you can go via http://sdfphd.net to see what’s been going on more recently…

Progress has been steady programming Max/MSP/Jitter over the past week having put the project to rest seven weeks ago having spent a similar duration getting it started.

It has actually been making sound in the past few days and is, as designed to be, capable of producing textural timbres as well as melodic patterns.

It uses OSC format messaging to link the UI and the synth. In future versions other programming languages will be used to implement various elements of the whole.

This post is not, however, an announcement of this tool. Rather it is a reaction to the first sudden death of Max 5 during its development, a crash caused, most probably, by a quick-fix solution that deserves better planning. At this stage the game is to balance the building of extendible infrastructure with the cutting of corners to arrive at a functional prototype.

I am still hopeful that it will be operational this month, even though that means in the next four days and there is marking to do and GEMDays is on and I’m working on a paper proposal and the rest…

((By the way all emphasised terms above will be defined and explored in the coming months as the site hosting this blog begins to take shape))

get up after an hour of snooze button pushing and dismissal of extra reminders that had been set to beep during supposed snooze periods, also after listening to some stories of winter in Moomin valley

finish getting dressed, brush teeth, prune hairs that had started to cover mouth

ask for water bottle to be filled while putting coat and boots on

bottle into bag, bag onto back, kiss boy good bye

saw and axe some wood but leave it in the barn, walk and run to SWT train stop, see crows walking on the frozen reservoir

say hello to Aaron Cassidy on arriving at the station, talk to Adam Jansch on way to HUD

stop in town for scrambled eggs on toast and a cup of coffee, read through my notes from November and December

pick up keys and go into research lab, drink some water

pick up attendance sheets from music office, give tutorial for Interactive Sound Design 2 (ISD2), ask Mark Bokoviec about software updates

respond to emails, chat with Mike (about physics mostly), listen to recording of HELO.pg rehearsal 3, finish water from bottle, work on the report that I had wanted to have finished before this month but did not manage to

do another ISD2 tutorial, return borrowed equipment, talk briefly to Geoff Cox, return attendance sheets to office, refill water bottle from tap in staff room and check for post

arrange to meet Monty on Monday, say hello to JMC who’s back from sabbatical, accept request to do sound design on Pempi track for delivery on friday, confirmed some meetings for thursday

walk into town for a salad and a coffee, return keys to security

sit in post grad command, do more work on that report, finish water again

talk with Adam and Scott Hewitt, look through Scott’s ISD1 lecture notes from last term

attend concert in Phipps Hall (Neil Heyde – cello, Paul Archbold – electronics, compositions by Archbold, Dickson, Harvey, Herbert, Ferneyhough), smile, applaud

walk to train port, pick up a newspaper on train to SWT and put it in bag, walk homeward, reuse own foot holes in snow, some for the third time now – and still no one else has taken that route get a cold ear, stop to listen for a while to what sounds like little folk whistling an intricate polyrhythmic counterpoint of some sort

get inside, observe the ice that has formed on the rain cover of my bag

read an article about home education.

find note saying that my Mum called this evening and she is home.

augment a plate of uneaten quinoa and olives with salad bits and eat it all up

smile as mains power to house cut out for approximately 30 seconds.

start to write this post

another power cut, less than ten seconds this time

did some more on that report, made it ready to send as draft to supervisors

finished this post.

upload report draft and send email

add to this post.

another shot power cut.

look forward to spending all day with my son tomorrow, hope his mum goes out to enjoy the snow if she can

copy and paste this post into wordpress admin thing

notice that it gives a word count, but that it is not changing as i type.

or maybe it is – seems to update on enter/return

consider that posting this might expose/further prove just how daft I am

go to do it anyway

(Word count: 585 (before this line) )

Back in December 2007, Brad Garton posted hohoho2dmatic to the MaxMSP mailing list:

Hey everyone –

I did this little max/msp standalone application last year, but I finished it fairly late in ‘the season’. It generates slow/ambient variations on some of my fave holiday tunes. I just UB-ized it (Windows version also available) and thought people might get a kick out of it this year:

http://music.columbia.edu/~brad/holiday2007/

And for OSX users, I turned the original patch into a Dashboard widget:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/music/hohoho2dmatic.html

ho ho ho indeed!

brad
http://music.columbia.edu/~brad

You can’t go wrong with generative synthesised sleigh bells . . .

This year’s musical treat is The 8bits of Christmas – free download release from 8bitpeoples features featuring holiday tunes composed on ZX Spectrum, NES, VIC20, Atari 2600, GameBoy, C64, Atari ST, and x68000.

The mp3 files indicate that this was a 2003 release. I found it via YouTube, whilst doing some Holly Wreath research with my son…

——–

As far as the MPhil/PhD research is concerned, I am concerned that in the past few weeks I have drifted from my self imposed timetable somewhat, thus not completing the report I wanted out of the way this calendar year. More specifically, my recent drift is either caused by, or exemplified by having fallen back into my favourite trap of programming away towards a half brained idea with the minimal of contextual research.

The carefully considered timetable for the current philosophical research project was designed so as to steer a sensible path through theory first (reading and writing in context), then on to programming (making tools) and composition (using said tools) which will feed back to theoretical reasoning and further research, programming and composition.

We will get back on track as soon as the statutory holiday has passed. Let us hope for some peace and joy in the coming days if nothing else… my thoughts are with family and friends that are presently distant

My first involvement with the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival was in 2005 when I worked on the tech team. It was on about day four of that that I remembered how I didn’t like working with live sound and how that had been one of the motivating reasons for studying music technology (as a move towards studio production rather than gigging). The experience was an eye opener in many ways, and I now have a tremendous amount of respect for various individuals who do this thing every year.

Last year, I had but a few hcmf events earmarked to attend, but as it transpired I don’t think I made it to any. So far this year, I’ve been to about half the 13 pre-selected events (mostly free stuff) plus a few other (ticketed) concerts. There are another 14 events over the next 96 hours that have made it onto my calendar, the next being the Music of Electricity performance in the Art Gallery.

Yesterday afternoon was spent at Greenhead Collage with Ruth Gamble (Education and Outreach Officer at Huddersfield Art Gallery) sitting in on the workshop lead by Duncan Chapman. It was a relaxed but focused session with four pieces being rehearsed for the performance, including graphic scores created by the ten-year-olds of the other group involved, and an indeterminate dice based composition performed with bespoke soundsets in off-line versions of the flash installation.

Also met Mark, from Holland, who was introduced as a Max programmer, and who is in Huddersfield this week to do some filming for various projects.

As far as my MPhil/PhD work goes, progress is steady and to plan, with a few new ideas cropping up, not least in relation to my excitement about the goings on over at CERN, and some fresh HELO based antics in the pipeline…

(p.s. it just about 30min to access the wordpress admin pages : the normal link in would not load…)

Monday 9 November 2009; mini WofS – more info on the inclusive improv event page
Backstory:
my ‘installation’ piece was prepared weeks, if not months in advance. it goes like this:


sound file __________|__ start time
---------------------|---------------
ii_wofs_improv-1 ____|__ 0 00 00 000
ii_wofs_improv-2 ____|__ 0 00 25 627
ii_wofs_improv-3 ____|__ 0 05 07 492
ii_wofs_improv-4 ____|__ 0 06 54 425
ii_wofs_improv-5 ____|__ 0 10 30 000
-------------------------------------
( + liner fade out over last 30 sec)


as the event approached, I kept changing my mind about whether or not to port it to Max/MSP or to just compile a mix from the Nuendo arrangement.
Mainly I was waiting for a channel-number-to-speaker-location map.
For a time I did try to not care about where the channels would end up, but it turned out that that really was important to me in this composition.
After all, the only compositional decisions being made were what recordings to play, when and where. To have the where removed would have taken out one third of the fun . . .
In the end it was realised as a hacked together Max/MSP patch with one bang to begin it and an output gain of about -33dB to render it only just audible.
(the final version of the patch only exists on Scott McLaughlin’s laptop, so if he could send me a copy, that would be great!)

Tuesday 10 November 2009; Music of Electricity project deadline – info at http://www.hcmf.co.uk/… and the flash toy is at http://www.musicofelectricity.net/pixels
Backstory:
After writing the ActionScript to make Flash load the .mp3 files listed in an xml file and display a representation of each as an interactive block of colour, I put together a Max/Jitter system that generated new xml entries for files to be add to the list, inserted them into the existing xml list, and uploaded the files themselves to the appropriate web locations. This all worked fine on my Mac, but Max RunTime on Windows XP was ‘having none of it’. The problem was traced down to the jit.uldl object – which does all the clever uploading and downloading necessary. Therefore Plan B was implemented, and a Max Interface for generating xml entries via drag-and-drop of folders deployed.

Duncan came into the University in the evening of the 10th and we talked through how to upload the files via ftp…

Friday 13 November 2009; HELO.pg performance at Any Which Way – event page on HELO wiki Any Which Way – Live Art Show facebook group
Backstory:
We had two ‘rehearsals’ as a group for this – the first one was just a case of getting together to making some noise and talk about possibilities for performance.
and the second one was about getting a pair of Bellecour 360º Omnidirectional speakers out, and mixing our outputs into them via their amp.

The plan for the performance was to stand in a line, facing the audience, but when we arrived the second act (we were first on) had already monopolised the performance space so we set up elsewhere with only the option to face looking out of the window…
our objective of a short set up/take down time was achieved, and although we didn’t play particularly well it was well received, and the local paper photographer took a picture of us (interrupting us mid-performance to do so!)

During the development of a two of my undergraduate compositions I began drawing the frequency domain as a spiral. Later I used the system to display pitch analysis data. I was ever bemused by the seeming lack of other people using this concept, but have now, at last, found a patent that claims it.
In a way this was a relief, I knew it must be out there, and yet I hadn’t asked quite the right question to find the reference. In another way the finding stopped me in my tracks – what now? can i still use this and call it my own?
Word from the Research Office =

as you are pursuing a research degree rather than a patent there is no problem in principle provided that you cite the sources of the ideas you use

so I will continue and build the synthesis engine with multi-touch spiroid interface that i have had in mind for the past three years, and if in the future some commercial prospects arise then I’ll let the University worry about it because they pretty much own all the Intellectual Property that I generate in the next three years.

ActionScript 3 is the object oriented programming language under the skin of Flash these days. I am using it to build an interactive sound player thing engaging with the aesthetics of visual artist Tim Head. This is in connection with the hcmf Music of Electricity project, which I will know more about after tomorrow afternoon’s meeting on the matter…

oh, and thanks for the comments on the first post – I had thought there weren’t any because i hadn’t looked at the control panel thing to ‘approve’ them until today! Settings tweaked a little now.

Professor JMC and I met yesterday for a first tutorial and I have a plan for the next three years. Lots of reading, writing, programming, and composing have been diagrammatically spreadsheeted in a Gantty style, so now all I have to do is get on with it.

Since submitting the original proposal for this project six months ago, I have discovered some issues that may stifle certain avenues of investigation. I’ll explain more after getting proper advice on the matter, but there shouldn’t be too much of a set back.

On a slightly less tentative front, I have been asked to collaborate on a project with the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF). I will be working on an interactive archive installation for one of their educational projects. This will be the focus of my programming for the next few months.

Lastly, seen as this is a first blog entry, I ought to say Hello World! and bid Welcome you readers. Posting will not be daily to this blog, perhaps weekly or monthly, and I expect that it will chronicle various distractions in addition to the research and development… your comments are welcome along the way too.

shanti shanti shanti