[PD] Res: Res: music made with Pd

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Eduardo Patricio wrote:

> The chorus effect is interesting, I believe it contributes to the timbre 
> you're building. I like the lower pitches too. But I like the previous 
> sound better.

I also miss the original non-chorus sound, so, I'm wondering whether I 
could use both at once. It's very similar to trying to use a 6-string 
guitar and a 12-string guitar at once while not being able to choose 
between the two. I suppose that this is what originally led people to want 
two-neck guitars... ;)

> In the previous version the timbre is more clear, bright and detached 
> from the drumming background, I like that.

Well, there are several differences that I didn't state, perhaps some that 
I don't remember. I messed around with the instrument itself in ways I 
just don't remember, that changed the sharpness of the sound. Also, the 
doubling of the bells itself changes the sharpness of the sound, because 
of the various cancellations it causes (tremolo by battements).

And then I changed the drumming background somewhat, because it sounded 
too random. There's a probabilistic effect that causes the "bass drum" 
impression to be unusually loud in a random way, and too often way too 
quiet. So I turned off the noisificator in the case of the drums, but I 
still use it in the bells.

> Maybe you could find a way to explore both, low and high pitches,

At this point, you know, each version of the piece spans over four 
octaves. Thus the difference between the two versions, which is only one 
octave, seems not very significant in comparison. But it ends up sounding 
quite different, perhaps most importantly because there's a very strong 
«home pitch» in this piece, that you keep on hearing all of the time.

> creating variation. In general, I believe that if you could do this, 
> variation, connected to some sort of underneath developing formal 
> structure (which means you could say, my music goes from here to 
> somewhere else, tracing lines...), this tune would be even better.

I'm still wondering about this one, but it's probably because I haven't 
tried much yet in that direction. But if I start messing with the pitches 
more, it may hide the underlying structure too much, quite easily, so I 
have to be careful.

> One element you could try to vary could be the selected pitches. What is 
> your present criteria for the pitches?

Binary coding mapped to subsets of a certain set of intervals, each of 
which is then summed. I tried a few different base sets, then settled for 
something that would give pentatonics and octave patterns.

> Maybe you could use different sets of them, each one with strong 
> intervallic characteristics, for different "sections" of your tune...

It would de-emphasise the fact that all the measures are connected by a 
magic pattern that constantly refers to parts of itself throughout the 
piece. It's a kind of fractal score, almost.

Actually, part of the score appeared as a stock photo in a newspaper 
recently, which I saw on the same day you wrote that mail :

   http://www.cyberpresse.ca/images/bizphotos/569x379/201006/12/178123.jpg

(really.)

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| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801