In his second set of Practical Max videos, Matthew Davidson, aka Stretta, demonstrates building a ‘sweet-sounding and performance-friendly’ Beat Factory.
Beat Factory slices up and processes drum rhythms in real time.
Watch the Practical Max 2-B video, below, to see inside the Beat Factory Max patch.
Cycling ’74 has teamed up with Matthew Davidson (Stretta) on a new video series, Practical Max:
Cycling 74 debuts a new video series in which I demonstrate some practical uses of Max and share the patches I make.
In this first episode, I’m exploring what can be done with some inexpensive piezo mic elements and Tristan Jehan’s analyzer~ external.
But really, I’m just having an embarrassing amount of fun.
This is an intriguing start to the series. Continue reading
This video, via Matthew Davidson, aka Stretta, captures the recording session for Combines The Charms, an electroacoustic ambient piano piece from his new album Could Have The Skies.
Could Have The Skies is available as a free download from Davidson’s blog.
Free Music Friday: Synthesist Matthew Davidson has released Could Have the Skies – the third set of electronically processed ambient solo piano improvisations under the Escape Philosophy moniker.
Here’s what Davidson has to say about the Could Have The Skies:
The same rules apply as the previous Escape Philosophy releases; I don’t have a preconceived idea what I’m going to play when I sit down to record, but I try to visualize something or express a feeling or memory.
I have a short period in the morning when the house is empty. The emphasis is on capturing a moment, including the hesitations and mistakes which I feel are more interesteing than pristine sound quality or the perfect take. You’ll hear the familiar birds from the previous albums, body movements, dampers rising of the strings, etc.
Some of the piano music from Escape Philosophy was once described as pointillistic which I thought was pretty, and apt. There is guitar and orff chime bars on one track but otherwise, it is all piano, often manipulated by the monome grid and arc.
You can preview the tracks below and you can download the album in exchange for a tweet or using a ‘name your price’ model. Continue reading
Matthew Davidson’s vcvi is a suite of Max For Live devices, designed to control your modular synth with a DC coupled audio interface.
Included functions:
vcvi is a free download from Davidson’s Stretta site.
Synthesist + developer Matthew Davidson has an interesting new project – Plane, a side-scrolling step sequencer for the Monome + Arc.
It’s a work in progress and is not downloadable yet, but already looks interesting. Plane treats the monome’s grid as a window into a larger matrix sequencer, which you can scroll through using the Arc rotary controllers.
The video, above, captures Davidson discussing his work in progress.
Davidson says this about Plane:
I’ve always loved step sequencers and I see the monome as an opportunity to address some of the grey area between the one-knob-per-function analog step sequencer and step sequencers with memory. The idea is to increase the available note range without sacrificing precision and increase the available sequence length range, without sacrificing direct manipulation and feedback.
So, when the arc came around it seemed like a useful navigational tool to manipulate a large plane of data.
Back in January, we reported on the Monome Arc 2 and Arc 4, a pair of premium high-resolution knob controllers from the creators of the monome. While some readers choked on the pricing of the Arc controllers, buyers snatched up the first run in about 15 minutes.
Musician/developer/designer Matthew Davidson (Stretta) put together this video, Holocene, that demonstrates the monome arc 4 in action, both as a musical tool and a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship. Continue reading
Matthew Davidson (Stretta) has posted these videos, demonstrating a new instrument, the Arc, in action.
The Arc, made by the creators of the monome, is a high-end, hand-crafted high-resolution knob controller for electronic music.
Davidson’s first piece, soome, above, is an improvisation for piano, monome, arc and an application he created, grainstorm:
I’m using a hand-built arc prototype, generously on loan from tehn, who is very busy building and shipping monomes, dealing with the transition to serialosc required by the new edition and finalizing the arc firmware. I’m sure he’d prefer to be playing with the arc himself.
hardware: monome arc2 (knobs) monome64 (buttons)
software: grainstorm
This mind-blowing video, directed by Franck Trebillac, is for Stretta’s Calculus.
The video is one of twelve music videos produced for Clear Notice’s debut release, Enter Calico – available on Bandcamp, Amazon and iTunes as an audio album and iPad App. More videos from the release are available on the Clear Notice Vimeo channel. Continue reading
Here’s a live performance by Matthew Davidson (Stretta) that uses the monome to explore FM synthesis.
Here’s what Davidson has to say about the performance:
Feeling pretty good about releasing a 512 version of press cafe the day before, I decided to tackle an idea I had for the monome involving FM synthesis. The horizontal axis is pitch and a modal pitch map can be quickly generated on any base note, or you can edit the pitch map arbitrarily. The vertical axis is a modulation parameter that can be routed simultaneously to several destinations. Patch editing is very gratifying as everything is live all the time, so you don’t have to re-trigger notes to hear the effect. This also opens the door to additional real time control. It is easily hackable. There are no polyphony/voice limitations. The downside is it isn’t light on the processor. This patch consumes 20% of one core on my core i7. I’m using some hacked in support for the powermate knob to quickly make some parameter changes to broaden the range of timbres demonstrated.
I finished the patch on Saturday night and resolved to make a video on Sunday. I had in mind something more musical for a demonstration, but I was losing sunlight, so this will have to do for now. I added reverb after the fact (Valhalla Shimmer), otherwise, you’re hearing the real-time output.
20 years ago, I wished for the ability to design a purpose-built synthesizer/instrument in a specific configuration, and use an adaptable, non-specific interface to control that synthesizer. Today this is possible. I wish I could spend every day making things like this.
by stretta