New Piece: Scan

[Xavman42]

Just finished a collection of small pieces for multi-percussion! Most of the code is here.

To play this piece, a projector needs to be mounted 7-9 feet in the air, facing down. Video is projected onto the floor, and the percussionist places instruments in the indicated locations.

Reticles move across the screen, and the percussionist hits an instrument when the reticle passes over it. Color indicates dynamic, and linetype indicates mallet/stick type. To assist with learning, there is a staff running across the top of the screen which may or may not be hidden in the premiere performance.

I've put together 6 little movements. Beyond using neoscore for the visuals, some AI sound generation from MusicLM was used for nebula, I salvaged an old saxophone and SuperCollider piece of mine for the audio in circus, the images in fish are AI generated, the audio in fish was made using VCV Rack, and the squishy sounds in spores are recordings of Knox blocks! Below are some practice videos.

acceleration - https://youtu.be/XdM-PcAsUg4
circus - https://youtu.be/ugQx6aHAuGs
dynamic - https://youtu.be/iNozGG9jhtc
fish - https://youtu.be/8_UuQugdqI8
nebula - https://youtu.be/sYHYtPDFuEo
spores - https://youtu.be/NFffE6hejhk

The only technical thing I've overlooked is some video compression artifacting coming from ffmpeg - it's most obvious in dynamic. Now I've gotten used to it, it may even improve that particular movement.

A few movements of the piece will be premiered sometime this semester, still need to figure out the exact date. They will be premiered as part of the Turn Around concert series here in Urbana IL at the house of Patch Adams and Susan Parenti.

It is ridiculously easy to come up with new and interesting movements using this architecture - I could end up with a couple dozen movements if I'm not careful.

[ajyoon]

This is extremely cool and a very compelling compositional approach. Please share videos of the performance if/when they're available!

I would expect the compression artifacts to be fixable with a little ffmpeg tuning, but I also agree the artifacts look nice in their own way.

[Xavman42]

The piece premiered! The movements we decided to perform are acceleration, circus, dynamic, and fish.
https://youtu.be/rLl9db8vVMU?si=GfpRhKFSskDA3Y8m