Laptop Orchestra: first jam

After a frenzied morning of coding last Thursday, Sam came up with a simple solution for programming beats on the fly.  Samples are loaded at the start of the session.  The tempo is also globally determined.  Each sample is associated with a line of text.  So, if we want a kick drum on every crotchet beat, we enter [[X]] into the line corresponding to that sample, creating a loop of one kick drum.  If we want a kick drum on only the first and third beats of the bar, say, we enter [[X _ X _ ]], which creates a longer loop, and so on.

Subdivisions of the bar can be easily created.  So for instance, [[X X] [_ X _]] yields two quaver hits on the first beat and a crotchet hit on the third.  [[X X X] [_ X _]] would yield triplet hits on the first beat, and so on.  I found this feature immediately appealing, having been accustomed to grappling with grid-based sequencers where changing the subdivisions of the bar required changes in the global properties of the visual interface.

Another really nice feature that Sam has built in is the facility to vary the volumes of the individual samples in an elegant way.  The samples automatically trigger at volume 9 when X is used as the input, but X can be replaced by any integer between 1 and 9 to vary the volume of the individual samples.

Fuelled by Diet Coke and chocolate Hob Nobs, we decided to have a go.  Sam’s machine was generating the audio, with my machine sending network messages to his via OSC.  It worked with surprisingly little heartache, but we quickly identified a few areas for improvement.

Firstly, once things got more than a little complex, it was hard to tell who was in control of what.  If Sam modified the kick drum pattern, say, it wouldn’t update on my screen, so I would have no visual clues as to who had been the last to modify the patterns, or for that matter as to what pattern was currently in operation.  Some kind of feedback mechanism is, we felt, necessary, so that we can feel that we have some sort of agency over the sounds that we’re respectively producing.  This might involve some system whereby we can tell:

1.    What messages have been sent?
2.    What is the current state of play?
3.    What samples are actually in use and what patterns are associated with each?

We also thought that it might be useful to have a system whereby we can name patterns and recall them with a label so that they can be recycled and used by other players.

We discussed using the strengths of the computer itself in a more systematic way, through incorporating a randomness function into the pattern selection or in some elements thereof.  The whole point of a computer ensemble is to do something sonically that can’t be done in traditional acoustic environments, which involves taking advantage of the technology in more authentic ways, we felt. 

Our priorities for the next session are as follows:

1.    Incorporate a log history of what has transpired in the session – this might be handy for recording sessions and analyzing them afterwards, which of course isn’t as immediately possible in the usual jam session;
2.    Think about having a window with the current status displayed, or some mechanism by which a user can query the current status;
3.    Incorporate a way of piping channels through effects in Supercollider, as well as master controls for effects;
4.    Incorporate panning and volume control, both at local and global levels; and
5.    Think about incorporating the Monome as an input device.

Aesthetics and laptop orchestras

While out for my daily (well, if I’m honest, it’s a bit less frequent than daily) run yesterday, in the afternoon sunshine, I forgot to bring a water bottle.  I began to flag a bit before the end; my legs got heavy and my body started to entertain mutinous thoughts of stopping.   So I took remedial action.  I took my iPod out of its armband and pressed Play on Kele Okerere’s solo album, Boxer, figuring that the nasty synths and the punchy kick drums would get me over the finish line.  As, indeed, they did.

This got me thinking about aesthetics.  I’m currently supervising an undergraduate course on the aesthetics of music, so I’m grappling with a lot of the classic texts in the area, like Eduard Hanslick’s ‘On the Musically Beautiful’.  Hanslick, and a lot of theorists after him, think about musical beauty – what we perceive as appealing or valuable in a piece of music – in cerebral terms.  The real appreciation of music is not a matter of brute sensory appeal, goes the story, but an altogether more contemplative affair. 

That’s all well and good for art music, and maybe for some other world musics, but it struck me that it seems entirely inappropriate for discussions of electronic music.  For me at least, the thing that gets me going about electronic music is the production values.  The way the mix is put together, the ‘shape’ of the synth sounds, the landscape of the stereo field – these are all things I really seem to feel rather than confront analytically.  I’m not sure if the discipline of aesthetics has really thought about this kind of musical experience, possibly because the guys writing the books on aesthetics do so while listening to Mozart, contentedly puffing on their pipes. 

I wonder what kind of an aesthetic treatise might arise from more serious consideration of the diverse relationships that people have with music these days.  If anyone out there wants to commission me to have a go, my email is in the 'About Me' section.

In the meantime, before publishers start beating down my door, Sam Aaron and I are working on our laptop orchestra.  Well, Sam’s doing all the work, to be honest; my contribution so far has mostly involved the provision of chocolate biscuits and the odd ‘musical insight’.  The aim is to create a collaborative environment in which people can get together and make live electronic music, using the Overtone system.  The system will use Supercollider, and all of its resources, but unlike Supercollider it will have a much more user-friendly linguistic interface.  It will also be able to accommodate live input from multiple users on the same network. 

Technology now has a human face, thanks in part to Steve Jobs, a point made in probably thousands of columns all over the world in recent weeks.  The laptop orchestra is another example of this – yet another example of how we can use technology to share new, meaningful experiences, which is what music is all about, surely.  Anybody who thinks that computer-generated music is anonymous or alienating is obviously not a fan of the genre, but the same could be said about art music for those who don’t get it.  Perhaps the Cambridge University Laptop Orchestra (the catchy name is a work in progress) will change a few minds around here at least.

We’re going to keep a log of progress on the project here.  Watch this space for further updates.