Interative Impovisational Environment
I have always been interested in improvisation, in the context of jazz performance, as a pianist, and as a general compositional resource. I.I.E. is a library of computer algorithms, running on a Macintosh, that listens to improvised music (captured as MIDI streams), processes the streams, and generates music of its own. The most straightforward tools form Hyper-Instruments, extending traditional MIDI instruments like keyboards, which usually only control the pitch and dynamics of sound, into instruments that directly control compositional algorithms. An example of a simple Hyper-Instrument from the library is Re-Voicer. It takes pitches from an inputted chord and randomly displaces the octave of the pitches within in a specified tessitura; each time a performer repeats a chord, the voicing is shuffled. More advanced modules try to compose variations or to accompany the improviser, filling in the gaps or transforming perceived motives. Frustrated with the timbral limitations of the MIDI paradigm, and encouraged by the dramatic increases in computer processor speeds, I am now extending my research into the audio domain. I want to create algorithms that parse a digitized waveform from an acoustic instrument in real-time, perform hyper-instrument type conversions, and synthesize timbres based on these interactions.