I arranged and
adapted six Music Machines for this concert (1, 4, 28, 29, 34 and 37)
and was joined by Julie Hill (violin) and
Ruth Molins (flute). Julie
and Ruth also played midi wind controllers for Music Machine 1, Julie
and I used
Casio Digital Horns and Ruth a
Yamaha WX5. We used a
Roland PMA-5, a
Roland MT-300s and a
Yamaha PSR-340 keyboard for the
sounds.
I also set up the
physical Music Machines 2 and 30 (both triggered by an ultrasonic
sensor) and Music Machine 35 (a RFID reader) in the library foyer and
at a couple of locations on the way to the
FabLab so people activated
them as they walked past.
The concert went
well and without any major hitches although there was a moment of
panic when the mixing desk started making a horrendous noise about an
hour before the concert was due to start. Thanks to Ian Woodbridge
who sorted this but it did result in me having to use my
Spirit Notepad which didn’t have enough inputs for us all so I had to swap
leads between pieces.
We each had a
Raspberry Pi 2 with USB sound cards for the audio (used in Music
Machine 4) and I designed a web browser interface that each player
viewed on their individual monitors.
This version of
Music Machine 1 was played on three midi wind controllers. The
web-page shows red or green, red for silence and green for play. When
a player blows through the controller the Raspberry Pi makes the rest
of the decisions; how many voices will sound, which sound each voice
will have, how loud each voice will be and where in the stereo field
the voice will sound. The piece was written to have more voices
sounding in the middle than at the beginning or the end.
This version of
Music Machine 4 was played on three keyboards (computer keyboards not
musical ones). The web-page shows the player which letter to press on
the keyboard. Each letter triggers a different sample. The piece is
designed so that the gap between the samples get shorter as the piece
progresses.
This version of
Music Machine 28 was for violin, flute and Casio Digital Horn. The
web-page shows the players which note to play and for how long to
play it; each note is faded in and out.
Music Machine 29 is
for solo midi wind controller and was played using a Yamaha WX5. This was originally written for the
Sonoroties Festival 2014.The
piece
consists of two parts and works in the following way. The first part
plays a C major scale (both ascending and descending) and arpeggio.
The second part remembers each note that the first part plays and
stores them in a list. It will then choose a note from that list to
play back simultaneously with the first part. Occasionally the
programme will delete (forget) some notes from the list and then
start remembering again. There is also the chance that notes will be
sustained allowing chords to build up.
Music
Machine 37 was a new piece written for this concert. It uses Bach's
Invention No.8 in F and is a violin and flute duet. The players'
screens display the score in full but then starts replacing bars with
randomly chosen ones until the music disappears.
This
concert was part funded by
Exeter Arts Council and was supported by
FabLab Devon and
Exeter Library.