Program Note: The Capsule is an electroacoustic dance piece in which every sound heard was created by manipulating speeches from prerecorded interviews. Choreographer Vickie Nidweski recorded interviews with recent university graduates asking them about their degree of preparedness as they entered the next stage of life. Their recorded responses were processed in novel ways to make this piece; no other sounds were added.

© 2011 clear blue media

Program Note: The Lapp interactive music system composes music in real-time using data derived from Lapp Group cables. Using custom software, data from the cables were mapped to scales, chords, and rhythmic patterns to algorithmically generate the music. The same cables were then made into an instrument capable of performing the generated music.
As the cable controls are manipulated, aspects of the music, such as the chords, tempo, key, instruments, and more, will change. The amount of volume of each instrument in the ensemble is mapped to one of the lights above each cable which reflect changes in volume.
In real-time, users then control different aspects of the piece, synthesized in a jazz style at the client's request.
The piece and system were commissioned by Lapp Group USA for the company's anniversary function. In addition to guests performing with the system, an artist improvised a painting while the system performed.

© 2011 clear blue media

Program Note: This system is designed to take real-time user input through a microphone and process it in novel ways. The user needs only to open the program and begin speaking. The spoken voice is recorded and analyzed using an FFT, and the spectral data is converted into a 3D matrix using a technique by my former teacher, Luke Dubois. This software is based heavily on his model. The 3D matrix is then scanned to resynthesize the original spoken sample. The novelty of resynthesizing from an image is that visual effects can be applied which change its sonic properties. Over time, the original sample will change substantially--there are no other sound sources or effects introduced in this system: everything heard is derived from the original sample. In this piece, the user says "God" one time. It is then processed according to a deterministic processing score that the software follows; nothing is random.

© 2009 clear blue media

Description: the following compositions were made using original algorithms. The algorithms used "rule-based" approaches such as the rules that commonly dictate voiceleading, harmonic direction, and form. Other compositions employed "data driven" techniques that, instead of being "rule-based", attempted to generate new music in a style based on a larger sample of extant musical data.

Compositions were created using original software written in LISP and/or Max/MSP from 2006 - 2008. For more information on each composition, click the link next to the title of each video in the player.