So I am very please with the progress of my last few iterations of the last week.  Take a listen here and please give me some constructive feedback for the homestretch!

Still needed:  A touch more stochasticism at the beginning.  Still have a bit too much zipping coming from the resonator bank but only in one spot.  I need to iron that out by reducing the effect of a turn of my rq swipe knob (the turn spans too much bandwidth in a single turn.  A quarter to 1/8 reduction should really help).  Much more to come in the near future!

Rob

Grindstone

Currently fixing a few things to add a more dynamic flow to my piece as well as make the beginning "cards-on-the-table" section more interesting to listen to:

1.  Gate the beginning with randomly assigned frequencies within a given range.  Run to noisy climax that then subsides into reverberant dust as the beginning of the second movement.
2.  Make the beginning section shorter.
3.  Break up the resonating banks by adding a random parameter that adds variance in each band's given amplitude.
4.  Practice, practice, practice... record, record, record!

Stay tuned, the radio's about to rock your world!

At Long Last!

So I was able to update my interface, get my final basic movement functioning, and get an additional recording done this weekend after much work and debugging.

Updates include:

- Removed the second xy pad on the touchOSC side to allow for more room on the resonator banks and more room for the first xy pad (I originally thought I was going to utilize both pads but now realize as this is connected to the second movement which controls parameters that combine both radios, so only one is necessary).

- Removed pops from the resonating banks when the RQ rolled over

- First iteration of the "frozen grain" effect completed (the third movement that I have been working on for a while now)

- Experimented with the whole FM frequency band and the FM band alone. See how this affects the sound. I feel I was relying too much on static in the first iteration so by adding this limitation, I was forced to use more recognizable bands (hence the awesome and surprise ending).

- Added more lag parameters to allow for ramping to occur without the need of additional limbs and fingers on multiple knobs for long smooth gestures

Still Needed:

- Resonating banks sound too much like bad slot machines or video games. I am going to work on a new design where I have more control over specific bands that fade in and out at semi-stochastic center frequencies rather than rolling them all at once in the Shepard Tone fashion.

- Add more stochastic and random processes to the piece. The general final global design of the piece is to give the illusion that the content is going from chaotic to controlled (from more recognizable radio to more abstract content) and the control parameters from controlled to chaotic (frequencies becoming more honed and the amount of my involvement in shaping the sound is more evident to the audience).

- Add fade-in fade-out to the delay lines. Cut is really obvious in the middle of the piece where a delay line is killed.

Go here to hear the latest version.

Finally, a snapshot of my new touch design:

The last couple days have been insane and I still haven't had a chance to run another performance with the updates to my synths, but there will be one for sure tomorrow!

First Recording (ROUGH!)

So I was able to get my first recording done, which was very rough. It is currently still missing a portion of the second movement due to a synthdef that is still not functioning. This was a great experience as it showed me currently what I need to fine tune to get a better functioning system. Currently the following still needs to be addressed:

My top priorities for this week are as follows:

- Complete second movement "Freeze" synth

- Implement balance, randomness, and lag where needed

- Remove filter pops

Listen to the first version here

Updated Interface

So here is the most recent interface for the pad:

I combined the faders into a single bank, which will be controlling resonant filters for each radio, allowing me to better control the amount of random behavior behind each radio's raw content in RT. The knobs will be associated with the q-value of each of these resonant filters. The 2D pads are still controlling the freeze movement introduced at around 3-4 minutes into the piece. Lastly, the buttons are for selecting which delay line is currently active.

Timeline

My timeline for the remainder of development of the project is as following:

Thesis Timeline

Date	Objective
4/7	Have hardware set up and begin testing synthdefs within the context of the final hardware setup
4/14	Have a first iteration of a performance done on the new hardware setup (however rough) for review
4/21	Iterate on the performance and work on complexity and amount of automation in the performance vs. live control
4/28	Create multiple iterations of the performance at various times (late night, afternoon, early morning) to get a feel of how much this varies the performance)
5/5	MT Review: Demo as many of my iterations as possible and get a solid review on what works/ what doesn't
5/12	Finalize Reel of various versions of the performance and documentation for the exhibition portion of the piece
5/19	Final reel and readied performance due
5/28	BFA Install
6/4	Finish Documentation