Computer and Turntablism Paper

[Eoin]

http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/events-conferences/sssp2009/

From the proceedings of the Sound, Sight, Space and Play Postgraduate Conference 2009

Any thoughts on it be greatly appreciated

Eoin

[Mudo]

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I have a fast look but maybe you will be interested on this:





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[PedroLopes]

I've finally had a few minutes to read your paper, the overall is interesting and the references on early turntablism (of the more experimental axis) are well done.

The section where you analyse the corelation between a software system / composition and its inherent choices ("1. What can be the justification for using technology as a compositional tool? ") is to me really interesting and could be wider. By means of discussing it more openly and showing current trends of uses of turntables/computer tools for composition (either RT or sequenced), in the paper you limit the scope to your instalation so that's why I felt it could span more.

Also about the instalation piece, the buffer ideas are interesting and the results outgha be great, I'm a fan of glutchy-replicant buffer repetitions but also feel that the resonant-section should add a really interesting harmonic effect to it. Please show more on that

I think it does not make much sense to go in technical discussings or implementation options withou actually whatching the "real thing working". About the references, the cited works are nice (at least the ones I know...which would be about 50%). On the gesture section you could have mentioned the work of Bressin/Hansen on KTH that analyses turntablism gestures quite well (at least record movement and xfader position).

Well, these are my 2 cents,
nice paper anyways!

[Eoin]

Thank you for reading it. Yeh it is hard to grasp the technical section without seeing it working in front of you, something i'll take into account for future papers.

thanks

E

[Paul Bell]

There's a bit in the Gesture in Turntablism section that I'm not quite getting and would be good if you could explain. You state that physical gesture was 'an intrinsic element in the production of music concrete' then go on to say that 'in comparison, turntablism relies on physical interaction'. It seems like a non sequitur, however it's late and I'm sleepy, so naturally feel a bit dopey. I like the direction of the paper though and have further questions relating to your claims.

[Eoin]

That was a weak section to be honest and could have been left out. Im not sure what you are having trouble with, is it the fact that I am coupling interaction and physical gesture together or something else?

E

[Paul Bell]

Sorry, I read 'in comparison' as 'by contrast' even though I quoted it, d'oh! Clearly my brain wasn't working at the time.

BTW what are your thoughts on Traktor Pro? I have just started exploring its potential for improvisation, it seems really powerful but requires complex mapping to achieve the kinds of expression through serendipity I desire...triple macros, etc.

[Eoin]

Hi Paul

Taku was suggesting I try Traktor when I was at STEIM but I never got around to it. What are the pro's and con's of the software, someone was saying it was a bit more stable than the likes of MsPinky. I'm quite happy with Pinky at the minute, the only real issues I have can be solved with a bit of tinkering in Max/Msp. I know theres a pinky pluggo which works with the likes of ableton, have you tried that yet?

E

[Paul Bell]

Hey,

Personally Traktor just feels a million times better than pinky - really tight with minimal latency - but I guess that's what you pay the extra money for. I was using the pluggo with ableton in osx 10.4 but would often fall out of sync with the vinyl, like a second of latency so completely unusable. Haven't tried in snow leapard so maybe the issue has been resolved.

Lately I've been exploring Traktor with controllers rather than time-code vinyl, so I was interested to know what you thought about losing the vinyl tactility. I was really excited by the looping functionality however it will only do the standard devisions of the bar so not really conducive to experimental improv. Great for four-on-the-floor Techno though.

[Kassen]

Hmmmm, latency would -to me- seem mostly a matter of using a clever control signal and a good algorithm for decoding it, not so much of money. Beyond that the OS, the soundcard and so on will matter but that's the same everywhere. Latency is just a fact of life with analysing audio, there is no way around that... but "losing sync" is inexcusable.

I do like the idea of MsPinky, but it could be taken further. Why not have timecode records and a open/free reference library for decoding them so this kind of control could be added to anything? It seems a bit odd to compare Traktor to MsPinky as they do very different things.