[PD] Pd "monosymphonia"

Andrew Faraday jbturgid at hotmail.com
Sun Jun 26 01:32:27 CEST 2011


Hey Pders
I've been messing with the idea of combining dynamic patching and generative music. And after a few hours of work I've come up with a patch (attached) which uses some rules to build a randomly generated piece of music who's result I'm rather fond of. 
On opening the patch, a 4-number array is generated, with a choice of 1 single note to choose from. It's played by a simple sine oscillator, then a second iteration generates a second array, choosing from 2 notes (adding one a semitone above), plays the two arrays in order, then generates a third, with 3 notes to choose from, and so on. 
As the piece progresses, the choice of notes playing through a sequence that's always a low drone, expanding out to a more tangible mid-range, usually coming up with melodic fragments, and then starting to use some higher-pitched sounds. And all the time the feedback on a delay unit on the output, of the system. 
When the range of notes reaches 127, the feedback jumps from 60% to 90%, changing the mood of the piece significantly, building to a harsh climax, each frequency range of notes lasting into the next and gains more significance. Like the perceived voices vying for position. 
Eventually, when a note above midi 127 is played, the synth stops, and the delay tail gradually fades out. 
I've found this to be an unusually structured and dramatic piece of generative patching. Initially a low drone, which pushes out and explores into melodies, building ideas, and being repeatedly pushed back to it's initial form. Then building into a repeating and expanding set of phases. getting louder and busier. Then a change brings this to a head, and signifies to the audience that the piece could end on any phase, building excitment to an inevitable but always unexpected end. 


Sorry, I've written quite a lot about this, but I thought the PD list might be interested... If anyone could spare about 15 minutes to listen to the patch in action, I'd love to hear what you think of the artistic result.

Thanks in advance.
Andrew 
P.S. I do realize that I could clean this up a great deal. The addition of [table] objects could just as easily be a single expanding array, I could hide modules away in sub patches and the sliders used for visualization could be more efficiently done with gem.  		 	   		  
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