Looking for a creative software engineer

digiology

Hi people,


I know the title looks like a job opening but I'm more or less looking for a band member who has an interest in programming live electronics systems.

I want to start a live band with one focus being on capturing live sounds from performers and manipulating them in real time. It would also involve augmenting how the performers work by adding controllers and processing to their individual setups.

It could be seen as taking a standard post-rock band format/style (drums, bass, guitar) but giving much more freedom to how sounds evolve over time (much less constrained by the physical world) and using ideas from electroacoustic music in a live context.
To take some simple examples imagine a live guitar sound object being frozen and interpolated into something more gestural and fluid and then back into the live guitar seemlessly. These ideas would be implemented with some specific aesthetic goals in mind and made to work within the entire composition (and by that I mean no gimmicks!).

Your own performance role could be dedicated to electronics or simply be guitar, bass, drums or whatever. If someone doesn't want to join a band but be part of the development of these systems and the compositional process thats fine too.

I should make clear that you wouldn't be a 'hack' that does all the dirty work. You'd be involved in the compositional process and for the record I have a degree in computer science and a masters in music technology so I'd be helping with the software development. I don't think you're going to need a phd in DSP to do this but certainly a long term goal to use software development for artistic ends would be a good start. Don't be too shy to contact me if you think this is too technical sounding, not everything will need to be coded from scratch of course!

Although I always imagined I'd be the one doing this, my interests have veered towards applying auditory/music cognition to music composition. Studying these topics and keeping my guitar chops won't leave me with much time to maintain my coding skills to the degree needed.

In terms of the kind of music, I'm into artists/bands like The Redneck Manifesto, Nik Bartsch's Ronin, Radiohead, The Bad Plus, Meshuggah, Cornelius, BT, Rest and am very much open to your own tastes.

In my own mind I'm imagining something between post-rock and electroacoustic music although I do like a bit of complex rhythmical stuff too.
I would also hope the conceptual aspects of EA music would play a big part along with the wide dynamic range and timbral sophistication of EA music.


Anyway, for the right person this could be an awesome project. I'm living in cork and limerick at the moment but wouldn't mind moving to dublin or possibly elsewhere. Please pass this on if you know anyone who this would suit.

shayleon

digiology wrote: »

I know the title looks like a job opening but I'm more or less looking for a band member who has an interest in programming live electronics systems.

sorry for being a smartarse, but... why not having the subject line say "looking for band member for programming..."
;)cheers

PMI

You mean you want madonna's musical director? the guy who already does this?

He uses mainstage though and even has all the front of house lines go through his mac before they hit the PA so he can filter the whole mix including her vocal live if he wants to

Imagine that scenario when you get the beachball, whole FOH goes down but he said he's been lucky in all the arenas so far.... the guys at logic said its not designed for this as he has so many songs open at once with so many FX but its working for him

in conjunction with scratch live you could have endless possibilities if you were that way inclined

MilanPan!c

PMI wrote: »

He uses mainstage though and even has all the front of house lines go through his mac before they hit the PA so he can filter the whole mix including her vocal live if he wants to

Believe it or not, this is what I am planning on doing at some point.

I'm not kidding.

jtsuited

PMI wrote: »

You mean you want madonna's musical director? the guy who already does this?

He uses mainstage though and even has all the front of house lines go through his mac before they hit the PA so he can filter the whole mix including her vocal live if he wants to

Imagine that scenario when you get the beachball, whole FOH goes down but he said he's been lucky in all the arenas so far.... the guys at logic said its not designed for this as he has so many songs open at once with so many FX but its working for him

in conjunction with scratch live you could have endless possibilities if you were that way inclined

you read that article too. Feckin gas the way the logic programmers were really freaked out saying 'we really don't think you should be doing this'.

jtsuited

didn't eno do much the same idea with roxy music but with tapereels etc. instead of a computer. Same with Throbbing Gristle.

Haha, btw, if anyone here has never heard Throbbing Gristle. You have an interesting hour of youtube ahead.

kfoltman

In case you don't find anyone interested enough:

I'm a keyboard player (not a good one, to be honest) with interest in (and knowledge of) digital signal processing and C++ - also interested in contributing to some sort of Linux-based live music performance platform (don't have time and energy to start my own).

And if you need references - I developed most of the one of the popular free audio plugins for Linux (Calf) - see: http://www.ohloh.net/p/calf and http://calf.sf.net/

Even if I don't end up working on this regularly - job, family and so on - I may be of some help anyway.

jiltloop

jtsuited wrote: »

didn't eno do much the same idea with roxy music but with tapereels etc. instead of a computer. Same with Throbbing Gristle.

Haha, btw, if anyone here has never heard Throbbing Gristle. You have an interesting hour of youtube ahead.

Yeah Throbbing Gristle are pretty damn interesting indeed! This clip is my personal favourite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8klW9trVTQ

p.s sorry to the op for going off topic

studiorat

I'm a sound engineer.

I'm ok with Pure Data and Csound. I can do a few things with C and C++, but nowhere near what Kfolftman can do. Working on a VST at the moment... I'm not a Linux man though that performance platform sounds like an interesting project.

I've a few interactive bits and bobs on the go at the so I'd be into seeing what sort of effects you wanted to run and having a go aswell if there was room for someone else. Regarding EA, I'm quite into the spectralism thing at the mo, Grisey, Murail etc... .

Starting a thesis on Music Information Retrieval soon but I guess I could have a bit of time, reckon I could learn a few things along the way as well.

madtheory

kfoltman wrote: »

And if you need references - I developed most of the one of the popular free audio plugins for Linux (Calf) - see: http://www.ohloh.net/p/calf and http://calf.sf.net/

Kudos!

kfoltman

And the thread died!

digiology

Sorry for the delay. I'll get back to this thread over the weekend and PM a few people, I hope that hasn't left the wrong impression.

studiorat

digiology wrote: »

Sorry for the delay. I'll get back to this thread over the weekend and PM a few people, I hope that hasn't left the wrong impression.

Certainly is that time of year again...

digiology

studiorat wrote: »

I'm a sound engineer.

I'm ok with Pure Data and Csound. I can do a few things with C and C++, but nowhere near what Kfolftman can do. Working on a VST at the moment... I'm not a Linux man though that performance platform sounds like an interesting project.

I've a few interactive bits and bobs on the go at the so I'd be into seeing what sort of effects you wanted to run and having a go aswell if there was room for someone else. Regarding EA, I'm quite into the spectralism thing at the mo, Grisey, Murail etc... .

Starting a thesis on Music Information Retrieval soon but I guess I could have a bit of time, reckon I could learn a few things along the way as well.

Hi studio rat,

Sorry for the delay. Its sounds like you'd be suitable, I suppose all it requires is someone who's interested in pursuing this kind of thing and wants to be involved in the project.

I have no predefined ideas on what kind of 'effects' we'd be developing, although I have a few in mind they would normally be with some compositional goals in mind.
I'd like to make the traditional band setup much more gestural and allow instruments to interact on a timbral level (if that makes sense).

To give an example, I'm working on a patch at the moment that will take my live guitar sound (like a single note being held) and freeze the spectrum or slow it down substantially. Then crossfade/interpolate to a set of sine wave oscillators so that the sound can be taken apart, split up etc.

Although I can do this myself these would be the kinds of problems we'd be dealing with.


Where are you living anyway? Dublin is it?

digiology

kfoltman wrote: »

In case you don't find anyone interested enough:

I'm a keyboard player (not a good one, to be honest) with interest in (and knowledge of) digital signal processing and C++ - also interested in contributing to some sort of Linux-based live music performance platform (don't have time and energy to start my own).

And if you need references - I developed most of the one of the popular free audio plugins for Linux (Calf) - see: http://www.ohloh.net/p/calf and http://calf.sf.net/

Even if I don't end up working on this regularly - job, family and so on - I may be of some help anyway.

I'm not sure about an entire platform but I'm sure some collection of tools would emerge eventually that would be flexible enough for the band.
Glad to see you could be of some help anyway, it can be hard going at it alone.

studiorat

digiology wrote: »

To give an example, I'm working on a patch at the moment that will take my live guitar sound (like a single note being held) and freeze the spectrum or slow it down substantially. Then crossfade/interpolate to a set of sine wave oscillators so that the sound can be taken apart, split up etc.

I live on the internet!;)

How are you building that?

digiology

Its all in max but I'm taking some pieces from someone else's spectral freeze patch.