Confetti (while the cat sleeps)

Please forgive the shameless cat mention/photograph here, but he was asleep on the chair next to me when I recorded the track in this post…

While researching ways to increase interactivity in Ableton Live, I came across Rodrigo Constanzo’s Confetti suite of Max for Live devices, based on modules from his larger Max patches for live sampling (Constanzo, no date).

I briefly auditioned these devices using the inbuilt microphone on my laptop and put some that I liked onto individual tracks in Ableton. I then mapped the buttons of an iRig BlueBoard to the on/off controls of each device, and recorded the following improvisation:

This recording was simply intended as the next stage of the audition process: a way to test how these devices could work in conjunction with a classical guitar input and in differing combinations with each other. Happily, I found the experience of improvising with these effects to be very rewarding, in terms of their complementary sound and the simplicity of control I had programmed.

The recording uses the following devices:

Chopper: a granular effect which divides the input into segments and plays them back one-by-one when the signal rises above 0dB. I have it set this effect in such a way that its output ranges from digital audio artefacts (glitches)  to something like an extreme pitch-shift

Pitch uses pitch-synchronous overlap add to create rhythmic pitch shifting in a similar manner to the Digitech Whammy pedal.

Resonator analyses the frequencies of the input signal and outputs a resonance based on these whenever an onset is detected, effectively extending the decay of the guitar sound. I made a small edit to this device’s patch to increase the decay time of the resonance, then left the device on for the entire recording. Much like the Feedback Network used in Hidden Influence, this effect provides a constant backdrop to react to when playing. This device, however, is responsive to performer input and produces a pitched output that closely matches their input, therefore feeling more interactive to play into than the Feedback Network, where perceived interactions were so infrequent as to seem coincidental.

Stutter, as expected, creates a very short recording and loops this until turned off. I used this device in automatic mode, which toggles between record and playback modes each time an onset is detected.

Cloud is a real-time granulation effect which simultaneously records into and plays back from a buffer, giving the impression of a cloud or ghost closely following the input signal.  

The below table shows when each of the effects are switched on in the recording:

Thoughts

Having programmed very little control into this Ableton set, I was not expecting to find the experience of improvising with it particularly rewarding. However, the Confetti devices largely behaved in such a way that I felt I was in a meaningful dialogue with the computer. The settings may have been static, but the sounding output was not: there was just enough variation and unpredictability to keep me interested in continuing the conversation.

I found Chopper to be particularly satisfying because its output was so unrelated to my input. I was aware of my influence over it, but I could not anticipate exactly how it would respond to my playing.

The only effect that I did not feel was entirely successful was Pitch. I would have preferred a static pitch shift over something that was constantly rhythmic, but it might also be worthwhile experimenting with varying the rate of this effect while performing.

Latency

I did encounter a considerable amount of latency when recording with this particular Ableton set, which I could not remedy by adjusting the audio settings. This would need to be addressed before I could consider performing with this Live set, but if CPU load can be managed, these devices might be able to be included individually into other Ableton sets.