The Water Street Project Week 3: Concerts, Contracts, and Early Max Patch
As I write this post, I’m sitting in New York Penn Station waiting for the 12:14 A.M. train back to TCNJ. The normally bustling station filled with a human corn maze is now oddly vacant, almost relaxing. (Other than the man arguing with security next to me over a bowl of hot soup. Never a dull moment in the city…)
As I develop my final project, I feel that it’s also important to attend different live music events to draw inspiration from. Both the behind-the-scenes production and audience experience of these live concerts have given me some great insight into how I want my project to look and feel.
This past Sunday, I rode shotgun next to my friend and fellow senior Luke Nelson to see Coin take to the stage in Philadelphia. Both Coin and their opener were phenomenal; Coin used a giant digital screen behind all of the band members to create shadows and silhouettes of the band members, and occasionally use videos or animations in some of their songs. While none of the media seemed to be controlled directly by the live audio, Coin’s media made me realize that a lot of the video content was catered to each specific song. For example, their song “Talk Too Much” used a repeating animation of a silhouette whispering into someone’s ear, creating the image of spreading secrets and rumors. I will need to do the same for my own video content that I may create.
And earlier this evening, I went into New York City to see the pop/folk band First Aid Kit at the Beacon Theater. First Aid Kit is a much more mainstream, well-known band, and tonight’s performance was the final show of their North American tour for their fourth album, Ruins. Needless to say, the sister duo went all-out, and the live media tremendously enhanced the performance value. Lights from almost every angle in the theater illuminated the performers, and the timing of some of the on-stage lights appeared to be controlled by the drummer’s kick drum. Carefully-crafted animations and videos amplified the story of each song. The band’s most popular song, “Emmylou” (a love song) featured an old film-reel themed video of the sisters growing up and traveling the world together as musicians. As great and well-prepared as the music was, I am even more impressed by how the media encompassed the band’s personality. I hope to show some of the footage I took tonight to my Time Media & Video Compositing professor, and get his feedback as to how I might create simpler yet effective versions of this media.
As far as progress within building my project, most of what I accomplished was, once again, the pre-performance planning and contacting. With the help of Dr. Nakra and Brower Student Center director Audrey Perrotti, I am now in the process of reserving the space, and filling out contractual agreements with both the student center and the Student Finance Board. The biggest road block that I faced this week was undoubtedly the combination of smaller hurdles that comes with booking a space on-campus. As an individual student, I cannot reserve a space on-campus. As such, I have handled as much of the communication that this project allows me to before passing further responsibilities onto the IMM Department. Since this event will also be funded and booked by the department, I am actively searching for involvement from fellow IMM seniors for this earlier showcase event on Friday, April 20th.
Most of the work, however, has been completed at this point. Once the space is reserved and the department has contacted SFB to schedule 2–3 testing sessions prior to the event, the only remaining pre-planning will be to find other students to involve in the showcase.
In terms of content, I am excited to finally move to our website domain to begin making the actual updates. This past week, I have also been collecting newer photos that will make their way to the site. Within the next couple days, I would like to have a checklist of updates for the website posted for others to see.
Lastly, I reviewed the current state of my Max patch and made some small adjustments. As a final project for another class, I created an early prototype of the final patch for my thesis.
Here is how the most recent version of the patch works:
1. The patch receives a live audio signal from an instrument, and measures its constantly fluctuating pitch.
2. The fluctuating pitch becomes converted to the nearest whole number, which the patch reads as a MIDI note
3. Meanwhile, another part of the patch continuously measures the 20 most recent MIDI notes
4. These MIDI notes get sent through an object in Max that “divides” them into a smaller number that basically informs the patch of the exact note being played (The notes increase chromatically, so 0 = C, 1 = C#, 2 = D, etc.)
5. Different groupings of objects (that make up the notes to a chord) read the most recent MIDI notes and look for the notes that will make up its chord
6. This is where the Boolean logic comes in: If a group detects all three pitches that make up its chord, the patch identifies the notes as that chord. A signal is then sent out through the patch to interact with the lights depending on what chord has been played.
This patch still needs a lot of work, but in a very basic and simplified way, it performs the function that it needs to. I am excited to dive further into this patch and work on reducing the error margin in the patch.
Within the next two weeks, I hope to have finally finished any event planning and focus more heavily on content creation, followed by performance planning and rehearsal. I would like to meet with Dr. Nakra and experiment with improvements to my Max patch, and find some simple solutions for live video content.
Ah, here comes the train now. More updates to come soon!
