this thread has a few tributaries
less concepts, the album and Mac app released 8/28/2018:
as mentioned in { open space } : 01-20-19 _ open house (2pm), I am releasing an album this upcoming Sunday – eep!
‘less concepts’ formed rather quickly (comparatively) and feels like an honest expression of what I’ve learned from lines, through both Sound + Process and the irreplaceable friendships I’ve been lucky to find here.
the album is entirely sequenced with Teletype’s CHAOS.ALG 3
, which is the cellular automata operator. having traditional “composition” stuff handled by algorithms helped me take inventory on what parts of my self are fulfilled by art-making – and most importantly, this process helped me tune and center those parts.
as I worked on documenting this approach, I realized that there was a level of inaccessibility baked in – even if others had the same hardware, there wasn’t a very actionable way to expose the value of manipulating cellular automata (CA) growth to crawl scales and provide note timing. so, I spent some time and built a Max patch that encapsulated not only the behavior of the CA but also presented the programming decisions I made to create the pieces in the album.
eventually, this became a way to encourage others to “make this album at home” – this also resonated with my desire to examine + realign those layers of fulfillment I mentioned above.
the resulting software is a standalone app for Mac, also called ‘less concepts’:
the app documentation also serves as liner notes for the album.
both will be released on 10/28. I’ll update this thread to serve as a support / questions corner for the app.
the album will be available as both a digital release + a limited edition tape through Bandcamp.
the tape will feature unreleased tracks and a sticker of the album artwork (incredible work done by suitcasedog).
the software will be released through GitHub, same day. preview the documentation / liner notes here.
(much love to @Jonny, @barnjazz, @shellfritsch, @trickyflemming, @madeofoak + @tehn for their guidance, advice, encouragement, and proofreading these last few months.)
seek, think, discover.
have less concepts.
nested, recorded at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum with a small Serge system and the less concepts app, released 1/13/2019. see here in the thread.
there are a ton of great insights starting here (p much) into DSP + synthesis from alanza, andrew and ezra.
a norns version of less concepts
received much of its beta testing through this thread as well. it has been submitted to dust for approval