What Sheep Herd (Why Don't You Write Me?)
Programmed by Nick Didkovsky in JSyn and JMSL
Introduction
This piece was developed after Phil Kline invited me to create a piece
for an evening of music he curated. Comprised of pieces based on pop music,
the event was called "Your Hit Parade" and took place at The New Museum
of Contemporary Art, 583 Broadway, NY NY, on Sunday March 26 at 3 pm. I
chose Paul Simon's Why Don't You Write Me? as the source material for my
piece.
This piece premiered on Saturday, Feb 26, 2000, at the Warwick Cyber
Arts Festival, and was performed there by Nick Didkovsky (computer) and
Barbara Benary (Erh Hu). The piece was performed again at "Your Hit Parade"
(see above), by James Forrest and Joel Mellin on computers, and Barbara
Benary (Erh Hu).
Description
"What Sheep Herd" provides you with up to 8 voices of independently looping
melody. The first 17 notes of "Why Don't You Write Me" are available to
each voice, and they all start by repeating the first note of the melody
very slowly.
The user can:
-
turn a voice on or off,
-
change its octave,
-
adjust the probability that the beginning of the loop will advance
through the melody,
-
adjust the probability of the end of each loop will advance through
the melody.
This compact set of choices is rich enough, in my view, to provide you
with an instrument that takes practice... you get better after playing
with it and figuring out various tricks.
As usual, this is in Gamelan Son Of Lion tuning.
Play
You will need:
-
the JSyn plugin
-
Netscape browser, or Internet Explorer, or iCab (Mac) with Java enabled
-
At least 200MHz processor recommended.
Perform What
Sheep Herd (why Don't You Write Me?) (CD quality audio).
Contact
Nick Didkovsky: Nick.Didkovsky@mail.rockefeller.edu
JMSL and JSyn
JSyn is Phil Burk's realtime music synthesis
language. JMSL is an experimental music programming language by Nick Didkovsky
and Phil Burk, which is based on HMSL. Both JSyn and JMSL are written in
Java, which allows for pieces to be presented on the Web.
For JSyn info, please visit www.softsynth.com
For JMSL info, please visit www.algomusic.com
Thanks
Thanks to Phil Burk for JSyn, to Phil Kline, and Barbara Benary, Joel Mellin,
and Jamie Forrest.