About this blog

This is a blog where I keep notes about my activities as a musician and a researcher at Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University. Until October 2008 these notes relate to my work on my PhD thesis Improvisation, Computers and Interaction but has since then become more general. Published (and unpublished) papers, essays and articles may be found in the documents section.

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November 07, 2009

Soap operas

Browsing the web for Soap Opera content for our Sucktion performance I came across this particularly funny clip:

What strikes me about this passage is how it reveals something about the attention span of the dialogue of the drama. The lead character claims to have made the move from "waiting tables" to the CEO of the company in just 13 weeks. That is quite an achievement.

Posted by henrikfr at 01:03 AM | Post a comment (0)

November 03, 2009

Vacuum cleaner performance

I started looking at different ways in which the soprano can "perform" on the vacuum cleaner in Anne LeBaron's Opera Sucktion. One option would be to let Marja, who is doing the soprano part, use a Wii controller that I then map unto some parameters of some part of the synthesis. Another option would be to rig the vacuum cleaner that is a part of the performance, with contact microphones and let the sound input from these microphones control aspects of the sound synthesis. This latter option is perhaps my preferred one, also because it will, I believe, more easily integrate into the general vibe of the piece.

Posted by henrikfr at 11:49 PM | Post a comment (0)

November 01, 2009

Sucktion: laying out the files

Having spent the last few days familiarizing myself with the sound and MIDI-files for Anne LeBarons Cyber opera Sucktion I'm now starting to get an idea of what is expected of me. Initially I thought I'd make use of the MIDI files in order to generate some of the part in real-time. On second thought, however, I think I will rather focus on the audio files provided by the composer, and work with them in various ways. As much as I like the idea of real-time manipulation and generation of sound, the concept of stuck notes is equally off-putting. I may still use parts of the MIDI-files for certain aspects to reinforce a particular part of a voice.

For the audio files I will use a Pd patch I developed for a concert earlier this year that allows me to scratch the sound-files using various techniques. What I would like to be able to do here is to play back the original sound file while at the same time scratch a copy of the same file and mix it in together with the original.

Posted by henrikfr at 11:03 PM | Post a comment (0)

October 28, 2009

Sucktion: A Cyborgopera by Anne LeBaron

On November 13 I will perform in a staging of Anne LeBaron's Cyborgopera Sucktion. I will perform the laptop part which, interestingly enough, is written adding in a lot of freedom for me as a performer. The way the part is written, with a mixture of pre-prepared material, instructions for improvisations, and instructions on how to use material from the other performers (soprano and percussion), gives me a lot of liberty.

I have started looking for sounds and tools to use for my performance. I will continue using the Korg NANOpad which I bought recently for my Guelph Jazz Festival performance in September as it will be the perfect controller for the Sucktion laptop part. I will use build the main interface using Pd and use the Hexter and Bristol DSSI plugins for some of the MIDI sounds. The Thermin like sounds used, in particular in Scene I, I think I will create as small Pd sub-patches, possibly pitchtracking live input.

I will make stuff available here as I go along, as long as the composer will not object against it.

Posted by henrikfr at 10:57 PM | Post a comment (0)

October 15, 2009

Fedora, MacBook Pro, and internal sound

Since I received my brand new MacBook Pro (17'') I haven't figured out how to get sound routed to the internal speakers using PulseAudio. The headphone outlet produced sound though and for that reason I hadn't bothered too much (it was kind of nice to not have to listen to all the little Gnome sounds; swishes and poffs and what not). But tonight I decided to do something about it.

From using Jack I had noticed that sound output from the internal sound card (a HDA NVidia with a Realtek ALC889A chip) was sent to the headphone outlet on channel 1 and 2, and to the internal speakers on channel 3 and 4. For PulseAudio the remedy proved to be some settings easily made in the ALSA mixer.

Start the ALSA mixer by simply typing

$ alsamixer
at the command line. If the right soundcard is not displayed choose the internal one by pressing F6. Once the settings for the right soundcard are displayed, set it in 4ch mode (the rightmost option in the playback section). Then, raise the volume of the 'surround' channel.

That's it. Now there should be sound coming out of the speakers, the volume of which is controllable by the keyboard shortcuts.

Posted by henrikfr at 08:57 PM | Post a comment (0)

Back after months of inactivity

I experienced a bit of a void after my PhD dissertation/defense about a year ago, so bad that I had no interest in posting on this blog. Well, I'm back now, intending to do something about it. I still have much to write about!

To new and returning readers: Welcome (back) to the unordered mix of (music) technology, artistic practice and research, and music philosophy!

Posted by henrikfr at 08:50 PM | Post a comment (0)

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