I hope to get some more pictures and diagrams up soon. Think of this as a teaser.

Tuesdays:
March 16, 23, 30, and April 6, 2010 from 7-9PM

Class size is limited to 10 people, so call 415-554-1977 to reserve your space early.

his is a workshop for users of Live who want to dig deeper into Max for Live.  The ideal participant is comfortable with Live but has little or no experience with Max or M4L.  Max/MSP/Jitter is a graphical programming environment for music, audio and multimedia that has been used worldwide for over fifteen years by performers, composers, artists, teachers, and students.

After completing this course, students will be able to make new M4L devices that process sound and midi in response to real-time control and/or simple algorithmic processes. Graduates of this course will also have the skills to read and understand larger M4L devises and the foundation for exploring more advanced features cir tutorials, help patches and online documentation.

Day 1: Introduction

• What comes with M4L? (A quick tour of useful devices and building blocks.)

• Getting started with Max

– navigating the patcher window

– messages and objects

– getting help

– data types

– file paths

Day 2: MIDI devices and instruments

• Interfacing with controllers via MIDI and OSC

• Managing lists of data: storing, retrieving, and manipulating

• Timing

Day 3: Audio processing

• MSP: how audio works in Max

• Sampling and manipulating samples

• Building audio effects (chorus, flange, reverb, etc.) from scratch

• Classic synthesis

Day 4: Advanced topics

• Live.API: The inner workings of your live set are exposed to Max via this group of objects and methods.

• Video: Using Jitter to add video to your Live world

• Third Party objects: An overview of some where to find programming and inspiration from the Max User community.

Custom software by Michael Zbyszynski
For info, click piece number 7 here.

Michael Zbyszynski

Michael Ferriell Zbyszyński is a composer, sound artist, performer, and teacher in the field of contemporary electroacoustic music. Currently, he is the Director of Electronic Music at San Francisco State University, contributes to Make Magazine, and plays with Respectable Citizen.

Dr. Zbyszyński plays flute, saxophones, clarinet, Yamaha WX-7 (MIDI wind controller), and things made from coffee cans and PVC. His 2006 piece News Cycle #2, created in collaboration with video artist Anthony Discenza, was jointly commissioned by the Getty Center and the Montalvo Arts Center, where they were in residence in 2008. In 2004, Zbyszyński finished a  permanent sound installation at Edgemar in Santa Monica, CA, in collaboration with Hugh Livingston. He has appeared, collaborated, or worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Myra Melford, Frank Gratkowski, , HPX Multimedia, the Capacitor Performance Group, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (the American premier of John Cage´s Ocean 1-95), Frances-Marie Uitti, and David Wessel, as a soloist with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Composers Inc., UC Berkeley Symphony, Cultural Labyrinth, Berkeley New Music Project, and Common Sense Composer´s Collective, and at the Other Minds Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Montréal Jazz Festival, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, Cal Arts, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, University of Washington, Reed College,Portland State University, and The Western Front Lodge (Vancouver). He has recorded and mixed sound for diverse artists, including Debashish Bhattachaya, Amelia Cuni, Fred Frith, DJ Spooky, and Bertram Turetzky. He can be heard on the ARTSHIP Record Label.

Dr. Zbyszyński teaches workshops on interactivity programming and sensor design in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has consulted on performances by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. He has taught composition at Berklee College of Music and Northeasten University, and was a Faculty Fellow in Music Technology at the University of California, Irvine. In fall 2000, Dr. Zbyszyński earned his Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley, having earned his M.A. in 1996. His
doctoral dissertation, Labirynt for saxophone and orchestra, draws on minimalist, spectral, and sonorist musical styles; his primary advisor was Jorge Liderman. In 1998 he was awarded a Fulbright Grant to study at the Akademia Muzyczna w Krakówie, Poland with Zbigniew Bujarski. While in Poland, he composed the string orchestra piece Beneath a Liquid Paper Sky, which was premiered by the Penderecki Festival Orchestra, under the baton of Pawel Przytocki, at the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. This concert was part of the 40^th anniversary celebration of the Polish-American Fulbright Commission, and subsequently aired on TV Polonia 1. In 1992, he received a B.A. in music from New York University, where he studied composition with Louis Karchin and improvisation with Joe Lovano. He participated in the Composers´ Symposium at the 1996 Oregon Bach Festival (studies with John Harbison and Robert Kyr) and the 1998 Académie d´été at Paris´s Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM: studies with Philippe Manoury, Kaija Saariaho, and
Salvatore Sciarrino).

He sometimes refers to himself in the third person.

Here’s a video from Wired Magazine’s Blog of me making carrot caviar.

Here is my instructable on the topic.

There is a movement in the cooking world called “Molecular Gastronomy.” The term was coined by Herve This, and become associated with chefs like Ferran Adria at El Bulli, Wylie Dufresne at wd~50, Grant Achatz at Alinea, and Homaru Cantu at Moto. Here is an interesting article in the New York Times.

Essentially, it involves applying scientific techniques and methodologies to the cooking process. One of the interesting results is found in the use of common substances to control the texture of foods, often in surprising ways.

You don’t need a chemistry lab to pull off such effects. Jump on board the Molecular Gastronomy train by making up some carrot caviar in your own kitchen.

installed at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies
commissioned by Edmund Campion

	Make Magazine Article
	short video
	still photos
	schematic (pdf)

Hemisphere from Electrotap
Experimental Meyer Array

or you could follow these instructions to build a cheap array out of IKEA salad bowls and surplus automotive speakers. It won’t sound as “accurate” as those other speakers, but it’s surprisingly good and looks pretty cool on stage.

Special thanks and apologies to Dan Truman and the researchers at CNMAT , who’s scientific work directly inspired this project.

Here is the Make Magazine writeup.

Free counterpoint within a diatonic tonal context. Emphasis on two-voice and melody/bass combinations.

Two-part Canon and Invention

Two-part cannon and two-part invention in the traditional style

Traditional Harmony & Composition 1

Diatonic harminic analysis in various musical textures. Melody writing. Harmonization of Melodies in various musical textures.

Traditional Harmony & Composition 2

Advanced traditional harmony and intermediate compositional procedures. Seventh Chords, altered chords, modulation.

(excerpt)