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key

By fc on February 16, 2020 7:30 am

Named after a photo my partner took that resides on my (rarely used) studio wall.

This one was a real struggle to get done. Low-energy week.

So what is it?

It's 2x analogue synths (1x eurorack voice, 1x 0coast), controlled from MIDI data in Ableton Live. But, I hear you ask, where does the MIDI come from? I'm glad you asked, dear viewer. It comes from OpenMusic, which I have not used for a hot minute. I have been reading Richard Barrett's PhD exegesis, and it is reminding me of nice aspects of probability-based composition. Also, because I've become shit at OM in the last five years, I couldn't be bothered serialising/probability-ising the time signatures, so this is all in 4/4 at 90bpm, if anybody cares and wants to try counting them tuplets.

This piece is a huge source of frustration for me.

1. I could not for the life of me get OMLily to actually work and generate a Lilypond file that didn't cause Lilypond to crash at compile time. Gross. Sorry, no scores 4 u.
2. The velocity output on my Beatstep Pro seems... shady at best. This is likely my own lack of knowledge, but it *seems* as though the note-off message does NOT generate a velocity of 0, but rather closes the gate. This meant that the rhythmic articulation was... well, frustrating, and given the rhythmic complexity of this, that sucks a poopoo.
3. The wifi extender in my studio does not pick up the wifi with the door closed. Thanks, extender. And I only have the one (real) powerpoint to use it on, right next to a triple-brick wall. And the house wall a few metres away is also triple-brick. So uh, yep.
4. Honestly, this week was a bit like trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives.
5. I wish all MIDI devices could take MIDInotes as floats rather than integers, and thus microtones would be possible. Stupid non-microtonal BSP.

Some post-production (mainly soak the fucker in reverb) in Live. Recorded with Zoom H6.

On the plus side, got some great Stockhausen/Babbitt/

I almost pissed myself reading the description. Thank you for this.

license wrote:

I almost pissed myself reading the description. Thank you for this.


Awesome! Hopefully you don’t have a condition.

Song title for next week. "trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives."

Regarding the BSP and triggers.  This may or may not relate to your problem and you may already know this but for actual triggers, you need to manually narrow the pulse width of the gate otherwise double trigs can occur.  And talking about your wifi, this piece almost reminds me of the tones of a dial up modem!

rdomain wrote:

Song title for next week. "trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives."

Regarding the BSP and triggers.  This may or may not relate to your problem and you may already know this but for actual triggers, you need to manually narrow the pulse width of the gate otherwise double trigs can occur.  And talking about your wifi, this piece almost reminds me of the tones of a dial up modem!

That's good to know. I was playing with that concept with VCV rack recently, but didn't know you can get a double-trig. It makes sense, especially if the wave form is not super accurate and drops below n volts, right? Am I wrong in thinking that the velocity out, if controlling a VCA, would create an envelope assuming that there is nothing that needs an open gate to pass the audio through?

The double trig happens more when it's expecting a trig and not a gate.  So if the trig is too long for say a percussion module, it'll trig on the 0 to 5v (for example) of the gate/trig but will also trig when the voltage drops back to zero.

As for velocity out, I'm not sure if it's continuous data.  I'd guess it's probably not so it'll just spit out the one value so not really an envelope effect with a VCA.  That would just open up the VCA to that particular value.  More of a stepped effect unless you slew the data.

Hope this helps.

rdomain wrote:

The double trig happens more when it's expecting a trig and not a gate.  So if the trig is too long for say a percussion module, it'll trig on the 0 to 5v (for example) of the gate/trig but will also trig when the voltage drops back to zero.

As for velocity out, I'm not sure if it's continuous data.  I'd guess it's probably not so it'll just spit out the one value so not really an envelope effect with a VCA.  That would just open up the VCA to that particular value.  More of a stepped effect unless you slew the data.

Hope this helps.

The double trig thing is awesome - great way to get some interesting effects! The velocity should still change back to 0 at note off. So you’d in-principle get at least an A and R? If not that is really bizarre!

"trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives." Oof. This track sounds like my headspace last week.

"trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives." Oof. That and this track sound like my headspace last week.

kevanatkins wrote:

"trying to coax a shit out of a constipated alpaca without laxatives." Oof. That and this track sound like my headspace last week.


heart
... Apparently heart is not enough words to respond with.

fc wrote:
rdomain wrote:

The double trig happens more when it's expecting a trig and not a gate.  So if the trig is too long for say a percussion module, it'll trig on the 0 to 5v (for example) of the gate/trig but will also trig when the voltage drops back to zero.

As for velocity out, I'm not sure if it's continuous data.  I'd guess it's probably not so it'll just spit out the one value so not really an envelope effect with a VCA.  That would just open up the VCA to that particular value.  More of a stepped effect unless you slew the data.

Hope this helps.

The double trig thing is awesome - great way to get some interesting effects! The velocity should still change back to 0 at note off. So you’d in-principle get at least an A and R? If not that is really bizarre!

For midi yes but for CV I'd say that it'd be unlikely.  Because of the modular realm of thinking, you'd leave that up to the envelope controlling the VCA to do that.  The great thing is that it doesn't have to be used just for velocity data, you can use it creatively to control other parameters at the same time and unlike a Max patch, you're not then having to filter out the note off data.  For CV, I definitely prefer the later.  If you wanted some type of note off CV, some envelopes have an End of Cycle trigger which you could use to control something the same way as note off.

I'll stop modular nerding out now.  Hehe.

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