[LAU] two new Csound pieces

[Dave Phillips]

Robin Gareus wrote:
> Dave Phillips wrote:
>   
>> Folderol wrote:
>>     
>>> These are interesting atmospheric pieces but I'm afraid are too much on
>>> the experimental side for me.
>>>
>>> Of the two, I think I prefer 'ascensio nudae beatae'
>>>
>>>       
> me too. - Well I really like it! the beginning reminded me a bit of
> Ligeti violins.
>
> What's it about? 'you're raised by beautiful nudes'? ;)
>   
The title translates to "Ascension of the Blessed Nude".

Aura Amara means "bitter wind".


> ... I was thinking that Ascensio could make a cool
> soundtrack for a film. it's well composed. Are the videos going to be
> online as well?
>   
Eventually. Recently I've found some good settings for video conversion 
with WinFF, so I'll experiment a bit and see what I can churn out. I 
won't put up the videos if the quality sucks.

The videos are also experimental.
> around second 87 in Ascensio Nudae Baetae I've missed some Tom Waits
> like "weird instruments from the barn" to go along with the synth
> chords. It feels a bit "too programmed" at this stage. (just a feeling:
> take a Mic, Moog&Sledgehammer or a coffee-cup,crowbar & wah-pedal and
> old harp may also do some good - maybe you can even translate that into
> Csound ;)
>   
As the piece stands now it's totally raw and unedited. I could easily 
pop it into Ardour and add new stuff. I'll have to think about it, and I 
may decide to do it in Csound itself.

> my crappy laptop speakers are no good for Aura Amara. I'm looking
> forward to listen later today. - I haven't read the novel yet; but
> that's the 3rd time that I heard about it in the last few days.. I'll
> surf over to amazon ;)
>   
Have you read anything by McCarthy ? He's strong stuff, but The Road is 
probably his most easily-approachable work. No Country For Old Men and 
Blood Meridian are also recommended, but be aware that his work can be 
extremely violent at times. There are passages in Blood Meridian that 
out-do Clive Barker and the splatter-punk and extreme horror writers.

> Would you mind sharing how you've done that? is this pure Csound or did
> you overdub/master with ardour/jamin..?
>   
These pieces are (almost) pure Csound and were composed in the 
AVSynthesis program, which itself is made of two major parts, a Csound 
composer and an OpenGL shader control panel. I can switch off either 
one, so I can use AVSynthesis as it was originally designed, or I can 
use it as a standalone composition environment for Csound. No text entry 
is involved, btw, it's all done with graphic controls.

Ascensio Nudae Beatae is built from seven layers, five of which have 
integrated sound. Two layers use a wave-cycling instrument and a 
phase-vocoder "blur" effect. One layer uses an Analog and a Vosim 
instrument (instruments are pre-built in AVSynthesis) along with a 
spectral arpeggiator. The last two layers use a Pluck instrument, one 
gets a Phaser effect, the other is treated by another phase vocoder 
effect, a "smoother". A global reverb is also applied.

Btw, I use a version of Csound compiled for double-precision math. The 
original audio output is very high quality, better than the soundfiles 
indicate.

AVSynthesis includes a sequencer that can be configured for 
deterministic or random output, that's what I use to arrange the pitch 
materials for a piece like the Ascensio.

No further audio work was done to these pieces, they're "as is" straight 
from AVSynthesis.

Thanks for listening, Robin, and thanks for your interest. Btw, feel 
rfee to use this material in any way you like. I haven't decided on a 
license yet, but it'll cover free re-use of the pieces.

Best regards,

Dave Phillips