Artist

Contact

Title

Andrew Souter

asouter@galbanum.com

"Prana"

Info on the process: All sources were created in MS using the image synth with sine wave sources and custom scales/spectrums. Mix was done in Digital Performer, using MOTU, Waves, Kind of Loud, and Audio Ease plugins.

Produced & Engineered by Andrew Souter. C P 2002 Galbanum Production Division. www.galbanum.com

Helge Krabye

hkrabye@tiscali.no

"Order and Chaos"

Notes: The piece is a remix of the best parts from the "Order and Chaos" instrumental music originally composed for a fantasy story in National radio in Norway. I used MetaSynth to create manipulations and effects by treating recorded acoustic and electronic instruments.

Examples: Stretching sounds both by regenerating the sound in the Image Synth and changing the playback speed (tempo). Picking areas of a sound file where the frequency spectrum is rich and using the Harmonics and Harmonize tools in the Effects window to create new samples. I used the Shuffler for chopping up my acoustic guitar and ambient pads into small parts which then play back in random order. (Combining controlled composed musical parts with random elements you can't control, is an interesting method!) Running sustaining sounds through the Phaser (Effects Window) or through graphic filters in the Filter window makes nice, moving sounds.

Another favorite trick is to load an interesting sample, pick one of the Micro scales or even the Whole Tone scale and first choose Add Fundamental in the Image Synth to play back the sample in real time and at original pitch. I then add Harmonics in the same menu, to get several new lines above the fundamental. I then treat these lines with various filters in the Image Synth to get rich, harmonic content which vary both in pitch and stereo position. Using the Pulse and Echo tools on various parts of the harmonic tones in the Image Synth also gives variation and valuable results. - When I have created a big family of manipulated sounds, I import everything into ProTools and start composing. This is much like painting, and the richer my pallette is, the more freedom I have :) -

For me, MetaSynth is THE musical tool which makes it possible to create music the way Brian Eno has described with these words: "One of my mottoes is that if you want to get unusual results, work fast and work cheap, because there's more of a chance that you'll get somewhere that nobody else did. Nearly always, the effect of spending a lot of money is to make things more normal." (Brian Eno).

Helge Krabye has composed original music for more than sixty television documentaries, radio plays, fantasy stories and art projects in Norway and internationally. His first instrument was a wooden citer. He learned to play violin at the age of six, and he now plays both acoustic, electric and electronic instruments. He is using ProTools24MixPlus on a dual processor G4 Mac to record and mix his music. His daily work is in post production and sound design in National TV in Norway. More info at his homepage: http://helgekrabye.com.

Sylvia Pengilly

spengilly@charter.net

"Pentatope"

Just as a 3-dimensional box can be opened out and flattened into a 2-dimensional object made of squares, so an opened out and flattened version of a 4-dimensional object can be constructed by placing a cube on each of the surfaces, forming hypercube, or tesseract. A pentatope is constructed in a similar way, but using triangles instead of squares to form the basic 3-dimensional unit.

The pitch material consists of triangular pitch shapes nested within each other both in terms of frequency (pitch) and time (the point at which each begins and ends), and are further defined by different timbres. This constructive principle is intended to emulate the folding into each other which would occur in four dimensions.

All the sounds originated as samples of my voice, processed using MetaSynth.

André Ruschkowski

ruschkowski@web.de

"Dione"

Notes:

The musical material consists of two levels: recorded sounds of everyday human activities as well as musical material produced by different means of electronic sound synthesis--mostly with MetaSynth and the Kyma/Capybara system.

The extensive electronic transformation of these items and their arrangement in larger musical units took place particularly on the basis of gesture criteria, i.e. the energetic process of human movement items, the rhythm of tension and relaxation reflects directly in the musical structures and their combinations. The aim is to create by this means an electronic music which is able to address the listener directly by this specific gesture or physical quality.

C.V.

André Ruschkowski (b. 1959 in Berlin, Germany) began his compositional studies in 1984 and has been Composer-in-Residence at several studios for electronic music (i.e. Berlin, Paris, Vienna). Since 1992 he has lectured Electronic Music and Music of the 20th Century at the Music University Mozarteum in Salzburg (Austria), the Technische Universität Berlin and the University of Cologne (Germany).

He is currently Professor for Electronic Music at the Mozarteum at Salzburg, where he directs the Electronic Music Studio of the Composition Department. He has prizes and mentions from various competitions for electronic music (i.e. Italy, France). Some of his works are recorded on CDs of TonArt (Berlin), La Muse en Circuit (Paris) and Sonic Circuits (St. Paul, USA). additional information at: www.ruschkowski.de

Peter Kirn

peter@powerpage.org

"Full Fathom Five"

FULL FATHOM FIVE (2002)

Featuring Kamala Sankaram, narrator

This intentionally creepy setting of the famous 'Full Fathom Five' soliloquy from Shakespeare's The Tempest is an example of what's possible when you combine distinctive MetaSynth sonic effects with some other software trickery. MetaSynth devotees will no doubt recognize the vocoder-like effect of the speech, produced (famously in one of the demos for the program) by doing a spectral analysis of a vocal recording and resynthesizing it from the Image Synth.

The trick in this case was to couple that effect with convolution from Tom Erbe's excellent Mac program SoundHack. The process of convolution is best explained in Curtis Roads' Computer Music Tutorial, but the short explanation is that convolution is a means of digitally filtering one audio file with the spectrum of another. I'm fond of Tom Erbe's implementation of convolution over the built-in facility in MetaSynth because it introduces a neat time-stretching effect by taking the definition of digital convolution literally. The combination of this with the spectral filtering can create extremely unpredictable (and occasionally deeply satisfying) results, and made MetaSynth's vocoder effect sound more organic. I eventually layered different convolved versions of the text (sometimes employing different takes with my narrator) on top of one another in Digital Performer, adding additional delay and reversed versions of the files in layers (along with some other tricks).

The deep, musical moaning sounds, incidentally, are entirely generated in MetaSynth using the same vocal samples, resampling them in the Image Synth and then doing some pitch adjustments and granular stretching within MetaSynth's excellent effects palette. The soundscape in the middle of the piece involves various convolved soundfiles, the main material being based on a sample of a fishing rod which I though evoked an underwater corpse (see what you think). The piece concludes with more MetaSynth material, rhythmic sounds generated by applying granular synth and granular sample sources in the Image Synth to spectrographs of the vocal samples. (No, really!) Oh, and there might be some MetaSynth-manipulated materials from Native Instruments Absynth, as well. (You expect me to remember all this?)

PETER KIRN is a composer/performer based in Manhattan and a frequent collaborator with dancers and poets. His work ranges from traditionally-based, tonal acoustic music to computer-based experimental sound and 'dance music' and a lot of areas in between. He is established as an electronic music instructor, as a guest faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College in 2001-02 and a regular freelance instructor and writer, and his electronic works have been featured at collaborative and solo performances at venues including Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, Williamsburg Arts Nexus, the Clark Studio Theater, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival in Korea. He is currently working towards a PhD in music composition at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he studies with Tania León.

Claude Frenette

claudef@cadre.qc.ca

"La nuit, doucement décevante"

La nuit, doucement décevante (The gently disenchanting night)

Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?

Rainer Maria Rilke

This piece is the 3e part of a larger composition called Les hiérarchies des anges (The angel’s hierarchies ) inspired by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

The sound was produced by manipulating recording of smalls objets. I used Metasynth and cSound to granulate and resynthesyse sound. Mixing was done with AudioDesk.

" Et la nuit, oh! la Nuit! quand le vent tout empli de l’espace des mondes
travaille et sculpte nos visages; car à qui ne reste-t-elle pas,
désirée si passionnément, la nuit, doucement décevante et prodigue en
douleurs,
qui se dresse, difficile, devant le cœur
de chacun. Aux amants, serait-elle moins sévère? "

Rainer Maria Rilke

Cette œuvre est la troisième partie d’un cycle intitulé Les hiérarchies des anges, inspiré par la poésie de Rainer Maria Rilke.

Les sons ont été obtenus par l’enregistrement et la manipulation de sons concrets à l’aide des logiciels Metasynth et cSound. J’ai utilisé des procédés de granulation et de resynthèse. Le montage final a été réalisé avec le logiciel AudioDesk.

CLAUDE FRENETTE studied composition with Michel Longtin, André Prévost, Jacques Hétu, Serge Garant and Marcelle Deschênes. He received his Bachelor of Music (composition) at the University of Montreal in 1981, his Master's in 1984 and his Doctorat in 1991. The winner of several prizes, he has produced compositions - including electroacoustic and mixed music - arranged for a wide variety of ensembles, from solo instruments to large orchestra.

CLAUDE FRENETTE a étudié la composition avec Michel Longtin, André Prévost, Jacques Hétu, Serge Garant et Marcelle Deschênes. Il a obtenu son baccalauréat en composition à l'Université de Montréal en 1981, sa maîtrise en 1984 et son doctorat en 1990. Récipiendaire de plusieurs prix, sa production musicale touche une grande variété d'instrumentations allant des instruments solistes au grand orchestre en passant par la musique électroacoustique et mixte. Il a obtenu des commandes de quelques artistes québécois et des subventions de l’Université de Montréal (campagne des années 80, Fonds des amis de l’art) et du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec pour la réalisation de projets spéciaux (Les étrivières, Un filet sur la mémoire, l'arbre du parc, Les merveilleux nuages).

Edward Spiegel

edward@uisoftware.com

"Prince of Freetown"

Notes: Everything was derived from about 10 second sample of a multi-track vocal performance by a Sierra Leonian friend of mine. Much of the piece was created using Grain, Resonator, etc. A lot was also done by analyzing and resynthesizing the results with scales derived from the sample.

Allen Strange

strange@mail.bainbridgeisland.net

"White Lady"

Notes: "White Lady" is from a larger collection called Funhouse. It is 2:05 in duration, made of samples of a waterphone (courtesy of Todd Barton), a child's voice (courtesy of my neighbor) and noise (courtesy of MetaSynth). The dsp was all done in Metasynth and the assembly was done in Protools. The complete collection (six pieces I think) will eventually be accompanied with video by David Van Brink.

Paul Fletcher

paulfletcher@origin.net.au

"The Impossible Chaos Ensemble"

Notes: my meagre MetaSynth offerings..

The process I used for the music, other than pure exploring and experimenting in MetaSynth, was to construct small sections in Xx and then resynthesize and rework them in MetaSynth. These pieces may be a little too naive and humdrum, non musical/too musical, but I enjoy the process and have used some of the material I've been producing for parts of some local independent short film soundtracks.

Glen Bledsoe

glenbledsoe@earthlink.net

"Shoki, Demon Queller"

Notes: Recently at an exhibit of late 19th century Japanese art ("Splendors of Imperial Japan") in the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum, I saw several intriguing images entitled "Shoki, Demon Queller." I wanted to created an aural piece which would invoke the same feelling that I got from looking at the prints. The sounds are pretty literal. You'll hear chittering demons, Shoki playing the flute to calm them, Shoki chanting to drive them away.

The chanting near the end of the piece is based on a Japanese cleansing ritual. The sense of the words is that if you trust in the universe, the universe will take care of you.

Created entirely in MetaSynth and mixed in MetaTrack.