Sound and Music Computing

Solo Diary: Write a piece with Strudel that has four algorithmic parts: drums, bass, lead, and freaky noises.

This workshop uses the Strudel live-coding language. You must have completed week 7 to attempt this workshop.

It’s been said that the minimum you need to make techno is drums, bass, a lead synth, and freaky noises. This week’s workshop is about knowing how to make those parts in Strudel and those making some EDM (or something like it).

While this course isn’t specifically about creating techno, live-coding languages tend to help us create this kind of music and it’s a good excuse to go deeper on the synthesis, sampling, and effects available in Strudel.

Goals for this week

  1. Revisit synthesis, sampling, and networking concepts in Strudel by completing the Making Sound tutorials on the Strudel website: samples, synths, audio effects, MIDI & OSC

  2. Use what you have learned to craft sounds for different parts. You need to pay attention not just to the type of synth, but the different parameters available, for each synth. E.g., if you use fm you need to sequence notes andparameters like fmh, fmattack, fmdecay, fmenv. You need to look at the docs to figure this stuff out as the parameters are different per synth.

  3. Load and play with recorded sounds in Strudel. You’ll want to combine elements of the Samples and Audio Effects tutorials to make sure you are performing with samples in a sophisticated way.

  4. Start using Audio Effects and sequencing their parameters. Similarly to the synth and sample topics above, using effects allows you to individualise the output from the default sounds and you need to use sequencing and modulation to apply them in an interesting way.

  5. For the workshop jam this week, you will need to use the collaborative live coding editor flok. Flok gives you very little interface, but you need to select strudel mode in the top left menu, and use the top right menu to change your user name and share the collaborative workspace.

Resources

Creative Notes

You might have wondered by this stage what a laptop ensemble is supposed to actually be. It’s probably a lot different from other musical ensembles you may have participated in. As background reading for this week, here’s some resources by others wondering about what laptop ensembles are and could be.

Reflecting on published research papers will help you to make sure that your work addresses recent developments which is a requirement for master students in this course!