Barryvan » Music

Generative Music

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:08:11 +0000

Continuing my HTML5 and canvas experiments, I’ve put together a generative music system. Essentially, a series of particles move across a field, occasionally triggering sounds — the sound triggered depends on their location in the field.

There is, of course, a little bit more to it than that. Under the hood, I’ve got a series of HTML5 Audio objects that are used to provide polyphonic audio using a simple round-robin algorithm (I encoded the audio in OGG, so you’ll need to use an OGG-friendly browser, like Firefox). The particles are much simpler than those in my previous canvas dalliance, in that they don’t swarm, and their motion is more linear.

View (and hear!) it live

[Music] Lament

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:12:03 +0000

About a month ago, I was playing around on the piano, and I came up with a fragment of melody that I couldn’t get out of my head. I played with it, twisting it around, pushing it in different directions, seeing what I could do with it. Ultimately, I turned it into a full piece of music, and this is the result.

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Like this track? Buy it at thesixtyone, and help feed an impoverished (well, not really) programmer.

You can also listen to one of the (early) improvisations I played on this theme by downloading the recording I made on my phone here.

[Music] Ventilate

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:06:52 +0000

Well, it’s been a fair while since I last uploaded a piece of music — over two months, in fact! So here’s my latest piece.

This piece actually started out as an experiment — I recently got my hands on all sorts of shiny new toys, and my DAW got an awesome upgrade, so I couldn’t resist seeing what I could do with them.

I managed to use all but one of the products that came with Komplete to make this track — FM8, Massive, Reaktor, Guitar Rig, Kontakt, and Battery. Much fun.

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Hmm… For some reason, the version of this uploaded to thesixtyone gets some distortion on the bass during the intro section. I’ve tried uploading at various bitrates, multiple times, but it still keeps on happening. I think they must be doing some re-encoding. :/ Very annoying.

Komplete

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:20:30 +0000

I am so excited, I’m giggling like a schoolgirl. I just unwrapped a package that I received from Germany: Native Instruments’ Komplete. It’s installing now.

In the (large and encouragingly heavy) box, I found the following exciting items:

Eight (yes, eight!) DVDs full of awesomeness
Seven hefty printed manuals (in a boxed seat, no less)
Four large (5″x1″) ‘Native Instruments’ stickers
Ten small (2.5″x0.5″) ‘Native Instruments’ stickers
A neck clip thing, with a very shiny stainless steel clip and detacher thinggy

In terms of software, Komplete means that my Native Instruments collection now comprises

Kontakt 2
Kontakt 3
Kontakt 4
Battery 3
Guitar Rig
FM8
Reaktor
Massive
Absynth

I am SO EXCITED!!!

Terminal

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:25:43 +0000

My first track in quite a while. :/ This one is a bit of a different from my usual stuff (although I tend to say that a lot nowadays… Hmm…). Not quite sure why I had such a long hiatus, but hopefully this track spells the end of it. We’ll see.

I made use of some of the samples that my friends at ModPlug Central gave me for a wedding present, as well as mutilating some of my other sample libraries.

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Download

Dauntless

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:48:33 +0000

As you might have noticed, if you listen to much of my orchestral music, I really like writing epic, syncopated scores with great big horn melodies (and little flute ones) that float above rapid, percussive strings and brass. Well, here’s another example of that.

This piece is a rondo in D minor. Let me know what you think!

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Download

Songpack #1

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:41:17 +0000

[Download archive]

I’ve uploaded an archive of my music for easier download. This archive currently contains eighteen tracks, eight of which are no longer available anywhere else! The tracks included in this pack are:

Ambient
- Clockwork
EDM
- Falling
- Plus que juste un rêve
- Raining in the east
- Rebellion
- The call
- Twelve nineteen
Pop/Rock
- Evening with you
- Fallen embers
- Just to say
- Quiet rituals
- Standing on the brink of forever
Orchestral
- Dawn
- Ink and parchment
- Journey
- Untitled hymn
- Whispers of love (2008)
(Fun) Droopy the dragon

I may well create other ‘songpacks’ for download, so keep checking back. There’ll always be a couple of exclusive tracks in each pack, so it’ll be worth your while. I hope.

Download all eighteen tracks now!

Clockwork

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:10:16 +0000

This track is rather unusual for me; it doesn’t really fall into any of my usual styles. I personally find it quite relaxing, especially when I listen to it with headphones. Perhaps it’s a bit too relaxing: my wife had to go and have a nap after she heard the complete piece.

Let me know what you think about it — any and all opinions are, as always, more than welcome.

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Download

Just to say

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:20:35 +0000

I would die a thousand times,
cross the deserts, tear the skies;
oh I would do it all

I would do it all for you
just to say that I love you,
that I love you.

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Download

Comments transferred from Trax In Space and Modplug Central.

Twelve Nineteen

Barry van Oudtshoorn — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:22:29 +0000

This one’s actually been sitting on my computer for a month or so now — I just haven’t been able to render it to wave, because my system just wasn’t fast enough. Today, though, I got a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM, and everything just purrs along, barely touching the processor.

Anyway, about the music itself. This piece is basically me having fun with Kontakt — each of the eight instruments has fairly complex insert effect chains, a couple of send effects, and a couple of modulated group inserts, too. Basically, lots of effects, for some nice sound degradation.

Because I’m still not a fan of OpenMPT’s automation handling, I managed to find a nice little workaround, that I used on a couple of instruments: I modulate various effects using the MIDI volume. This means that working with the modulation is much more immediate, and it also means that I can modulate a couple of different effects simultaneously completely independently.

The piece is, hopefully, quite fun to listen to — it was definitely fun to write. Let me know what you think!

Visit the website to listen to the audio.

Comments transferred from Trax In Space and Modplug Central.