Tag Archives: SuperCollider

First Night

Leave a Reply

Every night of Hanukkah, one more candle is lit than the previous night. This piece, for the first night, is about that one candle burning – one long drone, one sound, changing but constant.

This piece was made in SuperCollider. It is made up of 180 sine waves, each starting at one note in the Ben Johnston’s combined otonal-utonal scale and sliding slowly to another note.

Also per holiday tradition, this is intended as a fundraiser for a worthy cause. Please consider donating to Rainbow Migration. cafdonate.cafonline.org/111#/DonationDetails They support LGBTQI+ people through the UK asylum and immigration process. Their vision is a world where there is equality, dignity, respect and safety for all people in the expression of their sexual or gender identity.

Or, if you are in the US, please donate to the National Center for Transgender Equality secure2.convio.net/ncftge/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app268b?df_id=1480&mfc_pref=T&1480.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=C5EA18E62F736227261DC4CE5C50ADBE

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:12 — 5.4MB)

Shorts #44: November 2024

Leave a Reply
November 2024

This piece titled by Sonia Elks. Artistic feedback from Paula Gazzard.

There’s a principle in psychoacoustics called “stream segregation”. When you listen to somebody playing a lot of notes on the piano, but there’s a clear melody, this is because your brain groups some of the notes together. It “segregates” “streams” of notes by pitch. However, there are only so many streams you can recognise at a time. If you have more than that, the phenomenon is called “wall of noise.” In that case, your brain doesn’t know where the melody is. A constantly changing texture has some voices seem to come to the front and then retreat. No two people hear a wall of noise in the same way.

This piece has 47 different voices of sinusoidal grains. Each voice varies it’s pitch and panning position very slightly with every note. Each note is extremely short, although they do gradually double in average duration and then return to their original lengths. The longer pitches become “glissons”, which is a short sine wave that moves from one pitch to another instead of staying steady. The very end overlaps the 47 granular voices with 47 glissandos.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.2MB)

Shorts #42: Lacewing

Lacewing

This piece was commissioned and titled by Tim Walters.

This piece has two instruments – one uses the Ringz Ugen in SuperCollider and the other is a Sine wave which is phase modulated by another sine wave where both are tuned to the same frequency. It is in harmonic minor, tuned with the default just tuning.

Harmonic minor is known as “Mogen Ovos” to klezmer musicians. Rather than apply western harmony practice (except for the final cadence), every player is picking notes independently. The just tuning helps hold the notes in a key centre.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06 — 1.2MB)

The Last Christmas: III Misterioso

The Last Christmas: III Misterioso

As per holiday tradition, I have again produced a Christmas album, although only an EP this year – or a virtual chamber ensemble playing once piece in five movements. This movement is the odd one out, using the same MIDI data for pitch and rhythm as the other movements use. The only sound used, however, is one sample. The same sample appears in all the movements at least once, but in them it is untransformed.

Also per holiday tradition, this is intended as a fundraiser for a worthy cause. Please consider donating to UKLGIG. cafdonate.cafonline.org/111#/DonationDetails They support LGBTQI+ people through the asylum and immigration process. Their vision is a world where there is equality, dignity, respect and safety for all people in the expression of their sexual or gender identity.

Or, if you are in the US, please donate to the National Center for Transgender Equality secure2.convio.net/ncftge/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app268b?df_id=1480&mfc_pref=T&1480.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=C5EA18E62F736227261DC4CE5C50ADBE

If you are interested in hearing the rest of the album, it’s on bandcamp https://charleshutchins.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-christmas. This movement is my favourite one and the only one I’ll post here, lest this turn into a Christmas podcast. I’ve written a post about how the whole piece was made on my blog.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:01 — 7.4MB)