It was really interesting to hear each groups performance this way. Compared to having heard performances through laptop speakers originally, getting the full range of sounds that were actually being produced was quite amazing. For our won performance I felt that the overall sounds almost didn’t even resemble what we had heard before through our laptops. After hearing our performance through the speakers I felt that some work still needs to be done, but it was still enjoyable at the same time.

“Doughnuts”

Like last week this group used a drum loop, the difference was that this week it felt as though they didn’t rely on it. They had a really nice glitched up voice sample for their intro.

“Chavs”

the sounds used by this group sounded more defined than the week before. Their piece was well structured and was very atmospheric.

“No Name” (my group)

I felt this week we listened to each other a lot more. This meant that our piece was better structured and nobody’s sounds drowned out any one else. More work needed though.

“Dos Pendejos”

Unfortunately for this group they had two people missing. However, I thought that them managed to do well despite this. They had a good contrast of sounds that complimented each other nicely. They also didn’t rely on a drum loop this week, which helped a lot.

“Andrew Kinsey Experiment”

This group had some nice atmospheric sounds. They seemed to work well as a group and this came through in their piece. There was a nice structure and everyone seemed to know what they were doing.

Group one’s piece was my favourite of the five. They listened well to each other, and made good use of pauses. This meant that it was possible to hear clearly what each member of the group was doing.

Group two’s approach was more in the style of process music. There was some nice improvisation and each group member gradually added to the piece. They ended the piece when each member had completed their turn within the improvisation and had nothing left to play.

Group three (my group) had a similar approach to group two’s. Our group however had a less structured improvisation between the members, and generally required a bit more practice. Perhaps more listening to each other was required.

Group four used a drum loop to set the basis for their piece. I felt this was a little overused, but I did like it as it was a different approach from the preceding groups. There were some nice combinations of tones, however some of the improvisation felt a bit too random.

Group five also used a drum loop but they slowed the tempo of the drum loop at the very start that I liked. There seemed to be a lot of improvisation that at times felt a little muddled, but I thought it didn’t affect the overall sound of the piece.

In conclusion, it was very interesting to hear each groups approach to this task. After hearing each group I feel that in order to improve our own performance, more practice is needed. I enjoyed hearing the other group’s approaches to this task, and believe it will help us to improve our own performance.

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.

I’m completely new to the whole blogging thing so I’ll try and keep it brief! I was inspired to apply to the Creative Music Tech course at Anglia after completing a BTEC in Music technology. After our very first lecture I was made aware of how different things are going to be here and it was inspiring to see just how much there is to learn. I have had experience using logic 8 so SuperCollider is something completely new for me. I am really looking forward to the coming weeks to see how I will progress on the course.