New videos -- Platinum and Silicon, the eighth and ninth in this series.
The music for Platinum came together quickly, which was nice because I've been bogged down for a while trying to finish another couple of tunes. I used a set of guitar samples that came included with Plogue Sforzando to build a percussion part then added a bari and alto sax on top of it. The sax samples came from Karoryfer Lecolds at www.karoryfer.com/karoryfer-samples. I used Bear Sax, and Weresax.
Silicon was an experiment in vocal synthesis. It uses Alter/Ego -- a plugin made by Plogue Art et Technologie. Unfortunately, Plogue is no longer supporting Alter/Ego. I'm guessing that's because they also have a for-sale (95$US) voice synth product called chipspeech. I'll probably try an evaluation version of it as well sometime soon.
Voice programming is interesting, but very fiddly. I worked on this one track on and off for around a month before I was happy with it. A nice side effect of this is that I have learned a bit about IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) in the process because Alter/Ego allows you enter text in a plain-text form of IPA called X-SAMPA. I'm finding the whole field of phonetics / phonemics / linguistics to be really fascinating, but with a pretty steep learning curve.
A new video -- Xenon, the seventh in this series.
The music for this one started out as a simple melodic line over a syncopated rhythm with a sort of latin feel, and then evolved into a simple-minded homage to a certain famous orchestral work first performed nearly a hundred years ago.
I used MuseScore to write the score and saved each instrument's parts as separate midi files which I then imported into Reaper. Once the tracks were in Reaper, I was able to tweak each instrument's timing and dynamics and then record them using samples taken from my ancient Roland JV-1080 and some soundFonts I found online. It was an interesting exercise, but time-consuming because of the number of tracks (bass, cello section, guitar, alto flute, C flute, clarinet, oboe, french horn, trumpet, snare drum and tambourine), and because the score worked out to eight minutes of playing time.
However, seeing as how we're still locked down and in quarantine here at my house, time-consuming is more of a good thing than a problem. Speaking of which, I consider myself extremely lucky to have this creative outlet to help me cope with the bizarre and stressful events that we've all been going through lately -- especially here in the United States. Honestly, the last three weeks have seemed to have taken forever to get through. What a relief to see things beginning to change for the better -- here's hoping for less "interesting" (and hopefully saner) times in the future for us all!
What a relief to have 2020 in the past -- this curse of living in "interesting times" has become really tiresome.
I Recently posted the 6th video in the series -- Cobalt. I've been experimenting with the synth1 vst plugin lately and used it in the audio for this one, along with a blend of organ and Rhodes piano patches from my Yamaha CP-5. The tune itself started out as a stream-of-consciousness free improv that I was able to squish into a loose structure in the process of editing out all the clunkers due to the tendency that my train of consciousness has of regularly jumping its tracks. I tried adding percussion and other instruments, but it resisted all my attempts to clutter it up so I finally just left it alone as a pseudo solo organ piece in a kind of meditative mood.
I also cleaned up the Nico's Move audio on the Radon video by replacing the drum loop with a composed percussion part and fixing up some timing issues in the solos. I think I should have brought down the volume a little on the kick drum, especially at the beginning of the tune, but I'm going to leave it alone and work on new stuff instead.
Some changes and additions:
New video -- Radon. The audio track is a tune named Nico's Move that I wrote many years ago as part of a class assignment during my stint at Berklee. The recording is still a little rough -- the drum track is a short loop recorded from my primary keyboard and is too repetitive and mechanical, and I need to clean up some of the timing on the solo sections as well, but it'll do until I can work on it some more.
I have added two large batches of images to my home page that were generated using Processing back in 2016, before I began working on the Patchouli Project. The original versions of those images are pretty large -- 5400x3600 and 5700x3600 pixels, but I have reduced them to a more manageable size for viewing online. The original images were sized so that I could make 13" x 19" giclée prints of them using my Canon Pro9000 printer.
I think the group named SpinGrid is interesting because it shows the wide range of images that can be produced by a common (and in this case, really simple) algorithm.
The group named BigPix came from a variety of algorithms that I was playing around with at the time, largely inspired by the book Processing: A programming handbook for visual designers and artists by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, (MIT Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-262-18262-1). In particular, I cribbed the algorithm described for Jared Tarbel's Substrate for a few of these images. Also, I should give credit and many thanks to the excellent tutorials available at processing.org. In particular, I found the tutorials on PVector and particle systems by Daniel Shiffman very useful, and highly reccommend his book The Nature Of Code as well.
Since my goal with these experiments at the time was to produce 'final' images for printing as opposed to continuous animations, they are often more complex than Patchouli images and show a wider range of color palettes.
I've added a navigation link (dcHome) to all of the pages in the Patchouli site that will take you to my home page, where links to these images can be found.
Since posting a link to the Patchouli Project on the Projects section of Metafilter, Vimeo's analytics tell me that my videos have been seen by users in eight US states and one Canadian province. How cool is that? I hope others find this work interesting and it's a real thrill to be able to share it online.
Here are some thoughts from the original rough draft of this site's pages that didn't make the final cut, but still deserve at least parenthetical mention:
On the About page, I used the term "recreational computing", which is the name of a column written by Martin Gardner which used to run in Scientific American magazine. In a Metafilter post on generative art, user smcameron suggests that the term applies well to generative art programming, and I agree.
If you aren't already familiar with the Raspberry Pi, a good place to begin learning about it is at their home page: raspberrypi.org
Generative Art isn't exactly a new thing, but it still isn't on many people's radar now. As a (concept / movement / technique / philosophy / whatever), it's still a moving target, and there are lots of proponents / detractors, all of whom have their own ideas, opinions, and definitions -- so there's no definitive reference that I can link you too. Do a web search to learn more, but be prepared to go down a deep rabbit hole when you do.
On the About page, I mention briefly the "ephemeral" nature of Patchouli Project animations. I strongly believe that this is a major reason that they are enjoyable to watch. However, please understand this doesn't apply to the videos on this site -- they show the same animations every time you watch them because they were made by capturing a single unique run of the system. Unlike these videos, a Patchouli Project device will always produce animations that are both unique and ephemeral every time it is run.
Also on the About page, I mention how Patchouli Project animations seem to interact with audio by producing an illusion that the video and audio are synchronized with one another, when in fact they are actually completely independent. I first noticed this phenomenon when streaming music from Pandora through a pair of headphones while programming, but others have said that they noticed it as well. I'm sure that this is due to some sort of cognitive processing quirk in our perceptual systems. I have no clue how likely this is to happen to viewers in general, though. I suspect that your choice of musical genres is a factor in the illusion (I listen to a lot of jazz, classical, and film score), so your experience may or may not be the same.
My primary motivation for using my own original music for the videos is to avoid the problems of infringing on anyone's copyrights. Of course, using the videos as a channel to share some of my own compositions is also a motivation. I hope you enjoy the music but if you don't, turn it down and play something else.