#1

“Eight Gestures for Eight Virtuals” by Reflectives

Each composition in this album has a dedicated gesture that gets
revealed by an ensemble of eight virtual sounding objects. Unwittingly,
while they perform their duty the bigger picture is drawn.

22 Likes
#2

This is a really, really nice listen.

Thanks for sharing

#3

I really like how this has been presented and will give feedback after I listen later…

#4

This sounds really nice, can you give any more details on the composition and production techniques?

#5

Guys, many thanks for all the comments and likes.

Gabriel, compositional approach includes stochastic organization of
many of aspects, especially time related ones. Metric structures are
modeled from a certain speech phrase timing statistics using Markov
chains. You can hear the metre directly in some compositions where
beats are present. Mentioned gestures are based around function of
time which makes “virtual objects” sound and to which they react in
differing manner. Without this connection they keep silent. Big role
in forming musical and aesthetic characteristics is given to
spaces. They represent distorted models of spaces, and react to every
“object” in a bit different manner. Of course it will take a lot to
describe the approach fully especially technical side. But if there
more certain questions I will happily answer.

From production point everything is generated in Supercollider with
the use of included ugens and a couple of Faust-made filter-ugens
(nested allpass with onepole in feedback loop) Supercollider-generated
signals are recorded live into multitrack Ardour session where mixing and
mastering takes place.

4 Likes
#6

I listened to it repeatedly over the day and really like it. Tough not with the recommended headphones by now but will do this tomorrow on the train back from work. Your composition method seems to induce a lot of organic feel into it which complements the very digital sound of it in an interesting way.

:clap:

1 Like
#7

Beautiful.

Highly recommended listening.

1 Like
#8

Another comment to say that this is beautiful. I’d love to hear more about the process. I’m also curious as to why all the pieces are almost exactly the same length?

#9

Matt, they’re actually same up to second. There is nothing cryptic about it. I just wanted them to stay same, so kept the length of composition constant. The approach is realized as code using supercolliders sclang language. Composition is generated for as long as length variable specifies. Technically there is an envelope with duration specified by composition length variable. This envelope and it’s variations are used to drive objective correlates of musical expression for every “virtual object”. This is not the gesture-related one. This controls object’s behavior on the macro level.
Was listening to this while replying. And it’s lovely have to say

1 Like
#10

This is so beautiful. Listening to it on a train ride down to a jam session. It’s foggy out and I have a nice window view. Having a moment. Thank you.

1 Like
#11

Thanks for the info. And glad to hear you liked my music :slight_smile:

#12

Nice work. Bought your album. I made an album in SuperCollider last year, but I haven’t used it much lately. This is inspiring me to get back into SC.

2 Likes
#13

I’m​ curious how you work with time/sequencing in SC (patterns, tasks, routines, other)? Also did you use any samples or is everything or pure synthesis?

#14

Hi Corey, in this work all synthesis nodes start only once and remain until end of composition. It’s more of analog style sequencing. Base meter grid is played with impulse generator synth (demand rate ugens). Sound generating nodes react to those impulses according to several predefined rules.

There are some routines also. For example pitches are calculated with sclang routine that runs in background. After some experimentation I came to solution of calculating pitches and placing them in buffer and let the synth take in from there “whenever it wants”.

As for samples, no there are no samples in this work, everything is generated real-time. Synthesis methods involved are modulating (fm, am, ringmod, waveshaping) and granular mostly.

2 Likes
#15

And I refer to “this work” because it’s not the only method I practice. For example everything on this page is done with patterns and routines/tasks

#16

Awesome. Thanks for the insight (I even totally forgot about sequencing using demand rate ugens on the server as an option)