COMPEL Omeka Dev

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  • In Bengal, young children are told that the whispers and crackles they hear near bamboo bushes are the voices of the ghosts that live there. With this story in mind, I have created a piece where I have elaborated the natural sounds made by bamboo trees when they are moved by the wind. These natural sounds are then mixed with other ambient sounds (street, traffic, conversations) and processed so that the resulting composition is characterized by a remote and abstract atmosphere. The original sounds have been recorded in Jakkur, India, in the summer of 2006.

  • Music for 88 keys is the first example of a composition based on the sonification and remix of materials property data from the online computational materials repository AFLOWLIB, the heart of the materialssoundmusic project.The sonification algorithm behind Music for 88 keys maps the materials information into sound by encoding data into MIDI events in an automated high-throughput fashion. The sonic data are fed to audio generating patches written for MAX and Ableton Live through a DataPlayer app. The algorithm used in the creation of Music for 88 keys maps data to the MIDI notes 21 through 108 (the 88 keys of the piano) and associates an amplitude (MIDI velocity) to each note derived from a manipulation of the same dataset. The duration of any MIDI event (that is a representation of rhythm and meter) is inferred from the rate of variation of the data (i.e. their derivative in time), making each material soundscape completely internally consistent. The MIDI stream so generated is then treated as a collection of musical structures for further compositional elaboration. “Music for 88 keys” is a suite born from the remix of the data from Diamond, Zinc Oxide and Gold. The piece is scored for player piano and electronics and is dedicated to the memory of Conlon Nancarrow, the American composer who made the player piano his instrument of choice throughout his career. In Music for 88 keys the original datasets from AFLOWLIB.org are variably manipulated through different techniques: from simple variations of tempo and meter to extensive reordering of pitches or regions and various orchestration choices. The suite starts with a preludio that uses the sonic mapping of the data for Diamond as starting compositional material. The same concept is used in the interludio, but with data from a different material, Zinc Oxide. Interludio separates the two principal sections of the suite: largo and andante, with the piano accompanied by sampled percussions sounds and based again on data from Diamond, from continuo, based on the data for Zinc Oxide for piano with a drone of brass, and  contrappunto aureo, based on the data from Gold, where the brass and the percussions are both combined with the piano. The suite ends with a postludio, where the piano alone states again a sonic mapping of data that now combines the three materials.

  • These five short pieces are inspired by poems by Eugenio Montale, italian Nobel laureate in 1975. In his work, starting from the first collection, Ossi di Seppia (1925), Montale focused on the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy, love, and human existence in poems that are characterized by the hermeticism of the message if not of the language, in a dramatic and psychological dynamism.
    In each of these compositions I explored the dilemma of the sound in a multiform collection of audio manipulations that create dynamical and evocative portraits of the poet’s words.

  • after Giacomo Leopardi

  • In Contrappunto (the first of my Inventions for data stream) the data stream (from the AFLOWLIB.org entry for Silicon) is manipulated during the live performance creating a musical material that will be influenced by the performer in any instance of execution. This is where the CADDC environment is most versatile, allowing for a large degree of improvisation and for a broad palette of esthetic choices. The duration of the piece is open and the recording on SoundCloud is just an example of the infinite possibilities that this piece opens.

  • The structure of Ricercare is a reinterpretation of the original “ricercare” style of the late renaissance and early baroque period. Here the word “ricercare“ (Italian for “to research”) takes a double meaning: on one hand is the research the performer does to find the optimal connection between the flute and the sonification of the data stream in the basso continuo accompaniment; on the other, it refers to the scientific research work that has led to the data on which this composition is based. All the parts are directly based on the remix and sonification of the materials property data for Silicon, Germanium and Tin (Si1_ICSD_60389, Ge1_ICSD_181071 and Sn1_ICSD_53789 in AFLOWLIB.org), some of the group IVa elements of the periodic table. The flute part is built on the materials data mapped to pitch class sets (one of the output of the data manipulation algorithm). These pitch class sets are used in the original form found by the mapping procedure – no operation (translation, inversion or multiplication) is done on the sets. The rhythmic patterns oscillate between quasi-random sequences and continuous virtuosity runs as in a baroque solo section. The basso continuo is split in one harmonic and one percussive part. The harmonic part comes from the direct mapping of the materials data into MIDI note-on/note-off events streamed live through the DataPlayer app; the percussive section doubles the flute part in a rhythmic unison triggered by the flute through an audio-to-MIDI pitch recognition Max for Live patch.

  • EleKtrIoN I (music of diamond) is a composition based on the sonification, remix and artistic reinterpretation of diamond property data obtained by very sophisticated scientific computer simulations translated into music using a computer-aided data-driven composition environment developed by the composer in the materialssoundmusic project.

  • There are six parts written in Max/MSP. No conductor is needed and the time is automatically set in the patches.

  • This work is a collection of 12 movements that are comprised of all the zodiac symbols for any given month notated. The computer part is subtle and is used to alter the timbre of the instruments in real time to make a “hyper” instrument. The composition does not have to be played with all 12 movements. The ensemble can pick their birthday months or randomly choose.
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If you see an error or would like to add content to COMPEL, please leave a comment or contact Hollis Wittman at hollisw@vt.edu.