Friday, October 30, 2009

The advantages of using this patch is that I can alter the way it plays back very subtly which eventually causes massive effects. [091025 Patch 28 - Feedback Slower] Has a low playback ratio, causing the sounds to be played much lower pitched. [091025 Patch 28 - Guitar Recording] has an almost sound at some points, some of which reminds me of Sunn O))), just the tone of certain chords and notes that are held.
Another cool composition I used was a recording of the birds and various noises outside my house. The neighbours have an aviary with budgies and I thought I'd take advantage of their erratic, noisy behaviour. It apparently reminds some of the Hitchcock film The Birds, with it's intense presence.
The final piece I'll talk about in this blog is [091025 Patch 28 - Rotating Feedback] This work was about the idea around how feedback would react when the feedback loop is traveling between 4 different speakers at different times, unlike the other works where the levels between the microphone and the individual speakers remains constant. Obviously the effect can't be fully appreciated in a stereo setting, but you get the idea.

Today's Post

Working on my patches for the upcoming installation. I needed a router with a bit more adaptability than the objects present in max. I've created an 8 channel input, 8 channel output patch thats fairly simple, called Patch 38 - "Splitter". The patch can select up to 8 inputs, or any combination to a maximum of 8 (4 different channels of input 3 and 2 of input 5) and output the channels to any number of the 8 outputs. A handy patch bay for routing the channels out of the laptops for the installation. Also in today's development I added a handy radio group to the 8 channel master control. This allows me to select any of the 8 faders, and change them with a master fader to avoid having to manually get them all to the same levels.
The first good feedback composition using the doom patch. This was in class I was explaining the system to my uni lecturer and you can hear me speaking in the background at some points, which I think makes a cool contrast to the relatively pure sine tones being created by acoustic feedback [091019 Patch 28 Feedback 2].
After this point I began writing compositions in quadrophonic in my garage using two pairs of large speaker cabs. [091019 Patch 28 - Feedback 5] Was a cool experiment, this was the second piece written in 4 channel and all I used for this was the same feedback principle, but I used the sound of rubbing my hands together as a catalyst. There is also a noticable difference in the sound, due to the size of the room and the distance the speakers are from the microphone, as the piece progresses you can hear the sounds moving further away and the resonance increasing.
Ok, this is the post from last night, I hadn't made the blog yet.

29/10/2009 9:00PM

Drinking: Chocolate Port

Greetings,
I've decided to do yet another composition using patch 28, this time however, I will not use acoustic feedback, I will be using digital feedback going out of the soundcard and straight back in. It sounded ok, however clipping is always a serious problem when working with feedback but if used correctly it can add a great textural element to the piece. [091029 Patch 28 - Feedback 2].
Earlier today I also did a feedback recording at uni, that time however I used the inbuilt microphone and got some cool sounding results [091029 Patch 28 - Feedback].
Now, I am going to do the same feedback through the mbox but, instead of just going straight through, im going to have a small behringer mixer in the middle to try and pick up some more noise. Sounded cool, the mixer allows for a lot of experimentation and works really well with this patch [091029 Patch 28 - Feedback Mixer]. Going to grab some more cables to do some more routing. I'll plug some contact mics into the mixer to try and get something more interesting [091029 Patch 28 - Feedback Mixer 2]. The feedback didn't work as well as I would've liked, but anyway, now I'm going to through a ride cymbal into the mixer to try for some cool sounds. Sounds ok, but the mixer is too bloody noisy.

- Theo

Greetings

Hello fellow humans,

As you are hopefully aware, this is a blog documenting my musical endeavours. The reasons for starting this are numerous and I have no need to explain them. I will be posting updates on MaxMSP patches, musical compositions, gigs, installations and anything else I feel is important and related to my music development.

If you wish to contact me for any reason you can send an email to theodore_mage@hotmail.com and I will reply in due time.

That is all for the moment, I will however be adding a large number of posts in the coming weeks as I have a large backlog that needs to be presented.

- Theo