220b Homework #2

Adventure Terror - Robert Colcord

About:
This piece is composed entirely using sound clips from the animated children’s show Adventure Time being transformed by granular synthesis in ChucK. The show is known for it’s wacky and light-hearted nature, but I found that applying various granular synthesis methods to the clips seems to give them an almost nightmarish quality. I decided to explore this with the piece and to create something reminiscent of a nightmare. In my personal experience, nightmares tend to contain a few key elements, which I’ve attempted to recreate. First, they usually involve something familiar, such as a loved one, a close relationship, or the self, which is either in danger or has been changed dramatically. Using clips from a popular show almost inherently covers this quality; they are recognizable at times, but mostly disfigured beyond recognition. Second, events in nightmares tend to be very chaotic and unpredictable. To recreate this quality, I really just didn’t try to structure the piece at all. There aren’t any clear sections, and sounds tend to enter, exit, and transform randomly and without reason. The third quality is that the pacing of a nightmare also tends to be chaotic. Time seems to skip around, and events occur at speeds only possible in a dream. Thus, I’ve tried to make the speed of sounds vary significantly, and change often. 

Process/Difficulties:
The process of creating this piece really began with the creation of an interface with which I could experiment with the different parameters of granular synthesis. This resulted in LiveATGranulator.ck, which gave me control over grain position, size, rate, volume, and panning of multiple granulators. I treated this as an instrument and began composing the piece by playing it. Once I had a solid foundation for the piece, I began the process of scoring and hard-coding the live performance I had worked out, resulting in AdventureTerror.ck. The print() function in the live granulator was essential, as it allowed me to know precisely the values of the various grain parameters as I performed. Still, this was the most difficult part of the process, as it involved a large amount of trial-and-error. Much of the nuance present in the live version was lost in the conversion, but hard-coding the piece allowed me to do things with the piece that I would not have been able to do live.

Instructions:
For LiveATGranulator.ck:
You must have a USB mouse to perform this piece.
Add the shred, then use the keyboard and mouse as directed in the code to play the granulators. Try to avoid entering unwanted characters in the piece when using the keyboard, i.e. click off the miniAudicle window before starting.
Remove shred when finished

For AdventureTerror.ck:
Simply add the shred. 

Credits: 
All sounds were taken from the animated show Adventure Time on Cartoon Network.
Also, thanks to Ge Wang for the twilight-redux-kb.ck starter code.