Plex - Basset-horn and Live Electronics

In fall 2002, still at Strasbourg Conservatory, I registered at the École nationale de musique du pays de Montbéliard (Montbéliard national music school). Ensemble New Flore had just invested in a new Apple Laptop (a Powerbook G4, 800 MHz, 756 Mo, at the time), and I wanted to learn interactive music with Max/MSP. I chose Montbéliard because of the composition faculty, Hans Tutschku and Jacopo Baboni Schilingi. Each other week, we met there during 2 intense days, with many great students. We were a creative and motivated community of young artists, including, for instance, Lorenzo "Lorbi" Bianchi and Daniele Segre Amar (now members of esc-crew). Nice music school in Montbéliard, isn't it?

montbeliard chateau ecole musique

My first composition with live electronics

Plex is a composition for solo instrument and live electronics. The live electronics may be played either by the soloist, or by a second performer. I performed the premiere on clarinet and live electronics in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, on June 23rd, 2003.

The next performance took place on October 26th, 2003, in Weimar, Germany, during the festival "16. Tage neuer Musik". The Montbéliard Interactive Music Ensemble was invited, and we played a basset-horn version (I play a Buffet-Crampon model), with Hans Tutschku performing the live electronics part. We recorded a similar version in Le Palot, Montbéliard, during the afternoon of December 5th, 2003. Click play to listen:

Live extreme time stretching

In Plex, the soloist plays a 10-second musical phrase spread with live electronics over 6 minutes (these 10 seconds are played back 36 times slower without transposition.) To achieve this extreme time stretching, I programmed a special phase vocoder in Max/MSP. Additional spectral sound processing is applied, as shown on this schematic score:

Plex music score

Plex is a "live electronics" implementation of the concept of formula composition. I dedicated the basset-horn version to Karlheinz Stockhausen. Indeed, he and Suzanne Stephens have made a great contribution to the basset-horn litterature.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Max for Live: Extreme Time Stretching with Spectral Stretch

Image
In this post, I'm giving insights into the creation of the Spectral Stretch Max for Live Device . There are many ways to achieve audio time stretching without transposition . Some time-based methods build on Pierre Schaefer 's Phonogène . Another approach consists in processing the sound in spectral domain, using a phase vocoder . In this case, the audio samples are converted to spectral data through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Then, even if we focus on extreme time stretching, the details of the phase vocoder implementation have important consequences on the sound quality and the tool's flexibility for live usage. Before introducing the Max for Live device Spectral Stretch, let's have a look at a selection of four possible algorithms: Paulstretch Max Live Phase Vocoder Interpolation between recorded spectra Stochastic Re-synthesis from a recorded sonogram Paulstretch Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch , also known as Paulstretch , is an algorithm designed ...
Read more

A Free Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter

Image
When I discovered electronic music during the Centre Acanthes 2000/Ircam , my favorite topic was real time sound processing in frequency domain. Hans Tutschku taught the wonders of AudioSculpt in Avignon, before Benjamin Thigpen taught Max/MSP in Helsinki. Now, the Computer Music Journal just published an article I wrote about spectral sound processing in real time and performance time ( whereas real-time treatments are applied on a live sound stream, performance-time treatments are transformations of sound files that are generated during a performance ). If you are interested in graphical sound synthesis, phase vocoder , and sonograms (or spectrograms) , I hope you will enjoy this tutorial. The great news is that you can download the article for free on the page of the Computer Music Journal, Issue 32, Volume 3 . Max/MSP/Jitter patches You can readily apply the described techniques in the development environment Max/MSP/Jitter . For a hands-on approach, make sure you download t...
Read more

Freeze a sound with Max/MSP/Jitter

Image
In April 2008, I was invited by composers Eric Chasalow and Maxwell Dulaney to give a 2-day seminar on spectral sound processing techniques at Brandeis University Music Department . A topic the music students particularly enjoyed was the frozen sound , the audio equivalent of the cinematic " freeze frame shot ". I taught the nuts and bold of the real-time stochastic spectral freeze technique (the stochastic component is aimed at breaking the ice - with the audience). On this video , discover 5 variations on a Max/MSP/Jitter freeze tool: Downloads Note: the Max patches available here have been completely revamped since this article & video were initially published. New Spectral Freeze Max MSP Jitter patches (link updated Nov. 2019) A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing with Max/MSP and Jitter: Computer Music Journal, Fall 2008 Syllabus The program for just two 3-hour workshops was quite ambitious! April 14th Overview of the topic : “ Spectral processing...
Read more