Overview:
A live audience participation based rhythmic composition which evolves in real-time via filtering and effects done in Ableton Live.
As we were conceiving our idea for the project we knew two things. We wanted to involved people to allow them the chance to familiarize themselves with our project on a deeper level and we also wanted to incorporate different rhythms. For our project we had four different rhythms that can all be combined to sound symmetrical with each other. The rhythms increased in difficulty from number one to number four. We chose to do this because the knowledge and performance ability for rhythm is very diverse between people. Some are very good at reading and performing difficult rhythms but also some are not the most adept at it. We knew that adding these different rhythms would challenge the participants and further enhance their engagement through the performance.
Our main objective for the piece was to get people to have fun. We accepted the risk of human error and imperfection before hand and wanted to focus on how to get people involved as much as possible. After organizing people into four groups we recorded everyone through Ableton live. We then edited the recording and sent it to specific speakers around the room.
Inception:
As we were conceiving the idea for our project we knew two things. We firstly wanted to involve people and allow them the chance to familiarize themselves with our project on a deeper level and secondly we wanted to incorporate different rhythms. For our project we had four different rhythms that can all be combined to sound symmetrical with each other. The rhythms increased in difficulty from number one to number four. We chose to do this because the knowledge and performance ability for rhythm is very diverse between people. Some are very good at reading and performing difficult rhythms but also some are not the most adept at it. We knew that adding these different rhythms would challenge the participants and further enhance their engagement through the performance.
Setup:
The DAW of choice for this project was Ableton live.
The microphone as routed from input #10 of the UTRACK32.
Pre-amp on and gain sufficiently turned up.
Ambisonic Speaker Spread:
Technical Details:
The goal was to record the group after a 4 beat click and continuously build the rhythmic layers as we progressed through the groups. As this was happens live effects such as ping-pong delay, reverb, and various equalizations were applied to the recorded clips.
Bottoming out the piece was to be a guitar improvisation.
The original recording can be listened to here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-233892197/ess-project2
During our actual performance we ran into issues with the equipment. The main problem was the sound console settings. Gains were too low, it was set to ‘surround’ instead of ‘ambisonic’ and certain inputs were in the wrong spot. We were able to set and test all other equipment, but because every group used the console differently we were forced to set it during the performance. This lead to delays in the performance and a lot of waiting around time. We didn’t realize how much we relied on the console for our performance, and now realize for next time we should save our settings to a thumb drive. Our performance can be found here:
or Here:
A zip file of the project and the recordings can be accessed here:
[hyperlink zip file download]
Dan – Musician, Music Writer,
Nick – Ableton Engineer, Guitarist, Sound Editor
Kayla – Board Operator, Recording Engineer, Documenter, MC