Synopsis:

Research:

When thinking about how to approach this project I immediately thought of the work of 'Elvin Brandhi', an electronic improviser and composer, who has been able to build a discography of solo and collaborative improvised based music through a signature take on live electronics and sound design.

When investigating her live setup, it appears to be achieved through the implementation of an SP404; cycling through pre-prepared loops and sound design live, whilst also, interlacing vocals where she sees fit.

However, when trying to find out more about the origins of the sound design and loops that she is using, I discovered an interview with 'Shape+' where she outlines that she builds "drum racks in Ableton that contain certain ingredients that shift depending on where I’ve been and who I come into contact with. Khanja screams, Blumbergian brass, Omutaba hits, sea gulls, doors slamming, tapes, metal, tools, jackals, violin, YouTube – the personal associations of all these fragments combined determine the track’s character. The drum rack is like the cast list of a psycho-acoustic drama." (www.shapeplatform.eu/2020/screams-brass-seagulls-an-interview-with-elvin-brandhi/)

Immediately after doing some digging on the possibilities of the Ableton drum rack, this approach struck me as one that could facilitate my intentions with this project. Not only would this allow me to implement different MIDI controllers and setups, but also to grow and expand my palette of sound depending upon the improvisation that I'm going into. For example, preparing for a collaboration with a saxophonist would be vastly different from a collaboration with a bassist and pianist. By using this approach, the tangibility and performance would remain the same, whilst the outcome, through some preparation, would be vastly different.

Although this gave me some inspiration as to the possibility of the type of system, I was still keen to investigate the live processing that I could apply once I was building the system.

One of the approaches to live processing that I found particularly interesting is the work of 'Ikue Mori', whose innovative and foundational approach to live electronics and percussion viewed the drum machine as a sound source which could then be distorted into an array of textural and musical ideas in a very responsive way. Using, "different reverbs or delays and multi-processors that totally twists the sound and makes it come out really different." Explaining how she uses "three drum machines together with a mixer, then adding a pedal with pitch control and a Sony effects processor.” (furious.com/perfect/ikuemori.html ) 

Another reference point which expands on 'Ikue Mori's early explorations into drum machines and pitch and effect-based processing is 'Mariam Rezaei'. An improvised turntablist who pushes pitch to its breaking points through the use of live scratching and effects such as delay and reverb. Rezaei's highly tactile approach is definitely one that inspires me on a sonic level, with the texture of scratching being an interesting aesthetic and compositional component. 

Finally, in terms of the sound design I am looking to implement, I am particularly inspired by the textured, dark and crunching sound worlds of contemporary electronic producers such as 'Iglooghost' (*1), 'Arca' (*2) and 'Parker Corey' of 'By Storm' & 'Injury Reserve' (*3). I feel as though the common thread in sound design for these artists is about excavating a particular sample or series of samples. Working with library sounds and warping them in a D.A.W, to then create as much variation as possible before sifting through these sound design sessions for the best sounds that have come from it. In terms of how they are manipulating their chosen samples, it varies, with 'Parker Corey' and 'Arca' having more of a focus on granulation than 'Iglooghost' who commonly uses re-synthesis and gating. The manner in which they generate sounds is the consistent factor, with intricate workflows that allow for extreme variation and processing that can be curated later on.

1*)

2*)

3*)

Prototypes and Development:

Initially, I set out by exploring how to assemble a drum rack in Ableton, creating a simple 4 sound, system of kick drums whilst also looking into choke groups. Choke groups  enable any sound in the same group to cut each other off to avoid clashing e.g. if a kick and a snare were to be in choke group 1 and then the kick drum were to play first, the snare (when triggered) could cut off the end transients of the kick:

After doing some more research I discovered that as well as having 160 drum pads available to trigger, you can also stack up to 128 sounds onto a single pad, either triggering them all to hit at the same time or to be interchangeable using macro features, which allow you to "distribute ranges equally"; essentially spreading the line up of samples so that they can be selected rather than all triggered at the same time.
Furthermore, to create some variation I linked the macro knobs to a random envelope, meaning that every time the pad is triggered a different sound from that pad will play:

With this as a foundation, I continued to flesh out the drum rack in this way - creating banks of sound design in FL Studio with sounds sourced from sample libraries I've been collecting and then implementing it into the drum rack:

From here I began looking into how I could create more movement when cycling between sounds. To do this, I applied pitch and reverb-based processing, and mapped different parameters to envelopes, making for some constant live automation.

Furthermore, as I wanted to have more control over the system in terms of its randomization, I began to create some variation snapshots. Meaning that some sounds I would leave to be randomized through an envelope and some sounds, I can curate through a variety of snapshots that could be triggered as and when I please:

As I continued in this direction, I was constantly building on and revising the sounds to make a concise instrument. As well as this, I was also feeling out the type of rhythmic ideas that the sound would suit.

I began to become more detailed with creating movement by applying automated envelopes to the volume of sounds to create dynamics and arpeggiators to create rhythmic variations:

At this point, I was keen to implement some more character into the sound selection. Inspired by 'Elvin Brandhi', I recorded some long-form vocal improvisations and then applied the same processing to them that I had been using for the rest of the sound design so far:

From here I was keen to look into how I could make the system performative. I began by assigning different effects to be triggered on and off with the 'Akai APC Mini'. I also assigned some of the different variations I'd  been making to a few of the MIDI controller's pads.

To control the effects I decided to the use the 'Ableton Push 2' as not only did this give me a visually easy to navigate view of the effects but it also meant that I could sequence patterns live and with the help of a live quantize, 'Max For Live' device, I could perform on top of these patterns:

At this stage, I had organised a jam with 2 guitarists to test out how playable the machine was in its current form. After completing the session it was clear to me that the current performance setup was not responsive enough. Before the session I had also prepared a synth and live looper in Ableton, which I was performing with using the 'scale' functionality of the 'Push 2'. I ended up largely relying on this during the session as the drum rack was completely unfit for the context.

I think that the main flaw with this was doing the sequencing live. It was far too slow and by the time I had built up a pattern that was appropriate the jam had moved on. On top of this, performing the sounds in response to what was playing was weightless and would take a lot of practice to be done well.

Although this didn't go as planned, it has shown me to refine the focus of the system so that I can utilise performance in a more intuitive way:

In the meantime, whilst figuring out how to reapproach the system i continued to build up the drum rack:

With the drum rack almost at the stage that I wanted it to be at, I began to reinvestigate the playability of the system. Thinking back to 'Ikue Mori' and how she applied processing to the master sound source, I decided to remove the effects from being limited to individual pads and began applying them to the master chain. MIDI Mapping their parameters to the 'Akai MIDI MIX' as I found it to be a much more intuitive controller than the 'Push 2'. Some of these effects included: BPM, Pitch, Reverb, granular, and more. I also mapped the overall, macro, sound randomizer to the controller so that I was able to randomize the non-cycling via the controller:

I then got the drum rack to a point that I was happy with, with 32 of the pads having different banks assigned to them. At this stage, I had also decided that instead of playing the sounds live, it was better to prepare a variety of MIDI patterns which I could then launch live. Allowing me to focus on the processing. Although this sounds limiting, where i now had control of the global BPM, making the MIDI patterns play as intended was quite intuitive. This was also because I had created the MIDI patterns for different contexts e.g. on grid, stripped back and free etc. ( I go over this further in 'The Final System' video walkthrough at 6:36).

Following this, I arranged all of the sounds into 4 choke groups and created 4 empty pads that assigned to these groups, meaning that when I was working on a MIDI pattern, I was able to be precise with when I wanted a sound to cut out without having to trigger another sound from its group. 

Finally, I added a noise gate to the master effects chain, with the threshold being controllable via the 'Akai Midi Mix':

To complete the live system, I was keen to add another element that wasn't percussion-driven. I decided to add vocals. I did this by applying the same approach that I had been doing to the sound design (randomly enveloping a series of effects), however, this time doing it on the microphone input signal. I had control over this through a small MIDI keyboard. Whenever I hit one of the notes, the parameters were then randomized:

Final System Walkthrough

Timestamps:

0:00 - 0:25 : Intro

0:25 - 1:19 : Explanation Of The System & Master Fx reasoning

1:19 - 5:50 : Drum Rack Bank 1 Playthrough 

5:51 - 6:36 : Talking about the system becoming more intuitive later on through practice

6:36 - 10:41 : MIDI Patterns breakdown + chance and velocity probaility

10:45 - 13:45 : Drum Rack Bank 1 Playthrough 

13:45 - 14:05 : CHoke Group MIDI data

14:05 - 14:22 : Why Quantization and variations were removed 

14:23 - 14:30 : even split of sound design and sample library sounds

14:30 - 18:36 : Master Effects Chain Breakdown

18:36 - 18:54: Outro

Final Performances: