Night Lion Music

For this piece we focused on harmonics as a contrast to our task 2. The chords were F#m, A and D. I improvised over these chords using Pbinds and changing the \degree, the \octave and the \dur. For F# i used F# natural minor scale as my base for improvisation then the chord change to A occurs which is a minor 3rd change, however A is the relative major of F#m so i used A major scale. Next change is from A to D which is a 4th change, this is a change used a lot in film music because of its very “heroic” sound, basically the chords are very similar in sound due to having many of the same harmonic intervals, but they start from different root notes. I used mostly D lydian but also D major to give it a stronger harmonic relationship with the root note. Last change is from D back to F# which is a major 3rd. This chord sequence is then repeated, the second time Greg and Nick introduce their Pbinds and i play at an octave higher. 

If i was to compose this piece again i would probably gone for more interesting chord changes which have little harmonic relationship such as 2nd and flat 5ths because i feel major and minor 3rd and 4ths have too much similarity, but this maybe just because i listen to a lot of jazz which focuses on harmonic differences, also i was taught harmonics by a jazz pianist.

Below is a rough graphic score, but i feel this piece can not easily be described in a graphic score because it focuses on harmonies with a lot of improvisation, rather then sounds like our task 2.

Below is the Pbinds i used for this composition.

(h = ( e = Pbind( \degree, Pseq([0,1,2,4,6,3,4,8],inf),\dur, Prand([0.2,0.4,0.8],inf), \amp, 0.3, \octave, 3, \root,6, \scale, [0,3,7,14],\instrument, \cfstring1, \ctranspose, 0).play;))

(h =(e.stream = Pbind(\degree, Pxrand([10,13,2,4,7,10,5,12,9],inf), \dur, Prand([0.8,0.16,0.2],inf), \scale, [0, 4, 7, 11], \root, 9,\amp, 0.3, \octave, 4, \instrument, \cfstring1 ).asStream;))

(h =(e.stream = Pbind( \degree, Pseq([3,12,11,12,6,6,14,8],inf), \dur, Prand([0.16,0.1,0.8],inf), \amp, 0.3, \octave,4, \root, 2, \scale, [0,4,7], \instrument, \cfstring1, \ctranspose, 0 ).asStream;))

(h = (e.stream = Pbind( \degree, Pseq([10,10,13,4,11,7,10,12],inf),  \dur, Prand([0.2,0.2,0.8],inf), \amp, 0.3, \octave, 4, \root,6, \scale, [0,3,7,14], \instrument, \cfstring1, \ctranspose, 0 ).asStream;))

h.stop(4)

Below is the score for the our ixiquarks peice. 

In my group we focused on IXIQuarks for task 2. Each of us has a different musical role to play Nick focuses on making a beat and provides most of the musical cues. Gregs job is focusing of noise, mostly at mid range. My job is ambience at mostly high frequencies.

I begin the piece with a sample in SoundScratcher and use grainCircles with a lot of reverb to create a very ambient sound with a strong sort of clicky sound to add interest to the sound I put it through the Ixi vocoder. Nick comes in with a bass drum sound, when he adds a snare sound to his rhythm this is a cue for me to change ambient sounds. I slowly do a manual cross-fade between the sounds, the second sound is the same sample but this time put through a grainBox, Greg comes in about now. By moving the red box around I can find different sounds, because the red box changes the pitch of the sample. In the second grainBox I have a sample from a song Bassekou by Ngoni Ba which has a lot of plucked stringed instruments which produced a pretty tense and dissonant sound when put through the grainBox. Both the grainBoxes are put through IXIReverb and the Ixi Vocoder. When Nick stops playing his drum beat, this is a cue for me to fade out the ngoni ba sample because the dissonance sounds terible with Nicks piano chords which he plays next. During this part I don’t do much perhaps shape the ambient sounds abit in an improvised way. During this bit Nick and Greg are doing abit of call and reponse type things. After a while Nick and Greg decide together when this part is over and Nick brings in the beat again to signal that its the next part, the idea for this last part is increased tension to a hight then to cut off suddenly. I thought of an interesting way to do this using the Polymachine and the Ngoni ba sample, the sample loops in the polymachine and because I add a lot of reverb the samples layer similar to I Am Sitting In A Room by Alvin Lucier. As the samples layer they increase in amplitude and complexity. At the same time Ngoni ba is playing in the grainBox together they create a lot of ambient tension. After a while Nick signals the end of the piece by putting in a very long snare roll, while the roll goes on i switch off the grainBox with ngoni ba and watch Nicks hand signals. When he brings his hand down i switch off my other ngoni ba sample and Nick and Greg stop playing. I keep my ambient sound playing from the first grainBox and slowly fade this out. It seems to add abit of mysticism to the song. And that is the end of the piece, below is a screen shot of all the things I use in Ixi Quarks.

In week 2 we were introduced to Supercollider, found out about SinOsc.ar which produces a sine wave and we had a go performing supercollider code by changing the midi number. We were told a bit about chords and which midi numbers would work in which chords. We were told about ProxySpace and using ~sig.

we used the following code

p = ProxySpace.push;

~sig = {SinOsc.ar(48.12midicps)};
~sig.fadeTime=3;
~sig.play

~sig.stop

p.pop;

We got split into groups, I am in a group with Greg, Mickey, Yael and Nick. In the group we’re suppose to compose a piece using Supercollider.

In week 3 we learned a bit more Supercollider code including mouse commands, such as;

~mo={MouseY.kr(0.0,1.0) };
~mo2={MouseX.kr(0.0,1.0)};
~mo3={MouseButton.kr(0.0,1.0)};

which we used alot in our group composition.

This week we were introduced to the course. What will happen, whats expected of us, etc. We were shown ixiQuarks and told to download it to our laptops and practise using the instruments Julio had shown us, such as the SoundScratcher (shown in the lower middle of the picture below), the Gridder (upper left), bufferPool (upper middle), Predators (upper right) and the Polymachine (lower right).

Some of the instruments need a sample to work, such as the soundScratcher. These are put into the bufferPool and then the sample is loaded into the instrument.