Review of past weeks
Week 5:
Week five and a far better way of understanding the modes within Supercollider has been learnt. This was a massive help as learning the modes the previous way was a bit of a struggle, especially as I managed to miss some from the week before.
Here is a revised list of the modes within Supercollider:
Ionian: [0,2,4,5,7,9,11,12,]
Dorian: [0,2,3,5,7,9,10,12]
Phrygian: [0,1,3,5,7,8,10,12]
Lydian: [0.2.4.6.7.9.11.12]
Mixolydian: [0,2,4,5,7,9,10,12]
Aeolian: [0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12]
Locrian: [0,1,3,5,6,8,10,12]
Week 4:
This week was spent still attempting to learn how to code different modes into Supercollider. To try and help me remember I keep looking over these:
Dorian: [2,4,5,7,9,11,12,14]
Phrygian: [4,5,7,9,11,12,14,16]
Lydian: [5,7,9,11,12,14,16,17]
Mixolydian: [7,9,11,12,14,16,17,19]
Aeolian: [9,11,12,14,16,17,19,21,23]
This is how it would look in supercollider, using the dorian scale as an example:
( //dorian
Pbind(
\scale, #[2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14],
\degree, Pseq([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]-1, inf),
\dur, 1/8,
\db, -3
).play
)
Week 3:
In week three we went into more detail about coding chords and scales within Supercollider. Starting to realise that the more we learn, and the bigger the arrangements of code, the far more likely it is something will go wrong. One missed comma or bracket can lead to ten minutes of searching for the problem.
Week 2:
This week we looked at harmonies, frequencies, equal temperament, the haptic threshold and how we perceive sound waves. I found this very interesting but quite tricky to take in.
Halfway through this lesson we also attended a lecture from Dr. Joyce Shintani on digital music in media art. She told us about a festival she had attended in Linz and presented some work by Thomas Kerner, a prize winning video ‘suburbs of the void’. I found her lecture interesting but it perhaps leaned too much to her own opinions rather than giving a non bias assessment of her subject.
Week 1:
This week we began to learn the basics of how to use a program called Supercollider. Supercollider is a computer programming language for algorithmic composition. And real time audio synthesis. Here are a few basic things we learnt:
S.boot; = Boot the local server within Supercollider
.play; = Called function play
Shift + Return = Evaluates a line of code
Cmd + period = Stops what is being played
().play = The simplest event you can trigger in Supercollider, this plays default note of c4
Although I find this a lot less user friendly to use than other programs, I can apprecitate how there are a number of things that are possible with this programs that may not be possible in others such as Logic.
