The subject of my miniwave quantizer ROM came up in two different places this week. The miniwave has two voltage controllable bank inputs, so, I figured one could be used for key and another for mode - a musically useful arrangement. Most quantizers output chromatic notes. This approach makes sense because it opens up access to all the notes without prejudice. On the other hand, a modal scale constrains the output a step further, essentially filtering out all the 'wrong' notes. In fact, a completely random input (noise) will result in something musical.
The quantizer ROM is a hardware implementation of a subject I've been fascinated by for many years: the beautiful purity of the natural modes. 90% of normal harmony can be derived from the natural modes. I experimented with real time modal filters with Max, back in the early 90s and I created a useful object that I use to this day named satori. Satori takes a chromatic input, and maps a input key and mode to an output key and mode. This is useful as the cornerstone for algorithmic music generation and smart accompanist software. I used satori to to create a variety of applications with whimsical titles like 'Instant Pop Tune' and 'Jazz in a Can'. I made 'satori' publicly available for anyone who would find it useful and, to be honest, the co-incidence of Steven Kay's 'Karma', which was originally prototyped in Max, certainly made my eyebrows raise up and down.
Satori enabled me to subcontract some of the smaller decision making to the computer, allowing me to improvise a more intricate real-time composition. In this direct to 2-track example from 1992, I'm using two keyboards - one to play a melodic line, and another to direct key and mode information to satori which is producing the swelling random modal accompaniment.
A sculpture starts out as a solid chunk of marble (pure noise representing all possibilities) and the artist makes a series of aesthetic decisions to reveal the final product. Music software has evolved to the point where the management of aesthetic decisions can be automated. At what point does the software cease to be a tool, and becomes a collaborator?
A discussion of the 'morality' of Omnisphere erupted on the SynthSights mail list recently. Now, Omnisphere isn't even released yet, but we're getting a taste of what it is capable of via a series of movies Spectrasonics is releasing on their web site. This is a big product for them (and hotly anticipated) since they really have not released anything since Stylus RMX, and it effectively replaces Atmosphere in their line up. This is good news since some users were getting so desperate they were grinding up old Distorted Reality CDs and snorting them.
Spectrasonics products, including their pre-virtual instrument sample libraries, and even going back further to Eric Persing's days as a sound designer for Roland (his presets made the D-50 famous) make you sound good. Really good. Very easily. If you're a composer for film or television or are doing work for hire on a budget, or a tight deadline, the first thing you reach for is something by Spectrasonics. It quickly elevates your work and provides an instantly professional, produced sound. This is why they're wildly popular with professional composers and, as a result, you hear them everywhere. I think this is the best use for these tools.
However, when it comes to a personal artistic statement, when you're saying to the world, "this is what my music is all about", sweetening with these products feels a bit like cheating to me. It isn't just Spectrasonics, although they represent the pinnacle of the one finger symphony, it is a many of the software tools out there - or hardware, for that matter - like the Tenori-on.
Are you producing a genuine artistic insight or are you merely channeling the talent of a sound designer or software programmer. So, what do you think? Will we, at some point, credit software as a collaborator, or will it always be thought of as a tool?
