

New.Wavs is a study of the overlapping manner in which contemporary digital culture is produced and consumed, often with the same technological means.

The development of this project consists of identifying a 'definitive' set of tools used in the creation of contemporary music, then pairing them with iconic examples of their use, delineating a type of auditory and stylistic corpus.

Once these sets of material are established, compositional processes may be devised wherein information from these examples (midi notes/CC, spectral content, amplitude, etc) can be mapped back onto the use of the tools themselves, mimicking the recursion that occurs when stylistic tropes made for consumption become available wholesale as building blocks for new cultural production.

This method of creating work with information extracted from the means of its own production hopes to explore the formal structures encoded in both the tools and tropes of digital creation and consumption.
Initial research for this project has focused on the Lex Luger sample pack, a free collection of drum samples and VSTs available online and geared towards the creation of 'trap music', a popular subset of hip hop exemplified by the work of Lex Luger, whose production style has been widely imitated since it first achieved mainstream success in 2010.

Studies for New.Wavs have taken every song from the Billboard Hot 100 produced by Lex Luger as a source of compositional data, using each song as input material to be analyzed for structural form and content, then routing that analysis back onto a variety of production systems containing the Lex Luger sample set with no other intervention.

This process will result in the creation of a set of pieces lasting the same duration as their input sources, and represent an attempt to apply a Cage-ian embrace of indeterminacy to the context of commercial production, as well as an attempt to turn the gaze of contemporary consumption back on itself, taking out the middleman and creating a metaphorical network of self-propagating digital culture.

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Plastic Machine Music represents an ongoing study of the plasticity of digital media. After sourcing a library of online detritus in the form of YouTube advertisements, source material is arranged through simple generative processes and intuitive orchestration. This series functions as both a suite of fixed media etudes, and a gestural vocabulary for use in performance.


New.Wavs

Cultural recursion via free sample libraries. Cage-ian indeterminacy in vernacular production tools.

An initial sketch for New.Wavs.  All sonic material derived from the 'Lex Luger Drum Kit' sample library. All compositional information drawn from the 2010 chart hit 'Blowing Money Fast' by Rick Ross, produced by Lex Luger.

Audio analysis and subsequent mapping via Max/MSP and Ableton Live 9.

From Methodology Examples:
0:00: Original Rick Ross Track
0:17: Track recreated with Lex Luger production kit
0:36: Audio->MIDI mapped to production kit drums
0:51: Audio->MIDI mapped to production kit synth VST
1:11: additive resynthesis
1:30: concatenative resynthesis

Future Satellite

Initial sketch for New.Wavs. All sonic material derived from the 'Lex Luger Drum Kit' sample library. All compositional information drawn from the 2010 chart hit 'Blowing Money Fast' by Rick Ross, produced by Lex Luger. 

Audio analysis and subsequent mapping via Max/MSP and Ableton Live 9. 

New.Wav #1 (BMF)

Methodology Examples

Broadband Devotional (Music #7)

Broken amp, glockenspiel, melodica
Recorded in Lincroft, NJ, 2017

Alouette 1 - Inception

Meeblip anode synthesizer controlled by MIDI (using http://braid.live)
Recorded in Providence RI, 2017

Brian House - Geofolds

Voice, music concrete, cymbal, recorder rubbings, collage
Recorded in Brooklyn, NY, self-recorded, 2017
Inspired by Guitar Center sinkhole

Julia Santoli - s i n k h o l e

ROLI touchpad, Madrona Labs granular synthesizer. Real-time gestural 'tracing' of several weather forecasters superimposed over related found material(s)
Recorded at 7th Ave, Brooklyn, 2017 (Recorded by MDG)
Collaborators: Eye on the Sky Weather Forecast

Matthew D. Gantt - Future Satellite MG

Multiple sensor monitoring of a beehive, synthesis in Max/MSP
Recorded and exhibited at Moogfest in Durham, North Carolina, 2016
Excerpt is 20 minutes, full piece is 24 hours

Collaborators: Bee Downtown, Durham NC, Moogfest, Burts Bees Inc

Download 8 hour version at:
https://moonmilksounds.bandcamp.com/releases

New.Wav #1 (BMF)

Matthew D Gantt