HW3 Generative DrumMachine + Soundscape

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Final Composition: Your Morning Under My Fingers

final video
Inspired by my homebrew assignment Morning Delusion, I wanted to create a drum machine/soundscape that expresses a playful and
delusional morning, perhaps due to sleepiness, dreams, or the unwillingness of starting a new day. My constraint was that I
want this drum machine to be very simple to control and mostly autonomous as to allow my drum machine to have its own personality, yet
can still be different when I play it. I thought this is similar to the relationship of a conductor to his/her orchestra. Each player
has his/her own personality, yet together, their expressions exhibits the conductor's interpretations.

Technicalities of my drum machine
For the simplicity I aim for, I used only the keyboard. I used similar audio tracks from my homebrew assignment, including my
favorite bone cracks and morning alarm. Here is how I control my drum machine:
'j' starts crack noise 1, 'k' starts crack noise 2, 'l' starts crack noise 3, 'u' 'i' 'o' stops the cracks subsequently.
'a' starts the morning alarm ('s' stops it), 'd' slows the tune, 'g' quickens the tune ('h' stops it), 'e' increases volume, 'r'
decreases volume.
'1' starts and stops melody 1, '2' starts and stops melody 2, '3' doubles the speed, '4' creates bell tone effects.

My sample composition
The piece starts with comb filtered cracks, slowly adding in to create a playful conversation. "Little bouncing balls" joins the mix
sometimes brightening the mood and sometimes adds mystery. As these voices fade out, we reach the morning alarm, calling us awake, but
we quickly falls back to sleep as the alarm delusionally remains in the background and we return to our playful dream before the alarm
comes back and finally calls us awake.

My Comments
I comb filtered the bone cracks, I really enjoyed how they sound. There's a metallic timbre that I was ver fascinated by. Additionally,
the two melodies I created have different personalities, one in a slightly minor key while the other is in the major key. I mixed the
the melodies together to create even more different melodies. Finally, I find slowing down the alarm an interesting feature and it is
definitely one of the more prominent features of the piece. I very much enjoyed further synthesizing the sounds I worked with during
homebrew. I enjoyed this assignment way more than I thought I would. I just find the drum machine so fun to play. I would sometimes
press random keys, and they seem to just harmonize and create a distinct personality.
I did find it difficult to structure my drum machine, specifically how to make it simple yet be able to control a diverse range of sound
and personalities. There's definitely a lot more I can do with this, such as making a soundscape out of synthesizing the sound of the
morning alarm. But overall, I like the drum machine I created, and despite its imperfection (I still think I can create a better mapping
of the keyboard), it does its job well, and I was able to express what I wanted to.
chuck

Milestone 1 Experiments

video
I did some initial experimentations on my drum machine, inspired by my Homebrew assignment. I'm taking the sounds that I
have recorded to create a drum machine, specifically my favorite bonecracking noises. My alarm serves as the central soundscape,
and I'm planning to make more melodies is inspired by this alarm. My goal, again, is to create a feeling of confusion and
delusion.
How my drum machine works:
'j' starts crack noise 1, 'k' starts crack noise 2, 'l' starts crack noise 3, 'u' 'i' 'o' stops the cracks subsequently.
'a' starts the morning alarm ('s' stops it), 'd' slows the tune ('f' stops it), 'g' quickens the tune ('h' stops it).
'1' starts the melody, '2' stops it, '3' doubles the speed, '4' returns it to normal speed.
chuck
Recordings:
alarm
ankle
Neck
Spine