On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:58:05 +0000, alex wrote
> On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 14:02 +0100, Dave Griffiths wrote:
> > I haven't ever played non-livecoding :) but I seem to plan things out in a
> > very broad sense, with ideas to follow during a performance - ie
>
> Seems similar to the approach adrian and I developed out of
> necessity, of making a pictorial score up to half an hour before a performance.
> Even though they are at times nonsensical, we do at least have something
> to point at when we're agreeing upon where we are and where we're going.
I guess I should add that it never seems to go to plan for me, but I've only
had 4 gigs so I can't really say anything with authority :)
> > I don't think I like the idea of memorising a script and just typing it out
> > live (I don't know if that was what you were getting at alex) I like to think
> > things could be a little more fluid than that...
>
> Agreed - that isn't what I meant to suggest. However through
> practice an improv musician might build up a set of progressions and
> expressions. But where you're playing a progression that you've
> played before, you'll do it differently, in reaction to what your co-
> performers are doing.
>
> When I program to an idea, and then program to it again, the two results
> can look and sound very different. For example one idea might be "tween
> between a random and regular rhythm and back again." I might
> practice various ways of fulfilling that objective but would never
> come up with the same thing twice, and then hopefully in a live
> situation would be able to come up with something that worked well
> with whatever else was going on.
yep, it's more like ideas or themes or something, I thought this was what you
were getting at, I think it's an interesting point. I think (and again, lack
of experience may prove me wrong) that to perform with a conventional computer
program, you would not have this depth of expression. Another instance where
live coding is better.
> However, after saying all that, I am coming to the conclusion that "live
> coding from scratch" is an extreme position, and one I've been
> finding very difficult to live up to while producing music I'm happy
> with.
....
> I had an idea for a compromise between from-scratch coding and using
> pre-prepared scripts, that I'm hoping to find time to research
> soon... That is, while pre-preparing a script (in a livecoding
> environment of course), the hacker records many 'snapshots' of the
> code while it's being built. Then when it comes to performing the
> code, the performer can move backwards and forwards between these
> snapshots, as well as doing live edits.
I had a guilty secret (sort of) in that I loaded up prewritten scripts in
fluxus during the aarhus gig, for similar reasons (and following a machine
lockup scenario :]). Scripts of any length have to be done this way, and are
just new starting points. In the lsystem software, I don't have to do this (at
the moment) as the code is a formal rule set for only making music, so there
are less keypresses per note(tm) required I suppose.
> Therefore the audience gets to hear the code grow as it was
> developed in the studio, but sped up (or slowed down, or reversed).
> Development time meets performance time.
>
> Does that make sense?
yeah, I saw you doing this last week, and it's Ok, cos you used grep and the
command line - if you'd used a filesystem gui browser - well, that would be a
completely different story ;)
cheers,
dave
Received on Thu Dec 02 2004 - 15:28:28 GMT