with OpenMusic and bach<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\nFrom my first encounters with computer music, I’ve been drawn to the possibilities of computer-assisted composition, the field where musical notation collides with the processing and organizational power of computers. Far from becoming a slave to the machine’s suggestions, I’ve found OpenMusic<\/a> has enriched my practice, allowing me to generate, experiment with, and refine material in a variety of ways.<\/span><\/p>\nI started out using OpenMusic’s LISP-based notation interface to manipulate and visualize microtones\u2014a basic function, but a valuable one that is not widely available elsewhere. While studying on the cursus, I delved into OpenMusic’s more advanced capabilities, making use of its ability to act as a pitch and onset interface for external software via its libraries. Significant for me among these were the OMSuperVP library for sound editing (time-stretch, transposition), the Modalys library for piloting physical-modeling synthesis, and the OMPrisma library for spatialization. An algorithmically composed passage from my cursus piece Cognitive Consonance<\/em> is shown in the patch below, with synthesis and spatialization subpatches that are used to transform the short notated passage into an eight-channel sound file. I detailed this and other compositional and technical processes behind the composition of Cognitive Consonance<\/em>, <\/em>in a recent article for the OM Composer’s Book, Volume 3, published by IRCAM. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"fig18\"](\"http:\/\/christophertrapani.com\/wordpresssite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fig18.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nOther projects rely even more heavily on CAC. In an online article<\/a> for IRCAM’s Forumnet, I describe the process of composing Forty-Nine, Forty-Nine<\/em> for the MIDI-controlled Fokker Organ in Amsterdam. The piece was entirely ![\"fokker-cseq\"](\"http:\/\/christophertrapani.com\/wordpresssite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fokker-cseq-e1440626631908.png\")
composed in OpenMusic, and makes use of a specially-adapted interface, thanks to Jean Bresson, for the organ’s 31-note-to-the-octave microtonal tuning, Many small components of the work were created using algorithmic processes, and these were assembled using the maquette<\/a> environment. Passages could thus be manipulated in a two-dimensional space, and the MIDI-out capability of the maquette allowed it to play the organ directly\u2014a sort of intercative digital piano roll that served as the only score to the piece…<\/span><\/p>\n![\"fokker-score\"](\"http:\/\/christophertrapani.com\/wordpresssite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fokker-score.png\")
<\/p>\n
CAC has also served as a useful planning tool for purely acoustic compositions. In Passing Through, Staying Put <\/em>and Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs<\/em>, I used OpenMusic to generate progressions of chords according to constraints: specifically, a set of voice-leading rules and a palette of predetermined possible consonant intervals.
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nFor more recent pieces I’ve shifted from OpenMusic to<\/span> bach<\/a>, a Max-based library whose interoperability with the CataRT tools I often use is a significant advantage. I store, cut, and paste material, referring back to a sketchpad of the compositional process. In Spinning in Infinity<\/em>, bach was used to create the sensation of patterns that spiral out from a dense center, by translating curves and chiseled fibonacci series into chord progressions (again derived from a list of permitted intervals) that start with a tense flurry of notes with increasingly more space interpolated between attacks. These gestures were then quantified and the result orchestrated, split between the electronics and the live orchestra.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/christophertrapani.com\/wordpresssite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-25-at-12.44.07-PM.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nIn a final example\u2014another logistical application of CAC for an acoustic piece\u2014I built the guitar machine below to keep track of microtonal retunings while composing Alcohol and Algebra<\/i>, to visualize the placement of the hand on the neck and the resultant pitch content. After setting the base tuning and positioning the colored sliders on the fretboard, <\/span>the fingered pitches can be seen in a bach.roll object, and can also be heard by triggering a set of steel-stringed guitar samples (courtesy of<\/span> Taylor Brook<\/a>). A preset object makes it possible to store and recall the fingerings and underlying tunings, and a subpatch displays of all the available harmonics in a bach.roll, with partial numbers in red and color-coded by string.<\/span><\/p>\n
I started out using OpenMusic’s LISP-based notation interface to manipulate and visualize microtones\u2014a basic function, but a valuable one that is not widely available elsewhere. While studying on the cursus, I delved into OpenMusic’s more advanced capabilities, making use of its ability to act as a pitch and onset interface for external software via its libraries. Significant for me among these were the OMSuperVP library for sound editing (time-stretch, transposition), the Modalys library for piloting physical-modeling synthesis, and the OMPrisma library for spatialization. An algorithmically composed passage from my cursus piece Cognitive Consonance<\/em> is shown in the patch below, with synthesis and spatialization subpatches that are used to transform the short notated passage into an eight-channel sound file. I detailed this and other compositional and technical processes behind the composition of Cognitive Consonance<\/em>, <\/em>in a recent article for the OM Composer’s Book, Volume 3, published by IRCAM. <\/span><\/p>\n Other projects rely even more heavily on CAC. In an online article<\/a> for IRCAM’s Forumnet, I describe the process of composing Forty-Nine, Forty-Nine<\/em> for the MIDI-controlled Fokker Organ in Amsterdam. The piece was entirely CAC has also served as a useful planning tool for purely acoustic compositions. In Passing Through, Staying Put <\/em>and Past All Deceiving: Cavafy Songs<\/em>, I used OpenMusic to generate progressions of chords according to constraints: specifically, a set of voice-leading rules and a palette of predetermined possible consonant intervals. For more recent pieces I’ve shifted from OpenMusic to<\/span> bach<\/a>, a Max-based library whose interoperability with the CataRT tools I often use is a significant advantage. I store, cut, and paste material, referring back to a sketchpad of the compositional process. In Spinning in Infinity<\/em>, bach was used to create the sensation of patterns that spiral out from a dense center, by translating curves and chiseled fibonacci series into chord progressions (again derived from a list of permitted intervals) that start with a tense flurry of notes with increasingly more space interpolated between attacks. These gestures were then quantified and the result orchestrated, split between the electronics and the live orchestra.<\/span><\/p>\n In a final example\u2014another logistical application of CAC for an acoustic piece\u2014I built the guitar machine below to keep track of microtonal retunings while composing Alcohol and Algebra<\/i>, to visualize the placement of the hand on the neck and the resultant pitch content. After setting the base tuning and positioning the colored sliders on the fretboard, <\/span>the fingered pitches can be seen in a bach.roll object, and can also be heard by triggering a set of steel-stringed guitar samples (courtesy of<\/span> Taylor Brook<\/a>). A preset object makes it possible to store and recall the fingerings and underlying tunings, and a subpatch displays of all the available harmonics in a bach.roll, with partial numbers in red and color-coded by string.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\ncomposed in OpenMusic, and makes use of a specially-adapted interface, thanks to Jean Bresson, for the organ’s 31-note-to-the-octave microtonal tuning, Many small components of the work were created using algorithmic processes, and these were assembled using the maquette<\/a> environment. Passages could thus be manipulated in a two-dimensional space, and the MIDI-out capability of the maquette allowed it to play the organ directly\u2014a sort of intercative digital piano roll that served as the only score to the piece…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n
![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/christophertrapani.com\/wordpresssite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Screen-Shot-2015-08-25-at-12.34.56-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"