a manifest for continuing sound activities

Tonight I completed what I feel to be an appropriate situation (see screenshots below) for embryological growth with regards to my research into feedback as prima materia.  I’ve nearly pulled my hair out many times working with Pd but it has paid off.  I’ve finally gotten over the hump of learning…no longer do I have to go searching for tricks and trades in order to solve a problem…now I access them from the swirling miasma that is my consciousness and put them into action.  Once I was satisfied that I had achieved a situation ripe for topographical mutation I quickly began work on another patch.  I’m viewing Circulus3 as a series with its own incarnations and destinies.  Since Pd is, of course, so flexible I can use feedback in any manner I wish and I am seeing the necessity of creating three or four distinct patches in order to fully explore what I have been teaching myself.  What is swimming around in my mind now is a self-selecting grid of synthesis paradigms that contribute to both individual and global change.

I’ve also been thinking very intently, as a result of working on this piece, about the nature of composition.  I’m not so concerned with giving this work a traditional form.  I’m really more concerned about creating environments for listeners to actively engage with a set of sounds rather than wine and dine them with either formal or computer-music chops.  I see this work, then, as akin to the Texas summer wall of cicada-sound that happens in the early evening.  The sounds are monotonous, sometimes deafening, but nothing if not fascinating.  That’s what I hope to achieve with this incarnation of Circulus.  Not composition, per se, but the manifestation of a wall of fascinating sound.  In another two months I might have succeeded.

echolalia

My work with feedback systems has caused me to look at my life, and my creative process, in terms of a cybernetic feedback system. My artistic output influences my surroundings, which then influence, or shape, my artistic output…positive feedback from successful experiments reinforces the ideas (absconded from the random) I deem good and negative feedback allows for the dissolution of the ideas I deem not good. Conceptual points of interest can iterate in interesting ways ( a la my Objemlature series) if one is comfortable with using the world and one’s life, including personal past and habitus as a grand found object. In a previous post I had mentioned that I was working with a freeware, analog synth emulation called StudioFactory.  It is certainly one of the best free analog emulations available…all of the oscillators are about as rich as they come in the digital realm. (it is available here http://www.syntiac.com/studiofactory.html for anyone interested…sorry mac folks…pc only…) I created a non-linear feedback network with the aim of producing a patch (see screenshot above) that could be controlled in a purposeful way (but still allowing for indeterminate surprises) for either fixed media or live performance.  The patch is still a work in progress, although I feel that the accompanying recording (here at: http://martinback.bandcamp.com/track/echolalia ) is a good representation of the possible sonic palette.

junebugs

-Right now there are several junebugs buzzing at the threshold of my front door.  Their busy activity provides a nice counterpoint to the entrainments of the cicadas and crickets.  I forgot that those sounds had always produced a manner of comforting effect on me as my formative years were spent in southern Louisiana, so rich with night time insect life.

-Two days ago was a marvelously busy sonic day.  So much so that I grabbed my field recording rig to capture the interplay of passing trains, cicadas, mockingbirds and growing thunderstorm.  I had to wrap recording in order that my gear didn’t get wet from the rain, but after it passed I stood outside in rapt attention at the spiderwebs of lightning that ripped across the top of the sky with their accompanying waves of thunder.

-I will be putting on hold work on Circulus 3 (which, at this point, I realize needs a new and more befitting title) in order that I may complete my essays on Henry Flynt’s theory of Brend, Walter De Maria’s ‘Meaningless Work,’ their relationship to each other, Fluxus in general, and a piece of Fluxus art specifically.

-It was very difficult not to spend my last 6 dollars on several books at the used bookstore.  All in time with paycheck allowing….

-In my travels along the feedback path I’ve observed some interesting phenomena.  Digital systems, even when emulating analog systems, are not nearly as forgiving as their analog antecedents and forebears.  What I mean is that in the digital domain the connection of an input to its resultant output so quickly results in some color-form of noise.  In order to bypass this and achieve some kind of material to work with some manner of array of gates or envelope generators must be used in the feedback path. Of course, this is due to positive feedback in which the signal is added to itself, ad infinitum, very quickly.  In working with even the most simple of circuit designs (as has been my experience) one need only connect the right value resistor from input to output and voila…steady state oscillation…sometimes with rather beautiful aperiodic harmonic information.  In fact…oscillation, by definition, is the equilibrium of input and output…and is how simple building blocks of analog synthesis such as a sine wave, are achieved. However, the problem that digital computers aren’t particularly fond of infinity has provided me with some serious lessons in digital signal processing, which are too numerous too list in their entirety in this text.  Suffice it to say that the aforementioned ‘problem’ has become a launching pad for aesthetic choices in composing with feedback as the prima materia.

-When I’ve grown tired of PureData I switch over to playing around with a freeware, digital emulation of modular analog synthesis, called Studio Factory.  It’s currently only available for Windows.  I suggest that modular synthesis addicts investigate…..

-I have been thinking about feedback’s ability to achieve noise pseudo-scientifically and quite metaphysically.  The Big Bang’s existence was proven due to the tuning in to the cosmic background radiation, which sounds, and is, white noise.  So I wonder….is the Big Bang not some multidimensional feedback loop which may still be generating itself…adding itself to its own signal in order to result in the steady hiss of all harmonic information at once?

-The beauty of digital computers’ inability to deal with infinity has prompted me to think about feedback as both steady, ongoing signal, and as generator of events, which is the byproduct of the fact that computers don’t compute sound, but numbers.  And the numbers can be used to do anything I desire.  I digress:  someone suggested to me that since electronic sounds do not die then they do not live either.  I am not sure that I agree.  I am almost sure that I do not, but am still parsing out this line of inquiry in my brain.  The computer, or the analog synthesizer, is merely a vehicle for electricity + mathematics = sound (or whatever, in the case of the computer).  The electrons are there…they exist and the use of these electronic sound-making tools gives the opportunity to transmute them into sound.  Electronic sounds, while perhaps not being infinite, exist as potentials, energies which may be summoned.  Electrons, of course, do not ‘live’ in the anthropomorphic sense but they do exist.  One cannot state that since electronic sounds have the potential of not ceasing to exist then they don’t really exist.

-I’m going back outside to listen to the crickets and the junebugs.

iterative successes

I realized lately that what my work in pd and with feedback lacked was the feature of iteration, which is a basic function of non-linear systems.  For iterations to happen there must be a threshold that is surpassed.  Tonight I implemented both an iterative system (with sample and hold modules) and created a very effective delay line with a dynamic feedback control.  Now that I’ve experimented a great deal with various synthesis techniques I am ready to get down to the dirty business of composing.  Tomorrow I’ll be posting both screenshots and audio files of the work thus far.

Frustration, glory, anti-music

I’ve noticed a pattern to my working habits with Pd.  I have several days of utter frustration to be followed by a day or two of epiphany and artistic breakthrough.  This is the problem, I suppose, when one is constructing a new composition intuitively and learning the software with which one is composing simultaneously.  I was frustrated in that I was spending too much time thinking that I wanted to construct an uber-feedback instrument.  Pd simply doesn’t allow one to construct things this way.  It gets too messy too quickly. And as I’m learning as I go…the frustration turns to obsession with solving one or two problems to the point that I will waste (of course, it’s not really wasted) 6 hours with little to show for it. This is a massive undertaking, I’ve realized, and I need to take it in small pieces…no more 8-10 hour marathons of hair-pulling.  I’m only allowing myself 3 hours per day max.  And only in the morning.   So now I’m building little feedback synthesis modules that will act as ‘instruments’ in the larger unfolding of the work.  I’m not sure yet if I will take the reigns and switch between instruments myself or construct some sort of choice system so that the mix of instruments is determined by the data generated within the software.

Lately most of my inspiration for composition, particularly in the kinds of sounds I choose, come from purposeful listening to my immediate, ambient environment.  I am always fascinated by how cicadas, thunder, leaves, dogs, coyotes all mix together in a way that can be perceived as a musical experience.  With that said I am beginning to construct synthesis modules which don’t have a large range of behavior.  I hope that the use of many, limited-behavior modules will create a sum-greater-than-its-parts situation in the end.

I will post some sound files and screenshots very soon.

On an unrelated note there was the most spectacular thunderstorm last night here in Denton.  I love these North Texas thunderstorms.  So different from either Louisiana, where I was raised, and New Mexico, where I spent the last ten years.  Here the sky will light up like a strobe with multiple lightning flashes.  The thunder has a long decay that is almost celebratory.  I love it.

On another unrelated note I’m pursuing an independent study in art history this summer.  Part of my research and inquiry relates to Henry Flynt’s theory of ‘Brend.’  I won’t get into ‘Brend’ here suffice it to say that it is a concise essay outlining a practice of anti-art.  Which is to say, art that is not Art with a capital ‘A.’ Not art at all really, because it can’t be consumed.  I encourage you to go to Flynt’s site and read it. www.henryflynt.org  Something else.  It has got me thinking about ‘Brend’ as sound.  A sound practice that doesn’t have anything to do with music….or the consumption of sound as music.  Updates as they become available.

Circulus Maximus

This blog will primarily be concerned with ongoing meta-documentation of a music software/composition, whose working title is ‘Circulus3′ which is currently in progress. This composition is the third permutation in an ongoing series of works which use audio and system feedback as their prima materia. I am engaged in this project for credit toward my MFA in New Media at the University of North Texas; it is an independent study under the direction of Prof. David Stout with the generous PureData coding assistance of Reiner Kramer. For the purpose of documentation  I will be posting all manner of thoughts, issues, concerns (perhaps even a rant or two), sounds, and media which are directly or tangentially related to the piece.

Circulus3 Descendants:

Circulus 1 is a work scored for three, feedback guitars (by way of the guitar resting on the amplifier).  The score displays a range of numbers between 1 and 10, corresponding to the minimum and maximum of high, mid, and low potentiometers, that are to be ‘reached’ or approximated during the 9 minutes of the work.  It was premiered at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Contemporary Music Program in February of this year.

Circulus 2 (Folk and Troubadour Nodes of Excitation) is at once a musical instrument/sound sculpture, performance, sound processing system and fixed media composition.  It consists of the body of an acoustic guitar onto which I mounted a very long plank of wood for the neck.  It has two strings of .025mm piano wire and an electric bass guitar pick up mounted in the sound-hole.  On the base of the body are two audio-exciters, or surface transducers. The guitar pick up serves as input to an audio mixer.  The output of the audio mixer is fed to the transducers by way of a small 40W stereo amplifier. Thus the sound of the instrument is fed back into itself , which causes the strings to vibrate freely at frequencies which can be adjusted (with great care) by adjusting the EQ pots of the audio mixer.   I have ‘performed’ this instrument in a public place–the student art gallery in which it was exhibited and recorded the resultant mix of the feedback and ambient sounds.  I further plan to play this recording into the instrument and re-record.  I will likely do this with several different ambient locations to produce the final recording.