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Generative 2: Minus World (2012) (wf archive)

by Walker Farrell

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clement battung
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jAB
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Matt Ayers
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loitering
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/
1.
Minus World 07:44
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2.
Minus World 30:27
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about

All releases in the "wf archives" series are pay-what-you want, but any money made off of them will go straight into my children's college fund.

The "Generative" subseries features pieces for which there was no human input during recording.

Generative 2: Minus World (2012)

As far as I can remember, this was the first patch I ever made that I loved so much I left it up for weeks, afraid of taking it down and losing it forever.

My goal had been to make a generative music that did not rely on random voltage. My thought process was that although self-playing patches like the Krell did successfully evoke an organic "breathing", that this breathing was essentially repetitive and the note selection was essentially random.

Instead I wanted a musical structure to be created in real-time in which each event was the determinate outcome of the previous event, but in which the possible number of events and paths through them was very high. I found that having two predictable control sources (LFOs) control each other (in other words feedback) was a fruitful source for this. I spent a long time massaging connections and amounts. With feedback there is great potential for interesting structures, but even greater potential for repetition, stagnation and/or total entropy. Care must be taken to find the correct balance. I think that I managed to strike it well, as there is variety and also a sense of structure, and it is even possible to identify counterpoint, ornamentation, call & response etc.

The shorter recording (track 1) was the most "perfect" recording I found, but in the longer take (track 2) we can hear greater variety in parts, but also greater stagnation in other parts. I committed myself not to editing the patch during recording, so this is an accurate depiction of the various possibilities of the patch. I have to say that despite some less interesting segments I prefer the longer recording for its greater variety overall.

I believe the oscillators used are Synthesis Technology E340 Cloud Generator and E350 Morphing Terrarium, likely patched through Make Noise Optomix and VCAs, then reverb.

Patch notes from the time are below. I think one of the "variable shape LFOs" was the 4ms PEG, not sure what the other was. Maybe a MATHS, or a Livewire Vulcan.

"The patch is based on two variable shape LFOs synced together and cross-modulating at various amounts. They push against each other like two positively charged magnets, hitting the same basic shapes over and over again but with many ways of arriving at them. Running one through a quantizer for pitch data, and the other through VCAs and modulators."

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released February 2, 2018

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Walker Farrell Asheville, North Carolina

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