This piece, written for new media group Ensemble Decipher and titled toy_5, seeks to explore aspects of improvisational and generative algorithmic computer music. The work is designed to be immediately accessible to non-musicians through a participatory setting, if so desired, according to principles developed by Tina Blaine and Sidney Fels, while also providing the opportunity for more rehearsed performances like the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiQjoRHxn-c.
The work’s visuals and sound are controlled by mouse cursor position, mouse clicks, and keystrokes through OSC. In the performance linked above, they are then shared, in this case through the consumer-grade teleconferencing software Zoom. The code for audio generation was written in SuperCollider, while the visuals were coded in the JavaScript based live-coding and visualization package, hydra.
Download and install SuperCollider:
https://supercollider.github.io/download
or if you have brew installed:
brew install --cask supercollider
NB: For the boot.command file that easily boots the work's software to run properly, SuperCollider must be in your Applications directory. The path will look like so:
~/Applications/SuperCollider.app
Download the github repository by opening terminal and pasting:
git clone https://github.com/eclemmon/toy_5.git
or by clicking here.
Once the files have been downloaded, navigate to /toy_5/super_collider_files/ directory and double click on the boot.command shell script to run the software. Then, simply follow the instructions in the score(s) and in the SuperCollider files.
It is recommended that the bass part is performed by maximum two players, and the chimes parts maximum four. The granulation part should be played by one or two players. The scores can be found in this repository.
This software has been tested on SuperCollider 3.12, and macOS 12.0.1 (Monterey), but it should work on older versions of macOS as well as long as a recent, stable version of SuperCollider has been installed.
Playing the piece can be as simple as booting the work and playing around with the sounds. If following the score, there are a few quality of life additions in the GUI of the piece that help performers track their position in the piece.
- The CLI will post the midi note numbers as well as messages indicating when phrases are over. For example:
The piece has started.
[ 57.0, 64.0, 69.0, 57.0 ]
[ 57.0, 64.0, 69.0, 57.0 ]
[ 56.0, 64.0, 69.0, 56.0 ]
[ 54.0, 64.0, 69.0, 54.0 ]
...
...
[ 45.0, 52.0, 57.0, 64.0 ]
[ 45.0, 52.0, 57.0, 45.0 ]
Phrase 1 is complete.
etc...
- Beneath the performance GUI, which is mainly a key-catching window that displays the wave form of sound produced, is a progress bar. This progress bar indicates how far along a the piece has progressed since boot. Each tick in the progress bar indicates about 3 seconds of time. Because the score indicates for a bass solo about 2/3 of the way through the work, the progress bar offers up a slow, 3-tick countdown (9 seconds of time) to the bass solo in yellow. During the 15-second bass solo, the progress bar changes to red and counts down 5 ticks to the return of the rest of the players. All other information on what to do musically can be found in the score.
- SuperCollider 3.10.4-3.11.2
- Hydra 1.2.4 (best installed in Atom)
- If playing this in a networked setting, something like: Zoom or JackTrip.