WEEK 11 – CC1: MetaSynth Meshing

After last week's explorations I had a good idea of what I wanted this time around, though open to anything MetaSynth may present! Something more subdued. Long, drawn out, searching sounds. Undertones. Maybe I'd been influenced by the presentation on Brian 'Lustmord' Williams at forum (1). Either way, I was looking forward to tinkering with MetaSynth again (2).

I got studio 5 up and running and was into it. I tweaked the Image Synth and saved a few things, developing my thoughts, then headed to the Spectrum Synth. I experimented; changed BPM's, adjusted spectrum and interpolation settings. I saved more samples for now and later.

The Sequencer Room is too much fun and I tried a few instrument presets and scales. The huge range of possiblilities is mindboggling so I focused on the mood I was after. The organ preset sequence created was pitched too high so I dropped it a couple of octaves and deleted some notes, creating rhythms and pulses. I then set the scale to a wholetone (equal 2nds) and was satisfied.

(See screenshot for sequence before alteration. Active notes highlighted in yellow.)

I created around 8 samples and took a break.

The pulsing rhythm of the organ part is purposely set at a slightly faster tempo than the spacious opening section. The drums are different again. The original MetaSynth devised drum part which ends Becoming #2 was fairly one dimensional and bland, so I moved drums around and dropped beats from the kick drum part. I wondered how this 'tempo switching' would work over a minute.

The way things naturally fell together, it seems to work okay, helping to build tension. There is a section near the middle and just after where a number of different pulses and beats invoke a kind of rhythmic mesh.

The sprinkle of tinkles at the beginning and after the middle is a brush drawn filter.

Astounding that Becoming #1 and #2 were created from one source sample and one program.

Becoming2.mp3

References

Haines, Christian. Creative Computing, Week 11 Tutorial - Processing - Meta Synth 2. EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia, May 24, 2007.

1/ Delaney, John. Music Technology Forum - Construction and Deconstruction. EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia, May 24, 2007.

2/ MetaSynth 4. 2006. http://www.uisoftware.com/MetaSynth/index.html (accessed May 22, 2007).