January 2025

Looking back / looking ahead

The Christmas tree went out for collection yesterday and a couple days ago we quietly rang in the new year.

It's been a good time to revisit re-synth as I prepare for the "Informance" presentation at the Minnesota Music Ed. Association's Midwinter Convention next month.

Part of that presentation will demonstrate how the Tech players interact with the live ensemble.

Sadly, bringing the WSU Wind Ensemble along to play for a few minutes is not going to happen.

I decided to use the Dorian movement for the demo.

In order to demonstrate how the Techs interact with the live ensemble, I needed to construct a new Live set containing a backing track. Since we never recorded any of the ensembles without the Techs, I used an audio file created in Sibelius. Arne Wallander's incredible NotePerformer samples are excellent at creating convincing concert band demos.

The Dorian movement begins with the amazing bowed vibraphone sample triggered by Tech 04 – just as in the live performance.

Once that sample is triggered, Tech 03  will trigger the backing track serving in lieu of the live musicians and everything follows as it did in November.

After the Techs demonstration, four audience members will be invited to give it a try. (I've included a "click track" to help counting the rests.)

It took some tweaking (OK, a lot of tweaking), but the end result is quite satisfying.

The photo below was taken when all the Tech parts were revised in Sibelius and all the levels were correctly adjusted in Ableton.

I'm moderately confident the demo will go well at the February event ... moderately!

The MMEA presentation is being reviewed by my co-presenters and will be posted soon as will the survey results!

Coming back to the project after almost two months, I can truly say that working on re-synth has been an extremely rewarding experience for me, and, I hope, for everyone who I've had the good fortune to work with thus far.