This is Michael Svolos's submission for Music 220b HW 2.
Files: hw2.ck Assignment audio file
My drum machine consists of synthesized bass and tom drum sounds and a “snare” and “hi-hat” sound from the Shakers UGen. The basic measure is a bass drum hit on 1 and 3, and snare on 2 and 4. This is played at a slow tempo. The toms and hi-hats come in randomly on each subdivision of the beat, and this subdivision can be chosen by pressing numbers on the keyboard, from 0 to 9 with 0 being no hits. There’s also a twinkly marimba that can be toggled which plays on subdivisions, randomly skipping subdivisions. This has normal and fast mode, and plays pitches corresponding to the 9th through 16th harmonics of a fundamental pitch, forming an eight-note scale based on (I looked this up since the milestone README) otonality. Since the milestone, I added synth pads and a synth bass, three new sets of random parameters for the toms and hi-hats, and greater control capabilities (controls are detailed in the comments of the kbd() function and are probably specific to my type of laptop).
My aesthetic goals for this piece were definitely influenced by my last composition, which was upbeat and a little goofy. That was fun for sure, but after making it, I wanted to explore different moods, so I tried to make this piece more serious, brooding, introspective…less upbeat. That led to my decisions to use a different tuning system and to begin with very sparse and reverby sounds. The most difficult part of this assignment technically was making sure the timing of everything was okay. I tried to use the same framework for timing as I did in hw1, since I thought it worked really well, but I think the real-time aspect of this homework made it a little tougher. Using events may have made it easier, so I’ll try to use them in the next assignment if it helps.