Radio (1)

vaisvil

Radio 1 is an aleatoric composition. I did this in the late 90’s - thus the 486SX laptop and soundcard attached to the LPT (printer) port.

It was generated through the Cakeawalk Pro Audio “extract rhythm” function performed on radio static that had been noise reduced numerous ways with various settings, which generated a rhythm in on a single note in a midi track. This was done many times and the result transposed and combined to give several “melodies” on a few midi tracks. Next I used these tracks to drive my synthesizer after programming various timbres and such, recording the sound on a corresponding audio track, which was then panned as I wished. The noise reduced version of the source is included in various places. Towards the end you get to hear the source material used to generate the “music”.

Contributors:
A cheap radio and an external LPT connected sound card to my 486SX laptop. The terrible reception inside the Amoco Research Center. Casio CZ-101 which is actually quite a good synthesizer – now taken apart for parts by a gentleman in the Boston area to whom I sold it after it died.

Inspiration:
All of the aleatoric composers before me such as David Cope with whom I had a exchanged a few emails about his work at the time and this composition. We met when I was searching for information on aleatoric composition. Here is an interesting article about David. http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507