The exercise: Create an audio piece using the graphic score below. Use any tools you want. This could be a sound design exercise, a full composition, anything.
I chose something that is hopefully less daunting than some more detailed scores in order to encourage more people to participate and allow everyone to get done by the deadline.
The time frame: Let’s say by the end of January, 2023. At that point we can compile them into a playlist somewhere (Soundcloud?). If this turns out to be a fruitful endeavor, we can look at doing it again on some kind of regular cadence. edit: I guess we’ll just leave this open in case someone comes upon it later. We’ll check in at the end of February!
Below is an excerpt of a larger score entitled Speechless by composer Cat Hope. Please make sure to check out her website and support her work. I reached out to make sure she was okay with us using her art, and she was kind enough to agree.
For a long time, I was thinking about making an album, with scores like this. So far, it didn’t happen. I am thinking, I might start with this one.
Might even be nicer, if Lines-artists made some scores/compositions.
Ultimately that’s where I’d like to go with this. I have to imagine there are many talented and artistic designers amongst us. I bet we could use contributions on a regular basis while building up a small catalog of scores.
I read the score from left to right. I built a vcv rack patch corresponding the upper four parts (the ones that get squiggly). I made it evolve in 4 parts. I went with vocal samples of the amazing Audrey Chen (http://www.audreychen.com) to build the bottom two voices. The samples are from the Xtended Vox sample library: ‘Click sweeps’, ‘modulating clicks’, and ‘pursed lips’. (I’m a huge fan of Audrey Chen and Phil Minton. I was thrilled to see them featured in this sample library.)
For the round circles part of the score, I used a VCV rack patch as an insert on my tracks that generates short envelopes at chaotic intervals. I used delays and reverb to fill in the negative space.
Thanks @OhWell for being the first to share their work!
Today is the 17th, so we are roughly halfway to the end of the month. I’ve been noodling on this for a while and finally figured out what I’d like to do for this, now I just need to get it done. I look forward to hearing what everyone comes up with!
Looks like not a lot of takers. Maybe doing this alongside Jamuary was a bad idea.
Anyway, here’s my version. I took several of the field recordings that are available in the Music Thing Modular Radio Music library and loaded them up in Rx.
I used the paintbrush tool (freehand, it’s a little sloppy) in spectrogram view to create a selection that followed the shape of the score for that particular track. Then I inverted and deleted, leaving behind what are effectively bandpassed signals.
When you end up with are filtered signals that meander around each other in frequency and time, building to a cacophony and then small impulses from the dots at the end of the score.
That sounds great! Love the idea of spectral painting field recordings.
Re takers: don’t know for other folks but I’ve found it helpful to have time constraints with things like this – Eg the disquiet Thursday to Monday time window. I wonder if adding some kind of deadline, even as much as a month, might help with future iterations of this project.
There is one listed in the post, but if you passed it over it then probably others did as well. I will call more attention to it! Though at this point we’d probably want to extend it.
Absolutely, I’d say go for it. The original goal was end of January, but without many submissions maybe end of February? And if we don’t get any then I’ll just leave it open forever.
Maybe doing this alongside Jamuary was a bad idea.
