The idea was not to create jazz per se, but to use components in jazz drums as parts of computer music. For example,
I was very interested in using brush drums, which produce a longer, consistent sound than most other drums. I wondered if
Compositing jazz elements as computer music would make it sound like jazz or rather something completely different.
For example, what if a brush drum sound is layered on top of each other 10~ times, or played through granular synthesis?
The controller is: KORG NANOKONTROL 2
Which has 8 knobs, 8 sliders and 3 buttons for each knob.
The slider controlled the volume, the 3 buttons for each ‘track’ controlled the tempo.
The knob controlled the ‘random chance to reset the SndBuf back to position 0’, so when turned all the way up, produced a sound somewhat
Reminiscent of granular synthesis.
When the track is of a single play SndBuf (Saxophone) or just a UGen rather than a drum beat, the knob controls how much of a drone sound
Gets mixed into it.
For the saxophone track, I am using Ivan Renta’s
sax solo.
The brush drum sounds were pulled off from the following jazz brush drums technique
tutorial:
The double bass sound is taken from freeSound.org.
As always, knowing how to structure the code was a very challenging process. Also having very little background in music theory
Or jazz (have only been a casual listener) made me sometimes feel insecure about whether if a component was ‘jazzy enough’ or not.