hi all,
I have a little bit of free time after work this morning and I decided to try something new for me, something I wanted to try since a long time.
As you can hear, this song is kinda free jazz but I must explain how it was made. Not very easy to explain, as I have no musical theory knoweldge, but let's go.
As you know I use a freeware called Buzz. It's an amazing tool for producing music.
But it's more than that.
The music you hear was not
writen by me, it's generative music. It's self played music.
In buzz you have three kind of
machines : generators that produce sound (a.k.a synths/drum machines and so on), effects, that modify the sound (like filter, reverb, compressor, etc).
But there is a third kind of machines :
the peer machines. The concept is that these machines can control others machines.
There is several different peer machines, the most famous are created by BTDSys (Ed Powley) but there is some other very interesting too.
One I use here is
peer lfo. As written in the help file :
Peer LFO is an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) which you can use to modulate any parameter of any other Buzz machine..
Notice that a peer lfo can modulate another peer lfo that modulate a synth or a fx. I let you imagine the incredible number of combination that you can use. A peer lfo can modulate also more than one machine (would it be generator or fx) or modulate more than one parameter in one machine.
Other one is
peer scale. Peerscale is a kind of note filter using different scales like sixth, seventh, blues, locryan, major, minor and so on but also Ravel's scale, scales from indian music, chinese, greek, etc. You have a set of 421 scales you can choose. In each scale you can change the root notes.
I used also a peerchord (help file :
PeerChord is a chord/arpeggio player, which can control any other machine in Buzz).
I used a mda piano free vst, a mda ePiano, a XS-1 machine (soundfont player) with a free upright bass soundfont, a wav reader for the ride cymbal and a roland 808 emulator for the snare. Plus a synth (the soloing one).
I'll take the piano as example : the chords are created with the peerchord . The chords played are filtered by peerscale (Jazz minor melodic minor ascending scale), meaning that the chords used are in this particular scale.
In peerscale you have a parameter called "peer me" (it's a slider), if you move it you will play all the chords of the choosen scale. The peer me is modulated by a peer lfo, I choosed a random modulation (I control the randomness with min Diff parameter : when using Random or Wander modes, this specifies the minimum difference between consecutive values. This can be used to guarantee a noticable change in the parameter every time interval).
A second peer lfo is controlling the previous peer lfo phase (sets the relative phase offset compared to the "global" phase).
Then I used another peer lfo that control all peerscale (every instrument except drums use peerscale) and change randomly all the root notes of every peerscale, that way they all play in the same root note range.
Drums are also drived by a peer lfo.
And finaly I used a new machine called Relativion that gives me the ability to play solo with my computer keyboard. A peerscale is also used so that when I hit a key it will play the choosen notes + all other notes of the same scale. This is the only part that I played. I used it with the synth.
The peer lfo have a on/off slider. When you set the "on" parameter it begins to play alone. I recorded a part of what is generated. It can play like that for hours, playing always a different music. The ePiano uses the same setup as the piano but without peerchord, playing only notes. A second peer lfo modulate the the update frequency of the peer me, meaning it will vary the speed and the number of notes played.
It's the first time I play with these tools and it's an amazing creative tool.
There is a french guy called tinga which is a myth in these peer stuff. It made some incredible stuff. Check these videos, it's worth watching it :
http://youtu.be/-CItGqpZO8Y http://youtu.be/BrIwG7fgyc0 he uses XBox joysticks to drive the peer machines.
And these ones :
http://youtu.be/ulAu_1SBygMhttp://youtu.be/riXTa4NfEechttp://youtu.be/riXTa4NfEeche builded a strange chair that change the music when you modify your position while sitting on it!
I hope it was not too teddious to read
