Curtis Roads is the master of granular synthesis (aka composing with small particles of sound) and I’ve been fortunate enough to study with him for the past few months. The resulting piece won the informal “People’s Choice Award.” It’s a study on sound transformation and gestural composition.
All of the sounds are manipulations of samples taken from the previous post, Player Piano Study. I put these samples into a granular synthesis instrument that’s controlled through a motion capture controller I’m working for my thesis. Depending on what parameters I specify, it creates really strange, mechanical sounds such as the ones you hear toward the beginning of the piece, or more mellow chirps such as the ones about two-thirds of the way through. It’s meant to be played in 4-channels (speakers).
[audio:http://amusesmile.com/old/sound/roadsMaster.mp3|titles=Pantograph]
Music