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Text File | 1998-10-26 | 3.2 KB | 60 lines | [TEXT/ScoM] |
- WRITING EXTENSIONS
-
- >I think I can see why you say this, but I was experiencing some frustration
- >without them. Perhaps it is because I am wanting to retain the association
- >between symbols and lengths rather than have to duplicate all operations on
- >both (for example to make a retrograde of both pitch and rhythm). Also, I
- >am coming from a fairly traditional compositional method and, rather than
- >"surfing" as you suggest, have been trying to understand how to use SCOM to
- >execute these methods. I'm very excited about the possibilities of
- >expanding out from these methods as well as the ease of manipulation that
- >SCOM promises.
- >
- >Once I understand how to control things in a way that comes close to how I
- >have been working, I will be ready to do some surfing--then I will have a
- >better feel for what is happening. Motives seems the most natural way to
- >me somehow. Perhaps a way to do what I want without motives is to define
- >many small sections? Can inversion, retrograde, and so forth be applied to
- >whole sections?
-
- If you discover motive bugs let me know and I will correct them. You can
- apply processors on sections using do-section. It handles typical cases.
- Most MRAC functions deal with zone lists and can be applied to sections.
-
- Try writing a study that puts in practise things you want to do. There
- are many different ways to write a score in SCOM. If your approach
- differs you can extend the program writing your approach. PowerPack
- and MRAC are both done such way by composers Nigel Morgan and Janusz
- Podrazik. I can show you how to make protected plugins.
-
- But before rushing to write new plugins it is worth checking out what
- is already there. Janusz wrote a whole bunch of stuff to be able to
- process empty zones and you should have seen his face when I used nils
- and negative length units which solve the whole problem ;-).
-
- Interesting notice: Nigel and Janusz preferred working on zone lists.
- You can build freely on them and most experimental stuff is been done
- there. Personally I prefer sections when doing music like you can hear
- on the web page (moods and danzntranz). def-section-timesheet for
- instrument descriptions and def-section for MIDI controllers, that's
- what I have been using.
-
- Keeping elements separate is useful when you start using generators.
- You never know exactly what will come out from a generator, but you
- are experimenting with it to find out something interesting. So, you
- have the freedom to try out this on symbols and that on velocities and
- listen how it sounds. When you find interesting solutions you freeze
- those parts and continue working on other elements...and soon the piece
- is finished. And you go on for the next one.
-
- So, in this approach the extra effort to use motives can be too
- big step. Heavy section use is also too big step. The best solution is
- to adapt a subset that you understand and then build on that. It's
- interesting to notice that while I have written all the functions I've
- probably used only 10% of them in pieces. From 1991 to 1995 I was writing
- only functions and not music at all :-).
-
- Nigel has written some tutorials that deal how to work with zoned lists. I
- can email them for you if you want. Dealing with zones opens up things
- quite a bit.
-