These tracks are of an ambient nature - mostly improvised live with little or no overdubs but the occasional post-processing to add reverb and/or filter. Various instrumentation including real and electronic.

ambient improvisations

oops on the last little "blip" at the end - should have rendered that fade before uploading.

Aalto exploration

played live as an experiment - love the underlying distortion from the nord wave patch.

nord wave + scarbee mark i + delay + pitch stick warble

Custom Aalto patch being delayed, fed-back and layered with itself in max/msp using tapin~/tapout~, an omx.5band~ and a biquad~ lowpass filter. Mainly a D drone but a little "improv" as the piece goes on moving to E, F and G.


Aalto drone 22611

single original sound played live on the nord wave

range of emotion

This track was created as part of the MCRP (Monome Community Remix Project) 9a to help raise awareness and donations for earthquake relief in Japan. If you can, please tell your friends about this track and donate in any way you can. One way to donate is via http://www.redcross.org/
Created using the following recordings by Micah Frank

- Magnitude 5.0 - NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN 2011 March 11 15-46-01 UTC
- Magnitude 5.4 - OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN 2011 March 11 17-32-13 UTC
- Magnitude 5.5 - OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN 2011 March 11 16-11-26 UTC

A little more information on how this was created for those who are interested.

Micah Frank's Tectonic project has been monitoring earthquakes around the world for some time and sonify them (turning their data into sound.) His web site can explain in much more detail how he creates the audio from raw earthquake data. http://micahfrank.com/tagged/tectonic

A monomer named lokey had the idea to turn Micah's work into the next Monome Community Remix Project to raise awareness and try to put together a collection of tracks that could be used to entice listeners to donate to help relief efforts in Japan. This is one of the tracks that will eventually be pulled together with others as a complete statement.

As my part, I chose 3 of Micah's tracks (listed above) and built a max/msp patch to realize the piece you hear, Slow Motion. I created the patch on Saturday morning and tweaked it throughout the day. I started out with 3 buffer~ objects, one for each of Micah's samples. I then coded each buffer to play a section of itself for between 1 and 3 seconds in a loop. Each time the buffer looped it adjusted the cutoff frequency and resonance of a biquad~ filter to give it some movement. The 5.5 magnitude sample also modulates itself with random values from a phasor~ object. In order you hear the 5.0, 5.4 then 5.5 magnitude samples.

The melody you hear throughout the piece is one repeating 56 beat loop, created via a live.step~ object, from Aalto by Madrona Labs along with a modulated sine wave playing a random melody. Both tracks use the Japanese Yo scale in the key of D consisting of the notes D, E, G, A and B. The idea here is to give some basis of rhythm but at the same time not allowing the listener to ever feel comfortable with a common structure.

All 5 tracks - the three samples and two melody tracks are then faded in and out at various times throughout the piece using line~ objects. All of this is triggered via a single bang and the piece essentially plays itself, sounding subtly different each time. PSPAudioWare's N2O was used as a "master effect" to provide delay and ambience.

The patch look like this http://yfrog.com/h09mfp

So where is the monome? The idea of this project was to use the sounds realized by Micah and the monome was secondary to the concept. Although I could have easily implemented the monome triggering and manipulating various aspects of the patch, I decided to realize it the way I did. The monome sat by blinking randomly while making this piece.

I hope you enjoy the piece and it gently pokes you to help out Japan in any way you can. Special thanks to Micah and lokey for their work in allowing this project to happen.


MCRP 9a Slow Motion

1981 Rhodes Mark II Stage Piano into a Korg KP3 - looped and glitched w/ Moog Voyager "explorations" above. Recorded live through the air into a Sony PCM-M10 digital recorder. PSP N2O added as a light sweetener.

Rhodes Mark II + Moog

can you tell which is which?

no post-processing - played and recorded live.

windy night (op1/nord wave)

an op-1 improvisation - performed and recorded live to side b of the "album" in the op-1.

returned

performed and recorded live - op1 only - no post-processing.

prelude

fading light

moist air

improvised fretless bass and drums over top of a found "piano glitch" sample that someone probably put together with the elektron machinedrum - if anyone knows who created this (probably years ago) please let me know so I can give proper credit.


the day before

Ran Thicket on an iPhone into the OP-1 for the first track plus main melody. Then laid other tracks on the OP-1 alone. Then used the SoundCloud app on the iPhone to record the OP-1. Then uploaded to SoundCloud using the same app.

Hardware: iPhone, OP-1, stereo audio cable

No power cables. Super portable. Raw but inspiring!

iOS/OP-1

mist

Madrona Labs Aalto (in demo mode) and Native Instruments FM8 both in Ableton Live and being driven by monome via a few max4live patches. No other effects other than these two synths and their internal reverbs with the exception of some slight beat repeat and a subtle Augustus Loop treatment applied to the Aalto patch and some MIDI note randomization applied to the FM8 patch. Aalto is playing the low-end, FM8 is playing the high-end.


AaltoFM8

max/msp experiment 001

monome gs64 running parc triggering scarbee mark I with elektron machinedrum

parc mark md

max/msp patch 1 example

Just another recent max/msp improvisation

max/msp patch 2 example

max/msp aalto pspn20 1-feb-2011

See videos of some of my work on YouTube. Link on profile.

My pieces are mostly improvised, recorded live and minimally post-processed if at all. These primarily short compositions capture a moment - come about quickly - get recorded - then shared. Usually the how and why are lost after the recording stops - never to be repeated again - like the moment that inspired them.

Please listen in headphones or on good speakers. Enjoy!

ambient improvisations

aheadinclouds