Prent's new tune

Another fine piece of microtonal music Prent. Reminds me of Miles Davis'
post Bitches Brew. Could you estimate the amount of time it took you to
complete this? I am interested in how long it takes an experienced
Csound programmer to assemble a piece.

--
John Starrett
"We have nothing to fear but the scary stuff."
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html

In a message dated 5/6/2001 1:22:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jstarret@carbon.cudenver.edu writes:

> Another fine piece of microtonal music Prent. Reminds me of Miles Davis'
> post Bitches Brew. Could you estimate the amount of time it took you to
> complete this? I am interested in how long it takes an experienced
>

FYI. I'm new to this thread. I do sound synth among other things. I just
finished a little ditty which happens to be microtonal (it uses a wierd
system Ben Johnston Jokingly calls Unjust Intonation - it seems like a
fitting name). Anyone who works in Csound I would suggest taking a look at
some of the newer sound synth languages like Supercollider (what I use) or
Max. They work for live performances and if I remember correctly, its been a
while, Csound does not work in real time (although direct Csound might I dont
remember). As for your question it can take a good chunk of time to program
that stuff depending on how complicated you make it and what program you are
using. I haven't used Csound very much myself but from what I read it uses
mostly lists of notes to represent whatever you are doing(correct me if this
is incorrect).

With other programs, like Supercollider, things go much quicker
simply because there are programming techniques which simplify things. With
Supercollider though you could tell the computer to just do random things or
generate random pitches or lots of other really simple things, which wouldn't
take long, or you can make an intricate super ellaborate program which takes
in live audio modifies it, pitch shifts things, has patterns, or whatever
which would of course take more time.

cheers,

Andy Stefik

This song took me six months. Lots of time on coding the pre-
preprocessor program in Pascal, called "samples", to accept different
timing options (which randomize the start time of notes to imitate
the out of phase playing of high school drum and bugle corps). I also
spent some time implementing the upsampling and downsampling options.
These allow me to make miniature pianos and giant piccolos. I hand
coded all the glissando's: 65 different slides, up and down by
different amounts to allow the move from 4:5:6 to 7:9:11 in all
inversions and combinations. The program picks which one to use
randomly. Each time through is different.

This is not the fastest way to make music. But I can't figure out a
faster alternative. How else do you get to hear these chord changes,
in perfect intonation, perfect rhythms, and never hear anyone
complain about one more time through?

I think I may be able to move a little faster when soccer season
ends.

Prent Rodgers

--- In tuning@y..., John Starrett <jstarret@c...> wrote:
> Another fine piece of microtonal music Prent. Reminds me of Miles
Davis'
> post Bitches Brew. Could you estimate the amount of time it took
you to
> complete this? I am interested in how long it takes an experienced
> Csound programmer to assemble a piece.
>
> --
> John Starrett
> "We have nothing to fear but the scary stuff."
> http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html

Andy,

Csound does use lots of lists of notes. The way I use it, I tell
Csound the following information for every note:

- Start time (nice to make it just a tad early or late to simulate
drummers getting in and out of the "groove"
- Duration (short, long, independent of the start time of the next
note)
- Velocity (how loud each note is, very important for phrasing)
- Note (I use Partch's 43 tone scale)
- Octave
- Voice (which instrument the sample based synthesizer is using)
- Stereo (location in the stereo field)
- Envelope (I use 18 different envelopes, with various attack,
sustain, and decay characteristics)
- Glissando (I use either a non-glissando, or any one of 64 different
glissandi on each note, up or down, how long at each step, how many
steps and slides for each note)
- Up-sample how many samples (creates deliberate munchinization)

With all these different variables for each of the 60,000 notes in
the piece, I needed a separate program to control the information. I
use one I wrote in Pascal over the years. It's full of bugs and
idiosyncrasies and no one else has ever tried to use it. It requires
Borland's Turbo Pascal compiler, which has long gone un-supported.
But it does allow me to spend time on the parts of the music I care
most about in an organized manner.

Supercollider is Mac only. I only use windows and OS/390 computers at
the moment.

--- In tuning@y..., JoJoBuBu@a... wrote:
> Anyone who works in Csound I would suggest taking a look at
> some of the newer sound synth languages like Supercollider (what I
use) or
> Max. They work for live performances and if I remember correctly,
its been a
> while, Csound does not work in real time (although direct Csound
might I dont
> remember). As for your question it can take a good chunk of time to
program
> that stuff depending on how complicated you make it and what
program you are

Prent Rodgers

Yo Prent!

--- In tuning@y..., prentrodgers@h... wrote:
> This song took me six months.

What could only be termed "a dogged pursuit of the truth"!!

> Lots of time on coding the pre-preprocessor program in Pascal,
> called "samples"...

I remember the last time I talked to you about your custom 'tools'
you were one of the few people that was still playing with Pascal (a
language I still have a fondness for).

As to all the things you did to make the music, it really came out
great. You are one of the few that I'll use my 56k modem to download
the whole enchilada.

> This is not the fastest way to make music. But I can't figure out a
> faster alternative.

That's a shame, because I wouldn't be surprised if your
more 'spontaneous' (like, in hours or days) would be just as fun and
fascinating.

> I think I may be able to move a little faster when soccer season
> ends.

Slacker. You're just waiting for a sun break...

Cheers,
Jon

Prent,

I want to take advantage of one of the few times you're posting to
the list...

--- In tuning@y..., prentrodgers@h... wrote:
> Csound does use lots of lists of notes. The way I use it, I tell
> Csound the following information for every note:
>
> - Start time (nice to make it just a tad early or late to simulate
> drummers getting in and out of the "groove"
> - Duration (short, long, independent of the start time of the next
> note)

...and etc. Just a question: have you ever tried, investigated,
and/or used any of the MIDI-to-.sco programs a couple of people have
cobbled together? I wonder if you couldn't do at least some of this
in mockup form in MIDI, and then continue to tweak with either
another program or by hand on the .sco files? At the very least, it
might make generation of the drum parts faster (and not having to
worry about the intonations).

Then again, the more random sections you have, the more you will have
to stay with 'hand' composing the piece. Which seems to have it's own
rewards...

Again, appreciatively,
Jon

In a message dated 5/7/2001 12:10:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
prentrodgers@home.com writes:

> Andy,
>
> Csound does use lots of lists of notes. The way I use it, I tell
> Csound the following information for every note:
>
> - Start time (nice to make it just a tad early or late to simulate
> drummers getting in and out of the "groove"
> - Duration (short, long, independent of the start time of the next
> note)
> - Velocity (how loud each note is, very important for phrasing)
> - Note (I use Partch's 43 tone scale)
> - Octave
> - Voice (which instrument the sample based synthesizer is using)
> - Stereo (location in the stereo field)
> - Envelope (I use 18 different envelopes, with various attack,
> sustain, and decay characteristics)
> - Glissando (I use either a non-glissando, or any one of 64 different
> glissandi on each note, up or down, how long at each step, how many
> steps and slides for each note)
> - Up-sample how many samples (creates deliberate munchinization)
>
> With all these different variables for each of the 60,000 notes in
> the piece, I needed a separate program to control the information. I
> use one I wrote in Pascal over the years. It's full of bugs and
> idiosyncrasies and no one else has ever tried to use it. It requires
> Borland's Turbo Pascal compiler, which has long gone un-supported.
> But it does allow me to spend time on the parts of the music I care
> most about in an organized manner.
>
> Supercollider is Mac only. I only use windows and OS/390 computers at
>

Thats quite incredible. I didn't realize the immense amount of coding thats
required for CSound(let alone using turbo pascal along with it), I've only
used it very briefly. With SC programmings quite different. Its easy to
create a little function that puts whatever ratios, or temperaments desired
into patterns. you could for example set a ton of material into a variable
and then later manipulate that pattern, meaning pattern of ratios to a
fundamental or frequencies in general, and modulate it or whatever you want
by whatever ratio or number you want with very little code. Of course this
all depends on how specific you want to be with everything

Or you can work in scale degrees or other ways I havent messed with much. It
does have a feature that can do lists of notes which I've used briefly but I
always tend to make a mistake here or there (wrong duration for a note or
what not which screws everything up). Everything you specify, unless you are
specifically using lists of notes, can of course be specified of course but
you definately dont have to specify it for every note.

I wish it was supported on PC. I am more of a PC guy myself.

Thanks for the info on how you work with the microtones, interesting.

Andy