This sound was generated using an instrument that I developed using MaxMSP tentatively titled the Wave Table Glitch Machine. The instrument uses TouchOSC as a controller running on an iPod Touch. I interfaced the accelerometer on the iPod to a filter so that when turned on with a toggle, tilting it on the y axis causes a lowpass filter to effect the sound. By setting a threshold on the z axis, giving the iPod Touch a brisk shake will cause the patch to loop a randomly selected grain of random length from a randomly selected buffer played back at a randomly selected rate. The variety of sounds possible with five short samples is expansive. Here’s a selection of sound produced with just one sample selected.
Etude in 8 Bits for Multitouch Graintable Synthesis:
Chromatic Currents Part I is a generative music piece driven by particles floating in a liquid. No intervention in particle behavior occurred while the piece was being performed using the GMS. The scale was strongly C minor pentatonic, weighted with a Dorian mode by adding less-likely probabilities for D and A. However, every note that was not part of the scale still had a small possibility of occurring. This led to occasional blue or dissonant pitches in the sequence. The possibility of occurrences for any note within a twelve tone chromatic scale led me to the title.
Using a variety of processing techniques I was able to turn several percussion samples into haunting melodic phrases. A few of these phrases are the main themes in this piece from my solo album, Precambrian Resonance by Ostraka (Unearthed Music, 2009). I’m also using Rhodes electric piano that I ran through time expansion and other effects in order to create a slightly warped and distorted tone quality.
Examples of work in sound, imagery, and interaction