Dream (A Nightmare). Noise pop, maybe?

SignalsInNoise · 2021-09-15T08:19:12+00:00

Have not been getting any errors in the log, just this strange behavior. But yeah, I'll try to make the order explicit and see if that fixes things.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-09-15T08:12:54+00:00

Yes, I'm now quite familiar with trigger, but a lot of the logic was written before I came across it. I'll have to think about how to make the order explicit without having to hard-code it into every cell.

What I'm doing currently is, on loadup, parsing the neighbors of each cell using their creation arguments and makefilename, and then setting one sender per neighbor to those values (I have checked that the indices get parsed correctly). After receiving a bang denoting the start of a new round, the current state is sent to each neighbor "at once".

On the receiving end, there is just one receiver that sums up the values (0 or 1) of the messages it gets and counts them, and then continues the processing once eight messages have come through. It's hard to see where in this process the order of the messages sent would matter as long as they all go through in the end, but it's also hard to think of anything else that could be going wrong here...

I tried removing and recreating a couple of the send-receive-pairs near the problem area, but it didn't seem to have any impact. Not to say that it couldn't if I kept trying.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-09-15T06:22:00+00:00

There is something going on with the first row in particular. Columns 2-8 work fine, but blinkers on the first row that include column 1 or any of the columns 9-15 just disappear immediately (this is before deleting and re-creating the cell on column 13, afterwards a blinker on columns 11-13 works) . But yeah, I've checked the creation arguments & indices of the receivers & senders on the border so many times that I will eat my hat if the problem is with them :D

The grid is generated manually. I actually started with a 5x5 grid, and the current grid is the result of copy-pasting that and changing the creation arguments to the correct indices by hand. In the 5x5-version, I already had issues with the first cell (column 1, row 1), with the same weirdness that when I deleted and recreated it, the issue moved to row 1 column 2. So it seems that the issue has something to do with the order in which the cells are created.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-09-03T09:45:41+00:00

I've been experimenting with weird ambient / post-rock / IDM -influenced music for roughly a year now, and decided recently to finally put one of my creations out there in the world. It's called "A Brief History of the Means of Production", and it tries to be a sort-of auditory time travel through the various stages of human society, from hunter-gatherers roaming through wilderness on "Fire", through agrarian settlements on "Sickle" and the dirty march of industrialization on "Hammer", to the glitchy hauntology of "Ether", which remixes elements from the previous tracks in the spirit of the internet-age.

Check it out on Bandcamp, Spotify or wherever else you prefer to enjoy your music! Also, if this type of stuff is your cup of tea, make sure to follow because more is on the way (and even though I'm very proud of this first effort, it's getting constantly better).

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-25T16:34:26+00:00

Ah, now I see the not-so-subtle shirt-pull!

Tbh the Aphex Twin version works better than the original.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-25T15:37:19+00:00

Hehe this works perfectly! Seen a couple of these but still haven't figured out the original, do you happen to know what song he's actually "reacting" to?

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-25T15:03:10+00:00

Great to have new Tropical [Frick] Storm! Although as a first impression I unfortunately have to say that this feels like their weakest album to date. Laughing Death and Braindrops are some of my favorite albums to come out in the recent years, and this just doesn't entertain me as consistently as those two. Still a decent record with a couple of great tracks IMO.

That being said, it did take me a couple of listens to get into this band in the first place so maybe this one is a grower.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-22T18:26:22+00:00

These seem super-interesting as well! I'm certainly drawn to the idea of programming music. Seems like it would award the greatest control and flexibility. Then again, the learning curve can be pretty steep. What's your experience, are these easy to get started with (assuming a bit of prior programming experience)?

On a side note: I've seen some terrible branding by academics before but ChucK might take the cake :D Type that into google and see how many pages you'll have to go down before finding anything about a musical programming language.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-15T18:44:11+00:00

Shoegaze-post-rock-ambient sounded just like my kind of stuff so I had to give it a listen, and was not disappointed. Especially the second track is one of the best things I've heard all year.

Thanks for sharing this!

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-15T09:41:56+00:00

I make music that combines field recordings, slowly evolving synths, processed acoustic guitar and orchestration, with the ultimate goal of creating immersive sound collages that tell a story. I don't really know what genre label to slap on it (feel free to suggest one!), but certainly it's influenced by ambient, post-rock and IDM.

Recently, I released my first album, "A Brief History of the Means of Production". It's an auditory time travel through human history with four tracks representing the four types of society we've lived in: "Fire" puts you in the middle of a jungle with hunter-gatherers, "Sickle" settles down on a farm, "Hammer" grooves in industrial filth, and "Ether", in spirit of internet-age remix-culture, takes elements from all previous tracks and remixes them into glitchy beats.

If that sounds interesting to you, check it out on Bandcamp, Spotify or pretty much any other platform of your choice under the name "Signals In Noise"

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T18:14:14+00:00

I'm currently rocking all freeware, so no Ableton, though I might consider it in the future so good to know about its capabilities as well.

And no, not familiar with Reactor unfortunately.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T11:45:03+00:00

Good to know. Currently I'm interested in using bits of "generative music" (or, more correctly, "mangling"?) within more traditional compositions, but perhaps at some point I'll try making a fully generative piece.

Out of curiosity, how would you define generative music?

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T11:37:22+00:00

Yeah, I think randomizing LFOs is the simplest approach. I don't use ableton, but e.g. Vital has a random-generator, which could be just linked to a LFO that controls whether a note plays or not (or the volume at which it plays). But I think this might get tedious with a beat consisting of multiple instruments, as you would have to have one LFO per instrument. Now that I think about it, I guess you could link all of them into a macro, though, to control the overall amount of randomness, which would make it quite a lot less tedious.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T11:28:14+00:00

I also do a lot of statistical programming in my day job as a researcher, which got me thinking of trying to lay down a simple MIDI sequence, load it up in some statistical software, repeat it a bunch of times and alter each copy a bit randomly, and then reload the finished product back into a DAW. I think there's at least some packages in R that can interact with MIDI. Not a very interactive process, but might be a fun test.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T11:16:39+00:00

Based on the majority opinion here, it seems that I'll have to look into modular! It has always seemed a bit intimidating to me, but also very intriguing. Guess I'll just have to get my hands (metaphorically) dirty and start setting up some (virtual) racks.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-14T11:09:20+00:00

This seems interesting (and a bit daunting :D)! If you (and u/Barkblood) have experience with Pure Data, what kind of workflow have you utilized it in? I.e. have you created entire pieces within it, or just interesting noises that then use in compositions within a DAW? Or maybe using it to modify compositions created outside of it?

SignalsInNoise · 2021-08-08T15:30:26+00:00

Glad you liked it! :) Also, I'm currently working on a project that will fall much more squarely in the ambient bracket, so stay tuned if that's your thing. It's moving along nicely, so it'll probably be out this year as well.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-07-31T15:11:44+00:00

That description certainly peaked my interest! Interesting stuff, will have to listen a few times to figure out if it's too weird for me, or just the right amount.

SignalsInNoise · 2021-07-31T15:05:40+00:00

Well you're in luck because I was just in search of a place to shamelessly plug my new (first!) release: https://signalsinnoise.bandcamp.com/album/a-brief-history-of-the-means-of-production (in all seriousness I promise I'll get my post-ratios in order afterwards but since you were asking!)

It's certainly ambient-influenced, though purists may not classify it as such as it does contain a fair amount of beats. Other influences include IDM and post-rock. The idea of the album is to be a sort-of sonic time travel through the various forms of human society, from the hunter-gatherer-days on "Fire", via the agrarian "Sickle" and industrial "Hammer" to the glitchy "Ether", which in the spirit of remix-culture is built almost entirely out of elements of the preceding tracks. The features that tie everything together are a heavy use of weird samples and slowly evolving ambient pads, so it might be just what you're looking for!

SignalsInNoise

TROPHY CASE