There is always things rising, converging, and dying
in my evolutionary process. I learn to use new tools
new musical instruments, new programing languages,
then I drop some of that learning. I get tired of a
certain instrument or I simply forget to continue using
a tool.
Over the years there are some of these activity that
I keep coming back to. Writing, playing music, drawing
multi-media programming, meditation, martial art, theatre
and dancing are some of main activities that I come back
to again and again.
There is a certain frustration in having so many interests.
I feel I can't get really good at one thing if I keep
on doing so many different things. There is also a
disconnect between all of these activities which
seems to fragment who I am.
But sometime convergence happens. One or a few of my
activities merge together giving me hope that all
these activities I am doing have somewhat of a goal.
One convergence that helped my a lot in my writing has been gopher. I wanted to find a way to publish my writing, but
directly from the command line, without too much steps
in between. Gopher happens, and I have been writing more
than ever!
When I started multimedia programming in (fluxus) to then
move to processing and finally pureData, it brought together
visual creation with music and interaction. I could use
some of my drawings, photos or video and remix them.
It felt pretty good. Recently, I was inspired by Suiteru
techniques of using pureData and the midi messages from
his model:cycles to create awesome visuals. That
rekindled my interest in audio reactive visuals
programming.
I had a model:cycles until a week ago and know some
pureData enough to start experimenting. I'll write more
on the implicatiom of using Midi to create visuals in a
future post, and I'll share my code exploring this reality.
Musically, I can't stop playing new instruments. It does
feel silly at time how many instruments I own. Flutes,
trumpets, hand drums, tablas, piano, keyboards, synth,
samplers, shakers... the list goes on. 3 years ago now,
I got an Octatrack, and using a zoom h6 as a mixer I brought
all my instrument in a looping smorgasbord. That was a
great musical convergence. I could finally use all of my
instruments together, but toward what goal?
A month ago I started playing live music while leading a
meditation. That was one of the most exciting convergence
I've experienced. Brininging all these years of meditation
techniques that I've learned and shared, with my musical
skill, using multiple instruments.
Bringing in my field recordings into the meditation
as ambiance, and sampling other instruments that could
be impractical to use live in this setup. Every audio
bits are being used in one goal!
At the same time I use a couple mic to use my voice,
flute and didgeredoo. Since I am using my synth, sampler
and looper, all that spit out midi signals. My next
convergence is to bring my multimedia programing
into the mix. Multimedia programing, which was already
a convergence of a lot of my creative visual interest!
I'm very excited to see how far I can continue to converge
these activities. My creative brain lead me in the realm
of fantasy. I've built my own geodesic dome for my garden
and always though it would be an awesome space to lead
meditation.
<fantasy>
I picture myself in the middle of the woods. Setting
up a meditation geodesic dome, where I play electronic
and accoustic music. Leading a meditation, while
projecting visuals controled by my midi setup. The
meditation continue into a movement, and then into a
dance party. The projections would be mapped on walls
of the geodesic dome using 6 small projectors.
</fantasy>
When certains aspect of my life converge, I feel a release.
A sense of accomplishment flood my mind. It also give me
purpose, as it gives values to all the semingly disconnected
part of my 'self'. It makes me wonder if convergences
ultimately leads to happiness or the discovery of who
I really am. And if the quest toward convergence is really
at the core of my evolution.
From Suiteru, on YouTube I've learned to program
pureData to use my midi output from my then mode:cycle.
I've always like to program audio reactive program.
First in (Fluxus) then in Processing, I finally landed
in pureData using Gem. But audio reactive programs are
limited in the way you can feed audio to a softare.
You can use amplitude at first, which is the simplest
audio reactive function. And then you can filter a few
sound waves, the bass, the middle the high end to have other
sound to visual interaction.
When using Midi, you have so much information, with a
lot less processing power. The programing becomes truly
reactive to the music and not only the audio feed.
Tweaking a filter which would be hard to have a solid
feedback representation
Changing scene, which could send midi setting could
also completely change your visual to a new scene.
So this first mergin of visual programing of my
music playing was quite exciting. I've added a section
in my
