Sem Cordas (Stereo) by carthach

Premiered @ ICMC 2021 Santiago, Chile.

This piece is the result of some recent experiments developing a real-time feature driven sampler that listens and responds to live input intelligently. The instrument in question is the Max for Live based Decon device (pictured) that listens to input signals and responds either continuously or depending on the occurrence of onsets (note attacks) or offsets (periods of silence). Using IRCAM’s MUBU toolkit for multimodal analysis, existing collections of audio are loaded and analysed for their timbral and spectral properties. Samples are recombined akin to larger scale granular synthesis based on the best fit matching their timbral/spectral properties to the input signal. The first half of the piece is mostly textural stretches of mixtures of radio recordings and bowed cymbals. The second half features live triggering of the synthesis engine using plucked tenor banjo. Eventually two instances of the instruments are used routed in a feedback loop – autonomously triggering each other in curious back and forth conversations.