Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Goldsmiths' College : A - Music
Dynamic Physical Modelling Synthesis Piloted by Instruments and Voices
This submission comprises three compositions featuring real-time physical-modelling synthesis in Max/MSP: Funeral Sentences for ensemble and electronics, menus morceaux par un autre moi réunis for guitar and electronics, and the electro-acoustic series Nani. The real-time physical-modelling synthesis involves the modelling of complex interactions such as rebounding objects and dynamic parameter change according to Music Information Retrieval (MIR), as documented in a chapter from my PhD thesis entitled 'Dynamic physical modelling synthesis piloted by instruments and voices'.
Funeral Sentences was commissioned by the Festival Archipel for Ensemble Vortex in 2008, in collaboration with Musiques Inventives d'Annecy. Violin, cello, guitar, and percussion - the latter two often bowed to better blend with the others - are combined with large physically-modelled strings to create a kind of string meta-instrument. The physical modelling synthesis is piloted by live input from all three string instruments, and data from the performance influences parameters of the synthesis such as the listening point along the string model.
Menus morceaux par un autre moi réunis combines real-time physically-modelled strings with physically-inspired stochastic models (PhiSM) of percussion instruments. The addition of the percussion instruments is intended to create the sonic illusion that tiny bells are worn on the wrist of the guitarist, and slightly larger ones attached to the neck of the guitar.
The Nani series consists of several versions of the Greek folk song of the same name. In each of these pieces, the noise content – such as breaths and consonants – of an a cappella recording by Stella Gadadi are used to excite percussion models. Archival recordings of children's voices are also used in combination with physical-modelling synthesis realised in Modalys and Max/MSP, in which a ball-bearing bounces on a metal plate, creating an extended and dynamic synthesis process.
