How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Everything

Acoustic Interloper

Here is a video of a partial practice session for my electro-music 2014 Acoustic Interloper set, and attached are the program notes. I recommend running the video in HD. It should work without logging into FB; I have had trouble doing that with a mobile device in the past.

This is an extension of the 2012 HexAtom software that students and I performed in the planetarium. In this new version there is a feedback loop involving both the visual & aural domains. Graphics generate music, and music generates graphics, under stochastic control of the performer as outlined in the attached notes.

I am posting this partly because listeners to the event on the stream won't see the graphics. I put it into the Composition forum because a feedback loop that goes between visuals <--> music seems to be novel. I did find mention of an installation that used bi-media feedback, can't find it at the moment.

This part of the piece is a nod to 1970s Miles Davis.

Program Notes for The Ice Cream Truck.pdf

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program notes

Download (listen)

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Program Notes for The Ice Cream Truck.pdf

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7.2 MB

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829 Time(s)

Acoustic Interloper

Here is the electro-music 2014 recording of The Ice Cream Truck, score and outline posted above. This was my solo Acoustic Interloper set from Sunday afternoon.

The opening spoken passage is from a 1973 talk by Leonard Bernstein on The Future of Music. Leonard's sounds trigger the initial generation of graphical atoms, that in turn generate MIDI notes. Both the MIDI notes and the digital audio return to the graphical cellular automaton in two distinct feedback paths to generate more atoms, which in turn generate more MIDI messages. Returning MIDI notes can also destroy their generating atoms in a degenerative feedback loop. I play the piece partially by modifying probabilities for various stochastic properties in the graphics and sounds, and partially by manipulating Applied Acoustic soft synth patches in Ableton Live.

The level of the recording was really low, and after boosting it there is a throbbing white-ish noise that shows up in the quiet passages. You can still hear the piece OK, and with the noise spread across the spectrum, there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.

Bill Fox has a photo of me performing from the back of the room on FB, reposted below. I was playing the interacting music <--> graphics simultaneously on two laptops, and wanted to avoid a long cable run from the front of the room for the video. EDIT: As I look at this photo more closely, I realize it is from the Zero Input Mixer ensemble. Oops! No photos of the AI set have surfaced.

Thanks to all the organizers and workers once again!

IceCreamTruckEM2014AI.mp3

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22.39 MB

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24:27

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IceCream2014EMAI.jpg

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Photo by Bill Fox of my performance from the back of the room.

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39.61 KB

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blue hell · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 8:42 am Post subject:

Just started listening ...

and wondered why winamp shows the title as "Pro Tools - download" - maybe you want to check the mp3 tags?

Anyway, the beginning sounds good :-)

Re. the photo's .. I think i saw one on facebook ... probably posted there by Jez.

And now recall hearing this live too on the stream, was very nice then!

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 8:54 am Post subject:

Thanks, Jan! Will fix the tags. Start of semester, you know Shocked

Enjoy

blue hell · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:05 am Post subject:

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:14 am Post subject:

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 6:41 pm Post subject:

Here the 12 minute August practice session which is linked as video (MOV) above. I started in the middle of the piece, which leads to a different, and much jazzier performance than the EM performance. Still learning this instrument!

IceCreamMan17Aug2014_1_01.mp3

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Ice Cream Truck 12 minute practice session, August 17, 2014

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17.67 MB

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12:52

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1466 Time(s)