Martin Parker

Now

11:52 and the ensemble are working their way through Marc Estibeiro's Orbital Resonances No.3. This is a cyclically structured work, rather than a combination of episodes or contrasting themes, the four instruments have been conceived as one voice on an eternally cyclic loop and the band seem to be really enjoying the slow motion hocket effects Marc has composed. Robert pointed out that the music is reminiscent of Webern (in terms of sparsity) but I'm also reminded of Messiaen thanks to the cyclic repeats. There is an unusually pure combination here and right now, I'm not sure how the electronics will fold into it.

Later

Following some dedicated and focused rehearsals, we've also done a couple of run throughs with the electronics. I implemented some 'live electronics' control over Marc's Max patch to help him to manage the sound levels of the different elements he'd put together.

Interestingly, both he and Scott have built their patch based on Jean-Francois Charles' spectral processing tutorials. These little bits of software allow the timbre of a sound to be captured, frozen in time and replayed at any speed. The spectral haze that comes from loudspeakers works very well with high pitched and the pure instruments like strings.

The software has three very useful functions; spectral freezing, delay and filtering of the frozen signals. Marc has been combining them together in different ways as the piece progresses but the fader control and triggering of different presets is somewhat daunting. Marc spent his lunchtime listening for filter positions that would work best with the frozen music coming in from the morning's recordings.

After the rehearsals

Marc and the quartet have now done several runs and the electronics are forming nicely. We're now mixing and refining the balance between electronic elements.

In future versions of the live electronics part it would be good to separate out the different instruments into individual processing chains so that finer details of timbre can be explored and manipulated live. This would allow for the live electronics performer to be able to mix between different frozen timbres of the ensemble.

Hope you enjoy the mix. I'll post my presets patches elsewhere on this site soon.

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