Eastwind

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A Norns instrument of non standard tuning & limitations

I was thinking about

  • LaMonte Youngs Well Tuned Piano and how it seems like he is manually playing additive synthesis
  • Musical Gestures
  • a standalone instrument you could make a complete piece of music on
  • Limitations
  • None of the above - I just made a thing & thought of the explanations post-hoc

how to use it:

you can find it here

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This looks really great, thanks @junklight !

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Wow, this is so up my alley!

Can’t wait to give it a go :frog:

Edit: Thanks so much!

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dreamy east wind thank you :slight_smile:

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Using the install button on the script list in maiden doesn’t work, neither does using ;install https://github.com/junklight/eastwind/tree/main, both say repository not found.
If I go ahead and ;install with /tree/main removed it does work, just as a heads-up.
The script itself sounds fantastic and I’ll definitely dive deeper into it once I can :slight_smile:

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ooh - thank you for letting me know! I’ll sort it out (I’m away from my desk tomorrow but hopefully Wednesday)

(as I was telling a colleague my git skills are largely based on saying “oh that’s helpful” when someone else does it for me. I’ve learned a lot of things over my time but yet another version control system has never seemed worth the effort. However when you are doing projects on your own my usual trick doesn’t work :wink: )

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wow! Can´t wait to try it! Thanks! :heart_eyes: :pray:

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Thanks a lot for this, it’s a lovely script. :heart:

Just for quick reference here are the grid controls (number = row):

  • 1 Loop 1: Button 1 toggle record, play; Button 2 RecordOverdub; Buttons 3-6 Decay
  • 2 Loop 2: Same as above
  • 3 Attack
  • 4 Decay
  • 5 Sound (Sine > Triangle > Pulse)
  • 6 Resonance Decay
  • 7 Filter relative to note
  • 8 Resonance

This if for the lit buttons on the right side of the grid.

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this is a lovely script - you can easily zone out when you run both loopers together in overdub mode. With the unusual tuning it can sound quite spooky and mysterious.

Would love to see more tape manipulation of the loopers and panning in some way. I saw this

on a side note I imported Youngs scala files into er301 quantizer unit. I’m a big fan of Terry Riley’s stuff also.

image
image1280Ă—958 103 KB
using the scala files found here

https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/downloads.html

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Thank you. I’ll have a watch !

I did have some ideas for panning - didn’t get around to them :-). But yeah now you’ve mentioned it will come back to them

edit: that La Monte Young piece - Composition #7 - has sent me off down a right rabbit hole! :slight_smile: reading about Young & various tunings.

I also had some ideas last night for additions to eastwind for tape and panning - watch this space…

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hello -

when attempting to install this via maiden I get “install failed: repository not found” in return.

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ah - see Gatrix’s post above - I forgot I need to look into this

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20 chars of thank you!

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This is super interesting, thanks for sharing. I recently had the opportunity to visit Dream House in NYC and I’ve been feeling inspired to try and lean into some of that La Monte Young vibe, but it never even crossed my mind to utilize his specific scala scales on the ER301.

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cool - I’d love to visit (although I’ve sworn off of flying so NYC is now a long way away)

if you look in latest tracks there is one I’ve made influenced by Young - I’m currently on the first chapter of “draw a straight line” and I’ve been experimenting influenced by his serialism currently. More as I work through the book no doubt…

in passing - Don’t suppose you get to see the sound source? apparently it’s a digital system made by a guy called David Rayna who was active in the 80s and I don’t think makes anything now. There are 2 or 3 about according to internet searches…

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I didnt, no. There was a strong emphasis on being in the moment while in the space, so I obliged and tried my hardest not to let my mind wander into the realm of wondering how the sound was being made and where it was coming from, etc.

I am interested now, though, and I’m going to look further into this David Rayna system.

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yeah - I thought about that as I asked :slight_smile: very wise.

but do let me know if you find anything. I think there was a period of exploration of additive synthesis in the 80s and a number of systems - I can find very little about any of them but I’m getting quite interested in this area musically and would be nice to see what has gone before

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So, one interesting thing about Eastwind is that each grid button plays one harmonic of a note from a 12TET scale. That can get harsh when the tempering of 12TET places the root notes far off from their equivalent just intoned ratio. (Probably the author’s intent, but not really my vibe.) I experimented with replacing the root notes with tones spaced out by just intoned major and minor thirds, and wow! Wall-to-wall Palestrina.

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Are you willing to share this? You can’t say Palestrina and not get beggars at your doorstep…

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I’m also interested in this modification. I’m digging Eastwind a lot as standalone instrument.