Wish for FL Studio (or any other host): pattern variation

[AKJ]

Hi,

it would be a very, very cool feature if patterns had the possibility/option of automatic variation where the amount of variation can be defined by the user. A blueprint for such a feature could be the chaos designer in Stylus RMX. This really would be a killer feature in FL Studio - or in any other host.
Is there already one, which has such a feature? Is there a chance to see it in FL Studio any time?


cheers, akj

[stk]

http://www.lazy.com/

[AKJ]

I wanna see you program midi pattern variations during a live performance...

[alex zonder]

Is there already one, which has such a feature?
cheers, akj

may not exactly be what you're aiming at, but this sure is a nice one in REAPER:

[AKJ]

this seems to go in the right direction, but does it work in realtime?

[alex zonder]

this seems to go in the right direction, but does it work in realtime?

Yessir, it does.

[maxhodges1]

maybe check out LUCIFER

but what are you talking about when you say variation? arrangement of phrase, length of phrase, length of notes?

maybe you want Cinescore...

[Hewitt Huntwork]

http://www.lazy.com/

Laziness doesn't exist in art. Think of a song that moves you. What if the artist said "Not a lot of effort went into that song - we mostly relied on technology"? Do you say "Man that would've been a great song if the artist wasn't so very LAZY"?

Think of a song you dislike. What if the artist said "Well, we worked on that for several years to get it right - countless man hours and incalculable cost"? Do you respond "Well to me it sounds like barf but at least the artist wasn't LAZY"?

Is someone who wants to use a chainsaw instead of an ax lazy? The OP just wants a tool that works differently. It is for the artist alone to determine what the right amount of effort was.

[Bernard Quatermass]

http://www.lazy.com/

Says the guy with this website in his sig!

[maxhodges1]

Hi,

it would be a very, very cool feature if patterns had the possibility/option of automatic variation where the amount of variation can be defined by the user. A blueprint for such a feature could be the chaos designer in Stylus RMX. This really would be a killer feature in FL Studio - or in any other host.
Is there already one, which has such a feature? Is there a chance to see it in FL Studio any time?

cheers, akj

Maybe put can outsource the work of creating variations to other musicians. Then you can organize them by degree of variation and cycle through them using your controller.

[PTV]

http://www.lazy.com/

Says the guy with this website in his sig!

http://www.device.arcanedevice.com/
One of the best looking sites IMO...

[Shane Sanders]

http://www.lazy.com/

Laziness doesn't exist in art. Think of a song that moves you. What if the artist said "Not a lot of effort went into that song - we mostly relied on technology"? Do you say "Man that would've been a great song if the artist wasn't so very LAZY"?

Think of a song you dislike. What if the artist said "Well, we worked on that for several years to get it right - countless man hours and incalculable cost"? Do you respond "Well to me it sounds like barf but at least the artist wasn't LAZY"?

Is someone who wants to use a chainsaw instead of an ax lazy? The OP just wants a tool that works differently. It is for the artist alone to determine what the right amount of effort was.

Allow me to steal ideas from myself that are quite old:

There are happy accidents in a journey, sure. They are like a whiff of honeysuckle as you walk to visit your lover. But the visit to your lover will be better and would have been quite fine without them.

I would make a point, on a certain level, that if a parameter can be controlled (in technology and elswhere) then it must be controlled or else you are left with the default value of a thing. Another way of saying this is that the unknown value is then controlling you. Sometimes you agree with the value, the nature of the thing you've encountered. Properties are there to distinguish from other properties. A scrape is this, a thud is that, a steel string vibrates thusly while a creature of brass fells armies from the realm of the djinn.

The composer has to use prescience, practicum, and intentionality to fully realize something inside of him. If a composition or phrase has twelve components and seven of them fall from the sky like rain then their expression is merely what the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain predetermined. What is left may be a better experience than daytime television, but it really misses the point! You've got to look ahead at the unformed thing, the art, and as you gaze at it, it will inspire you to know/feel aspects of it. And in this middle experience one gains a type of knowledge that is akin to craft but still more easily described as a type of passion. That's the practicum. The wait. The foreplay. And you find yourself in a room with colors, sounds, forms, spiraling ideas. And you decide to pluck some of them and gather them in a basket. The evening comes and your lover has seen you hard at work on the meal. She looks at you, you at her. There is between you an actual meal, not a simulation.

This is the key to art. But I realize there are many rooms in the limbo of practicum. Did you know that one of the distinguishing features of man is his ability to make convenants? It's true. As far as we can tell, no other creature makes promises, and certainly not promises based upon abstract concepts. The old myths talk of Prometheus obtaining fire for man. I wonder if he did not first promise to do it and then set about it.

<buffyverse>beer bad</buffyverse>

[maxhodges1]

I would make a point, on a certain level, that if a parameter can be controlled (in technology and elswhere) then it must be controlled or else you are left with the default value of a thing. Another way of saying this is that the unknown value is then controlling you.

well, it depends. some 'parameters' just don't make a smack of difference to the work at hand. There are tools to give you surgically precise control over a photo's tonality; contrast; ranges of hue, saturation, and luminance; sharpness, and any number of other attributes, but letting these values fall where they may might or might now destroy a well-composed photograph, capturing a special moment in time.

If when giving a live guitar performance, do I need to control the microphones, mixing board and monitor being used? The acoustical treatment of the room? The sheen of my skin?

Random kiln effects are often prized in Japanese pottery. I live in Japan, so here's a metaphor and an opposing viewpoint:

Indeed, the perfection achieved in the quality-control of mass-produced ceramic ware is foreign to Raku. The randomness of Raku glaze is not the result of an invented and refined method, but is simply the natural consequence of the glazing technique. Since the technique accepts human limitation, it is open to unintentional mistakes. Though a Raku bowl may seem rough and cumbersome when compared to something as refined as a rococo tea cup, for example, it nevertheless possesses an undeniable hidden refinement which far surpasses that of its cousins. Its form is methodically "worked" as opposed to being designed. When the Raku master opens his red-hot kiln, he has only seconds to act in harmony with the "heat of the moment." Once the glaze has stiffened, the artist has no time to consider what he has done or what he might do - there is no past or future. He must act fully in the present. Making corrections is a pointless endeavour as the bowl has already cooled, hence the master is open to any result, be it ordinary or unique. He accepts the consequences of the moment and forgets what has already passed. Not unlike a smoothly flowing river, he acts without hesitation; neither turning back, nor rushing forward. His goal is not to perfect the technique, but to experience it. "He doesn't know what he has conceived until he sees it". His discipline is entirely different from that required in the process of professional design and implementation. "He behaves like water, his calmness a mirror and his answer an echo."
[source http://www.terebess.hu/terebessgabor/raku.html]



Devendra Banhart once recorded a song into an answer machine while sitting in the window in France. You can hear fireworks in the background and later a loud bang. From his window he saw a man with a gun walking into the building below where he presumably shot someone. the song wouldn't be half as great without those random events.

Splendid: Yeah, because you hear a lot of things on the record that were maybe not intended to be there.

Devendra Banhart: But they worked. Like at the end of "Charles C. Leary", a car beeps its horn and it's in tune.

Splendid: That's funny, I was just talking to another guy who had a cell phone go off in the middle of recording and left it in because it was in key.

Devendra Banhart: Wow, awesome. That's pretty cool. There are some kind of weird cool things that are on that record. I think I might have mentioned in "Cosmos and Demos"; I recorded that on Bastille Day in Paris. You can hear the fireworks.

Splendid: That's the one with the music box?

Devendra Banhart: Yeah, the music box, and then it's goes on "I want to tell the story..." You can hear the fireworks and you can hear another blast that is distinctly different from the other fireworks and that's a gun shot. While I was recording the song, I was looking out the window at a view of Paris, and it was really beautiful. We were in front of an alley. And while I was recording this song, I saw a man walk up to a door and pull out a gun and cock it and ring the bell and get let in and then five minutes later, I hear the gun shot. That's on that song.

[Shane Sanders]

I think there is a discernable chasm between knowing in a general sense what fire will do to a particular glaze and giving up fundamental control of dynamics on a melody. Why? Because the affects of Raku can only be achieved that one way. But to want to relinquish note dynamics to a machine when it's completely possible to make a better decision for each note yourself seems curious to me. I think a human being will normally be able to surpass a machine in crafting a performance within a sequencer. But I acknowledge that there may be instances where you can have such a cleverly conceived algorithm applied to a set of performance parameters that it could yield results than anyone would find satisfactory. Yet the machine and the mind behind the machine is the author of it. I think the Grammy awards are generally a waste of time, but for the sake of illustration can you imagine this: "And the album of the year goes to....Band In a Box." As if no human could be found to flesh out a chord progression into something more than a general principle of the universe. I find hi-hat patterns hard to do manually. But it doesn't stop me from insisting upon doing it myself. It would never occur to me to use a groove template on something, though all the tools for it are right there in front of me. I just would rather have touched every note unless I'm using a loop (an extremely rare thing for me). In that case, I would think of the loop more as a collaboration with a human than a capitulation to a machine.

On the other hand, I don't disregard synchronistic types of things. I don't think one should edit out a random event just because it was random. If it is fortuotuous, so be it. Once, I had some tape rolling and experienced the need to weep. It was a moment of deep pain, and I was far away from any sense of making music. I couldn't even make sense of myself in that moment, but there I was. Much later, when my centeredness returned, some of those sounds were forged into music. So I do understand that the artistic process isn't washed in germ-killing sauce or whatever. I use machines, too, but more as a scribe uses paper. Maybe I'm missing out? I have created some Sound Borbs, finding that the result is like a haiku that doesn't know itself (or something like that). YMMV, and I respect that.

[maxhodges1]

no discussion of the role of chance in music would be complete without mentioning the life work of John Cage.

Cage was an early composer of what he called "chance music"—referred to by others as aleatoric music—where some elements are left to be decided by chance; he is also well known for his non-standard use of musical instruments and his pioneering exploration of electronic music. His works were sometimes controversial, but he is generally regarded as one of the most important composers of his era, especially in his raising questions about the definition of music.
[more at wikipedia]

Also noteworthy, Cage was a student of Zen Buddhism.

Here's another interesting article on Cage: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2053.htm