Livecoding Audacity

Had a slightly crazy idea for the TidalClub Night Stream on 2022-12-21 – could I livecode something in Audacity?!?

Obviously the answer is basically no, as you can’t edit anything in Audacity while it is playing. So, instead, the plan is to use some of the things in the Generate menu to improvise some sounds: the Risset Drum, Rhythm Track, DTMF Tones and so on.

Once I have a minute’s worth I, save out a mixdown to disk. Then, I have a script running in SuperCollider that waits a minute, then reloads the latest file exported from Audacity. So, in theory, I have a minute to create the next layer in Audacity while the last layer is playing.

For some reason, I decided to bill the performance as a ‘dangdut’, so I also have some simple algorithmically generated dangdut-ish material ready to go in SuperCollider that can be played alongside the much more abstract Audacity material.

Quick proof-of-concept video:

The Longest Night

I’ve been teaching some of the composition students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland how to livecode in Estuary, and we’re going to do a short set as part of The Longest Night. Here’s the test I just did for that, which sort of counts as another one of my tiny estuary jams – not a very interesting one!

Gamelan samples

This is just a quick post to pull together links to a number of places online where I have offered up gamelan sounds for download. It’s all a bit chaotic! Most of these are from the pelog Spirit of Hope instruments in Glasgow, sometimes retuned. Some of them may be from other sources that I’ve forgotten about.

From my perspective, these are all inteneded to be CC0 ‘No rights reserved’ – you can do what you like with them!

If I’ve accidentally uploaded someone else’s sample here and you want me to take it down, please let me know.

https://freesound.org/people/tedthetrumpet/packs/14/

https://freesound.org/people/tedthetrumpet/packs/1797/

https://archive.org/details/so-h-gamelan-gongs-drums-etc-pelog

https://archive.org/details/sohgamelanbalunganpelog

https://github.com/tedthetrumpet/Perang-Gagal/tree/master/SuperCollider/arum

Radio Automata

Here’s the collaboration that Bill Whitmer and I did for Radiophrenia

Livecoding with Robert Henderson

Improviser Núria Andorrà visited Glasgow in March to teach on the International Collaboration in Contemporary Improvisation module at the Royal Conservatoire of Glasgow. My colleage Una McGlone took the opportunity to organise a gig for her at Hairdressers, in collaboration with a number of Glasgow improvisers.

I did a short set alongside trumpet player Robert Henderson, who I have known for many years: in fact, I know him from the period around twenty years ago where I myself was active as a gigging trumpet player! For this performance, I used a bank of sounds that I have created using purely mechanical sounds from a trumpet, the metal, valves, valve slides and so forth. It’s always slightly problematic livecoding alongide an actual analog musician, as it is not easy to respond particularly rapidly to another player. However, Robert and I enjoyed playing together and managed to create some satisfying musical gestures together.

No recording made, unfortunately!

ICLC 2019 Madrid

Some reflections on the International Conference on Livecoding 2019 in Madrid.

The play-and-tell workshop that I helped put together with Evan Raskob and Renick Bell was, as intended, a low key and informal way for people to share their individual practices in livecode. Of particular interest to me was Dimitris Kyriakoudis showing how he uses heavily customised keyboard shortcuts in emacs as a way to be completely fluent when performing: as he put it, ‘typing should not get in the way of livecoding performance’. There were also some very interesting links to my mind between his Timelines system  – ‘all music is a function of time’ and Neil C Smith‘s ‘AMEN $ Mother Function‘ performance that worked by chopping up a wavetable as a function of time.

As well as that session, I also had input to a paper entitled ‘Towards Improving Collaboration Between Visualists and Musicians at Algoraves‘ co-authored by – deep breath – Zoyander Street, Alejandro Albornoz, Renick Bell, Guy John, Olivia Jack, Shelly Knotts, Alex McLean, Neil C Smith, Atsushi Tadokoro, J. S. van der Walt and Gabriel Rea Velasco. The creation of this paper was itself an interesting process, beginning with a conversation in Sheffield, and then continuing with us writing the paper collaboratively in a shared online space. Guy presented the paper, you can see that here.

A stand-out performance for me was Maia Koenig‘s ‘RRayen’, using some sort of hand-held games console. Great energy: I can’t seem to find a video of her performing at ICLC, but here she is doing the piece elsewhere.

Of the many new livecoding systems presented, I was rather taken by Balázs Kovács slighly bonkers Makkeróni ‘web-based audio operating system’, kind of like an online shared bash shell that plays music.

Also very interesting was Alejandro Franco and Diego Villaseñor and presenting their Nanc-in-a-Can Canon Generator. The cultural backround was fascinating, with an attention to reclaim Nancarrow as a Mexican composer as explained in the talk.

I’ve never been to Madrid before, but found it was an easy place to be: dry, cold, comfortable and easy to get around. ICLC 2020 is to be in Limerick, fairly local for me, so I’ll be looking to present or perform there as well.

Raving the netbook again

Once again happily proving to myself how possible it is to work with open-source software on basic hardware. Just upgraded to Ubuntu Studio 18.04 on a refurb 11″ Dell Inspiron netbook, and built SuperCollider 3.9.3 from source. Here’s an algorave-ish test track made using this setup:

https://clyp.it/5d3lo4na

Some new code idioms:

Plazy({Pseq((0..15).scramble,4)}).repeat(inf)

is easier to type than

Pn(Plazy({Pseq((0..15).scramble,4)}))

and similarly

Pseq([2,6,4,7],inf).stutter(32)

instead of

Pstutter(32, Pseq([2,6,4,7],inf))

also

Pseq((0..15).scramble,inf).clump(3)