Adaptive Scores for Octet & Quintet
SemiHemiDemiCircle 1 & 2
Instrumentation: computer + indeterminate instruments
To begin with, you can find below a video explaining to my collaborators how the adaptive score software works. Note that an earlier version of this project went by the name “Matrix of Desires”. However, as I scaled back my ambitions and evolved the adaptive score for live performance involving data being passed between 8 performers (1 computer + 7 humans) in a circular round, I decided to change the name of this and subsequent instantiations to “SemiHemiDemiCircle”.
After an early rehearsal (video below) of the work, at which my professor jokingly said that it sounded like a new version of “In C”, I decided to revamp my approach. One issue, as evidenced by my professor’s remark, is that the piece would tend to get stuck on one note. I wanted more from it.
So I regrouped. As I was thumbing through Todd Winkler’s book, Composing Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max, I came across Robert Rowe’s trichotomy for “composer objects” within interactive music. Composer objects, Rowe contends, can be transformative (transforming inputs), generative (generating new outputs), or sequenced (involving pre-programmed changes). I realized that it was the absence of these latter two aspects that was causing my piece to be overly static. So I decided to make a slight change in venue from a standalone Max application, to discrete Max for Live devices in Ableton Live. This had a number of upshots. It allowed me to include a sequenced kernel to get the piece going and it allowed me to make use of already existing generative tools such as chance operations, note echoes, and quantization. It also just made signal routing a lot easier for live performance. Here is a video showing a demo of SemiHemiDemiCircle 1 in that context:
With progress achieved, yet still much more troubleshooting to be done, we eventually arrived at the ensuing ensemble performance (for my piece, you can jump to 14:00):
I have since continued to work with SemiHemiDemiCircle, producing the following studio version for quintet:
Most recently, at a CCRMA workshop, I began to explore what it might be like to realize an adaptive score project such as this by a full orchestra using a concept I call “players as representatives”. I look forward to continuing to develop this project into the future.