A new thing. I work fast. I mess around with samples. I teach myself stuff. I never delete anything. If I hate it, I work with it until I don't. When I don't,  I put it here.

Sound art/experiments

My contribution to the Cities and Memory Dada Sounds project: http://citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds/

For Ssa-ha-la, I chose to use an existing sound from the Cities and Memory database (https://audioboom.com/boos/4078583-the-crying-gulls-of-margate), since I felt this was more in keeping with the spirit of the Dada readymade than procuring my own field recording would have been (although I ultimately manipulated the recording far more than perhaps Marcel Duchamp would have approved of!). 

Listening closely to the sound of the waves and seagulls at low tide, I decided to write a sound poem, in the 'Bruitist' (or phonetic) form invented by Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck, which would reflect and exaggerate the natural sounds accompanying it, replacing semantic logic with sonic logic. The result is a kind of 'sound song' which intertwines with the cries of the gulls and sibilant waves.

Vocals, field recording, Ableton Live, Borderlands, Bastl Microgranny. 

Buy compilation

Ssa-Ha-La - Cities and Memory Dada Sounds project

My first piece in Supercollider as part of Stanford CCRMA's Introduction to Supercollider course, 2016. No synthdefs, very simple, just some numerically randomised ambient noodling. 

Code is: 

// lab session 1

(
t = TempoClock(60/60);
{
	 ~bells = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pwhite(20, 30, 16),
		\octave, 3,
		\amp, Pseq([Pwhite(0.2, 0.4)]),
		\dur, Pwhite(1, 3.0),
		\legato, 20
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	16.wait;

	~bass = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pwhite(20, 30, 8),
		\dur, Pwhite(1, 4),
		\legato, 10,
		\amp, 0.6,
		\octave, 0
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	16.wait;

	~ostinato = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\degree, Pseq([0, 5], 62),
		\dur, 0.2,
		\amp, 0.4
	).play(t, quant: 1);

	12.wait;

	~secondostinato = Pbind(
		\scale, Scale.locrian,
		\note, Pseq([[0,3],[5,8]], 64),
		\dur, 0.1,
		\amp, 0.3
	).play(t, quant: 0.5);

	2.wait;

	~bells.stop;
	~bass.stop;
}.fork(t);
)



beginners (supercollider)

Experimenting with Supercollider sndbufs in hard-panned stereo. Rehash of track 'ACTIVELY DEVELOPED' from my EP 'Browser Pieces'.

(very simple) code below:

//first we load file into a buffer

b = Buffer.read(s, "/Users/emmawinston/Desktop/actively-developed.wav");

//How many channels?
b.numChannels;

//then we play it
(
{ BPF.ar(
	in: PlayBuf.ar(
		numChannels: 1,
		bufnum: b,
		rate:[-0.2, 0.1],
		loop: 1
),
	freq: MouseX.kr(100,6000),
	rq: MouseY.kr(0.1,5)
)
}.play
)

inactively undeveloped (supercollider)

UPDATE: This is now available as part of a charity release for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants here: https://deerful.bandcamp.com/album/without-borders

This is my contribution to Squarepusher's MIDI Sans Frontières collaborative project, detailed here: http://www.squarepusher.net/.

I want to explain a little about this piece here. I spent the 19th to the 23rd of June this year at Stanford CCRMA, learning to begin to program music in SuperCollider. That's not a very long time, and the sum total of what I've learnt is used here; I could perhaps have done something more ambitious using another method, but I didn't want to, and here's why. The night of the referendum vote was the last full day of my classes at Stanford, and unlike my friends at home, and my partner who had dutifully acted as my proxy voter earlier in the day, I wasn't able to sleep through the counts; as my lecturers spoke I kept the BBC website open behind SuperCollider on my laptop, refreshing and refreshing until all the counts were done and I knew 52% of the population had voted to leave the EU. 

I've never stayed up to the end of a count before and never want to again. There is a powerlessness to it I couldn't have anticipated. As the only UK-based student in my class it was hard to make my American classmates and lecturers understand my distraction and upset at the referendum result, but their kindness even in the face of something comparatively unknown to them will stick with me for a long time. I worry about my friends who are people of colour in the wake of the reported rise in racist attacks; I worry about being unable to visit Germany, where my entire maternal family live without dual citizenship; I worry about a return to the depths of austerity; I worry about friends who are unemployed and my own employment prospects when I graduate; I worry about the NHS. There's a lot to worry about. It piles up like the phrases of this piece.

It's hard not to feel, now, like the country is more in ruins as a result of this referendum than any other vote in the course of my lifetime so far. As I write this we are essentially in governmental stasis with little we can do to change the situation except to exercise our democratic right when we can by voting, joining parties and unions and demonstrating if we are able, but in a smaller sense, to look out for one another, extend hands and say, I will stand with you and work with you and support you regardless of borders or government or where we are from or how we identify. In a very small way this is one attempt at doing the latter. 

Code (and vague instructions for live performance) available at http://pastebin.com/rhHAexVh. 

Special thanks to @christa_lee for making me aware of this project and for her own inspiring contribution to it, and to @brunoruviaro for his wonderful teaching.

MIDI Sans Frontières

I feel kind of out of practise but here's a found-sound journal after a long break. All sounds taken from the main block at King's College London in the final week of term before Christmas 2016.

skate

Deerful. I do sad pop music on tiny synthesisers.

In other people's bands I do or have done:
Keys/backing vocals in Owl & Mouse
Keys/backing vocals with Darren Hayman
Harmonium/accordion/vocals in Enderby's Room
Synth/electronics in free-improv duo Brute Love
Backing vocals/synth in Papernut Cambridge
Backing vocals with Citizen Helene