vdof - pulse setup
I just recently released two albums I have been working on in the last months, raw material and for the present, and I decided to document the making of them (the theory and the research part apply to both works, but the technical details described below apply to for the present only).
Both these works are born from the need to reconnect with sound and explore its pure characteristics, free from musical structures, scores, visual feedback and any other sensory input other than hearing.
When working on them I tried to take the distance from my usual setup which includes laptop (mainly running ChucK and Pure Data) and few hardware sequencers/synths, that I usually control and heavily process in the digital domain (a sort of augmentation one could say).
In this case instead I wanted to play a single instrument, something simpler in its structure, something I had to learn how to play, something unfamiliar at first.
Also, I didn’t want to use the computer (as in a standard laptop), not even to record the work.
Thus, I ended up focusing on two phenomena: feedback and modulation.
I started working on a ChucK script I then ran on Raspberry Pi 3 and at the same time I bought a small second-hand Soundcraft mixer (before I had everything going straight into the audio interface).
In ChucK I implemented a unit generator based on a particular modulation technique, a pulse generator. I then used this as a main module in a slightly more complex unit generator which uses two pulse generators in an fm fashion, with also a feedback component in it.
I mapped a MIDI controller and began playing with this new sound generator.
On the mixer side, I started experimenting with some basic no input techniques which involved a Lexicon MPX550 multi effect.
I then combined the work done in ChucK with the analog experiments conducted with the mixer and ended up with a system that looked like this:
Raspberry Pi 3 running ChucK
Novation ZeRO SL MkII MIDI controller
Soundcraft Spirit Folio lite mixer
Lexicon MPX550
Tascam DR-05 portable recorder
I spent several days playing with the system, trying to understand its strengths and weaknesses, changing approaches, working on the mappings (what controls what and how), exploring new gestures, etc. .
In doing so I realized I wanted something a bit more homogenic as I felt as if I had two separate instruments in front of me (the Rasp Pi and the mixer itself), therefore I added another feedback component to the system, looping the main output from the mixer back to the RaspPi (which already used internal feedback).
This kind of closed the circle. Now all the parts in the system played an equal role in the overall architecture, and also an unstable component was added, allowing the instrument to surprise me with ever evolving textures as well as piercing sounds.
I had to revisit once again what I learned so far. A new approach was required, because now the player and the instrument had the same importance.
It was like the instrument had its own will that the player must respect and listen to, instead of trying to impose his/her own one.
I feel pretty satisfied with the system now. There are still things I want to add/change, and I hope I’ll do that as soon as possible.
Probably I will also spend few words about the artistic decisions behind these works, since they played quite an important role, but for now I’ll share few diagrams showing what described above.
The next step would be that of releasing the ChucK code as well.
