Building instruments Pt2
This is the second of two blog posts dedicated to documenting and discussing the design of a series of instruments inspired by light. Some of the ideas discussed in this post were introduced in the previous blog entry, so it's highly recommended to read these in succession. This particular blog post focuses on "Overhead Flicker" and "Sodium Run."
Overhead Flicker explores the aesthetics of overhead commercial lighting fixtures. These are often found in supermarkets, offices or large indoor public spaces. The patch imagines a hypothetical grid of flickering overhead lights and a sensor that the user can move around to pick up these light signatures.
From a technical perspective, the patch consists of two groups of 16 triangle-wave oscillators with complex AM and FM interactions between the two groups. A user can control the frequency of each of these 32 triangle waves individually via the "light AC frequency" and "Flicker AC frequency" multisliders and their respective "Range" dials. The two XY fields control the sensor pickup position and the source from which the flicker is generated, and additional crosstalk controls allow the signal from each "light" to "bleed" into their neighbours. The Flicker and Brownout controls determine the respective amounts of FM and AM modulation between the two groups of triangle waves. The integrity dial progressively clips the signal, allowing for more square-like tones. A simple panning section determines the spatialization of the 16 lights within the stereo field.
I built this patch intending to mimic how individuals move through spaces where light creates grid-like patterns. A performer can choose to move through the field of overhead lights whilst progressively changing crosstalk and flickering behaviours to turn simple gestures in the 2d XY plane into evolving sequences of ramps and pulses.
Sodium Run is the fourth patch I developed in this primary research phase. It's a homage to the initial experience (described in the first blog post) that fueled this inquiry into light. It mimics the experience of sitting in the back of a car at night and seeing streetlights flash by the passenger window.
From a technical perspective, the patch produces a series of noise pulses that interact with a comb filter and a resonator. The control scheme for Sodium Run is similar to that of Photon Emission as they both utilize the same sequencers to drive their main parameters. Because of its rhythmic focus, Sodium run benefits significantly from a mixture of both continuously variable and stepped sequences.
Whilst the fundamental building blocks utilized in all of these patches are relatively similar, as they primarily gravitate towards an abstract physical-modelling approach to synthesis, they present interfaces that do not conform strictly to the aesthetics of contemporary computer-based musicianship. More than a music-making tool, these patches should represent an open playground to explore the aesthetics of light through sound.
