So here’s my first serious stab at a performance plan for my NIME object. I’m going to map out something more interesting (probably in Illustrator or something) and/or post the Max patch as I plan to move through it, but I’m not quite there yet with that.
Performance - the strange object
- Start: the form sits on the stage, dim light visible through it.
- I walk up to it, examine it, and then finally poke it — this makes it jump to life.
- And/or ultrasonic that turns it on when I get close enough.
- The object starts by playing a faint drum beat
- The form also begins pulsing white light
- I look perplexed, but pull the speed slider up, and the full drum loop becomes audible.
- I pull out the reverb slide, and mess with that for a bit, showing the spatial relation between the shape and the sound made.
- I pull out the bit rate, pitch shifter, and lores filter sliders, and mess with them accordingly to mash up the sound.
- I tweak the delay slider for a bit to get some nice echoes.
- Then I mess with the buffer slider, making the sample choppy at first and then singing in pitch after a bit.
- Once it’s pitched, I can play that pitch by pushing the speed slider in or out. That’s one of the most appealing parts of this, so I’ll probably do that for a while.
- After having messed with it to my satisfaction (I did so for about 3:40 today and it was actually really interesting to listen back to: check it out — I probably wouldn’t take 3 minutes up live of just that), I push all the poles in at once (probably hitting a footswitch on the floor to actually make it happen or using rate control to see if things have been pushed in quickly), and the noise goes sputtering out.
- When I do this, the lights flicker out accordingly and go back to their dim state.
- At this point, the loop I just finished is swirling about, and a second loop of beats is now inside the form.
- Optional — I’d discussed in class having the mutilated loops “live” somewhere (Gideon suggested mason jars, which I quite like), especially as if they allow me to play them more later, but there’s only so much I can do in this performance.
- I repeat the above process, find what I want, and spew it out as well. This time I’d like to make it rhythmic (in time with the other one) but more ambient, more background, and maybe bass-frequency focused.
- These two loops are now bouncing off each other (and may be lightly augmented by a sampling patch, much like Lesley’s, so they don’t end up just making annoying noise).
- I repeat again, this time with a higher pitched sample, and out of it form a melody.
- I’m think I repeat that again with a second melody.
- End: I shrink the machine again, (close the jars if I’m using them), shrug, and walk offstage.
One big question I’m still working with is layering things on top of things. I really want to, but the tough part is balancing what I’ve messed with (and is playing on loop) and what I’m messing with (which will also be audible). The solution may be to have the sounds pre-picked and edited so they don’t need much tweaking beyond what is cool to demo and go from there.
There’s a few other things I’ve been toying with, like the idea of having the sounds be of architectural spaces instead of loops, and having video play of those spaces while they’re mangled, but honestly, while it’s high in concept I’m not sure it’s worth watching, really. I’ve played with that a bit, and it’s much closer to the architectural concept, but it’s a bit further from the rest.
I also thought about pulling the sides of the “tarp” up — left side to let audio in, right to let it out — but (A) that’s a little cheesy, and (B) that’s going to be a bit harder to regulate. We’ll see. It’d be fun to have to look around for other things to “shove” into the machine, but I’m not sure how that’d work live.
Oh, P.S. - the patch has evolved too. Looky!
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