Not for the weak hearted. I warned you!

Assignment #2 for Advanced Computer Music Composition, aka ACMC. We were to create musique concrete, which is taking a sound sample of a found object and creating something musical with it.

I used MAXMSP to play around with the sample and then edited the results using Pro Tools. I've mostly incorporated time-stretching and time-crunching(?), but the time stretching brought a lot of artifacts and noise to the sample, which the professor didn't really like (nor did I). He said that maybe if I had filtered some of the artifacts out to make the time-stretching less obvious, it would've been better. I guess the biggest problem about this piece is that it's very obvious WHAT i did to the sample.

I'm still very, very new to this genre, but I think I'm getting an eeny weeny bit of an idea of how to organize and develop the music... But listening to what my fellow classmates create, I feel like I'm still waaaaaay behind. The different approaches that they take, the methods that they use to manipulate the samples, etc... I feel like the creative side of my brain is so dead right now!! 

Anyway, for those who have listened to this rather horrific-sounding piece to the end, can you guess what sample I used? 

Scroll down for the answer...

ANSWER: CASH REGISTER. The one that rings a bell as the drawer opens up LOL

One of the compliments I received was that they couldn't figure out what sample I used! That's a small accomplishment. Yay- 

First assignment for Advanced Computer Music Composition : Create something with Max/MSP. 

I have had no experience with Max/MSP whatsoever, I wanted to crash the computer a few times (but restrained to do so because it was school property), but I managed to come up with SOMETHING in the end. 

Made four different groove patches - each patch had a buffer that read and stored the music samples and loop-played them forward or backwards at any desired speed (which could be done by inputting number values - negative numbers indicate that the samples will be read backwards). The samples I used were those that I had recorded last semester for my acoustics class. The instrument is the kayagum, a Korean 12-stringed zither.

Doesn't have much development or structure, but I tried to make it a little organized at least by introducing the different elements one at a time, playing around with the speed, building up a sort of "climax" before the "resolution" to the normal speed, and then taking away the elements one by one for the ending.

I don't know, the electronic music that I'm exposed to during class are beyond my understanding and I feel like I'm listening to horror movies (you should see the expressions that creep up on my face while I listen to the 10-minute pieces). Hopefully I'll learn HOW to listen to them by the end of the semester.