Something a bit different for this week. I've been building up a Max/MSP version of the patch that Jaap Vink was using at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht in the 1970s. This is an 8-channel version of that, with an attempt to make it responsive for live performance. (I actually prefer the performance I did just prior, but I mistakenly recorded it as mono.)

The title comes from the minor planet Iva 497.

I'd done some rhythmic composition with guitar and bass, and...it didn't seem that interesting. So Sunday evening I did a few improvisations with home-built Res-O-Glas guitar, Moyo passive volume, and my eight-delay Max/MSP patch with Hainbach's Wires (for grit and warble) and convolution reverb. I recorded that to the drive, and brought it into Ableton for fixing levels a bit.

Title this week refers to NGC 90, a spiral galaxy interacting with NGC 93 to form the galaxy pair Arp 65.

Last week's piece required quite a bit of arrangement, so to get myself back on track for this week, I opted to improvise with pedal steel and my eight-delay Max/MSP patch. A few weeks ago, I added FFT pitch shift to the patch, and 50% blend of one-fifth down is very satisfying. So there's a lot of that here

The signal chain going in is pedal steel > Balls Effects KWB (a fuzz/boost), Vox Wah, and Moyo passive volume. Inside the patch, there's the FFT, a VST of AudioThing Reels, the delay lines, a send to a VST of AudioThing Motor, auto-pan, and convolution reverb (Huddersfield Town Hall) on the output.

The eight delay lines were set to different lengths, but they were related by calculating 12-part increments from a base of 15.5 seconds.

To keep things from becoming too austere, I added yet another convolution reverb (Fort Worden Cistern) in Live, and put Full Chain multi-band eq/compression on the output.

The title comes from 83 being a safe prime.

This past week brought unfortunate family news. To be as easy on myself as possible, this week's track is an improvisation with pedal steel guitar and my eight-delay Max/MSP patch. There's a Moyo volume pedal to take the attack off, Waves Factory Cassette for a bit of character, and a convolution reverb for space. The reference delay time is 19300ms, and the individual delays are based on divisions of 21 of that amount. Each delay is a different value.

This is essentially real-time, though I did tweak levels after the fact, and shortened the end fade.

The title is from Euler's idoneal numbers, also called suitable numbers, of which there are 65. (And I hope that this is a suitable tribute to those we've lost this week..)

A long track. This past week included a show on guitar, through a new Max/MSP patch. The signal chain is a Waves Factory Cassette VST, four parallel tapin/tapout pairs with variable lengths and regeneration, and convolution reverb. Delays and reverb also had variable bleed back to the input, and I set up message objects with fixed delay amounts so that I could snap the delay suddenly to new values. It's a work in progress, but I'm into the direction in which this is going. (UI work is important here; I'm using the Mira app to give more immediate access to the controls.)

Still, kind of a cool wintery vibe here.

Guitar (the Res-O-Glas) is going through a MOYO passive volume pedal and into the Focusrite. I pseudo-mastered this in Live with the Full-Chain Master effects rack.

Title from the unexpected volatility of this week's element, Lawrencium.

Very busy week including travel to the spatial audio workshop at RPI, so this is a quick little improv with Max/MSP. [cycle~] into the pitch/delay/pan/degrade network, a bit of convolution reverb, and Full-Chain Master in Live.

Title from the use of this week's element thallium in photoresistors.

Very busy week, including prep for a Max/MSP show with mic feedback, so this week's submission is one of the test runs through the Max/MSP patch, with guitar. Kinda ambling and chaotic.

.aiff file captured to the drive, then brought into Ableton for level correcting, a touch of convolution reverb, and Full-Chain Master. And there we have it.

Title from the discovery of liquid mercury under this temple in Teotihuacan

A very busy week, including beginning prep for my upcoming performance in Chicago, so I've had my head in Max/MSP (particularly developing performance interfaces I can use on the iPad with Cycling74's Mira). So it was fairly natural to do some improvs with the input shifter patch, and this is one of them. Max/MSP -> file, Ableton Live for tweaking levels and compression, and adding a bit of convolution reverb to the mix. (And it's a rehearsal opportunity.)

Title from one of the uses of this week's element hafnium--as the electrode in plasma cutting.

I spent the weekend at Cycling74's Expo, which is devoted to things we can do with Max/MSP, so this week's track is in Max. I used the input shifter patch I've been using for a while, with a filtered square wave as source material, and then dropped the recorded result by an octave. There's a convolution reverb send, and Full-Chain Master on the output.

Title from the use of Thulium in lasers. (A lot of these elements are getting tricky to differentiate.)

This week's track came together in little sessions during the week (new job and travel), so it was easier to do an in-the-box thing--I had the drum patterns (a synth drum kit I came up with, a 909 kit, and Ableton's AstroPlay) and an abstract ring-modulated keyboard line (Ableton's Electric piano). It seemed to need a layer of noise, so I added Ableton's Analog's Coptor (sic) preset, and then did a quick improvisation with my randomizable pitch shifting network in Max/MSP (which begins the piece and continues throughout.)

Effects/sends: Drum Buss on the synth drum and 909, and Frequency Shifter (in Ring Mod mode) on the AstroPlay. One Echo send, and one convolution reverb. Full-chain master on the stereo mix.

Title from a property of praseodymium (element 59): silicate crystals that are doped with it have been experimentally used to slow light.

Another busy week, including a show using one of my Max/MSP patches, so here's a little dark ambient track making use of the same patch and similar improvisational methods. (The original input is just a sine wave, going through ring mods, pitch shifters, and delays, all of which have some level of randomization.) As a slightly different approach, I also put on a drum rack of Analog-synthesized drums. Bit of convolution reverb, delay, and Full Chain Master as well...and you have this steady-state kind of thing. My younger son suggested the title, because it sounded to him like something malfunctioning. (It does!)

Yet another busy week...but it should lighten up after this. Here's a quick improv with the Max/MSP patch, with guitar as the input. There's a bit of convolution reverb on the output. Noise at the beginning comes from the variable bit-depth and sample-rate deduction, and while I wanted that out...it's just kind of part of it now.

Another even busier week, so here's another quick improv with the sine-waves-and-random-processing Max/MSP patch. There's some convolution reverb using an impulse from a Swedish reactor, some EQ8 to roll off above 8K (because it's peaky up there), and full-chain master. Title comes from the n=3 magic hexagon, which sums to 38.

Very busy week involving work, a report for a class I'm taking, and a live set, so here's a quick improv using my pitch-shifting and randomizing Max/MSP patch, processing some simple sine waves. There's a touch of compression and convolution reverb on there, too.

Title comes from one of the uses for rubidium, atomic number 37.

An extremely busy week of work, performance preparation, and performance, with ups and downs. Coming off a very satisfying snwv set with my new Max/MSP patch at Oscillate: Pittsburgh 2017, here's a quick improvisation with just a sine wave oscillator into the patch. I added a bit of reverb and full-chain master in Live, and cut out a longer part of the noisy waterfall section, but otherwise it's the result of this improv. Features of the patch: pitch-shifting, delay, delay regeneration, and sample-rate and bit-depth reduction, all of them randomized and continually updating. And the time between updates is itself randomized, for extra confusion. Title comes from previewing the piece for the kids, and talking about it after they listened.