COMM2591 - HMsEx Secondary Project Execution + Semester Final Thoughts :: Week 12

GYRE Execution:

The DisOrganEyesd concert at Melbourne Town Hall was a great deal more emotional to be a part of than expected. Perhaps in part because this is the final year of my program, but also due to the history of the venue and the high turnout of patronage. There was something of a hallowed feeling in the air during the anticipation of the performances and at the peaks of each. There is a level of respect for the history of the venue that was palpable.

I was pretty impressed with the work everyone presented. Shane & Pat's performance really lifted the room visually and sonically. Denby and Lisa brought a nice, heavy sense of atmosphere and Job was entertaining with his performance as well as providing some pretty stunning detailed visuals. Keith's piece was pretty mindblowing. Unfortunately I think it went above many people's heads (probably everyones but his to an extent!) and I think it was a case of overcooking it a little - as the version at his rehearsal the previous week sounded perfect - the changes he made pushed it over the edge in my opinion.

After weeks of agonising over my composition and the visual performance, I was pretty happy with the performance of GYRE! I'm usually quite critical of my own compositional work, in the past sometimes allowing it to overshadow the development process - but with this piece I feel that the restraint I exercised paid off in the execution. I feel that the reductionist direction I began to take with this piece is an ethic that I've had the need to pursue with composition for some time. It felt good to satiate it and the results were equally gratifying. This piece represents a greater control over deploying melodic structures in the facility of heightened emotional content than previous work in my folio. I attribute this to the limitations imposed by the organ and working to a theme. These necessitated a greater focus on arrangement and greatly assisted with establishing a musical logic that provided the framework with which I began to work in to create the piece.


In the performance of GYRE I gained a sense of the audience reaction in certain moments which felt like the piece hit those emotional peaks quite hard - which was gratifying. I also felt that critically, the piece could have been improved by shortening the length as I feel it stretched the attention span of the audience slightly beyond the threshold of maintaining those emotional moments. This is perhaps what became a key consideration during the development of GYRE. With the primary objective being  to create a "hypnotising" composition there is necessity to avoid major deviation from a central musical motif or to work with rupture or strong contrasting harmonic juxtaposition. Peaks require troughs. I used the accompaniment of the synthesised tracks and the organ idiophone accompaniment to disperse and embellish these during the swells of the main organ score - however I feel that the troughs could have been pushed further with harmonic minimalism to prolong attention to the conclusion of the piece and within the scope of the "hypnotising" concept.

I received great feedback about the piece and people felt that the sound and vision worked in harmony which was gratifying. People also made reference to the masking in the visual elements of the projection made the surface feel as though it was a part of the piece and there was a level of kineticism present that made the performance feel synchronous and engaging.




CoDesign: Study 3 - Creative Agency Walking:

Creatively, a very fulfilling project. Explored two of my key passions which are Sound Design and Interaction Design in a postgraduate context which was fantastic. Also a great opportunity to work with dance/body work and sound, which is an area I'd been very keen to explore for years. Hopefully this leads to more work in that direction. Great relationship with Frank Feltham and Kirsten Packham. This project has in turn led to an application to a second degree in Industrial Design and working on a large project that will comprise my honours work. I could not be happier with the outcome! I will be assisting FF with the interpretation and writing up of the data collected, which may be presented at NIME. Very excited! I came to academic study with the pursuit of exploring the use of sound in a practical context (how I expected that to be present in an arts program I'm not sure, arts and pragmatism are almost polarised!) I really feel that I am on track to developing skills that will take me to the next level of post graduate enquiry and start raising my own questions that will inform my PhD.

HMsEx Final Thoughts:

Where was this course in the Arts program! I imagine some of the Art Music and The Brain material  (which I missed out on) informed the HMsEx content. I was searching for this type of content in all of my Arts program! The mechanics of how not the historical or political reasons of why. A neurological framework for media art facilitates artistic pursuits with scientific relevance. I gained a greater understanding of how arcane psychophysiology still is in the 21st Century and how media art actually comprises almost all of the key modalities to explore it. This opens up a wealth of potential academic inquiries, I find myself considering the psychophysiogical implications of the work I'll be undertaking next year and into the future.

Final HMsEx Slide Presentation 

COMM2591 - HMsEx Secondary Project Research & Development :: Week 11

GYRE Project update:

• Shifted the key from E Minor (a little light) to G# Aeolian Mode (feels much deeper and engaging)
• Generated many automated iterations from NI Reaktor ensemble Spiral as this was the tool I used to generate "GYRE Oscillation" which is the sketch that Tom selected that matched his vision.
• Compiled single MIDI track from these takes and arranged them into master MIDI track for main organ voice for GYRE.
• Found three nice moments of rising intensity moving up the scale and lowering intensity moving down the scale in varying temporal patterns
• Mirrored these moments across the Y axis with transposition giving a rich and deep chordal movement
• Painstakingly moved MIDI notes away from the grid across the whole composition - accentuating temporal displacement and complexity, also added a 'played' feel with offset notes in chords 
• Mirrored these again across the X axis giving the composition moments of rising and falling ebb and flow within a bookended compositional macrostructure
• Removed all velocity information

Sketching and composing GYRE in Ableton Live

• Used multiple variations of FM synthesis techniques to create accompaniment, some quite percussive, others softer attack.
• Experimented with timing on the accompaniment utilising my exponential decay generator
• Intensified the 'temporal flux' by using modulated audio delay on these sections (giving a stronger sense of speeding up and slowing down)
• Modulated other various FX and synthesiser parameters over multiple passes of the composition giving it more life and expression
• I macro mapped expressive parameters ie: filter, envelope, LFO amount to pitch etc and used this to give greater expressive effects to the sustain phase of the envelope which worked quite well at creating tonal and timbral juxtaposition against the organ voicing.

• Less really is more with this project. I'm finding with the scale of the organ and the size of the venue this is an exercise in stripping away elements rather than building and layering them - which is my usual practice. 
• Revised the primary organ MIDI arrangement even further, removing about 30% of the note information across the whole piece to give more moments of dynamics
• Removed and augmented the generated material with manual editing of MIDI note information, found myself editing this visually (by tethering the piano roll to the scale I was using) working in this way really assisted in further facilitating a sense of temporal flux.

• Used the Glockenspiel and Carillon voicing to add further accenting to the FM synthesised accompaniment, using these sparingly really worked best with the density of the rest of the composition. 

COMM2591 - HMsEx Secondary Project Research & Development :: Week 10

GYRE Project update:

• Tom liked 'GYRE Oscillation' & "GYRE Drone Intro"
• GYRE Oscillation in particular fit perfectly with a sequence he is planning for the middle of the performance.
• Moving forward using GYRE Oscillation as a basis for the centrepiece of the composition and build outward
• Will either scrap or build upon GYRE Drone Intro as a lead in to GYRE Oscillation
• Composition/performance length has been shortened to 7-8 minutes max to fit everyone in

• Need for Revision in GYRE Oscillation sketch post session in situ
• Key and phrasing did not sound powerful enough
• Percussion sounded very odd, considering abandoning it all together
• Grain voicing vs Organ acoustic 'timbral flux' concept was not as compelling in situ as hoped 
• Will most likely abandon this and move forward developing 'temporal flux' concept

Built a MaxMSP tool to generate exponential decay patterns in MIDI

I achieved this using recursion. The [detonate] object in Max takes a list with a MIDI note value and timing data in milliseconds. This draws MIDI notes into a piano roll when executed. By sending a starting value through a recursive patch that multiplied it by a float that is less than 1.0 - every time the millisecond value goes through the loop it has the same amount removed from the previous time, which shortens at every loop.

These values are collected into a [coll] then when the value is below a threshold of 5ms the loop stops and dumps the [coll] into [detonate] which generates the MIDI pattern - which is ready to import into Ableton.

This effect is usually achieved using audio delays, but by having the MIDI pattern on hand I can send these patterns to the Glockenspiel and the Carillon or my synthesisers.

Inspired by compositions using this technique:

Autechre - Drane2

I think using similar harmonic content to the organ in this manner will generate a sense of temporal flux I am seeking with this composition. I am confident that the percussive attacks (using FM synthesis and envelopes) will contrast quite nicely with the organ when played in the same key.

I am excited to hear how this develops!




I experimented with IanniX software this week to generate MIDI patterns. IanniX is incredible free software used to generate scores and control messages using moving graphical objects inspired by Iannis Xenaxis.

IanniX is particularly useful for projects with a strong visual theme, you can program graphically and hear the result using OSC messages assigned to synthesisers.

After spending some time with IanniX I decided not to proceed - though I've wanted to use this tool for a while to create scores - I feel that I need to use software I am familiar with to achieve a greater result for the composition with more control.

I experimented with Steve Reich's famous Phasing technique with MIDI patterns in Ableton using Carillon and Glockenspiel emulations using different loop lengths that met at alternating times. I really enjoy employing this technique - I find it generates complexity and engagement while maintaining a minimalist aesthetic really well.

But I'm starting to feel this may take the composition in another direction. I think it may be best to stick to the ideas contained within GYRE Oscillation and work on using the accompaniment to create dynamism within the composition (as the original sketch felt a bit flat in situ)

Steve Reich - Piano Phase

Performed  by Tine Allegaert & Lukas Huisman (www.lukashuisman.be)