My thesis deals with making music using an Apple iPhone equipped with Touch OSC, an iPhone/iPod Touch Application that lets me send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol. This allows me to remote control and receive feedback from software and hardware that implements the OSC protocol such as Max/MSP or Ableton Live.
Last semester I was a little unsettled on the method in which I would deploy this project so I spent the whole semester ripping all of my vinyl records and CDs to MP3s. Then imported them into iTunes and came up a with a system of organizing each file for easy access. Using different sounds and samples from such a wide variety of music, I knew it was going to be important to categorize what records were compatible with one another. This process was long and tedious but in the end was the necessary to ever figure out what sort of sounds I wanted to experiment with when it came down to the performance.
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After getting all my media into iTunes I began making Smart Playlists, a powerful and underused feature. These special playlists are updated automatically, depending on a simple set of criteria in my case I separate tracks by tempo and key signature. The ability to create playlists by mixing tracks from different genres has always been one of the great features of iTunes, and Smart Playlists allow to to really isolate a set of tunes to come up with very creative combinations of music and sound. Before I create a smart playlist I must fill my two separate parameters that iTunes will look for. I can detect keys with a piano, a good ear, or a background in music theory. To save time, I use a professional DJ software called Mixed In Key. Mixed In Key scans my MP3's and shows me the key of every song. Think of this wheel below like a clock that I must move through hour by hour in either direction.
Click the image below to get a better idea of a smart play list, the "comment" 8A represents an A minor and the number "121" represents the BPM or tempo. This is a numerical value describing the number of musical beats in one minute. The value is not calculated by iTunes. It must be entered manually or calculated by a third-party application. As you can see the highlighted songs that are not neccacarily related by genre, however they are alike in other ways enough way to be combined to create new and interesting effects.
I spent the majority of last semester coming up with this technique to aid my eventual performance, more to come soon! In the mean time enjoy some of these free MP3s to celebrate the first post of my new thesis blog!
Download: First Communion - Gang Gang Dance
Download: The First Single - The Format
Download: The First Song - Band Of Horses
Download: First Gear - The Rapture
Lookin' good!
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