page.layout: post page.title: One Face page.date: 2021-06-19 00:00:00 +0000 page.url ⛓️: /2021/06/19/2-one-face/ page.content_id: 2 page.author: Ryan page.type: Autofiction page.ascii: $ page.x: 2 page.y: 5 page.class: red page.attributes: carbon, plutonium
One face, then two, then three. The ideal count of load-bearing vectors. With an unhurried gesture, the light moves slightly, bringing into relief friendly contours.
“Now I exist.”
Verbal handshake, clock synchronization, report of specific musical queries:
- Ryan, reacquaint with the horizon line.
- Tyler, maintain the emotional urgency of the edge.
- Trent, find the pattern and fun in the intuition.
These thoughts give us energy: live coding as a concept, playing on the edge of our ability, creating and sharing a good time, portable systems and concepts, knowing just enough.
We relish the homework.
Trent describes the ensemble:
- A bass drum.
- A snare.
- Two toms, which are kind of really just bass drums.
- A noise thing that ended up being more of a kick.
- w/ as a synth.
The bass drum and toms are from sister bands. A friendly blade excites them with just one softened corner. We watch one sister imprint her ripple on this excitation. This ripple changes shape, fades in proportion to the excitation.
Trent describes recent live codings: triggering “longer samples” as opposed to one-shots…
Ryan silently wonders: are these like loops, maybe slices? Does a network of hidden parameters depend on when triggers arise? Is this sequencing sequences? Sequencing sequencers?
… Now we see the field, a geometric playground of aluminum, punctuated by inlets, outlets, corpora parametric. A golf course for tiny aliens.
On this field lives the snare. We listen to a pinkened transistor avalanche, through a gate, As relayed by a different trio of sister filters. These sisters are attracted and repelled in equidistance, as semaphored by another curve.
We compare pinkened and unpinkened avalanches. Trent points out that the pinkened ones have inherent chaos and stronger bias and that is more interesting within percussion. The avalanches, as the sisters and gates relay them, sound something like a space. A trick of the mind’s ear.
Just as the hour bottoms out, Trent summons an unfurling semi-fractal of undertones. We postpone unpacking this magic in deference to a quick discussion closer to the horizon line.
Smaller sub-systems are easier to interact with. Simple building blocks are the design philosophy. Strap these into the harness that makes the most sense.