Fruition

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"I love it when a plan comes together"

This piece is the result of some months of planning, recording, frustration, and tinkering.

The aim of the piece was to challenge the sublimation of the human body by technology in electroacoustic music. This was done by using a performance by contemporary dancer Liv O'Donoghue as the primary input for the piece. MIDI information was generated by her movements using the Gestural Music Sequencer. This triggered a software piano, and a sampler containing audio of her performance.

No Input Mixing

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I first heard of this technique two years ago, but it only surfaced in my memory again when my friend, Stephen White released an experimental EP featuring this technique among others. The idea also showed up in a blog post I was reading, spurring me on to grab the Spirit Folio desk in college and have a quick go of NIMB (No Input Mixing Board) myself. I was impressed with the depth of sound you could get, particularly the buzzy saw bass I've posted below. I'd like to get further into the technique employing some guitar effects pedals etc. The Pro Tools plug ins didn't offer much flexibility for such a tactile way of making sound.

**Audio since deleted**

'No Input Mixing' is a form of composition involving plugging the outputs of a mixer boards back into the inputs of it's channels and controlling the subsequent feedback for musical purposes. While this may sound like a quick route to a migraine, the results can be surprisingly pleasant when controlled by an expert such as Toshimaru Nakamuru:

Gestures

Another great piece of software I've been using for the same composition mentioned in my previous post, is the Gestural Music Sequencer.

This little gem will take a video feed, live or pre-recorded, and generate MIDI information based on the brightest point of the image. It's very simple to use, requiring only the IAC bus to activated to route it to your DAW of choice for gestural MIDI goodness.

Scales, keys, note, note value and rest probabilities can all be programmed, and my results so far have been very musical.

One small hiccup I experience when using pre-recorded material, is that the resolution must be 640x480 for the bright point to be tracked accurately.