Compositional Strategies

The following processes are natural and idiomatic for loudspeakers and the production mechanisms that support them.

Machine Music

Machine music involves the working out of rhythmic and/or mechanical patterns and processes. The mechanical nature of our synthesis and various DAW-related music production systems seem extremely well-suited to generating such music. The ease with which our productions systems permits the effortless generation and realization of complex polyrhythmic patterns and the working out of such motor patterns make them well suited to create process that have fascinated many 20th Century composers.

Extended Growth and Decay Processes

Loudspeakers and DAWs effortlessly cope with extended sequences of crescendos and diminuendos, which can easily take an hour, if desired. These structural sizes are beyond the capability of live performers or the constraints of the live performance venue.

Hocketing

Hockets (melodic sequences that bounce between various performers) are fascinating and delightful music behaviors. It is extremely easy to generate hockets that exist between loudspeakers (channels). The spatial interactions are extremely interesting. Rhythmic interactions subtly change as the listener changes position between the speakers.

Iterative Loops

The idiomatic tape echo and related multi-channel tape-echo loops that change over time are absolutely generic to loudspeaker music to the point of having become a cliché. Such slowly evolving loops present powerful opportunities for composers to create organically changing musical landscapes and sonic voyages.

Canons

Literal canons are simply realized with cut and paste editing. More complex imitative canons are comparatively easily generated and realized, including canons of diminution and augmentation, as well as canons at various intervals.

Musical Motion

Simple Panning

Amplitude panning is of course absolutely generic. It works extremely well for rapid pans, and moderately well for slow pans.

Time Domain Panning

Panning in the time domain can also be done through the introduction of microscopic pitch/time shifts of one of an identical pair of tracks. Such pans have considerably more interest than amplitude-based pans.

Complex Multichannel Motions and Migrations, including Doppler Shifts

Panning that involves a complex array of channels, including reverberation, can be quite complex. Done well, such pans can be stunning, especially if a pitch shift (mimicking Doppler Shift) is involved. Particularly powerful are front to rear Doppler pans (through the overhead speaker), especially when the reverberance reverses (so that primary reverberance starts in the rear for front-based sounds and pans to the front as the front-based sounds pan to the rear.

A Hypothetical “Star-field” Pass-through Algorithm

I have long wished to have an algorithm that causes signals introduced on a continuing real-time basis into the algorithm to migrate smoothly from front to rear, including Doppler shift, with various sideways displacements and fading away behind us (equivalent to the sort of screen saver that gives us the illusion of going through a star field).

Vertical Layering

A single vertical speaker actually allows us to “pull” a signal “upward” in apparent elevation (through a ratio of horizontal-to-vertical amplitude distribution). This permits us to have sounds overhead, sounds at the horizon and sounds in between as distinct strata. These seem to have different emotional meanings. Further, we can have reverb high or low, and we can equalize reverb differently at various heights, for instance making the overhead reverberation quite dark and foreboding with the horizon reverb quite light and airy, or vice versa.

Production Tools

A Digital Audio Workstation

I use Pro Tools, which appears to be almost ideal for this sort of work. Rhythms are extremely easily handled in Grid mode and the effortless multiplicity of channels make it close to ideal. The biggest flaw I have found is Pro Tools’ inability to allow the user to easily modify the clock rate for a given signal to create slow and well-controlled glissandi, beat-rate changes and the like.

A Surround Reverberator

I have found the Lexicon 960 surround reverberator to be a close-to-ideal spatial generator. When utilized in conjunction with automated reverb send levels and panning, and appropriate automation of reverb spectrum, this reverb has proved to me to be invaluable in obtaining the textures I desire.

A synthesizer

Interestingly, I find the use of a synthesizer (especially with stock patches) to be less and less important. Mostly, I generate libraries of carefully tuned sine, square and sawtooth waves and work with these as primary sound materials via cut and paste in Pro Tools. However, I expect to move back toward synthesizers in the future as time and finances permit.