A Granular Serenade

Performance Project

Overview:

This project started out as an exercise for me to play my Viola more. I had wanted to improve my skills as a performer, and utilise it’s sound in more of my music, live or pre-recorded. What ended up being produced was a mixture of both.
‘A Granular Serenade’ consists of 2 performances in a way, the first being the performance of the samples themselves, and the second being the real-time manipulation of the parameters to shape and form the clips into a wider composition, using granulation to create textural clouds, and pitch shifting coupled with saturation to form large sounding bass parts.

Inspirations

To begin with, I felt that the project would be a loop-pedal based performance in which I rehearsed pre-written loops that would slowly layer to produce a wider composition. Pieces such as ‘Electric Counterpoint’ by Steve Reich sprang to mind, performed here on percussion by Justin Lamb. This example perfectly demonstrates the power of simple layering and looping, showing how quickly a deep and interesting texture bed can be developed using minimal instrumentation.

Also using pedals/layering, and slightly more relevant stylistically and instrumentally, was a performance I found of Hildur Guðnadóttir playing her piece ‘Erupting Light.’ I was impressed by the how fluid the playback of loops that are used is, and how using only the palette of only one instrument could quickly build a piece. This example uses an approach of foot-pedal triggered backing tracks as opposed to using pure loop-pedal performance, but is still none-the-less impressive, and a definite spark for me of what string-based performance could be.

Prototyping

I knew that if I wanted to work with looping and clips, I would need to learn how to use Ableton Live. It was a software I had not ever spent much time with before, so I sat down and started to record some rough vocal clips, just to get used to the architecture.

After I started to get to grips with the software, the problem of actually recording my Viola came into question. If I wanted snappy, in time parts that looped perfectly with no gaps, I was going to need a foot pedal. Luckily, a roommate had a spare electric piano sustain pedal, and thanks to Ableton’s MIDI mapping capabilities, I was able to hook it up to the activate button of Ableton’s ‘Looper’ in no time.

Using the looper, I was able to create compositions quickly and easily, resulting in prototypes such as this:

However, quickly I came to realise that while musically these compositions were fun and intuitive to write/perform, from a production point of view they were rather flat. The parts that I recorded were just overdubbed onto the ones that preceded them, ending up being merely added into one busy mono track. Also, if I wanted to have any other structure other than just slowly building up parts, over time, I would have to reconsider my approach due to the fact the parts could no longer be separated from themselves.

That’s when I realised I could drag and drop the content of the looper into individual clips on different audio channels. This meant I could have the hands free, seamless loop recordings from the looper, but the control and creativity that came from having differing audio channels, resulting in prototypes such as this:

I was much happier with the control that having separate tracks gave me, but felt that the music was still lacking something. The Viola (I may be biased) is a great instrument, however it is of course only one part of an orchestra, with only a certain range/timbre. If I wanted my work to incorporate more than just the Viola’s established palette, I would have to come up with something else.

Drafts for the final project:

I decided to try to come up with different ways of augmenting the Viola’s palette, using plugins, live manipulation of said plugins, and the technique of granulation. I have had an interest in granulation for a while now and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to further experiment with the capabilities of the technique.

The granulation engine I chose was ‘Emergence’ by Daniel Gergely. This is because it acts as a send effect as opposed to the instrument itself, so I would be able to manipulate W/D as well as many other parameters in real time, whist switching between different Viola source samples, as opposed to having to go into a granular synth and reprogram each time I wanted to change notes. It works by granularizing a live buffer that is fed into the effect, and the user has control over multiple streams of grains, including their pitch, read speed, playback direction, time, and many more parameters.

As for the samples themselves, I had to consider how the dry recording was going to act once granulated. I performed lots of repeating patterns, small scales and arpeggios that all fit together chromatically or as a sequence/development, as when granulated they would be smeared together to form chordal clouds:

When varying these patterns, and combining them with one another, you can get some interesting textural and tonal movement:

Another way I wanted to further add some more depth to the collection of sounds, was by pitch shifting recorded parts down one and two octaves, to create a deep and low sub bass. I would add harmonics further up the spectrum to this bass by heavily saturating the signal. It turned out to be a great performative element, as I could experiment live with the level of saturation vs the W/D of the octaver on the dry Viola sample.

Final project:

The Final project was a culmination of all the above explored techniques being added together. To add potential extra dimensions to any performance I produced, I added 2 more parameters to the granulators which I could edit live to further expand the sonic content. These were:

Variable Grain Length – changes the length in milliseconds of each individual grain:

Variable Grain Octave – when applied, it spreads the 4 streams of grains from their original middle octave into the one above and below too, to increase the spectral content of the one part:

After a few different versions and tweaks, the final setup I decided upon was this:
I found that this specific combination of editable parameters gave me the tools and flexiblity to perform interesting and developing sequences over time, using the small Viola samples I had pre-recorded.
Finally, I added all the elements together to create the performance.

The recording of the performance that you see was a structured improvisation, with me having somewhat planned out the course of the performance by stacking clips in order, so that I could slowly cycle through and reach an end point. The main ‘performance’ came from my manipulation of the mentioned parameters, allowing me extensive creative capabilities to explore different textures, spaces and tones.