Haze

Programme Note

HAZE ver.1 October 2002 Reactive music for computer with Clarinet in Bb Tenor Trombone and Cello Duration ca 5 minutes HAZE was written for members of the Paragon Ensemble and computer. Rather than interactive, HAZE is reactive. Essentially, the role of the live performers is to trigger computer based sound synthesis. The computer listens for pitch and amplitude data a re-maps this onto synthesis parameters. This version was prepared to open a concert and was created to be punchy and brief. The score was used as a very literal guide for the performers who found it useful to follow because of very restricted rehearsal time. The software for HAZE was written in the MaxMSP environment (www.cycling74.com) and makes use of the following third party external : Ted Apel’s MSP port of Miller Puckette’s fiddle~ which is downloadable from the following site: http://crca.ucsd.edu/~tapel/software.html (current as of 21/03/04). In performance and rehearsal, a 16 channel midi fader box is required to take care of the input and output signals. Controllers 1, 2 and 3 are assigned to the input levels of the three instruments and channels 14, 15 and 16 control the three levels of the computer output relative to each instrument. The routing to the four or two loudspeakers is undertaken by the software, which diffuses the computer output depending upon the parameters that the computer receives from live input. The software is compiled as a standalone application which is ASIO compatible and requires four dedicated channels of audio output and three dedicated channels of audio input. System requirements for the standalone Apple Macintosh Power PC running OS 9.1 or 9.2. G3 500Mhz, 64Mb Ram, 5mb disk space ASIO drivers for ASIO compatible sound card to be placed in ASIO drivers folder. A version for OSX is also available. The sound card should be Core-Audio and Core-Midi compatible the card can be configured in the standalone with ease.