Delta-6400 :: Monad

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Hofstadter
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Delta-6400 :: Monad

Post by Hofstadter »

Hey!
Hope this is cool for me to post, if not I'm sure the mods will have no problem taking it down!

I just posted my second demo/album of material on bandcamp, and thought I'd share it here, because a) some of you may enjoy listening and b) I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys might have if you do listen! It's about an hour long, so I would not be surprised if most people don't have the time to listen to the whole thing, but even just listening to one or two tracks would be rad!

Here is the link to the album page.

Every track except "DB(OY)" was made in the max/msp visual programming environment. Here's an example of a high-level (but still prior to a nice cleanup) look at the max/msp patch for one of the tracks, "AMAR 223." The exception was made using a fairly rudimentary modular synthesizer and a delay pedal and was recorded to 4 track cassette. The first album on my bandcamp features a lot more modular synthesizer pieces.

I definitely would not be making music like this if it weren't for a lot of the things I have come across via this board, especially bands like Bitchin Bajas and Eat Lights Become Lights.

As always, Play Loud! I recommend headphones because pretty much everything was made in my dorm room, so I always had to do all my monitoring on headphones - the (fairly extensive) use of stereo I guess is sort of built around that listening style, but it sounds fine on speakers too! "AMAR 223" has some pretty deep bassy stuff so turn it up for that haha.

If you are only going to listen to one or two... hmm, I think "RWO7," "BDB2" or "AMAR 223" would probably be the way to go; the other three are definitely more "abstract" or "experimental" or something. I guess I'll include descriptions of each track below so that if you want to listen to one or two you can see which ones interest you most.

"RWO7" in particular is very much inspired by some of the more... optimistic? brighter, ELBL songs, and is made using a few sequencer emulations I programmed in Max/MSP, as well as some delay effects that I built in max along with some filtration systems I built in max. I feel like this could be the basis of something with more... motion, dynamic - it is fairly static, which I like, but perhaps gets boring... I don't know.

"DB(OY)" is definitely a result of a sort of "frippertronics" mindset; felt like I made this using an idea that is present a lot in the music of Riley/Fripp/Bitchin Bajas etc - additive looping that fades away as more loops are piled in. This is a modular synth piece and was totally improvised (as opposed to the max/msp tracks, which although improvised and recorded live, are less improvised so much as randomly generated due to the structures that I have programmed). It sort of takes the "additive looping" thing to the extreme though... I've listened to it so much that I know what is coming and all that so everything makes sense to me, but I wonder if to other listeners it might sound shapeless or something.

"AM AR 223" is another Max/MSP piece; it started out as me just giving myself the exercise of programming some non-trivial ways (at least non-trivial to me) ways of using sample and hold - I really liked the way applying a noise signal (post S/H) coupled with some on/off logic tied to the phasor control wave as a random-gain envelope trigger, and so I ended up just running with that. All programmed and recorded on a 6 hour plane ride from Boston to Los Angeles. It might also suffer from the "static" problem. I guess this one is sort of like a minimal dance track or something... it might be my favorite despite being furthest from what I regularly listen to. I attached an image of the max/msp patch for this one to give you an idea of what a patch might look like at the highest level (there are nested levels of abstraction and subpatches from other stuff I have programmed in max/msp baked into this).

"QRLP1" is another Max/MSP piece; this one is just weird though. It's a stereo mixdown of quadrophonic piece that was still in a rough draft stage at time of mixdown that I was working on for a music class this past semester (elsewhere on my bandcamp I have the stereo mixdown of a 24 channel electroacoustic composition for that same class that I presented at a concert at the end of the semester, if you are interested - that piece is very different than this though, it mixes a solo oboe and live electronics). I don't even know how to describe this one. I guess the basic idea of the max/msp patch for it is taking some field recordings I made and playing them back at various speeds with a few layers of cyclic modulation on the speeds. This one is the most out there I guess, but I find it sort of hypnotic/relaxing.

"BDB2" is another piece made in max/msp - it is a pretty simple drone based piece, but it's also one of my favorites of the ones on here. It is pretty much directly inspired by Bitchin Bajas sound. On the most basic level it's just a few oscillators with various forms of modulation on top of them.

"JHR2" was again made in max/msp - this one is maybe the least easy to listen to, at least at first, but I like it; the initial goal was just to try to produce something out of a single sample using only one main technique, since I have way less experience working with samples/field recordings. I definitely was thinking a lot about/listening to a lot of Oval while making this, which I think I can here - very glitchy/choppy/repetitive. The sample is from Julia Holter's "In the Same Room." The basic premise of the patch was to divide a sample into random numbers of segments of equal lengths and then stack those segments on top of each other; after each stacking, jump randomly to equivalent points in the segments and scrub forward on all segments at once with volume levels of the segments determined by "vertical location" in the stack (which is also deterministically generated at each jump/stacking).
BzaInSpace
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Re: Delta-6400 :: Monad

Post by BzaInSpace »

I look really forward to checking this out when I can, although at this point in life I'm running through several backlogs including 'music to listen to'.

However you sir are more than welcome to post and I hope you receive some constructive feedback.

The mods... C'mon. The mods here are surely the most easy going in the entire cyber-verse!!

I had to delete a few gas appliance spam ads that appeared last week through our normally formidable security system but otherwise there'll little 'moderating' that actually happens.

Anyway best of luck with the music!
O P 8
ro
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Re: Delta-6400 :: Monad

Post by ro »

am looking forward to hearing these!
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