Hey guys,

I've written an article about my ongoing research in using Pd to analyse sound from myself playing vibraphone and create a complimentary performance.

The article is here:
http://cmpercussion.blogspot.com/2008/10/duet-for-vibraphone-and-computer.html

Here's a piece that I created using these techniques:
http://www.epmartin.com/cmpercussion/DuetVibraphoneComputer.mp3

I performed this piece at the Street Theatre in Canberra as part of a larger cross-media performance involving several local artists.

I'd love to hear comments that anybody has!

--Charles Martin

That looks great Charles. What's the response time like, and with vibration and general noise on stage how does the setup fare with accurately picking out notes? (I assume your're using [fiddle~] )

Good stuff...

What's the response time like, and with vibration and general noise on stage how does the setup fare with accurately picking out notes? (I assume your're using [fiddle~] )

Yes I was wondering that. Do you find the midi jitter on the iac bus ok to work with?

Its nice to see Pd used in multi application scenario. I've been using it with Live and Impulse drums, which works great, but sometimes i find the jitter a little frustrating when recording the midi into Live.

well, for this particular piece I use the fiddle~ output to look for notes being played in 10 zones on the vibraphone keyboard (3 or 4 notes each). That's coarse enough to stop accuracy being a problem.

Response time would be bad if it was triggering a synth but ok for triggering complementary samples.

Actually when I perform the piece live, fiddle~ starts to react to the sound coming from the speakers and the piece starts to play itself, but I found that in the context this wasn't such a bad thing. The best solution would be to use a vibes with pickups but If I point the speakers away and have the threshold on triggering notes in the right place it can work more accurately.

I'm now trying to generalise this and use fiddle~ to listen to all 37 notes individually but it's tricky to combine an accurate pitch detection with timely attack detection (bonk is better...) as well as velocity. Then there is a problem with turning notes off.

Anyway, that's what research is for right? Solving hard problems.

Also... I've noticed midi jitter on iac bus. My solution is to be artful about what parameters I control in live so that it isn't a problem...

--Charles.

Just to let you know , I did some tests last night. I ran Pd and Live through Jack and it smoothed out midi jitter considerably...

As midi is processed in blocks of audio, there is definately something crook with Portaudio in os x. Jack just seems a more solid audio driver generally

S

Cool stuff!

This is great. I love tuned percussion.