Żyjątka

Karol Firmanty

Introduction

Song żyjątka was created as a part of LCRP musica ignotum lcrp solstice and is available at bandcamp: musica-ignotum.
The main theme of this LCRP was to envision

music made by unknown life or music that we have not yet discovered.

My main idea was to create system that would emmit notes in a non typical rhytmical way but would be governed by some rules so its output would not be purely random. Also important part of the composition for me was to achieve sounds that are not natural but dosen't sound synthetic in a "familiar" way. That is why Reaktor Steam Pipe 2 was used for its physical modelling capabilities.

Sequencing

To create sequence of notes simple processing.org script was created which tried to simulate enviroment with really simple lifeforms. Enviroment was composed of three entity types:

Rules governing the simulation could be summarized as:
Beings emmit chemical particles periodically (every being with different period and with some jitter), move semi-randomly through 2D enviroment and eat chemical particles that they collide with and which are not emmited by them. Chemical particle carries information about frequency, velocity, midi channel and parent being. When two particles collide they emmit wave which expands uniformly in all directions. Also on collision one particle is generated which caries information generated from information carried by two parent particles. Waves expand till they reach some predefined max radius after which they are removed from enviroment. When wave collides with one being (which was selected at the beginning of the simulation) the information stored in wave is sent through midi to DAW. Number of beings, their positions, number of particles, number of waves are also sent to DAW through midi.

Screenshot from script running simulation. Pale dots are beings, smaller darker dots are particles and circles are waves emmited by colliding particles. Example simulation visualization

Sound synthesis

In total there were 6 midi tracks used. One for each being (five in total) + one for a constant drone in the background which represented the enviroment. Each track used Reaktor Steam Pipe 2 as a sound source which output was then processed using granular synthesis. Sounds were only triggered when preselected being collided with waves to represent song from the viewpoint of one listener. Track which represented enviroment was playing the same note constantly but parameters were dependent on enviromental parameters mentioned in previous section so the timbre of this drone was constantly evolving.

Bohlen–Pierce scale was used to achieve otherwordly and alien sounding effect.