[LAU] new Csound piece

[Robin Gareus]

On 01/06/2011 02:05 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 5:34 AM, Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> Actually it's an old one, recently spruced up for a new video created with
>> AVSynthesis. The video hasn't been uploaded yet, but I like the soundtrack
>> well enough to post it solo.
>>
>>   http://linux-sound.org/audio/QuietlyScatter.mp3
>>
>>   http://linux-sound.org/audio/QuietlyScatter.ogg
>>
>> Soft ambient music, not loud. Think "dynamics by Morton Feldman".
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> dp
>>
> 
> Dave and others,
>    I've listened to this a couple of times today and enjoyed it each time.

same here. Although I need to admit that I've cheated and normalized it
to 0dbfs after the first listen.

>    I'm curious as to any forums where people share the code/setups for
> compositions like this. 

I'd be interested in those as well.

> I've played a bit with CSound, ChucK, Super
> Collider, etc., but never made much headway on my own. Having access
> to some musically interesting code would likely spur my learning.

I don't know the details on "Quietly Scatter" but it sounds very much
like it was entirely composed (or preformed live) with AVSynthesis.

AVSynthesis abstracts the audio-synth and the resulting Csound files are
close to unreadable. I tried to extract some instruments from a few
soundscapes that I've created with AVSynthesis and it is no fun.

An example dumped Csound orchestra+score from AVS look like
http://rg42.org/_media/wiki/avs-csound.tgz - you should be able to play
it with ./play.sh included in the tgz.

It is possible to exchange AVSynthesis .xml files, though (you don't
need the video-textures to render the sound). But I don't think you'll
learn much from those.

The score is [often] quite simple (a sequence of 4 triads or 16 single
notes), and usually only one the 3 available synths is sufficient. The
"trick" is effects and modulation of the synth and effect parameters -
as well as modulation of the modulation :) AVSynthesis makes this quite
simple (once you got a hang of the UI). BTW AVS has a very long reverb
which can't be disabled but gives the overall composition a nice touch.

Nevertheless, while AVS does magic, Dave did a great job composing
arranging this piece. ..but again that's something one can _not_ learn
by looking at the score or the source, though it can be handy to have a
look a at few arrangements.

If you like "Quietly Scatter", I recommend to check out Dave's "False
Mondrian Studies" (posted sometime in August 2010 on LAU): f.i.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZrnknnKVEk and there are a few more of
Dave's AVS compositions floating around. Those actually got me really
interested in AVS and Csound a few years back.

BTW AVS is available from http://avsynthesis.blogspot.com/ - Jean-Pierre
Lemoine did an amazing job!

2c,
robin

>    Also, what about mash ups of stuff like this?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark