20090402

Thea Musgrave's Narcissus performed by Carolyn Keyes

One of the many interesting things that Music Technologists do these days is rebuild obsolete electronics using modern equipment and techniques. I was commissioned to help Carolyn, a graduate Flute student rebuild an ancient digital delay system (A Vesta Koza DIG-411). More information about this technology and a sound clip after the break.



Carolyn played into a microphone and the program would echo the sounds just emitted, slowly becoming softer. While I was unable to attend the performance of this piece, I have heard that it went off without a hitch. I learned a lot about the difficulties of building a program that can actually be utilized in a real world situation, and I definitely intend to do this kind of thing again in the near future.

Email me for more information about this kind of program or anything similar.

Using my favorite program MAX/MSP, a little help from a paper by David Wetzel, and a midi foot controller (Behringer FCB-1010), I customized a program that allowed Carolyn to change the number of delays as well as the delay length using her feet while performing. There was an additional setting that allowed a delayed sound to play continuously without any decay (until turned off).

No comments:

Post a Comment