https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/ Process Documentation Hugo en-us Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro/ Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro/ Interactive Ever-Changing Music Video Clip? The following chapter details the iterative creation process of an app specially designed for a new project, The Aquatic Museum (TAM)—the name given to a band project, an album, and an app. The sections below lay out the project and the preproduction steps of the album and app. I’ll then take an excursion into other musical creations using chance and surprise elements, some of which have found their way into the TAM app, while others were deemed, in a democratic artistic collective process, too experimental. I’ll conclude with finalized examples of audio interactions in the TAM app. Album and app were released in 2023; the last section of this page presents the release. https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro02/ Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro02/ Film Rhythm After Sound TAM singer Claire Parsons had worked with Vienna-based Astrid Rothaug on a previous music clip for her In Geometry album. For TAM, we wanted to give Astrid as much freedom as possible in creating a three-minute short film with hand-drawn animated frames and a story loosely spun around an Aquatic Museum theme. For inspiration during our first meetings, we provided Astrid with demo and pre-production material and settled on a simple pop music tune (with some twists), co-written1 by Claire and me, The Souvenir Shop—a constant in every museum visit. https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro03/ Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro03/ Simple Structure Music and audio in video games is certainly a central atmospheric mood element, but too often in indie games musical considerations come very late in the development process. Furthermore, sound performance1 and quality have to make room for graphic performance and user interaction priorities. As a new take on the music video clip, the TAM app takes the opposite perspective and puts music first. The animated short with few user interactions and a linear storyline is the backdrop to The Souvenir Shop tune. https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro04/ Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cyclesintro04/ Perception To come up with a list of musical parameters worth changing, I drew on workshops and classes1 at the Conservatorium Maastricht and on research in the fields of music education2 and perception.3 The overall musical design process was less planned and more iterative than the following table would suggest. Intuition, feasibility regarding the software used (here mostly FMOD), time and budget constraints, testing, and personal live concert experience all played a role in the final decisions. https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy01/ Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy01/ The opening scene from the TAM app gives the user a window of a few seconds to press a button that turns red. This triggers a random C minor chord leading into verse 1 of the Souvenir Shop tune. Not only is the voicing randomly picked, but so are the instruments playing the chord (piano, big band, strings). The following was an experiment for the in praise of folly string trio1 (violin, viola, and cello). Some voices were written out, and the final bar only gives minimal indication of which notes to play: a pentatonic-derived scale with a 9th, no 7th and no 6th: https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy02/ Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy02/ This example might not find its way into the final version of the TAM app but will be used during live performances. The main bass groove is transformed by two metric modulations: the first uses the triplet (bar 6) as the new reference speed, and the second the quintuplet (bar 11). Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer used these rhythmic transformations in his adaptations of Mystic Brew and Human Nature (cf. my original post here peckels.com/blog/mystic). https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy03/ Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy03/ Karnatic Practice Part 1 of the detour uses as an example the following étude, which I wrote for the first-year assignment1 of the Applications of Karnatic Rhythm to Western Music program, using only devices taught during the first year. The following composition is entirely based on one eight-note melodic cell (F D A Bb G D Eb C) in the violin lead voice and the rhythmic cells of the drone voice (cf. bar 1 for both), with melodic and rhythmic transformations applied throughout. https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy04/ Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:42:20 +0100 https://serendip.peckels.com/50process/cstudy04/ ▶ Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DXXxXCPg7Hg