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SC Conference - Activity Details



Concurrencies (2008) for Live Multi-channel Electronics and Viola

Presenters:
David Wessel  (University of California, Berkeley)
Nils Bultmann  (University of California, Berkeley)
Masterworks Session
HPC in the Humanities and Arts
Tuesday,  11:15AM - 12:00PM
Room 18A/18B/18C/18D
Abstract:
This work is a study in musical design patterns inspired by patterns for parallel programming [1]. The synonymous terms - voices, streams, channels, tracks - suggest the highly exposed parallelism in music. If multiple voices are to fuse into a single monophonic line they must be tightly correlated in terms of their pitch and amplitude. On the other hand, polyphony is achieved by asynchrony in the note onsets and a lack of common melodic motion. Other coordination schemes give rise to homophonic and heterophonic textures [2]. The performance of Concurrencies is live and the audio is generated in real-time by Max/MSP [3]. Control is provided by the instrument-like multiple touch pad surface shown in the photo below. The device is a product of research on expressive musical interfaces at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies CNMAT [4] at UC Berkeley and was engineered by Rimas Avizienis. Each of the 32 touch pads sense x and y finger position as well as finger pressure.
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