Max/MSP

This project presents a model to sonify data. It uses a multichannel audio system to create a spatial illusion of the presence of the sound source. This in order to present with a way of translating information from other domains into sound, at the same time that the spatial position conveys information also from this data.

The explosion of 20th-century technology, especially in the second half (IBM Computers), initially helped Universities & Research Centers to study a wide range of scientific fields. People like Max Mathews and John Chowning, using the programming languages of the time (e.g. MUSIC-V), researched and developed theories which become part of our music culture through a plethora of Synthesizers (Yamaha DX7, PPG Wave, etc.). This development has led us today to the combination of Hardware and Inside the Box philosophy (DAW, plug-ins, VST-i), with many of the VST-i inevitably inspired by Hardware Synthesizers.
This thesis examines four of the primary sound synthesis techniques (Additive, Subtractive, FM, Wavetable) and helps the user apply them to a synthesizer. My goal is not to create an "ultimate" synthesizer, but through the simple synthesizers (Max Patches) that I developed, to understand better the behaviour of sound synthesis techniques and how synthesizers work.

The portfolio contains seven compositions with varying instrumentation, ranging from string quartet to computer processed voice ensemble to purely electronic forces. Fata Morgana is the largest work in the portfolio and written for female voice ensemble, percussion and live computer processing or tape. Its main concern is that of extending the human voice via the auditory illusion of the Shepard’s tone. String Quartet No 1 contains excessive glissade to expose microtonal qualities. Haute Rorschach, When all memory is gone, Drift, Gala and Mutation 2 all explore complex and unique microtonal tuning systems and are written with instrumentation left relatively open ended: given certain conditions, both acoustic and electronic forces are able to perform it.
The most prominent compositional aspect that features in the portfolio is an approach towards the experience of movement in terms of colour, form, texture and space. Material consists of lines and curves such as glissandi or the Shepard’s tone auditory illusion, pitch fields, waves, pulses, flickering morphologies, distorted glows, morphs and slow transformations. This material originates from focusing on the internal properties of sounds, for example, the use of microtonal intervals that are clustered to produce beating patterns, third tones and unique colors. Macro forms are determined by this material and range from drone to simplistic, repetitive gestures. The final approach is a focus on the experience of sound in and as space: most pieces feature artificial acoustics as prominent part of the material and overall texture.

Since Barry Truax’s early pioneering work, the increasing availability of powerful and inexpensive desktop computers has led many composers, researchers and artists to experiment and work with granular synthesis and/or granulation processes. During the last two decades a stream of granulation software has appeared, but despite this spread, all these applications have important limitations in terms of efficiency, usability, flexibility and control. This paper describes an abstraction of an efficient and flexible granular processing system built into the Max/MSP environment.

As tecnologias desenvolvidas para aplicações musicais no século XX exerceram influência direta na expansão de gêneros musicais. Sobretudo no rock, o grau de dependência entre a sonoridade de um artista e a tecnologia por ele utilizada é grande, o que gera problemas para uma manutenção de uma mesma marca acústica nas diversas situações de prática musical: no ensaio, no estúdio e na apresentação ao vivo. Para abordar tal problema, as tecnologias digitais (e, principalmente, o computador) servem como uma grande ferramenta por possuírem algumas características, tais como: portabilidade; maior facilidade no armazenamento de dados, manutenção e atualização; maiores possibilidades de uso de recursos provenientes do processamento de sinais; maior possibilidade de interação, entre outras. A banda SOMBA – um representante do gênero pop/rock – se propôs a percorrer e experimentar algumas dessas possibilidades que as tecnologias digitais atuais podem fornecer, procurando se definir musicalmente através de (entre outros fatores) uma marca sonora. Isso se concretiza com a elaboração de uma programação – desenvolvida e detalhada ao longo deste trabalho – no ambiente Max/MSP, com a diluição de fronteiras entre funções no processo musical e com o desenvolvimento de um trabalho fonográfico e performático utilizando a programação desenvolvida.

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The technologies developed for musical applications in the 20th century influenced directly the expansion of musical genres. Overall in rock, there’s a high dependence degree between an artist’s sonority and the technology used in it. This generates a problem to the maintenance of the same acoustical mark in the various situations of practical music: in rehearsals, in studio and in live performances. As an approach of this issue, the digital technologies (and, mainly, the computer) is a great tool, with its characteristics such as: portability; an easier data storage, maintenance and upgrading; more possibilities in the use of signal processing resources; more possibilities of interaction, and others. The band called SOMBA – a pop/rock band – considered to cover and research some of the possibilities that the current digital technologies can supply, in a way so it can define itself musically through (among others factors) a sonorous mark. This occurs with the elaboration of a patch – detailed through this work – in Max/MSP, with the dilution of borders between functions in the musical process and with the development of a phonographic and performer work using the designed patch.

(Computer Music Department Peabody Conservatory Of The Johns Hopkins University)


Introduction
This commentary is about my work at the Peabody Conservatory spanning the years 1993–1999. What I learned and experienced at Peabody helped transform me from a traditional pianist and organist into a contemporary computer music performer, with significantly enhanced career opportunities.

I began my computer music studies at Peabody by studying piano and tape music. I was impressed by the pioneering nature of the early electronic music composers, whose work not only advanced the field of composition, but also introduced electronic music to performers. I performed Jean Eichelberger Ivey’s Skaniadaryo and James Mobberley’s Caution to the Winds in one of my Master degree recitals, and discovered my deep interest in performing piano and tape pieces. Chapter 1 discusses my work in music for piano and tape.

Interactive computer music pieces were my next focus after the music for piano and tape. One of my main projects at the conservatory was Jean-Claude Risset’s Duet for One Pianist. This piece was written for an interactive computer music system consisting of a Yamaha Disklavier (an acoustic MIDI piano), Max computer music software, and Apple Macintosh Computer. Although Duet for One Pianist contained many performance problems due to incompatibility of computer systems, I finally was able to perform the piece by rewriting the computer code to be compatible with contemporary hardware and software. I learned from this experience the need to combine a variety of musical and technical skills in order to accomplish this performance project. I had to combine and apply knowledge I learned from many classes in the computer music master degree program including: “The History of Musical Notation,” “The History of Musical Instruments,” “Synthesizer Theory,” “Computer Music Programming,” “Ear Training,” and even the “Publishing on the Internet.” I explain my approach to the research and the performance of Risset’s Duet for One Pianist in Chapter 2. In relation to this work, I also gained the ability of designing and performing interactive computer music, and have shared this competence with other composers in the computer music department.

I collaborated on an interactive computer music work—Microstructure—with composer Cheon Wook Kim. Microstructure was written for piano, MIDI keyboard, computer- generated sounds, and interactive electronics. In this collaboration, we learned from each other’s musical capabilities and realized our intentions for a variety of interactive computer music techniques. Microstructure won the third prize of the 1997–98 Prix d’Eté Competition.

I wrote this commentary in the year after I finished all the classes and recitals. During that year I also have been employed as a professional Internet media director in the Northern Virginia area of the United States of America. Since I have been working in high-technology business, I realize that my study at the Peabody Computer Music Department not only helped my musical career, but also my profession in the Internet business industry. Because of the flexible curriculum at Peabody, I was able to study many different kinds of up-to-date technology, and many other fields of art as well as music. In the appendix of this commentary, I have enclosed some of my visual artwork I produced during my years at Peabody. Also included as an appendix is a multimedia CD- ROM recording of my computer music recitals, in Microsoft Windows Media Player2 files format.
Many special thanks to the following people who helped me accomplish my Master degree commentary and recitals: Dr. Geoffrey Wright, Dr. Ichiro Fujinaga, Dr. McGregor Boyle, Dr Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Dr. Susan Weiss, Ms. Cheon Wook Kim, Mr. Seung Hyun Yun, Mr. Charles B. Kim, Mr. Mark Huang, Ms. Ruth Kuo, and especially to my parents, Ms. Ly-Hwi Ong and Mr. Moa-Sumg Li, who are the first two people who showed me the beauty of music and love.

Questo progetto di Tesi nasce nell’ambito della collaborazione esistente da qualche anno fra Politecnico di Torino e Scuola di Musica Elettronica(SMET) del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” di Torino. L’argomento alla base di questa tesi è la sonificazione del bio-feedback raccolto sulla superficie di un vegetale. Le piante e la vita vegetale, in generale, hanno sempre vissuto sul nostro pianeta in parallelo alle vicende umane, quasi come testimoni silenziosi del corso della storia. Dalla maestosità del millenario albero alla piccola e umile pianta grassa sulle nostre scrivanie, in qualche modo i vegetali ci osservano ed entrano in relazione con noi. Le devastanti conseguenze del global warming, della deforestazione incontrollata e dell'inquinamento, stanno mettendo a dura prova il convivere pacifico di questa relazione. Anche da questa necessità nasce l'esigenza personale di trovare una chiave diversa di lettura al convivere uomo-vegetale. Valutando la differenza di potenziale presente sulla superficie di un vegetale, è possibile estrapolare un'emissione dalla pianta. Questo lavoro nasce dalla necessità di utilizzare tale metodo di sonificazione come parte integrante di una performance artistica che comprenda, fra i suoi temi portanti, la necessità di un approccio sostenibile al quotidiano e l'esplorazione di nuove forme di relazione uomo-pianta. Questo elaborato di tesi raccoglie le strutture concettuali alla base della preparazione preliminare di tale performance. Nel Capitolo 1 si trattano le basi e i ragionamenti che hanno portato alla volontà di progettare una performance che comprenda l'utilizzo di bio-feedback raccolti da vegetali e verranno approfonditi i pilastri concettuali alla base di tale esibizione. In seguito nel Capitolo 2 è esposto l’articolarsi storico delle ricerche scientifiche alla base di tale tecnologia e alla base di come la musica interferisce con il regno vegetale. Poi nel capitolo 3 saranno valutate le diverse tecnologie, esistenti ad ora sul mercato, che trasformano in musica le bio-emissioni delle piante. Successivamente è riportata l'esposizione delle ricerche e dei test effettuati per la progettazione della performance. In particolare, nel capitolo 4 è approfondita la parte di realizzazione hardware tramite Arduino UNO e, nel capitolo 5, gli algoritmi e le logiche software utilizzate, con un approfondimento ulteriore sull'implementazione in Ableton Live Suite e Max/MSP. Infine, nel capitolo 6, è stato realizzato un breve studio acustico su un possibile ambiente esistente dove si vorrebbe eseguire tale performance.

《五月》故事為一位母親與兩個孩子抽象式的對話。生死、選擇、 執念、記憶、失憶為框架，闡述人類無止境的人性追求。 作曲風格將以實驗電 子音樂與異響為基調，全音音階與非調性交錯。

為結合跨媒材製作的電子實驗音樂劇，包含影音、與多種混合樂風(古典、搖滾、 電子實驗)。 創作音樂劇之未來演出編制：製作人員:音樂總監、編曲人員、錄音人員、舞監、技術人員、音響設計、舞台 設計、化妝、造型等。 演出人員:一位女高音、一位嘻哈歌手、一位民謠歌手、 與舞團、合唱團、DJ 電子異響、VJ 實驗影像、燈光、音響等約 18 人。（人數因經費而異動）

作曲方式同時融合電腦音樂互動程式（Max MSP)，力求由演算法創作的音樂同時能與人性的敘事性融合，特別是在音色的調變上，帶給觀眾嶄新的音樂戲劇聽覺經驗。並藉由此作，讓大眾、新生代創作者得以有機會聆聽不同音樂領域創作方式的結合。

Public art, that is physically and freely accessible to the public, raises challenges for the artists and the audiences. Artists should take into consideration the diversity of the audiences, the special conditions of the exhibition and the environmental characteristics. Public art relates to the context in which it is placed and can embrace all art forms and has no boundaries as it expands continuously. Threa 2020 is a sound art installation and this case study reveals a repository of concerns for the year 2020 through an open-ended approach to interactive sound art installation. This case study serves as a tool for the reconstruction of the real world challenges posed by the outcome of the sound art installation Threa 2020.

A new electroacoustic composition-Travessia (2020)-relies on a well-known urban soundscape of Lisbon: the sound radiated from the 25 de Abril bridge. As with many soundscape compositions, the sonic reality captured in situ serves as the basis for subsequent manipulative procedures. Although exploring those procedures, the focus of this article is on the human/machine interface, especially important in electroacoustic music composition. Building on previous research on the use of algorithms in music-making, an analysis of compositional processes is carried out in connection with their associated aesthetic decisions and implications, providing new insights into composing with computers.

In this paper we present some technical aspects on the virtual masks created by the composer Georgia Spiropoulos for the needs of Les Bacchantes (IRCAM, 2010), a solo opera for one performer, tape and live electronics. In The Bacchæ the performer interprets four different characters within the interactive environment in Max/MSP. The “vocal masks” are seen as a metaphor of Euripides’ dramatic personae in which masks  of the same actor are used as virtual scores which register the vocal trace of the performer and give further vocal agility, extensibility, mutation, multiplication and augmented vocality.

This chapter examines computer assisted analysis and composition (CAAC) techniques
in relation to the composition of my piece TreeTorika for chamber orchestra. I describe
methods for analysing the musical features of a recording of a speech by Mao Zedong,
in order to extract compositional material such as global form, melody, harmony and
rhythm, and for developing rhythmic material. The first part focuses on large-scale
segmentation, melody transcription, quantification and quantization. Automatic tran-
scription of the voice was discarded in favour of an aural method using tools in Amadeus
and Max/MSP. The data were processed in OpenMusic to optimise the accuracy and
readability of the notation. The harmonic context was derived from the transcribed
melody and from AudioSculpt partial tracking and chord sequence analyses. The second
part of this chapter describes one aspect of computer assisted composition, that is the use
of the rhythm constraint library in OpenMusic to develop polyrhythmic textures. The
flexibility of these techniques allowed the computer to assist me in all but the final phases
of the work. In addition, attention is given to the artistic and political implications of
using recordings of such a disputed public figure as Mao.

oggetti II (2021), written between November 17 and December 7, 2021 for the TACETi Ensemble and Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, is the second work in a larger cycle exploring concise musical objects, gestures, and formal constellations. Over time, my compositional process has become increasingly introspective and critical—thus, oggetti II is an attempt to re-capture the spirit of my earlier works with a more spontaneous and economical nature. oggetti I (Omaggio a Sciarrino) for wind quintet and antistasis for Ensemble Nikel were composed nearly simultaneously in a 10-day period during the summer of 2014 in NYC. Many concepts and compositional devices are shared, but not musical materials. antistasis, meaning opposition, is a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase in a different or contrary sense. This was poetically translated through the repetition of a small number of musical gestures, or objects, continually recurring and recontextualized so as to contribute to the composite in different ways. oggetti I and now oggetti II both function in a similar manner, drawing upon extremely limited materials reconfigured in various ways, something like a musical jigsaw puzzle.

Advancements in digital computing have allowed the amplification of the organic body as musical instrument. This dissertation explores human-computer musical interfaces (i.e., alternate controllers) through the view of the body and describes music composition using digital technology through physical movement. The dissertation aims to 1) develop a framework for body–digital technology–sound discourse and 2) describe a collection of software tools, digital musical instruments, and music that demonstrates this framework.

Chapter 1 frames alternate controller digital musical instruments around the body, and Chapter 2 looks at physical movement through its numerical representation inside the computer, discussing how the digital byproducts of movement help shape our musical choices. Chapter 3 describes software tools for aiding digital sound composition on digital musical instruments. Chapter 4 outlines a digital musical instrument composition and performance practice, and Chapter 5 builds from Baruch Spinoza, Shaun Gallagher, and Mark Johnson to dissolve mind and body divides in the act of composition on digital musical instruments. Chapter 6 further explores how the rich palette of body movement can become a musical voice with a report on a new musical instrument, Distance-X. The final chapter revisits a concept central to digital musical instruments, the movement of data, in order to describe how pre-existing digital information can be set into musical motion.

Working from the embrace of physical bodies inside our digital lens can help acknowledge the complex and different stories that make-up our musical communities. Physical Composition strives to address the concerns and the capacities of these bodies and endeavors to stand as a model for achieving symbiosis between performer and digital sound. This dissertation seeks to affirm physical resistance in a digital music practice and depict how Physical Composition is both an art of the moving body and an art of composing sound.

Balaenoptera is a piece of mine for bass clarinet, electronic sounds and live electronics. This paper describes the use of live electronics through a detailed illustration of Max/MSP patches devoted to that aim. After the description of main patch interface, all five quadraphonic audio effects are examined showing the figure of the corresponding patch and illustrating it: a real time granulator, a quadraphonic player, a freeze reverb, a real time stretcher, a tap delay with transposition. In conclusion structural relations among instrumental part, electronic sounds and live electronics setting are analyzed.

all-forgetting-is-retrieval (2019)
by Jason Thorpe Buchanan
for mixed septet, augmented conductor, and electronics
Commissioned by the TACETi Ensemble for the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium
World Premiere July 8, 2019, Bangkok, Thailand
https://vimeo.com/386270819
More at jasonthorpebuchanan.com

"all-forgetting-is-retrieval" was commissioned by the TACETi Ensemble for the 2019 Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) in Bangkok. This work explores the formation of human memory, retrieval, and failure, drawing from two sources. The first was a passage titled “Myth of Permanent Memory” from Richard A. Chechile’s book 'Analyzing Memory: The Formation, Retention, and Measurement of Memory': “There is a common belief that forgetting is strictly due to a retrieval failure. It is curious why this idea of a permanent memory is so appealing...the storage of information is not perfect. Storage as well as retrieval is subject to failure. Thus, the hypothesis that all-forgetting-is-retrieval is incorrect. For information in this state of permanent [long-term] memory, all subsequent forgetting is assumed to be caused by a retrieval failure. Yet...there is no known biological mechanism to stop the adaptive changes in memory from continuing and thereby possibly destroying the prior learning record. If the learning environment changes, the same adaptive mechanisms that created the memory in the first place will continue to rearrange the structure of memory and potentially destroy the former memory representation.”
  The second source is dialogue from a 1978 ephemeral film, 'Human Memory', by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, used as sonic material for the electronics throughout the work, written for eight musicians including a conductor and percussionist who have been augmented by contact microphones and wearable electronics to trigger and govern the behavior of temporal events and media, manipulated through the use of wrist-worn sensors and gestural tracking mapped onto discrete musical parameters. The title is both perplexing and quickly disproven in the above passage, reflecting the strange and unfamiliar space that, for me, the piece inhabits, with “failures” both large and small. Artistically, my apprehension toward falling into familiar patterns and relying on my past compositional work shares a similar cognitive and emotional space as “lost” experiences—the inability to be truly present in a moment, or failure to commit to memory experiences that are simultaneously both formative and fleeting. The rapid loss of their fidelity is staggering, and this work attempts to confront that impermanence and decay. To reflect this, I was interested in both paraphrasing and sampling elements of my past work, alongside the recontextualization of “found” media and sonic material deeply familiar to me. How can we be certain of things we have experienced, and that the events that took place were not, in fact, radically different than what we remember? These inaccuracies and discrepancies that form over time through internal repetition, how information storage and retrieval may be influenced by context, and what kind of experience might interrupt a memory from being formed, are explored.
  “The subject of our film is memory. Imagine what your mental life would be like if you had no memory at all.” A man, facing away from the camera, is introduced as “Mr. M.” to Dr. Christopher Ryan and Kathy Montgomery. He claims to recall encountering them before. Immediately following their introductions, Mr. M is asked if he remembers this gentleman’s name, to which he responds “Yes I do.” “What’s his name”…[a long silence]… “No I don’t.” The film’s narrator explains “this patient has suffered brain damage which destroyed his memory. Notice how he fails even the simplest memory test.” He is encouraged to practice reciting their names. The narrator elaborates that “such amnesiacs provide us with a dramatic illustration of the role that memory plays in keeping us in touch with the changing world around us. You might think of your short-term memory as a workbench or countertop onto which you place a box corresponding to each chunk as you attend to it. There’s only a limited amount of space on the counter, so eventually adding a new chunk onto the counter causes some other ones to fall off…”

For human–computer interaction, most devices use the fingers, sometimes the whole hand. And short of organ pedals, the fingers remain the primary source of triggering musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) synthesizers. This project offers an alternative in using the color intensity and hue controlled through objects manipulated or worn as clothing or ornament by the human body, as detected by a camera across the several zones of the video image. The method is explained in this report, along with pitfalls, perturbations, as well as performance and paradigm.

La tesi " In Genesi col Dubbio" espone ideologicamente il tema del tempo e di come l'uomo si relaziona ad esso attraverso uno degli elementi che lo caratterizzano lungo il corso della sua vita, il Dubbio. L'opera musicale omonima fornisce un'interpretazione artistica fornendosi della geometria frattale come tramite tra pensiero razionale ed arte musicale concettuale, spiegando il percorso compositivo, tra idea e tecnologia applicata.

Originally composed by Marcello Messina, Ntrallazzu is a cycle of pieces for live score and electronics built on Max, and involving various instrumental line-ups. In particular, Ntrallazzu 4 was performed by Luzilei Aliel on the pífano and electric guitar in São João del Rei during the VIII UbiMus workshop. Aliel’s particular setup also involved a further layer of processing: namely, the usage of Pure Data alongside Ableton Live in order to literally hijack the original piece and open a whole set of unforeseen possibilities that abundantly transcend the original intentions. In this paper, we signify our experience by means of the concept of comprovisation, while we situate Ntrallazzu 4 within the domain of ubiquitous music.

The ocean is a mysterious world that is not easy to reach. However, people have a curiosity for this strange deep world and would like to know what kind of marine creatures live in the deep ocean, especially children. Also, we are not satisfied by the traditional study experience, like just looking at pictures, to get to know the sea animals, we want to make the learning process more interesting and more interactive. Using motion capture technology, we developed an interactive marine-life education system for children to enhance the experience for them to learn different kinds of sea animals.
Marine World is an interactive multimedia system based on motion capture technology. It’s used to help children learn about the different types of sea life that live in all parts of the sea. In the installment, you walk on a virtual water pool that creates ripples wherever you step. In the water, there are sketches of different types of sea life, and if you stand over them, interesting facts about that animal appear on the wall display in front of you. We believe that by doing this process in the different “levels” of the sea, children can learn something new.

Pretende-se com este artigo contribuir para a reflexão sobre a criação como forma de comunicação. O seu conteúdo tem como suporte a investigação realizada no contexto do Mestrado em Criação Artística Contemporânea da Universidade de Aveiro. Esta reflexão, mais que responder, pretende levantar um conjunto de questões pertinentes ligadas ao campo da actual criação artística.
O início da Idade Moderna trouxe um novo Homem, antropocêntrico. Consigo, a ideia de autor/criador, intrinsecamente ligada à ideia de criação traduz-se na assinatura como vínculo de umaobra a um artista. Fica assim resolvida, de forma clara e tranquilizadora, a relação criador/criação que fez regra durante aproximadamente cinco séculos. Cerca de 500 anos depois, no início do século XX, os dadaístas anunciaram a morte do autor tal como era conhecido até aí. Hoje, a voragem provocada pela aceleração tecnológica e pelo aparecimento de um conjuntode novos media e de novas ferramentas, de outras possibilidades e outras combinações, arrasta consigo um leque de novas interrogações.
Quem participa da obra pode também ser considerado “autor”, ou é apenas um catalisador, agindo dentro de um conjunto de possibilidades?
Se realmente está em algum lado, onde está o extraordinário? No artista, na obra, no espectador?
Mais: quem é o artista, o que é a obra e existe realmente um espectador. E qual olugar da criação?

Laptop orchestras have much in common with video games, such as utilization of networked play, singular [solo] and cooperative [ensemble] modes of play, and hardware that is multipurpose and widely available. In this talk, the composer will outline the project goals and iterative design process that have lead to the creation of Stethoscope Hero, a sci-fi multiplayer “choose your own adventure” game-composition for networked laptop orchestra that is designed to be inclusive and accessible to participants who may be unfamiliar with laptop performance and/or musical performance, while still offering a challenging and rewarding experience to those who have already performed with such an ensemble. Stethoscope Hero is part of ongoing research on the social and design parameters that contribute to meaningful play and fun in the context of networked laptop orchestras, and is supported by a grant from the Concordia Undergraduate Summer Research Award, and supervised by Dr. Eldad Tsabary under his Interdisciplinary Networked, and Telematic Laptop Orchestra Project (INTLOP).