Writing code for music may still seem a remote notion to the vast majority of even geekier digital musicians, but as exemplified by the language Overtone, it looks very different than coding once did. Whereas sound code was once a type-and-render affair, new coding environments focus on live coding. They use elegant, lightweight modern languages that take up less space. And they can be surprisingly musical, coming remarkably close to just typing “play a c major chord.”

Not to say that you won’t look plenty geeky doing it — but, hey, if you can’t impress slash frighten your friends a little…

Using a brew of powerful free and open source tools, all available via GitHub and running here on the Mac (though any OS will work), contributor Sam Aaron walks through the program at top and demonstrates some musical examples. After the jump, a much longer screencast walks you through how to get up and running with the emacs text editor for live coding.

Key ingredients:
overtone @ github
emacs live coding @ github
supercollider for sound production
clojure, the language, modern dialect of lisp

Features, as described by the creators:

Overtone is a toolkit for creating synthesizers and making music. It provides:

• a Clojure API to the SuperCollider synthesis engine
• a growing library of musical functions (scales, chords, rhythms, arpeggiators, etc.)
• metronome and timing system to support live-coding and sequencing
• plug and play midi device I/O
• simple Open Sound Control (OSC) message handling

Note the MIDI support — code, like many other things on the computer, isn’t very tangible. But you can quickly go to MIDI or OSC for some hands-on control of what you’re making. I have to say, some of this is quite a lot easier and less abstract than what you see in a Max/Pd-style environment. We’re blessed to have such choices in music making. Let us know if you try it out.

More videos and screencasts from this Cambridge-based artist:
Sam Aaron on Vimeo
http://twitter.com/samaaron

CDM’s Matt Ganucheau contributed to this story in San Francisco.

Speaking of futuristic instrumental design, the Eigenharp – an instrument that looks like the bassoon was redesigned by Vulcans – brings two big developments with its appearance this week in the Bay Area of California. First off, if you’ve doubted its utility in musical practice and you’re a fan of American minimalism, we’re treated to it covering the music of Philip Glass’ landmark Koyaanisqatsi. Geert Bevin, Eigenlabs’ Senior Software Developer, explains how he did it:

I’m using SonicCouture’s Glass/Works Kontakt instrument in a four-part multi-timbral setup in Native Instruments Kontakt. Each key individually controls pitch, velocity and the resonance of the convolution filter cut-off frequency (which creates a faint scraping-like sound).

The vocals are done through the DPA microphone that’s clipped onto the breath pipe and plugged into the Eigenharp Alpha. It uses the built-in Eigenharp Alpha pre-amp and is routed through a series of Audio Unit effects in EigenD for pitch shifting, stereo spreading, EQ and
compression. I’m monitoring directly from the headphone output of the Eigenharp Alpha with my Etymotic ER-4P earphones.

The single instrument cables carries all the information, data and audio, in both directions.

Geert has good news for those who hope to modify the software, or see it become a platform on which other instrumental innovation can happen. As originally promised, key components of the software are now covered by the GPLv3. It’s not the whole software stack, but I think it’s the stuff that most matters. Full details:

http://www.eigenlabs.com/wiki/Developers/

I can imagine this will open up some new possibilities for the Eigenharp’s dedicated band of players to mod the instrument for their own needs. But players, I’d love to hear from you – does the GPL here matter to you? Will you be able to dig into the code, or know someone who could? (Or want to try to motivate developers to do so?)

All this week, I’ll be talking about the artists and events at Montreal’s MUTEK audiovisual festival. There’s nowhere better to begin than at the launch evening of their a/visions series.

Natural landscapes are recurrent themes in electronic music and the metaphors we use to describe them – glaciers and jetstreams. But the Black Forest of Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS, the audiovisual “experience” from the Cologne electronic legend, is an unusually potent descriptor. It’s not so much the real Black Forest’s twigs or leaves or babbling brooks that defines GAS; it’s its density. From its elaborate twirling visual forestry to the saturated sound, GAS is ambient without ever being static, and as deeply enevloping of its visitors as its subject matter.

For his part, Voigt himself was a motionless shadow through much of the piece. Occasionally, the slightest motion of his forearm suggested he was tweaking something subtly in his Ableton Live set. Otherwise he seemed only a reference of the diminuitive human scale against a sometimes blinding projection behind him.

Listening to Voigt’s music requires active effort, like holding your breath underwater. (Underwater bodies turned out to be the theme of the piece that would follow.) The bass below becomes a kind of sonic ground, though occasionally it materializes into a recognizable pulsing beat, like a distant tribal drum call. The inscrutable density of the Dark Forest is embodied mainly in a wash of sound, sometimes obscured by a relentless hiss of noise with which it is mixed. The combination seems like should overwhelm, but somehow details become clear, bouncing off the walls of Montreal’s Monument National theater. Turn your head slightly, and like sounds in the underbrush, the murky becomes clear. With the occasional digital crackle popping out of the underbrush and the shimmer of sounds that float above the mud, the effect is magical.

Oddly, though, to me it was really the visual experience that made GAS so dazzling. Built on Voigt’s own photographs, thickly layered outlines of twigs and leaves twhirled on top of one another in abstract kaleidoscopes. Particularly at the piece’s opening, they became as thick as Voigt’s soundscapes, but would pull apart in regular patterns to form crystalline structures and skeletal architectures. The fusion of this visual effect with the sound allows details of the soundscape to emerge, like shining a light onto the forest. Close your eyes, and the sound loses a whole dimension.

The visuals were derived from Voigt’s own photos, but the credit to the live visualist was missing. A woman appeared onstage, evidently the designer and performer, but no one seemed to know her identity – a real injustice to her work. I’m working to find out who she was. Updated: In fact, it was Petra Hollenbach. Incredibly, I believe she may have been the only headline artist in all of a/visions to be a woman. That makes the fact that MUTEK seemed not to know who she was and credited the piece exclusively to Mr. Voigt – even given his reputation – even more unfortunate. That’s not to suggest that MUTEK was being intentionally or even unintentionally sexist, but the simple reality was that, whatever the intention, women seemed generally invisible and nameless at the festival.

The whole evening is tightly controlled, though so much so that it sometimes seems repetitive – certain stretches of this forest are traversed in circles. For all its minimalism, though, the piece is spectacular first. Perhaps that explains why the piece explodes into an eye-numbing strobe at its conclusion. Most effective was the simple addition of a scrim at the front of the stage. The brilliant color-on-black combination turned the proscenium stage space into a three-dimensional illusion.

Getting out of the woods seems to be the piece’s one stumbling block; it seemed unable to find a structural definition that would bring the piece to a conclusion, leaving some of the final scenes feeling redundant. The appearance of the name “GAS” at the end, and an oddly-abrupt fade out of the audio, also seemed odd after such an eloquently refined performance. But to me, the sheer sonic and visual textural spectacle was irresistible. It’s hard to think of a better way to start MUTEK than with a complete, imagined world.

Wolfgang Voigt at Kompakt (of which he’s co-founder)

I’m working on finding out if we can get officially-released video documentation, but in the meantime, the original album classic is now available with a nice color book:

Gas

All of this bodes well for the new album coming this summer. More press coverage and links on the single:
bjork.com news

The artist is also playing Coachella this year, and in honor of that, Michael Todd takes us on a flashback to a BBC special from 1997 called Modern Minimalists. Bjork makes an impassioned plea for embracing simplicity in favor of intellectual complexity and maximalism, flanked by minimalists from Estonia, Scotland, and Finland (including none other than Arvo Part) as a glass harmonica plays in the background.

It’s good creative/inspirational fuel, and wonderful to have an advocate and unusual personality in Bjork fighting musical blandness. Oh, and Maestro Part fittingly enough looks like as ever like an Orthodox religious icon:

and part two:

For more insanely talented and inspiring women in music as featured by BBC documentaries, see Delia Derbyshire and Alchemists of Sound, as discussed here on CDM last month.

And, BBC, why not officially send this stuff to YouTube and let them carry your bandwidth costs?