MUCO 541 Class Blogpost category. Please tag all class-related posts with the sub-categories of the applicable semester.
This week we started working with MIDI in the Max environment. We discussed the different semantics of a MIDI note message vs a musical note (as we know it from standard Western music notation). While the former is a discrete message (transmitting a key number and a velocity), the latter can be considered a symbolic musical object which has a duration and is commonly embedded […]
This week we looked further at data flow, discussed hot- and cold inlets and Max’s order of execution as a function of the layout of connected objects in a patch. In Max, messages to connected objects flow in the following order: right-to-left bottom-up This is also described in Max7’s Tutorial #5 which I recommend you to look at on […]
In today’s class (first class of the term) we discussed the objectives and scope of the MUCO541 course, including the course-outline, gradings, student-accounts, logistics, and the structure of a class. We started the lecture by brainstorming our ideas about live electronics, and how this relates to computer music and algorithmic music. We read a text of Julieanne Klein about […]
A beautiful note by Noam Chomsky about the importance of discovery, participation and interaction for the development of independent thinking.
Today we reviewed some of the most popular signal processing techniques used in live-electronics music repertoire. These included: delays (tap/feedback delays) flanger, chorus, phaser reverberation filtering (IIR/FIR also sometimes referred to as resonant vs fft) modulation (AM, FM, Ringmodulation) pitch shifting and harmonization Convolution, Cross-synthesis phase vocoding (time-stretching and freezing of sounds) We also listened […]
This week we started working with audio signals in MSP. We started the class reviewing some principles of digital audio (discrete time and audio in digital systems) and discussed some basic concepts, such as the Nyquist-Shannon theorem, the meaning of word size (or bit depth), vector sizes (audio buffer sizes), and looked at the path a […]
This week we talked about Software Design Patterns, such as the Model-View-Controller pattern. We then discussed the advantages of using a shared bus messaging system rather than individual send/receive objects and addresses, for its hierarchical structure and flexibility of being able to communicate to any module just by specifying its address. To further improve our messaging system we […]
In this week’s class we first had a small class concert of interactive, improvisational MIDI studies. The general quality was high and I think the pieces were very interesting, at times dramatic, at others humouristic, working with texture, sound masses, instrumentation, and many other elements. The density of notes was a bit reminiscent of the idea of Black Midi ;-) This little concert […]
In this week’s lecture (Max & MIDI III) we continued improving the structure of our performance patch. We learned why it makes sense to separate the score from the processing part and the user interface. We found that there are parts of our program we do not need to look at during a performance, more specifically, the […]
This week’s lecture focused on programming style and strategies for structuring a patch for real-time performance situations. After looking at different solutions for Class 3’s programming assignment we discussed strategies for detecting and removing programming mistakes (debugging) to make you programs behave as intended. We then studied different approaches to realize more complex data-flows and introduced […]