Electronic Music 411 - untitled 6.26.07

06/28/07 + Tripnik

I've tried to set this up so that there are multiple ways to do almost anything. The hardware I use is fcb1010, uc-33, and trigger finger. The yellow box on the top of the patch is for the trigger finger. I can record 2 samples of something which each will be chopped into 8 slices. each of these slices can be triggered by one of the pads in the trigger finger. The check boxes toggle polyphonic or monophonic playback (which can be useful if I want to do something super rhythmic). The other box indicates whether or not these slicing units will receive messages from the trigger finger or not.

The brown box to the right of that allows me to tap quantized rhythms into 4 buffers which are used to drive any number of things. I wanted to be able to create generative rhythms, but still have a control over the essential groove. Most of the time, I interpolate between bank playback. The bank #, location in buffer, and loop length are randomized as well as speed of read through, and duration until another set of random parameters is selected. These buffers ONLY send out bangs which are used in ways described later.

The long green box below the trigger finger and rhythm interpolation modules is a set of 4 tone swim modules. I stole this idea from sebastien roux. Each of them records a 4 second sample. If the first radio button is selected, the playback will be totally random. The loop start, end, and duration will be randomized, so the sound will "swim" in space. The 4 radio buttons below that correspond to the rhythm banks I mentioned earlier. If I select the second radio button, it will loop the rhythmic data from rhythm bank one, and use that to trigger the sample playback. radio button 3 loops rhythm bank 2 etc etc. This way I can create custom rhythmic loops with data I entered earlier...something that comes in handy when trying to do other things at the same time. Pitch of sample playback can also be set via the numberbox on each of the tone swim modules.

The long brown box beneath the tone swimmers makes drones. 4 one second samples can be recorded which will be granulated/droned. The number boxes on the left of each module set bit resolution/depth, and the check box turns the distortion on and off. The turning on and off of distortion can also be automated by using the rhythm bank interpolater. The ubu menu on top sets the rate of parameter randomization (measure, quarter note, eighth, 16th, 32). This is the rate at which a random bank/loop start/loop end/loop duration/and playback speed will be selected. Each 'hit' in the rhythm bank will turn the distortion on for about 10 ms, then turn it off. Again, the rhythm bank interpolator ONLY triggers events, so the speed of the rhythm bank playback doesn't affect pitch or speed of the sample it's messing with. It only regulates the rhythmic qualities of an event.

the right side of each drone module controls pitch. The top number box sets resolution, and the bottom sets the actual pitch info. Default pitch max is 1., so any twisting of knobs on the uc-33 will be able to set a pitch value between 0 and 1, however, the pitch resolution could be set to 4, which would allow a maximum pitch level 2 octaves above the original.

The gigantic check box with radio buttons the the right of the drone module is only for visual feedback. For the tone swim module, one row of pedals records samples, and the other starts playback. Similarily, on the drone module, one records, and the other turns distortion on and off (the drones automatically play all the time in the background, and are shut off by recording silence or pulling the volume faders down). However, I wanted to be able to control the pitch of each of these modules with my feet as well, so I use the expression pedals as a sort of toggle switch. When the exp B pedal is in the heel position, no record/playback/distortion data is sent to any of the modules. Instead, the bottom row of pedals selects the module to be fucked with (eg clicking pedal one will select toneswim 1, pedal 2 - toneswim 2 etc). Once an object is selected, it's pitch can be set using the upper row of pedals. The defaults are 1., .5, .25, 2., and 4. When the expression pedal is set back in the toe position, regular record/playback/distortion messages go through again.

The brown and green boxes below the drone module make loops from the overall audio output. Audio from any sound maker can be patched to any of those looping modules via the matrix to the right of the loopers. This is handy since I can have 7 things playing at once, but only capture 2 of them if I want. The loops are able to be chopped up via the ubu menu on the bottom. The process can be automated using the rhythm bank interpolator in the same way the drone module used it to turn distortion on and off. The rate that new randomized parameters will be sent to the rhythm bank interpolator is set to either measure, quarter, etc etc. Each bang that the interpolator sends out will make the looper jump to a new slice in the loop. These can also be controlled manually by setting the trigger finger to control slice playback.

The bottom modules aren't working yet. Eventually I want to be able to route volume envelope and eq data to each of the objects as well. The sliders indicate which envelope or eqer will effect which module. If all the sliders on all the routers was set one notch higher, the first volume envelope and first eqer would be used on all of the modules.

Almost all of the parameters in my patch can be set using keys on the keyboard, knobs/faders on the uc-33, or pedal combinations on the fcb1010, as well as clicked directly in the patch. This is useful since sometimes both my hands are busy playing guitar, or both my feet are already controlling something else. Nothing...sounds, rhythms, loops, etc, are preset in the patch so I'm able to truly improvise everything. The downside to all of this is that I need to practice so I can get faster at setting sonic events up and tearing them down.

Apologies for the long winded explanation (I know you said elaborate A LITTLE), but I've been working for awhile on this one and jump at the opportunity to talk shop.

After I get the envelope and eq modules working, I want to find more ways to control timbre. I have an amplitude modulator I'm going to patch in, and later I'm going to mess around more with pitch - midi, however most of my previous experiments in the latter field have been dismal failures. I could obviously use any number of actual sound sources, but I'd like to have a number of sound options available no matter what instrument I'm using...guitar, piano, cello... Any suggestions of more ways I could control sound itself?

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