Electronic percussion improvisation - navigating sound space through playing

Percussionist Olof Olsson performs an improvisation on an electronic percussion instrument designed and programmed by Palle Dahlstedt.

In this instrument, the musician navigates a huge space of possible sounds, through playing and listening. All pads play a single polyphonic sound engine, but each pad generates its own set of parameters. The size of the cluster of parameter sets can be varied, and the sounds of different pads can be blended, i.e., a pad has an effect also on the sound of the other pads. At any time, the whole cluster of sounds can be moved in any direction. When the musician presses a pedal switch, the cluster is moved towards the current sound, and then this subspace can be explored - so the sounds are changed through playing, and the timberal variation is virtually limitless.

This instrument is a percussion adaption of the vector mapping technique used in the instruments Palle Dahlstedt designed for duo pantoMorf.

The percussion pad is a DrumKAT, and the instrument is implemented in a Nord Modular G2, visible to the right in the video.

This is part of the research project Creative Performance, directed by Palle Dahlstedt at the Department of Applied IT and the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• electronic
• percussion
• drumkat
• vector
• mapping
• synthesis
• nord
• modular
• g2
• improvisation
• olof
• olsson
• palle
• dahlstedt
• creative
• performance

[dslsynth]

@otoskope It took me a while to realize that the videos of the 2011-04-13 concert was published on another youtube users account and made visible via your favorites. Will there be published more videos from the concert than those two already published?

youtube.com/watch?v=s77oIhPaxz­0

youtube.com/watch?v=T4jcAocO4d­M

Thanks for the comment on the second video. So essentially the keyboard version is an effects processor controlled by the piano playing? Interesting idea!

[otoskope]

@dslsynth There will be more videos, as we filmed it with three cameras, for documentation purposes. The ones already posted were form a friend who filmed with his own camera.

Yes, I'm controlling the parameters of different audio processing algorithms directly from the keyboard, using the dynamic vectorization mapping that is also the basis for the othe instruments (expressure pad from duo pantoMorf, and the pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments).

[dslsynth]

@otoskope An interesting design exercise is to imagine what can be done with one current parameter vector pr voice. In other words: The pads will sound differently even when multiple pads are played at the same time. But the pads will still affect each others sound. Any idea if this would make musical sense and be useful at all? Oh, and how it should be done? ;-)

The only idea I go so far is to let each voice only listen to the pads that were active when the voice was triggered.

[otoskope]

@dslsynth Hmmm, not exactly sure what you mean. But the thing you mention last - to take only the initially played pads into account, is already implemented in my system, and sometimes used, to get a more differentiated playing. But it also limits the control over the extended decay of the sound.

[dslsynth]

@otoskope Thanks & way cool! I look forward to see the new videos and read about the improved scaling functions.

One more question about the instrument used in this video: If two pads are played simultaneously will that produce two identical sounds or two different sounds? In other words: How does the parameter sets of each pad interact or influence each other in the polyphonic version?

[otoskope]

@dslsynth Good question. They will create the same sound (although possibly with different base pitch). There is only one resulting parameter vector at any one time, but having several voices (right now 6) allows for a better feel and flow between timbres, more like acoustic percussion instruments. There is a function to freeze parameters right after the attack in each voice, but that is also sometimes limiting (preventing morphs within a sound, for example).

[dslsynth]

@otoskope In other words moving away from one shared parameter vector affecting all voices and move towards a design where each pad (or voice) has its own parameter vector. For instance in the gravity model each pad's point may be moved in the direction of the other played pads while still having a different timbre. But there may be many other interesting options. Also it would be interesting to see if this idea will work for the vector model. In particular for a duo pantoMorf style instrument.

[dslsynth]

@otoskope From what I understand the original (pantomorf/paper) version of the instrument is monophonic and monotimbral. The instrument in your video is polyphonic and mostly monotimbral with some polytimbral features. What I am asking for is how the polyphonic and fully polytimbral instrument will be? Such a design will will permit more differentiated playing while still letting the pad timbres interact. I thought it would be a good idea to ask the guru himself for advice hence the question! ;)

[otoskope]

@dslsynth Thanks! The main changes are actually in how I implemented the mapping it in the Nord Modular G2. It is now more optimized, so the sound engine could become polyphonic, which made a big difference to the player, and to the musical result. The description in the paper is still valid. There are some improved scaling functions coming, and a new keyboard version, premiering in concert April 13th. I have made a video explaining the pressure pad version in Swedish...will consider an new one!

[dslsynth]

Very cool instrument design and playing! I really feel tempted to experiment with the Gravity Model in my own setup after seeing this.

How much has changed since the 2008 CMMR Dynamic Mapping paper? Will the new design be described in an upcoming paper? Can you provide some details on the new design here? How is the release time controlled?

PS: Would be lovely if you made a video explaining the instrument used in duo pantoMorf. In particular what parameters the knobs and sliders control.