Modular Practice and Experimentation

In parallel to my investigation and creative process for this portfolio work, I’ve been creating and performing music with my modular synth. I’m always producing and composing music as it is a regular activity in my life, but now with the addition of my new modular synth I’ve been creating more work than ever before. I spend a lot of time practicing using my modular and exploring new sounds and possibilities from it, resulting in a very fruitful relationship with the tool. My newest module is Qubit’s Nebulae, a granular and phase vocoder processor, capable of creating vast timbral palettes, perfect for sound design. The creation of this module was inspired by the practice of Curtis Roads, the developer of granular synthesis and one of the most forward thinkers of the electronic music cannon (more information of this will be addressed in another post).

I’ve been doing a lot of experiments with the module, passing a lot of different samples, re-contextualising them into new unrecognised forms. The following are some examples of those compositions.

In this recording I processed the audio of a YouTube guided meditation video, gating when the granular processing comes in, and modulating the pitch of the recording.

This other recording is a composition made only with sounds from the nebulae. I processed a lot of samples through the nebulae to compose this piece and got some exciting textures and motifs. This exemplifies how vast granular synthesis is.

Working with the modular is a very laborious job, as the routing of the instrument has to be carefully set and the parameters tuned to a desired outcome. In result you get incredible sounds, that are very unique and useful to use in compositions and performances. While using the instrument I created incredible sonic material that could be used for different purposes, as music and sound design for films. When I consolidated a single sound I realised that I used up all my creative drive in it, as the process was very long. This is not necessarily bad, as you do get a useful result for your compositions, but in other cases it could be too time consuming for my creative practice. This lead me to imagine an instrument, either digital or hardware, that with a click of a button outputted useful sonic material to be used in my practice. Solving the issue I mentioned before. The instrument would not be a replacement for my modular, but just a tool used to close the gaps in my creative project.

After this realisation I decided to create the instrument I described before, for my project of the portfolio. I decided that the perfect medium would be a Max for live device, as it is easy to include into my workflow. I could also share this device with people, in order to solve their own compositional projects. The instrument would be a granular processor, in which the users inputs an audio file and by clicking a button or sending a gate into it, a random algorithm would be triggered, generating unique sound material that can be easily implemented in ones work.