page.layout: post page.title: tele-exegesis page.date: 2021-08-16 00:00:00 +0000 page.url ⛓️: /2021/08/16/1-tele-exegesis/ page.content_id: 17 page.author: tehn page.type: historical record page.ascii: . page.x: 4 page.y: 9 page.class: evolution page.attributes: ash, stars
the year was maybe 2013 but maybe not.
despite having grown up typing code we’d fallen into graphical patching. the pre-2k appeal was strong: max just got msp, os’s were a take-it-leave-it black box, and we were primarily concerned with what came from tools, not the tools themselves. so in 2013ish meadowphysics emerged with embedded javascript, creating brain sparks soon to ignite lazily-accepted and too-dearly-held doctrines alike. it was an algo-grid thing that generated triggers, and we were left to make that musical by our own wits.
after assigning each trigger to a midi note (which is some sort of standard practice) we could no longer tolerate what sounded like a depressing casino. a trigger should be able to change timbre or a progression of all sorts of other parameters to allow something actually generative.
the first incarnation of teletype was born, with some minor abuse of max’s semicolon message system:
meadowphysics now routed its triggers through 8 little “scripts” that could create a note, advance a note in a sequence, send CC, and change parameters. but what made this different was the ability to modulate, with code. a probability operator set chance of execution, and a random operator gave back a value within a given range. slews for params could be set dynamically, along with note transposition.
note 4;
cc a rand 50 100;
p 50 note rand note;
is this programming? maybe? it sounded good, thanks to trent gill’s synth engine stolen from sum. a short time on the meta-programmable event responder seemed a good fit for modular, with its agnostic to whatever-happens triggers on wires.
it’s safe to assume the original patch has been alienated and abandoned by the speed of technology updates, but for historical interest it still lives in the reaches.
safe travels.