriff and Melike Ulgezer.

Works

Mark Pederson: Invisible Territory, generative music work (with performance by Adrian Sherriff)

Peter McIlwain: live performance using Nodal

Isambard Khroustaliov: Axiom, generative music work (with performance by Brigid Burke)

Mark Pederson: Fragments of Sainthood, generative music work (with performance by Melike Ulgezer)

Ollie Bown, Ross Bencina, Brigid Burke, Adrian Sherriff: Double Prosthetic Duo, improvisation.

Details

Date: 17th March 2010.

Location: Guildford Lane Gallery, Guildford Lane, Melbourne 3000.

Time: doors 6pm, music 7 – 9pm.

Entry: free / donations.

Nodal 1.5.0 Demo

We’ve been working away to get the commercial release of Nodal out and its going to happen next week. As a prelude I’ve posted a performance on Nodal using Logic synth engines on You Tube. Have a listen. Here’s the blurb on the youtube page:

A sneak peak of the new version of nodal (coming very soon). This is a short piece by Peter Mcilwain using a prerelease version of the software. Logic is used for its synth engines (which is shown just at the start). Unlike the last Nodal demo, this one is a bit more like “here’s something I prepared earlier” and there is no note programming. Instead a more complex network is given and the video shows how you can turn on and off parts of it in an interactive way.

PMc

MIDIfilter software

 Dear Composers
the software that I showed on Monday that filters out MIDI notes has been put up on the Box.net widget. It should run on Windows but you will need Max Runtime (which you download and use for free). Open Runtime first then open the MIDIfilter.mxf file into Runtime.

The way it works is that you take MIDI from software that is playing/generating MIDI and then filter the notes and send it to some software to make the sound and/or record the filtered MIDI information.

Note also that I have included a transpose function the transposes with different settings for each MIDI channel. I often find it useful to transpose one instrument in Nodal up or down an octave.

Anyway have fun and let me know re bugs etc.

Something I’m working on…..

This is a short sketch for a piece that I’m working on. It’s made in MaxMSP and using simple oscillators but with detailed control (as you can see). The piece is for multi-channel but the sketch sounds OK in stereo.

Its a small texture that bobs out from under static sustained sounds. Anyway you might find it interesting. There is a birdlike reference – which for me always amounts to a reference to Messiaen .

Peter Mc

Multi-touch controller

This is a fantastic use of technology – it may be of interest to some of you. Related technologies include:

JazzMutant’s Lemur

reacTable

Microsoft’s Surface

More comments:

Multi-touch control I think will become very important for computer music for a number of reasons;

1) it enables simultanious control (obviously)

2) it enables relational, as opposed to parametric control (as slider or knob gives parametric control whereas moving one finger in relation to another to resize a photo is relative).

3) it enables software t be used as a social space (realtime control by more than one person).

4) 3 above encourages software design as an environment or object with properties that we can interact with (just like acoustic instruments) as opposed to the ‘computer as machine” metaphor where it is controlled by settings (knobs, dials, levers buttons etc). We perceive the world by interacting with it and our perceptual system has evolved through this interaction. Therefore it seems to me that computer music that will be most strong or interesting to us will best be created using means of generation and control that are similar to those of the interactive physical world.

What is particularly interesting about Randy Jones’ ingenious design is that he is able to include pressure sensitivity. This is an important form of control in sound making. The design sacrifices visual feedback at the control surface but this may not be a big issue because tactile response is often a dominant sense in music making. The next stage is to provide Haptic feedback . Mobile phones and gaming technology provide for this at a low level and there is scope developments here. 

Peter Mc

blipmusic

Article about history of chiptunes / blipmusic / whatever you want to call it. J Abstract – Chiptune refers to a collection of related music production and performance practices sharing a history with video game soundtracks. The evolution of early chiptune music tells an alternate narrative about the hardware, software, and social practices of personal computing in the 1980s and 1990s. By digging into the interviews, text files, and dispersed ephemera that have made their way to the Web, we identify some of the common folk-historical threads among the commercial, noncommercial, and ambiguously commercial producers of chiptunes with an eye toward the present-day confusion surrounding the term chiptune. Using the language of affordances and constraints, we hope to avoid a technocratic view of the inventive and creative but nevertheless highly technical process of creating music on computer game hardware.

http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/96/94

Iannis Xenakis – Metastasis

Orchestral work for 61 musicians, with no two performers playing the same part

• Piece was inspired by a combination of an Einsteinian view of time and sounds of warfare.
  • Einsteinian view of time: Time is a function of Mass and Energy (vs. Newtonian view of time being linear)
  • Warfare: sound single bullet being fired cannot be identified in warfare. The sound of gunfire is clearly identifiable. The order in which gunshots are fired are not important, it still sounds like gunfire.
• First and Third movements are based solely on the Einsteinian concept of Time. Instead of using Mass and Energy to propel the piece forward, Xenakis uses intensity, register and density.
• Second movements has some melodic content.
  • pitch is taken from a tone row
  • duration is based on the Fibonacci Sequence (a sequence often used by composers such as Bartók)
• Piece began on a graphical score, however Xenakis notated the entire piece, rather than leaving anything up to the performers.

Most info from Wikipedia: Metastasis

This piece taught me that time need not be fixed. So often time in music is seen as something stable – a tempo – that the rest of the piece is based upon. Tempo for the most part does not change that much. The rhythms based on that tempo change most definitely, but not so much the tempo itself. This piece challenges that (much like Einstein challenged Newton’s concept of time), having time be the slave of other musical elements.

To be honest, I prefer a linear, and stable timeline. But that isn’t to say that this piece does not demonstrate how time can be used differently.

- Dean

createdigitalmusic.com

I have found this blog to be very interesting. If you are into the latest in emusic in a range of ways. Have a look.

Create Digital Music is a webzine and community site for musicians using technology. Our unique and influential audience reads daily for the latest news, tips, reviews, and features on digital music making. As a change of pace from the usual, unfiltered product news, our indepedent contributors focus on ahead-of-the-curve tools, DIY music making, emerging trends, advanced software and experimental interfaces, gaming technology, retro 8-bit music, and other themes. CDM is the creation of Peter Kirn, a composer, musician, media artist, and author; he now leads a staff of regular contributors.

Nodal on You Tube

Hi Composers

I have put up a single take performance of me using Nodal on YouTube. This is to promote the release of Nodal 1.1. Just as a favour, if you want to comment,  could you post comments for this on the You Tube site? See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbFwJB-YF_k

(this is not a Rick Astley link – honest).

 

Peter Mc