The Grid and The String in Music

[Image of the Tenorions from synthtopia.com]
Yamaha has a pretty looking device, Tenori-On for fans of MIDI-triggering LED grids. I have been a fan of portable LED grids since I discovered Maywa-denki's Bitman in Tokyo. Tenori-On is a 16x16 grid... four times more little LEDs than Bitman ;-) OK, seriously now... The Tenori-On's LEDs act as push buttons, much like the buttons on the old Novation Nova synths, another favourite of mine. Incidentally, Novation have their own LaunchPad controller which also plays on the pixel grid idea. This has been a common theme in this area over the last few years. In the Yamaha product, the grid is used to control a sequencer in various ways. In some modes the hardware acts like a step-sequencer, in others more unusual metaphors are employed to trigger music events, for instance a bouncing ball metaphor is employed to trigger an event when the ball (a lit LED that moves across the grid) hits an edge for instance. The user then controls the distance the ball moves between bounces to shorten or lengthen the delay between triggers... in discrete steps.

And this is the thing about "the grid": Whilst beat-based, typically 4/4 music is so seductive, popular, easy to make and therefore marketable to teenagers with home studios and greying electronic music buffs alike, it would be nice if these new tools enabled the subtlety of a string on a fretboard when it came to placing notes in time. For experts maybe a fretless fingerboard is better... no need for the guidelines, place the notes in time by feel. But no, even after all these years of computer-hardware and software based music production the "new" instruments by the big manufacturers return us to our neatly discretised rhythms (and pitches). They can't afford to venture into the territory that brings us an instrument like a violin or the shakuhachi because these are just too hard to master. Even a recorder which, despite its regular finger holes offers the player a chance to over-blow, stutter, tongue, tremolo and shriek their way through a piece, merging notes, individuating notes with staccato punctuation, placing notes wherever and whenever they darn well like, is more subtle.

A drum-machine? Well, I absolutely love the new rhythms that have been moving into electronic music since Kraftwerk, through 80s synth-pop, jungle, drum'n bass, techno... right through the 90s and 00s up to the stuff so popular even on mainstream radio today. It has really transformed the way I think about rhythm. Most of it I could never have hoped to play live on a drum kit (even when I practiced). But a lot of it is just sampled old drum loops. I know this is a little tired. We have heard all this before. But every new instrument that comes out is a chance to revitalise electronic music. Every new instrument based on the grid is a chance lost. All the complexity of which music is capable is being missed by a generation of music makers.

The Tenori-On looks like fun to play. And don't get me wrong, I love a range of electronica based around the grid. But really Yamaha's sequencer/instrument is just another toy with a pretty pixel grid. Funny then that there is a pop-group (well, it is surely OK nowadays to call a group of 3 sexy girls who make music and dance around a bit on stage a pop-group right?) called the Tenerions. From what I have heard of their music it sounds pretty much like the product demos on the Yamaha website. Not particularly exciting.

Although I haven't played with my poor dusty synths for years, sometimes I am tempted to look longingly into my cupboard, dust off their cool metal surfaces and twiddle the knobs... analogue knobs. Knobs that spin smoothly and continuously. And then I remember that I waved goodbye to my last truly analogue synth well over a decade ago. Even the boxes I have with knobs are analogue emulations. The knobs might spin, but the values they represent are discrete. And so it goes. In the name of suplesse (a cycling term... grace? suppleness? elegance... on a bike) I have given up many things. Music-making was an early casualty. Who am I to complain about grids? Maybe count me as a concerned music-citizen who would like to hear the newcomers make something different, sometimes. I guess the best of them do and I should just listen harder and more widely. No disrepespect to the Tenerions. The fact that I have even heard of you means you must be doing something right!

algorithmic compositions for the vuvuzela

Here are some ideas for algorithmic compositions for the instrument of the season, the vuvuzela. These ideas were generated during a lunchtime discussion with Peter Mcilwain.



Mexican wave
Sound a note if somebody to your left is playing a note.

Splitting wave
Sound a note if somebody to either side of you is playing a note.

Bounce
Sound a note if the ball is at the point on the pitch nearest to you.

Cross-fade
Sound a note at an intensity proportional to the distance of the ball from you.

Team kicker
Sound a note if a player on the team you support kicks the ball.

Kicker
Sound a note if any player kicks the ball.

Random
Sound a note whenever you feel like it.

We take no responsibility for the din that will ensue!

a few videos of a few art works - michael kontopoulos

How did we manage before people could post videos online? They are a great way to see all kinds of things that would otherwise be relegated to still imagery and the written word. Michael Kontopoulos has posted some videos of his art works online. The Machines That almost Fall Over (2008), like the other works he has documented online, exhibit a "cute" sense of the absurd that only works when you see it. A video is not as good as being there but in this instance its all I have to go on, so I'll make do. He gets the balance just right... pun intended. The sculptures are kinetic and composition-generating and in this respect the piece is reminiscent of Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique for 100 Metronomes (1962) as it winds down (also available online). The sense of anticipation the machines create is a significant component of the work, perhaps my favourite aspect of the piece. One has this same experience wondering if Ligeti's metronomes will finally strike their last tock.

Kontopoulos' Inner Forests is "fair" as an A-Life styled work, although I'd not rate it highly on innovation. I think it lacks the charm of his mechanical constructions and fits the mould for me of a typical art-tech piece. Its a bit high on "toy" and a bit low on "elegance". Boy I can be hard on people. Having said that, I can't help myself, his work Pass the Funk amuses me. It is so overtly tacky and reminds me of a Sesame Street segment but I can't help finding it fun. Breaking the TV illusion in this way is disarming. Oh dear. The fact that it appears on a Japanese TV show makes it even more ridiculous.

visual musical score - ANS synthesiser

Here's a visual score for the ANS Synthesiser. Its by composer / audio engineer Stanislav Kreichi who discusses the synth and its development online. This visually appealing score reminds me of a sketch from an ecology text book. It seems to depict mountains, wind, rain and perhaps alpine vegetation. Perhaps this idea inspired Metasynth in which a very similar score of peaks, troughs and pulses can be composed visually for synthesis. I've just inverted this image and loaded it into Metasynth to hear it. Well, it sounds like it looks. In the 60s I bet that was really something! I'm not sure of the original scaling in the temporal dimension but I've played around with the mappings to have it play out over 30 seconds. Its great that a score from the 1960s can still be played on software made a few years ago.

suburban wetlands - ecosonics

I used to live about a ten minute walk from a creek and surrounds that, long ago, used to be a wetland. Then it was just a suburban drain in a strip of land between a freeway and some cricket pitches and monitored by massive power-pylon robot-monsters. Then it was remade into a wetland again, complete with a secluded bird-watch. I used to regularly scoot down to the waterside on a hot Summer's evening to enjoy the frogs' competition with the nearby freeway traffic noise. I have since moved house.

As Spring has now arrived I am very pleased to find that once again the frogs are near at hand. I was out at midday, at last enjoying some sunshine, and I found myself in a wetland a 20 minute walk away — quite manageable and well worth the steep return trip. The frogs were making a lovely din that completely drowned out any traffic. That is quite a feat in suburban Melbourne! Its a shame about the ever-present DIY renovation junkies and their circular saws and routers. Even the frogs were stretched by this competition. Why aren't people happy with their homes as they are? Anyway...

I heard at least three frogs. Thanks to the marvellous Frogs of Australia website's audio resources and a CD of Australian frog-calls, I can say with (shaky) confidence that I heard: the Eastern Common Froglet; the Eastern Banjo Frog (I prefer its other name, the Pobblebonk); and lastly, a frog that made a very short, percussive "click" sound. I suspect this was the Spotted Marsh Frog. If not, it may have been the Striped Marsh Frog (named like an Italian beer, Limnodynastes Peroni). The frogs were set off delicately (!?) by the screech of playing Lorikeets, the warbling of Magpies and the playful antics of the native Noisy Miners.

These local wetlands are absolutely brilliant. I wish all storm-water drains and creeks could be de-concreted and replanted. The urban sonic environment would benefit immensely.