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The weird yet fascinating world of Soniclabs' math driven synthesis and sound design (Oceanic discussion)

doctoremmet

doctoremmet

Senior Member
Earlier this year I have been heavily involved in all sorts of experimentation in Live and MAX, kind of driven by a personal fascination I developed for IRCAM, the history of computer music etc.

It took me on a musical journey that involved listening to a lot of “avantgarde” type stuff, including Iannis Xenakis’ music. And via that route I eventually discovered Sinan Bokesoy, a musician and mathematician with a keen interest in Xenakis’ musical concepts who has translated those principles into the development of an ever growing array of synths and all sorts of MIDI devices.

I bought a couple of those and have had varying degrees of “musical success”, - or rather: failure - mostly due to a lack of understanding of what I’m doing and what the tools CAN do. I may revisit this topic and post some of my experimental “results” regardless.

Anyway, I just noticed another release that -again- somehow magically fascinates me to the highest degree, despite not exactly knowing what I’d ever do with this trio of plugins.

So I’ll just leave this here I guess ;)







Fascinating….
Click to read more...
 
I don't put this under music myself. I see it more as a form of creating evolving pad type of sounds, through difficult methematics with a quite ehm... odd UI ;)

The tool is therefor indeed fascinating, because it's doing sound generation very differently.

I tried to listen to Iannis Xenakis' work too, because of you mentioning it.. but as said to me it's more randomly evolving pads and bleeps and such.. not so much music.
 
RogiervG said:
I don't put this under music myself. I see it more as a form of creating evolving pad type of sounds, through difficult methematics with a quite ehm... odd UI ;)

The tool is therefor indeed fascinating, because it's doing sound generation very differently.

I tried to listen to Iannis Xenakis' work too, because of you mentioning it.. but as said to me it's more randomly evolving pads and bleeps and such.. not so much music.
Click to expand...
How do you define music?
 
VannKraken said:
It seems intuitive that if there is a Venn diagram of "natural" sound on one side and "organized" sound on the other, there must be some overlap between the circles - no matter how small.
Click to expand...
So Free Jazz and Musique Concrète are not music? "Organized" and "natural" are subjective.The definition of intuitive is "using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive." Also subjective. Would you apply this reasoning to art in general?
 
One mans music is another mans ear murder.
Good grooves for the goose aren't good grooves for the gander.
Shall I tell you the definition of madness? Attempting to apply objective opinions to subjective matters, and expecting to be in the majority regarding those opinions.
 
Alchemedia said:
So Free Jazz and Musique Concrète are not music? "Organized" and "natural" are subjective.The definition of intuitive is "using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive." Also subjective. Would you apply this reasoning to art in general?
Click to expand...
My comment was actually agreeing with your point…
 
indeed fascinating (a Spock reference?), i am very tempted to buy it.
saw it yesterday evening (local time of course, time!) in my mailbox...

do own Thermo 2 and Fundamental 3 (although the last one i haven't used yet, really, time! again).

although the developer is somewhat idiosyncratic himself, it are interesting 'things' he makes.

it can also drive effects for example, with WaveCC.

it has an intro price by the way €89 instead of €109.

(and me like Xenakis, by the way...)
 
Wasteland said:
indeed fascinating (a Spock reference?), i am very tempted to buy it.
saw it yesterday evening (local time of course, time!) in my mailbox...

do own Thermo 2 and Fundamental 3 (although the last one i haven't used yet, really, time! again).

although the developer is somewhat idiosyncratic himself, it are interesting 'things' he makes.

it can also drive effects for example, with WaveCC.

it has an intro price by the way €89 instead of €109.

(and me like Xenakis, by the way...)
Click to expand...
Hehe I see the Spock reference although it was completely unintentional. Apparently I did use the world quite a lot in my above posts.

Yes, I am constantly attracted to use these “contraptions” to control various MIDI parameters just to see what happens. These are fun tools to sink a lot of time in. Like yourself I am actually tempted to get these, although some of the other “bots” may be equally or even more useful (particularly ENVbot). I also have the Cosmosf M31 suite and I think I better get a firmer grasp on that one, before losing any more time on something new.
 
Alchemedia said:
How do you define music?
Click to expand...

I see music like this (not definition, but more criteria):
it must contain one or more time signatures and a form of rhythm.
It must contain some form of recognizable (to memorize in the listeners head) melody/motive/pattern made by the musician (not by algorithmic of a piece of software alone)
it must have clear structure
It should be repeatable, by the musician, on a later date. (so random things are out of the question, since they cannot be repeated)

In the case of Iannis Xenakis, from the snippets i heard, i couldn't detect the above.
It sounds like a random thing (going for long periods of time), that evolved through turning (virtual?) knobs/sliders, instead of done by the musician: made motives/patterns/melody, by playing it in, or deliberate sequenced those notes.
I consider it sound design.

If you guys consider it music, that's ok.. but for me it isn't.
By finding his works music, is the same as saying (for me anyway): "i made music! i just pressed one key on the controller, and a synth is playing a pad sound that has some movement in it (either by itself or by interaction through sliders). "
The same is true (in my opinion), for those jam sessions/"live performances shows" for modular synth people.
They just tinker around, hoping they get something nice out of it.. but it lacks my definition of music (so to me it's not music, but sound design)

doctoremmet said:
Haha - Xenakis is DEFINITELY music, but if you’d discard anything you don’t like as non-music then it is not ;)
Click to expand...

Bit short-sighted from you.
Not everything i don't like, i discard as non-music.
There are plenty of music pieces i dislike, but i would not call them non-music.
I'll stick with my criteria for what should be considered music, and what not.



Anyway.. maybe i am not the target audience/customer for these things.
So i'll leave you all alone (for this topic anyway ;) )
 
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RogiervG said:
I'll stick with my criteria for what should be considered music, and what not.
Click to expand...
That’s perfectly fine. But you are objectively doing Xenakis’ achievements a disservice by this easily discarding them as non-music or with your “just press a key on a controller” remark in that same context. That’s just a dig. A completely unwarranted one, to make a point.

Mister Xenakis is widely recognized as an important 20th century composer and he followed a methodology that cannot in any way be compared to pressing a knob on a controller or to having a modular synth create sounds with a generative patch. TL;DR Xenakis put in a lot of work, his pieces are ‘repeatable” (your criterium) as witnessed by many performances and recordings. So no, they’re not just pads or merely stochastic bursts of noise. Sometimes a very brief encounter with music one hasn’t ever heard before can easily leave an impression, but your remarks remind me of my son’s when we visited Centre Pompidou and he easily dismissed the artistic quality of a Kandinsky painting by stating that any 10 year old could have made it. ;)

I am not looking for any further discussion by the way, but your all too easy dismissal of a prime figure in 20th century’s modern music (after one casual listening experience) doesn’t strike me as particularly well researched or well argumented. Apart from the fact that by all means YOU get to determine what you call music or not. Nuff said.

Edit: as for your remark about music needing a rhythm, Xenakis was all about that haha. A lot of his works are written for percussion.

 
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doctoremmet said:
Edit: as for your remark about music needing a rhythm, Xenakis was all about that haha. A lot of his works are written for percussion.
Click to expand...
You pick one element of what music is. but it's all the points combined, that makes it music (for me) :)

And as said: i might not be the audience (i know for sure).
I leave the thread alone..
 
RogiervG said:
You pick one element of what music is. but it's all the points combined, that makes it music (for me) :)
Click to expand...
I am not disputing your definition of what constitutes music for you. I was just stating that your whole post had a bit of a reductive approach to the work of a well respected composer and that hit a nerve. I am not and was not trying to convince you that Xenakis’ work is in fact music, let alone trying to convince you to like it. There is no point in doing that.

No offense Rogier. We like what we like, and vice versa. Let’s move on. ;)
 
RogiervG said:
I see music like this (not definition, but more criteria):
it must contain one or more time signatures and a form of rhythm.
It must contain some form of recognizable (to memorize in the listeners head) melody/motive/pattern made by the musician (not by algorithmic of a piece of software alone)
it must have clear structure
It should be repeatable, by the musician, on a later date. (so random things are out of the question, since they cannot be repeated)

In the case of Iannis Xenakis, from the snippets i heard, i couldn't detect the above.
It sounds like a random thing (going for long periods of time), that evolved through turning (virtual?) knobs/sliders, instead of done by the musician: made motives/patterns/melody, by playing it in, or deliberate sequenced those notes.
I consider it sound design.

If you guys consider it music, that's ok.. but for me it isn't.
By finding his works music, is the same as saying (for me anyway): "i made music! i just pressed one key on the controller, and a synth is playing a pad sound that has some movement in it (either by itself or by interaction through sliders). "
The same is true (in my opinion), for those jam sessions/"live performances shows" for modular synth people.
They just tinker around, hoping they get something nice out of it.. but it lacks my definition of music (so to me it's not music, but sound design)



Bit short-sighted from you.
Not everything i don't like, i discard as non-music.
There are plenty of music pieces i dislike, but i would not call them non-music.
I'll stick with my criteria for what should be considered music, and what not.



Anyway.. maybe i am not the target audience/customer for these things.
So i'll leave you all alone (for this topic anyway ;) )
Click to expand...
I don't want to deviate too much from the original topic, but I could not resist to bounce on what you say with a profound respect to everyone participating to this conversation. I got the feeling you talk about patterns recognition, I'm using this semantic in a broad neurological way. So you're right, music is not what you don't like, but it's more what you're unable yet to identify as being music from your own experience. As you know, for recognition, the brain must be trained to, that explains why every definition/experience can be so subjective and be altered time passing to train our brain. So there's not right or wrong in this conversation, just the temporary boundaries sealed by our brain capacities.

From wikipedia:
"The excitement of following a familiar music pattern happens when the pattern breaks and becomes unpredictable. This following and breaking of a pattern creates a problem-solving opportunity for the mind that form the experience.[26] Psychologist Daniel Levitin argues that the repetitions, melodic nature and organization of this music create meaning for the brain.[27] The brain stores information in an arrangement of neurons which retrieve the same information when activated by the environment. By constantly referencing information and additional stimulation from the environment, the brain constructs musical features into a perceptual whole."
 
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