Extending the acoustic ensemble through spectral and temporal transformations in real-time.
Doug Van Nort · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2010
The paradigm of live performance mixing acoustics and electronics has predominantly focused on simple background “tape music,” human players performing highly structured sample-based music (e.g., using the ABLETON LIVE software), or reactive systems that respond to player qualities such as timing, pitch, and so on. In this talk I will present my approach to improvised “laptop performance” that focuses on the transformation of acoustic players in real-time. Rather than simply altering the acoustic content in the manner of an effect processor, the goal is to capture notes and phrases in short-term memory and to re-articulate the material so that it presents a new gestural inflection and timbral content that can be completely novel or suggestive of other players’ sound. The system presented utilizes a hybrid system combining spectral analysis and feature extraction with block-based temporal processing and a feedback delay network. The interaction paradigm of “scrubbing” the intermediate time/frequency representation is used to generate the ultimate output. The result in an ensemble context is an extended palette that can “keep up” with the musical dialog while eliciting the subtle textural qualities of acoustic players. [This work was supported by NSF Grant 0757454 and CIRMMT/McGill University Fellowships.]