Bruce's Documentation's Blog

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Reflections on the Weekly Performance

The performance went on relatively well, but surely there has been much to improve. 

The development of my patch is more complex than the first time and I got many insights from the example patches. At first, I was thinking about using the kslider to do some real innovations; for example, letting the kslider simulate other instruments. I changed this idea after adding other details, like the two oscillator parts, to my patch. I explored several instrument sounds and finally thought that the delivery of the kslider was too weak with the company of two other parts. My final design was to use multiply the kslider signal by pink, which is slightly softer than noise. This part works relatively fine. The problems concerning two other parts were mainly about finding the exact numbers for frequency and the function of the sound wave. Through the previous experience using the PA mixer, I got the idea that the low and the medium frequency work pretty fine with that system, and I decided to focus more on that. I was relatively satisfied with the delivery and the integration with others’ parts of the oscillator parts during the overall performance. 

The patch looks like this:

During the overall performance, I think the biggest problem was exactly the same as what Shireen had pointed out, that during the climax part, the overall delivery of the four of us sounded a bit chaotic. Before the performance, we four met together and adjust our metro number so that our projects can smoothly integrate. However, we had definitely missed something important, that the small pauses between different music are the parts that really make the general music piece sound harmonious and integrated. This part will be considered and improved in the next performance. 

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Steve Reich – Minimalism

Music for 18 musicians has already become one of my favorite pieces of music.

(Perfect choice to listen to when doing assignments!)

    I first read the article and I was always wondering one specific question: What does he mean by musical processes? The only seemingly reasonable feature of musical processes given in the article is that musical processes can determine all note-to-note details and the overall form simultaneously. 

    This is one thing that catches my mind, and I started to think whether this is the core of minimalism, that everything gradually changes in a way that also affects the overall flow. I, on the other hand, changed this idea after listening to that masterpiece by Steve Reich. 

    My first impression was that this music is so beautiful. It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces that I have ever listened to and it appears to be indifferent to Wagner’s Die Walkure for me. The second thing I noticed was the musical process. The whole performance was a great musical process, completely controlled. There were only a small number of basic musical patterns existing in the whole music piece, but as time goes, different variations make the whole process complex, and at the same time, remain to be minimal. 

    I figured out at this moment what Steve means by note-to-note details and the overall form. The two are basically the same thing. Every note-to-note detail is like a fragment of the overall form. To start with, the overall form is constructed by the details, but on the other hand, there is not an order in such a process. Since the two things happen simultaneously, every detail is also the overall form. One can tell the overall form by looking at even one single detail. The musical process, in this case, is the integration of every perfectly controlled detail, delivering an overall flow. 

    I love this music. 

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Reflection on the weekly performance

    The construction of my now Max patch is, honestly speaking, not that complex. I decided to be the bass once again because I really love the effect of bass coming out of the sound system in 933. Here is my Max part (I didn’t include much complexities):

    The sensor I chose was LDR, the light sensor. In the first place, I had intended to use something creative like the accelerometer and the atmospheric pressure sensor. The atmospheric pressure sensor looks like this: 

    However, the tricky part is that the accelerometer and the atmospheric pressure sensor I bought arrived on Thursday morning, which really didn’t leave me enough time to figure out these sensors. Therefore, I decided to use the LDR, which is one of the sensors that I am most familiar with. 

    Connecting Arduino to Max 8: (I found that only when I restart Max 8 after transferring the code to the Arduino, Max 8 will then start to receive code)

Connecting

    In terms of the performance, I think we four really did a great job. Compared to previous performances, I can directly feel the different layers of the music. There were the bass, the first melody, the secondary melody, etc. We four sounded like, as Daniel mentioned, a family of music. The overall delivery and the integrality of the music are much better than before. However, there is always room for improvement. When reviewing the video recording of the performance, I found that the overall performance at around 20-30 seconds was a little bit chaotic. That place is where Eden and Jiany came in. In the next performance, we will pay more attention to everyone’s entrance and exit in the performance. 

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SensorBoard

The SensorBoard is about sensors, but not only sensors. 

When I was watching the first Vimeo video about the performance given by SSS, I was impressed most by Tanaka. In the whole band, he was the one person that was doing something catches my eyes. I can directly tell the male performer on his right was playing theremin (I know this instrument pretty well because it was one of my choices for the final project of interaction lab last semester) and the female performer on his left was using the ultrasonic sensor to alter the music, BUT Tanaka was indeed doing something new. I watched other videos and read the article and found out he was using the bioelectricity sensor to direct the electricity generated by muscle movements. However, The tricky thing is that even if I’ve already learned the theory of his instrument and the logic embedded in it, I can still feel something unique watching his performance. I watched his performance and read the interview again, paying much attention to his part, and then I found the key. Tanaka said at the end of the interview that “in our art form, there is a balance between logic and intuition.” This is the key. It is not his novel sensor and visual presence that impresses me, but the performing style. The logic part and intuition part coexist in an extremely harmonious way. When he is performing, I can get the feeling that he is not actually performing a certain instrument, but that he is actually performing himself. The outcome (music) is intuitive, and the delivery is logical. What makes him outstanding is that there is always a connection between the music and the delivery, that you can always feel that it is reasonable this kind of music is generated by this kind of gesture/posture.

    Maybe I didn’t manage to well explain my thoughts here, but what I want to say is that it is crucial to keep a balance between the outcome and the delivery of a performance, which is also something important l learned from last semester’s interaction lab. I focused on exploring the connection between the virtual world and reality, that one person’s behavior caused something exactly corresponding to that behavior, to happen in the virtual world. In terms of music, I believe the logic is the same, that “in our art form, there is a balance between logic and intuition.”

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Reflections of the Weekly Performance

    The logic embedded in my NIME is actually rather simple. Eden, Shireen, and I all decided to make something wearable. They turned their ideas into a shirt and a pair of gloves. However, I was actually a bit uncertain about what to make at that time. My initial design was to turn the NIME into a kind of outer skin, like the concept of cyborg. The idea was actually practical given the small PCB (, which also restricted me from making a bigger and more complex NIME last week.) in terms of assembling, I intended to tape everything together, which would make the whole thing look more like skin, and it did turn out to yield some desired effects. 

    Then it came to the actual making part of the NIME. Given the reason that few can the soldered onto the small PCB, I decided to mainly incorporate the pitch division technique and took some time to find the best combination that generates the best beats. The soldered PCB looks like this:

    Then I thought this might look too simple, and came up with some ideas to alter the resistor’s value in order to change the pitch. Therefore, I made another board with LDR, potentiometers, and resistor ladder, allowing alligator clips to freely switch between different modes. The board is like this:

    About the performance part, I think we did it quite well, (apart from the fact that Eden was actually muted throughout the performance). The biggest progress from previous weeks is that everyone started to care more about the general flow of the music and made some corresponding changes to the volume and frequencies. However, I think the biggest weakness learned from last week’s performance might be the fact that none of us had made ourselves a switch that can control our NIMEs, which made the beginning and ending (I had to turn off the PA mixer to stop the music) quite chaotic. The next performance will be better. 

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Reflections on the Weekly Performance

    I think last week’s performance was a little bit better than that from the previous weeks because more time was used to prepare and four people can definitely come up with some fact ideas. 

    The development of the musical instrument STRAND is not complicated. At first, Eden wanted to make the performance into an investigation, that we shall all behaving as detectives, using strands to make connections with things on a board (just like what detectives would do if they are trying to find out some clues). The thing is, we soon found out that the idea can be perfectly turned into a kind of musical instrument, using strands. The basic theory embedded in this musical instrument is the idea of the resistor ladders. One person will control four strands, each of which is connected to a resistor. This was, in the first place, supposed to be a four-men instrument, but Chenle was having trouble with her circuits at that time, and therefore we had to make it into a three men instrument, with three different performing ways. Eden is interested in the idea of letting gravity and Physics do the job and chose the iron ball as his tool. I prefer to perform it in the way of Guqin and made myself a finger stall. At the same time, Shireen was using the iron bar simulation the violin bow. 

(This stupid website says I can’y include images because they have too good qualities???)

Here is the link to the photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1A2zax7blgA32svw5XvDWNLOsghHTpUwH?usp=sharing

    During the performance, I have to admit that we only carefully rehearsed the beginning and the ending part, which seemed more organized. However, personally speaking, I think I also managed to find a harmonious way to accompany the others during the process of the performance and created some interesting effects. However, things should be more controlled if everything is prearranged. In the next performance, we will be more controlled and pay more attention to how to integrate four people’s individual parts as a whole.