[PD] Dynamic pitch-shifting performance/recording(s) with Pd

[Maurice Rickard]

Hi everyone, 

A few weeks ago I did a temporary installation with Pd at the second International Conference on Deep Listening at RPI in Troy NY.   The piece involved two microphones going into a Pd patch I've been constructing/tweaking for a bit over a year, in which inputs go to multiple ring modulators and then to multiple pitch shifters, then to two delays and multiple outputs.  In this case, it was six ring mods and six pitch shifters, two delays, and four outputs.  All of the parameters (ring mod carrier frequency, % ring mod, pitch shift target, window size, pre-delay, post-delay send, panning in quad, post-delay time/regen/return) were randomized within ranges, and the times between random updates were themselves randomized for each parameter.  

I set up in a hallway so people would have to walk through it, and I'd invited people to make sounds, which worked well--people played with it, singing, clapping hands, using pocket ocarinas...maybe the most surprising sound was from percussionist and educator Leaf Miller, who tore a sheet of paper in front of the microphone--that was a great sound.   

One problem with the hallway, though was fighting the standing wave feedback; I'd put in a notch filter to deal with the root frequency.  But that got me thinking, since I'd had a performance coming up, that instead of fighting feedback, I'd embrace it the next time I'd use the patch.  These are recordings from this performance, in which the sound source was feedback from the PA I was performing through.  I used two mics, waving one them around in front of the PA while manipulating the mic gain, overall maximum update time, stopping some random updates, sometimes selecting static preset values.  I set up a lot of line objects for changing values, so generally the transitions were smooth, but they could happen quickly, particularly with the low max-time-to-next-update values. 

The performance is here: http://snwv.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-garfield-artworks-july-27-2014

But I also like a version that's slowed down to 1/4-speed (and dropped two octaves): http://snwv.bandcamp.com/album/july-27-2014-1-4-speed

Enjoy. 



Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com | http://onezeromusic.com | http://snwv.bandcamp.com