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 Forum index » DIY Hardware and Software » Circuit Bending
zero-input mixer as a performance instrument
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robsol
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Mr. Green

Thanks for reading, and good idea on the diodes!


umschmitt wrote:

* those no-input devices behave quite differently when feedback is delayed (na really ?). It may not matter for drones but some (rather violent) blips & squeaks need immediate feedback, as far as I understood the process.


Yeah anything that goes into the loop will make it sound and behave differently, and you don't need the delay and limiter unless there is a mic involved. Strictly speaking, you could do with just the limiter, or if you like taking the risk, just the delay. Or you could put the speakers and mic in a different room and see what happens. Shocked

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Rob

The article on feedback is very informative and well written. It is certainly a great launch pad for learning to use feedback as a performance technique. I think now between yourself and Dale, I can overcome my fear of annihilating my speaker system Laughing I will take the advice of starting with single feedback loop, massage that a while and record fro those serendipitous moments, then increase the patches in complexity by adding more feedback paths as I get more comfortable at each preceding step.

One of my mixers that I shall use has 4 buses and thus will act as a 4 x 4 matrix mixer. I can then INSERT an FX unit ( a delay for example) into each FB path if I choose to. This will allow for great flexibility.

As for doing a DIY matrix mixer, check out this one by Ken Stone. It is a 5 x 5 matrix mixer that can operate in either bipolar or unipolar modes.
Simple to build and easy to obtain parts.

http://www.cgs.synth.net/modules/cgs33_matrix_mixer.html

Bill
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thank you kindly Bill. Very Happy

That mixer is exactly what I had in mind actually. Ideally it would have a short variable delay on each channel, 50 ms max. You could then combine phase reversed channels to create filters and other effects, at least in theory.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Since I usually run my signals through my laptop as the last stage before speakers or the Internet stream, with Ableton Live as the final tool, I always place a compressor / limiter into Live's output to good effect. Even with a limiter, I recommend starting with all the faders down so you know what will happen on power up, which is to say, nothing.

I have noticed the snake that lives next to my workspace paying keen attention when I use speakers, although that may be due to the fact that I moved next to him and added some lights in that end of the room about the same time that I started playing zero-input mixer. He doesn't seem agitated.

At electro-music 2012 John Driscoll and I discussed non-linear transitions in the feedback path; Rob's article mentions them as well. Those are the really cool spots, for example where regenerative feedback becomes degenerative or vice versa, because some active filter or effect is crossing a threshold. Finding those spots and milking out the sounds is one of the fun aspects of this thing.

Take a look at this article from spring 2009 when you get time.
Quote:
While exploring transistor behavior, the team found evidence that a widely accepted model explaining errors caused by electronic “noise” in the switches does not fit the facts. A transistor must be made from highly purified materials to function; defects in these materials, like rocks in a stream, can divert the flow of electricity and cause the device to malfunction. This, in turn, makes it appear to fluctuate erratically between “on” and “off” states. For decades, the engineering community has largely accepted a theoretical model that identifies these defects and helps guide designers’ efforts to mitigate them.

Those days are ending, says NIST’s Jason Campbell, who has studied the fluctuations between on-off states in progressively smaller transistors. The theory, known as the elastic tunneling model, predicts that as transistors shrink, the fluctuations should correspondingly increase in frequency.

However, Campbell’s group at NIST has shown that even in nanometer-sized transistors, the fluctuation frequency remains the same. “This implies that the theory explaining the effect must be wrong,” Campbell said. “The model was a good working theory when transistors were large, but our observations clearly indicate that it’s incorrect at the smaller nanoscale regimes where industry is headed.”

The findings have particular implications for the low-power transistors currently in demand in the latest high-tech consumer technology, such as laptop computers. Low-power transistors are coveted because using them on chips would allow devices to run longer on less power—think cell phones that can run for a week on a single charge or pacemakers that operate for a decade without changing the battery. But Campbell says that the fluctuations his group observed grow even more pronounced as the power decreased. “This is a real bottleneck in our development of transistors for low-power applications,” he says. “We have to understand the problem before we can fix it—and troublingly, we don’t know what’s actually happening.”

I am interested in quantum mechanics for an assortment of reasons. I am very interested to see that the primary model for transistor noise all these years has been incorrect. Zero-input mixer is driven at its core by this phenomenon, although I guess all solid-state oscillation is.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 5:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
That mixer is exactly what I had in mind actually. Ideally it would have a short variable delay on each channel, 50 ms max. You could then combine phase reversed channels to create filters and other effects, at least in theory.


You can create variable delays from 30 to 350 milliseconds with little distortion using the Princeton Technology PT2399 Echo processor chip. I have attached the PDF of the data sheet. I have about 20 of these little beauties. This may be the perfect chip to realize the delay elements for the matrix mixer.

Futurlec has them in stock fro $1.45 USD !

http://www.futurlec.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi

This is where I got my chips.

Bill


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
Since I usually run my signals through my laptop as the last stage before speakers or the Internet stream, with Ableton Live as the final tool, I always place a compressor / limiter into Live's output to good effect. Even with a limiter, I recommend starting with all the faders down so you know what will happen on power up, which is to say, nothing.


This is probably the best solution for me as well Dale as I also want to utilize a laptop in my setup. I like this idea and will also use a software limiter on the channel where I bring in the mixer.


Quote:
I am interested in quantum mechanics for an assortment of reasons. I am very interested to see that the primary model for transistor noise all these years has been incorrect. Zero-input mixer is driven at its core by this phenomenon, although I guess all solid-state oscillation is


After reading books about quantum computing, and they were fairly intense reads with some of the material going right over my head, it seems that all known physics goes out the window and things start to behave in very strange & different ways ! I would think that as transistors approach quantum dimensions, they would start to deviate from their expected behavior as well.

Zero Input mixing, the core of this is the violation of Barkhausens stability criterion by which we have an amplifier that has a gain of greater than 1 around the feedback loop and with zero phase shift between the output and input signal thus positive feedback.

Thus to sustain oscillation:

The loop gain around the amplifier is equal to unity (or greater)

The phase shift around the loop is zero or an integer multiple of 2pi radians (360 degrees)

Oh this is great stuff !!!!

Bill
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

State Machine wrote:
You can create variable delays from 30 to 350 milliseconds[...]


I may be missing the point .. but would have expected delay times from say 50 µs to 50 ms (or it's 'inverse' 20 kHz down to 20 Hz) to be most useful.

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also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2013 7:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

State Machine wrote:
After reading books about quantum computing, and they were fairly intense reads with some of the material going right over my head, it seems that all known physics goes out the window and things start to behave in very strange & different ways ! I would think that as transistors approach quantum dimensions, they would start to deviate from their expected behavior as well.


Here is my light reading for the upcoming summer, staring me in the face from atop a pile of books right now. Humans as quantum amplifiers. It wouldn't surprise me. People are strange.

Here's another light read.
Quote:
Can the rate of decohrence be slowed down? Astonishing new evidence
says that the answer is almost surely "Yes". Chlorop
hyll is the molecule in
plants that carries out photosynthesis. Photons hit a receptor site and
migrate to a reaction center. Recent experimental work has demonstrated
that the quantum coherent state of chlorophyll during this process lasts
1000 femtosecon
ds, or a nanosecond, or even longer! So decohrence can
be slowed down, and the coherent state is thought to sharply increase the
efficiency of energy extraction by the plant from the photon. More, the
chlorophyll molecule is surrounded by an "antenna" prot
ein which is
thought to suppress decohrence, or possible enable recoherence. This
hypothesis can be tested using mutant antenna proteins.
The long time scale coherence at ambient temperature of a quantum
coherent state is important because until recently,
most physicists would
have believed that at room temperature, decoherence would rapidly
destroy all quantum coherence. This suggests that long lived coherence
may be biologically useful, selected for, and tuned for sundry functions.
What about the convers
e? What is now known about conversion from a
decohered, classical (for all practical purposes) state to regain the
quantum coherent state? There are, at present, two bodies of work.
First, mathematician Shor proved a quantum error correction theorem for
qu
antum computers. This work has been expanded upon. Briefly, if
quantum degrees of freedom in a quantum computer are decohring due to
loss of phase information from the computer (the system), to its
environment, then Shor showed that if information is added
to the system
from the outside, the decohering degrees of freedom could be made to
recohere again. This clearly says that recoherence is possible.
Second, physicist Hans Briegel, University of Innsbruck, Austria, has
published two papers showing that a qu
antum coherent "entangled"
system can decohere to classicity than recohere to quantum entangled
coherence.
I am not a physicist or mathematician. But based on the above, I will
assume that the quantum coherent to classical conversion can happen
acausally by decoherence, and recoherence can also be attained.
This immediately raises four huge sets of questions.
First, what determines
the ratio of quantum to classical processes in the universe? Second,
can a
sustained, partially decohrent "Poised Realm" be attained and
maintained?
Third, and critically, what laws,
if any laws exist
, describe
the behavior of a syst
em in the "Poised Realm"? I return to this in a
moment, for we really know almost nothing. But we do know one critical
thing. Fourth, how can one expermentally achieve and study a possible
sustained partially decohrent "poised realm" physically?
I will ju
mp to the third question:
If
a Poised Realm exists and persists
between quantum and classical, partially decoherent, in a system in its
environment, what laws if any apply to its behavior? At this stage the only
thing that seems certain is this:
The quantu
m system is losing phase
information to its environment, therefore the Schrodinger equation for
the system cannot be propagated "unitarily.
"Unitarily" means that the
Schrodinger wave propagates in such a way that the square of the
amplitudes of all the po
ssibilities, interpreted as probabilities, sum to 1.0.
This is
the only way
physicists know how to compute the forward time (or
reversed time) behavior of the Schrodinger equation describing the
behavior of a quantum system. But this cannot be done for the
system
alone if phase information is being lost from the system to the
environment. Thus, at present, we have no idea if the behavior of a system
in the Poised Realm is lawful or not, or what that or those laws may be.
Thus, if a maintained Poised Realm c
an be created, it seems to be a realm
of very new physics.
One possibility to bear in mind is a contrast. We are used, since Newton, to
ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations in
physics. In areas of computer science we grow
used to "agent based
models", which interact to exhibit behavior, but so far we typically cannot
write down differential equations for their detailed behavior. With respect
to the Poised Realm, if a sustained Poised Realm can exist, we don't have
any idea
what happens except at the quantum and classical limits of this
Realm.
The second question asks: Can a Poised Realm state be maintained? It
would seem possible. If the quantum system is losing phase information to
its environment, Shor's theorem assures us
that addition from the outside
of information can cause decohering quantum "degrees of freedom" to
recohere. Thus it is conceivable that a balance can be struck between
decoherence and recoherence, leading to a sustained state in the Poised
Realm. Obvious
ly, at this point, how to do this "in principle" possibility is
unknown.
If the quantum to classical transition via decoherence is reversible, then
the first question looms large: What is the balance between quantum and
classical processes in the universe
and its "parts", via what means, laws, or
otherwise. One radical possibility is a kind of abiotic natural selection in
which bits of classical matter which are good at avoiding return to a
quantum state persist. If they have variants by accretion of differ
ent added
bits of classical matter there are even more resistant to return to a
quantum state, they will be abiotically "selected" ie they will persist better.


A little something to think about as you fall asleep. The author's conjecture (a rather formidable biologist) is that aspects of consciousness may arise out of the process of decoherence / recoherence in the brain.

My interest, of course, is computer musical, and my position as a computer scientists is not to strive for autonomous algorithmic compositional agents, this being a trend in academic "music meta-creation," because classical computation is fundamentally weaker than quantum computation. If there is even a reasonable case for quantum cognition in humans, then taking humans out of the loop reduces the dimensionality of the system -- musical or otherwise -- at least until we crack practical quantum computing.

Cool

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State Machine
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 4:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Jan

Quote:
I may be missing the point .. but would have expected delay times from say 50 µs to 50 ms (or it's 'inverse' 20 kHz down to 20 Hz) to be most useful.


You are correct. The range of delays that the PT2399 is capable of are what was quoted. For this application, only the 30 to 50 millisecond range would be technically useful but one never knows how it will behave what you start to get chirps and ticks, along with the delays, in the feedback path. It would be interesting to see what the circuit does as a trial with a single channel before committing. Wink

Bill
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 2:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

State Machine wrote:
Jan

Quote:
I may be missing the point .. but would have expected delay times from say 50 µs to 50 ms (or it's 'inverse' 20 kHz down to 20 Hz) to be most useful.


You are correct. The range of delays that the PT2399 is capable of are what was quoted. For this application, only the 30 to 50 millisecond range would be technically useful but one never knows how it will behave what you start to get chirps and ticks, along with the delays, in the feedback path. It would be interesting to see what the circuit does as a trial with a single channel before committing. Wink

Bill


Very true Bill... I have not conceptualized it properly in my mind yet, but the general idea was something that spans the audible spectrum and can "morph" between different types of effects ie filters and delay stuff, as well as being used for feedback and other things. I suspect that trying to control these effects in a predictable way wont be easy though. Which does not matter too much in general, but for now its just an idea, I think I might have to mock up something virtual first.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

In preparation for March Equinox radio concert, the first 15 minutes of my show will be a zero input mixer performance utilizing a Eurorack MX2642A mixing board with a Korg QUAD FX in the feedback path of channels 1 & 2. Channels 3 & 4 are feed straight back to each other using two AUX 1 & 2 sends. My DIY dual digital fraktal synthesizer, also shown in the pictures below, will add additional layered sounds. A picture of the mixer setup is also shown below. Recordings to follow.

Bill


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It looks great, Bill! I am looking forward to hearing you in action
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 6:20 am    Post subject: There is No Spoon Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have been doing some experiments aswell with my newly build 4x4 matrix mixer. The channels are allready patched internally for feedback
using the switch contacts on the jacks. But it is inverting (at least at the moment), so I have to chain 2 channels in series to get feedback going.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

So far I can say that an equalizer in the chain is very usefull. I've also used a stepped filter on my miniKP which created very interesting effects.
I recorded about 7 hours over the last few days, of which I'll post some parts later, after sorting it out. Sometimes I just let it go for a while since
I really liked the sounds it created, here's an excerpt from one of those parts:



I also did something last night which Blue Hell mixed in with his own noodles and posted here. Very Happy

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Especially loved the electronic throat singing at the beginning Cool I also plotted a Lissajous and also time & frequency domain plots, using sndpeek, at home and on the planetarium dome, when playing zero-input mixer. I think watching the waveforms helps to cultivate ideas when playing the mixer.

Tell you what. Our next planetarium gig for March 2014 is already booked for invited guests, but I think the one after that should be a seminar (for students & public) on distributed musical collaboration, and that we should use Ninjam or similar to have a distributed zero-input mixer jam. Probably some time between September 2014 and March 2015. By then I should have some funky custom waveform graphical software in place for the planetarium. I'll post an invitation here when the time approaches Very Happy

Nice work!

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 4:54 pm    Post subject: My first zero input mixer recording Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hi friends,
I just started exploring the no-input mixing. It's really fun. I am connecting my master out of the mixer to SuperCollider for extra processing.

Take1: MP3
https://soundcloud.com/joowon/ub1002

Take2: Youtube Video
http://youtu.be/QKcs8_-rLAc

Best,
jw
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 4:40 pm    Post subject:
Subject description: zero-input mixer planning for electro-music 2013
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Rather than start a new thread, I've decided to multiplex a bit of planning for the electro-music 2013 collaboration here.

The participants at this point are:

Jeremy DePrisco
Bill Fox
Joo Won Park
Dale Parson (coordinator)
Bill Manganaro
Adam Holquist (Charles Shriner has a timing conflict with his workshop)

I sent mail to John Driscoll in June to find out whether he was interested in re-joining, but have not heard back. Five seems like a good number. I think we can do six if John decides to join us.

Last year's performance came in 4 parts:

1. Introduce the instruments (spoken & performance) / warmup / harmonize with each other / create beat signals, etc. This part was basically harmonies.

2. Noise.

3. Robot / space ship / etc. sounds.

4. Segue back through 3, 2, 1, fade out.

Each performer came with some ideas, and all performers listened & responded in a collaborative / improvisational way, and it worked very well. Steve Mokris did visuals, and posted his video at
http://vimeo.com/49584651

This year's performance comes in 4 parts, two of which we need to figure out:

1. VOICE: Throat singing / humpback whale sounds / chanting-like sounds, etc. PHOBoS' recording above inspired this idea, along with some humpback whale sound I did in my solo em2012 set last year.

2. ENGINE: Pod racers from the Star Wars movie / race cars / airplanes / engines, etc. This part was inspired by Bill Manganaro's zero-input mixer performance in the March 2013 equinox webcast event.

3. TBD1

4. TBD2

I'll take suggestions on the TDBs from the above collaborators (or from anyone who likes to suggest Smile ) and post the TBDs late in July.

I don't know whether we'll have a chance to practice at em2013, but my experience from em2012 suggests that there is no need. It's nice to show up with some sounds, then lead in some sections and follow in others. I think that it might be good to post some samples and ideas here for VOICE, ENGINE, TBD1 and TBD2, along with technical suggestions. I'll post some of my samples as soon as I get some Very Happy

Looking forward to it!

EDIT 21 August 2013: Adam Holquist is taking Charles Shriner's place, because Charles' workshop runs at the same time.

EDITED to add Bill Fox on 15 July 2013.

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:05 pm    Post subject: Ideas and advice Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thanks Dale for coordinating this again. I wanted to participate last year, but I think the time conflicted with my solo set.

I might need some guidance on what is needed in terms of gear. Let me know the minimum setup so that I can be sure not to bring too much. I could also use a little recap of the recommended procedure/etiquette for the collab. I'm in the middle of a move and will not have my studio reconfigured for another few weeks, but I'm looking forward to getting back to things and this will give me a goal to work toward. I may be able to do some stuff via headphones on the laptop for the next week, but my good monitors are packed away Sad

As for ideas of types of sounds for the remaining sections... I have a set of bamboo/wood chimes that are not packed yet, and I thought of sampling them. Also, an old autoharp that is slightly out of tune and has some potential if sampled and manipulated. I'm also a big fan of gamelan type sounds. I'd like to possibly incorporate Iris in here somewhere for sound manipulation, but upon listening to PHOBoS I think my broad selection of EHX pedals may be more useful for this exercise. I've had some interesting soundscapes with these in the studio during experiments with various connection options. Let me know if any of these spark interest:

Ravish Sitar
Cathedral
Holy Stain
Memory Man
Pulsar
Voice Box - this is particularly useful and could do some of the throat singing stuff if manipulated properly.

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 11:06 am    Post subject: Re: Ideas and advice Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

shivasongster wrote:

I might need some guidance on what is needed in terms of gear. Let me know the minimum setup so that I can be sure not to bring too much. I could also use a little recap of the recommended procedure/etiquette for the collab.

The main idea is to introduce one or more feedback paths within your mixer, and apply FX within those paths to shape the sounds. FX may be as basic as filters, equalizers, compressors, limiters etc. built into the mixer. There is a lot you can do with this, and should play with it to find out what you can do with the minimum setup.

The next level is using FX built into the mixer (if any) in the feedback path(s).

Beyond that, my son Jeremy used guitar stomp boxes & similar in his feedback path(s) last year, and State Machine plans to use DIY hardware (he can tell us more). Joo Won will likely put Supercollider into the feedback path. My plan is to but a Pacarana running Kyma, and / or the FX unit of a VG-99 guitar synth into my feedback path(s). Some of these are obvious software FX.

I plan to stay away from using sampled sounds in my rig because they are arguably not "zero-input," but I did process some sampled sounds in the feedback-path-thru-a-laptop in my solo AI set last year. So, when I say VOICE or ENGINE above, the goal is to have a set of VOICE-like or ENGINE-like mixer-feedback-sounds worked out ahead of time. However, there is no mandatory restriction against using some samples that get processed in the feedback path(s). The main rule such as it is, is to use feedback path(s) in mixers as the primary sound generators and transformers. Everything should be getting processed via a feedback path.

As far as how the collab works, watching Steve Mokris' video of last year's set may give some insight. We had our four sections and agreed to transition at the required time boundaries. I had hand signals for the 3 transitions worked out, but I only used that once; a cue sound from me was adequate for the job. Beyond that, each of us had some theme-compatible sounds worked out in advance that we wanted to use, but they were not OVER-abundant, so we'd alternate between setting the tone and following someone else's lead in the performance.

If we indeed have as many as 6 people, the ratio of follow-to-lead per performer is going to have to go up. In other words, listening and trying to integrate what each of us comes with into the collective becomes even more important. So knowing what you can do with your mixer, and then listening, are the two most important things to do.

I will fill in the TBDs later, will sleep on all suggestions before I decide.

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PHOBoS



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Tell you what. Our next planetarium gig for March 2014 is already booked for invited guests, but I think the one after that should be a seminar (for students & public) on distributed musical collaboration, and that we should use Ninjam or similar to have a distributed zero-input mixer jam. Probably some time between September 2014 and March 2015. By then I should have some funky custom waveform graphical software in place for the planetarium. I'll post an invitation here when the time approaches Very Happy

Nice work!

thanks,
zero input ninjam could be interesting. Another thing that might work would be chaining streams,. so one person creates a zero-input sound,
streams it and another person picks it up and uses that (being the only soundsource) and streams it to the next and so on,. with the last one
looped back to the first.

shivasongster wrote:
I might need some guidance on what is needed in terms of gear. Let me know the minimum setup so that I can be sure not to bring too much.

from my experience so far, filters (equalizer) are very useful, delay (both very short and long), pitch shifter is fun, basically anything that can
shape/transform the sound. And of course a mixer (matrix mixer works great).


I did another session saturday night after building a limiter/distortion. I still have to sort out the recordings but I did post an excerpt on soundcloud:



(the wilder parts are created with the Korg miniKP)

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:15 pm    Post subject: Feedback appreciated... take that anyway you like Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thanks for the tips. I soon realized samples were outside the scope. But I have done quite a bit of experimentation in the past couple years with my little mixers and have both a pre and post fader FX loops that I usually run through a number of pedals before returning back to the board. This has often resulted in some neat finds, and I'd prefer to go analog rather than stare at a computer for this one. So I already have some ideas. TBD theme recommendation: Time Travel (lots of room for interpretation).

When everything is unpacked after the move, I will get back to my experiments. I'll be off the grid all next week and write again in mid-August.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 12:44 pm    Post subject:
Subject description: the Score for Electro-music 2013
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Thanks, Jeremy. Here's THE SCORE. See above for comments.

1. VOICES (about 6 minutes)

2. ENGINES (about 6 minutes)

3. ENTROPY (about 6 minutes)

4. TIME TRAVEL (about 6 minutes)

My only suggestion after a couple of days of babbling on the instrument, is to look for the non-linear, somewhat hard-to-control transitions in the feedback paths. The best stuff is right on the verge of loss-of-control.

Also, *please* make sure that the rig you bring to electro-music 2013 has some kind of compressor/limiter on the outbound side. At electro-music 2012 I did this by serving as the final mix for 4 stereo signals, but with 6 of us I don't have enough extra hardware. (My big mixer is going to Stage 2 this year.) We will be plugging individually into the room mixer unless someone has a spare mixer big enough to serve as the sonic sheriff. So, we all need to protect ours & everyone else's hearing. Anyone who plays these things understands the probability of loss of control at times. Keep a lid on the danger, please Very Happy

Cool

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 12:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

PHOBoS wrote:
I did another session saturday night after building a limiter/distortion. I still have to sort out the recordings but I did post an excerpt on soundcloud

Nice, this is fun to listen to Great way to get new ideas Smile

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
Time Travel (lots of room for interpretation).


Now this is interesting. Lots of prospects for playing with sounds spatially.

Lots of great ideas floating around.

I expect this thread will be getting busy very soon. As for me, I am setting up in the studio for this exciting collaboration.

As I further develop my POD RACER FX, I will post audio examples and descriptions on what devices were used in the feedback loop to create these sounds.

Bill
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 9:20 am    Post subject:
Subject description: the Score for Electro-music 2013
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I worked out my basic set of sounds and transitions a few weeks ago, then had to swap onto other things, then went on vacation with Linda up near Saugertise, NY. We stayed in a yurt! Just got back, got a bunch of stuff on the plate this week, and classes start back up in 2 weeks.

My main "to do" for electro-music 2013 is to put together an Acoustic Interloper set, starting today.

Again, THE SCORE:
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
1. VOICES (about 6 minutes)
2. ENGINES (about 6 minutes)
3. ENTROPY (about 6 minutes)
4. TIME TRAVEL (about 6 minutes)

I've decided to take sort of the Charles Mingus approach to conducting this collaboration, although without his violent verbal and physical outbursts Very Happy
Quote:
Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole.

I think we are in good shape with respect to improvisation. The only thing particular about collective improvisation is that everybody goes together, rather than soloing one at a time. Listening and responding at phrase levels is pretty typical in electro-music. With as many as six experienced musicians in this mix, I am going to lay back and be the bass player in some sense Cool I'll trigger the transitions, and fill as needed, but otherwise I am planning a supporting role. Many of the ideas for the piece have come from listening to Bill, and PhoboS, and also Jeremy's idea for Time Travel.
Specifically, I have decided two things:

A. I will not make any suggestions about the 4 parts of the score above beyond listing them. We can each bring our own interpretations to this piece.

B. Even though we'd probably have time for a practice session on site, I don't want to do one. I have a feeling this is the sort of thing where we'll hit stuff the first time through that we want to recreate in performance, so we'll just make the first time be the performance. xxsun

We go on first thing at 11 AM Saturday, so let's plan on coming together in the theater at 10 AM at the latest. I'll be there earlier, after my breakfast-short walk-shower routine.

I'll probably post some of my samples here after I work out my AI set and my seminar talk. See you soon Exclamation

EDIT 21 August 2013: Adam Holquist is taking Charles Shriner's place, because Charles' workshop runs at the same time.

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Last edited by Acoustic Interloper on Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:46 am; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

With regard to using samples, I don't plan on playing or processing sounds from prepared samples, but rather will create samples in real time from the feedback generated sounds during the performance. Especially the very distinctive ones. Ones that can be recognized easily. Thus, these samples could be used, for example, during the movement entitled "TIME TRAVEL" and played back again some seconds later so the past is now the present.
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