Hyve/4 (disquiet0247) by 337is (three three seven is)

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of meeting @yellow-salamandr-7 in the real-time waking world. We attended an awesome synthesizer build workshop together in Chicago. At the end of the workshop we each had completed our builds of the HYVE Hybrid Octave Touch Synthesizer. You can read more about the unique touch driven polyphonic synth here:

https://www.facebook.com/HyveSynthesizer/

The timing of my acquisition of this instrument was fortuitous as when I think of waltzes, accordions aren't far behind. The arrangement of the HYVE reminds me a lot of a concertina and playing little parts of waltzes flowed pretty easily for me.

A struggle that I had in rendering this is my not having the perfect audio cable to provide a pristine path to my front end. The HYVE uses a 1/8 single stereo output (like a traditional headphone out) and I don't currently have the requisite cable to accommodate that output in stereo. Stereo is really important on the HYVE as each key is split in half and depending on if your finger is on the left, the right, or somewhere in between, its placement determines the placement of sound within the stereo field. This can produce lovely vibratos and tremolos with a bit of wiggling. Without the cable I was left with a poor quality usb speaker that takes headphone input, and then mic'ing that. This causes an interesting aggressiveness of the sound as a result of the lower quality signal path. Please don't blame the HYVE's sound engine for this ... my recording of it is to blame.

The visual score was fun to interpret in real time. I ran through it four times in total for this performance with each rendition veering into more free associations implied by the movement I see in the images. I utilized the open upside down U used in the score as my home base, and any time I ran across it, I pulsed my selected chord more deliberately. Like ringing a bell to draw attention to that spot, and in my head creating the "Pah Pahs" of a classic waltz's "Oom Pah Pah." All of the other images led me to influence the central column of the chord progressions. Moving either from the right to the left, the left to the right, or up and down the central column. In the last read through I let those motions be more fluid and connected to each other by eagerly swirling my fingertips around and through the columns. Great fun!

More on this 247th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Interpret as a graphic score an illustration drawn upon waking by Lark Pien” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0247/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/a-cartoon-graphic-score-disquiet-junto-project-0247/4647

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

(Modified) Image associated with this project is the (unintended, but used with approval) graphic score by Lark Pien.