Stockhausen - Kontakte sound - kpr?

[xencage]

Hi all

To any of you programing gurus out there (kpr, etc), I'm trying to create a program on the Fusion that resembles that really amazing sound in the middle of of Stockhausen's Kontakte - to anyone familiar with his stuff.

wikipedi describes it as such:

"The most famous moment, at the very center of the work, is a potent illustration of these connections: a high, bright, slowly wavering pitch descends in several waves, becoming louder as it gradually acquires a snarling timbre, and finally passes below the point where it can be heard any longer as a pitch. As it crosses this threshold, it becomes evident that the sound is comprised of a succession of pulses, which continue to slow until they become a steady beat. With increasing reverberation, the individual pulses become transformed into tones once again."

To me it sounds like ".a giant worm crawling through a tin can in outer-space"

Also, anyone have any suggestions or experience working on some of those sounds from pieces like Ligeti's Articulation and Glissande ? Classic avant garde electronic sounds. I know some of the work was done with tape splicing, but I would think many of those more"primitive" sounds could easily be recreated on the Fusion.

Any ideas or suggestions?

kev

[jpvideo]

xencage said:

Hi all

To any of you programing gurus out there (kpr, etc), I'm trying to create a program on the Fusion that resembles that really amazing sound in the middle of of Stockhausen's Kontakte - to anyone familiar with his stuff.

wikipedi describes it as such:

"The most famous moment, at the very center of the work, is a potent illustration of these connections: a high, bright, slowly wavering pitch descends in several waves, becoming louder as it gradually acquires a snarling timbre, and finally passes below the point where it can be heard any longer as a pitch. As it crosses this threshold, it becomes evident that the sound is comprised of a succession of pulses, which continue to slow until they become a steady beat. With increasing reverberation, the individual pulses become transformed into tones once again."

To me it sounds like ".a giant worm crawling through a tin can in outer-space"

Also, anyone have any suggestions or experience working on some of those sounds from pieces like Ligeti's Articulation and Glissande ? Classic avant garde electronic sounds. I know some of the work was done with tape splicing, but I would think many of those more"primitive" sounds could easily be recreated on the Fusion.

Any ideas or suggestions?

kev

Which version of Kontakte? Understand we are not talking about Mozart here. I have four versions and they all sound different. You must remember these 'sonic schemes' are much too complex and long to be reproduced with a common sampler. It's not solely the timbre and articulation thereof: it is the process in which the composition was realized through time as well as the performers temperment at the moment. There are so many spontanous permutations to be considered in this work. No two performances are the same.
Sorry, no quickie fix to 'mimic' Uncle Karlheinz's complicated sonorous palette other than an approximate near 'conceptual' representation.

You can get close, but no cigar.

Listen to the second part of my composition 'Obeah'. I use a similar process not unlike that of what Stockhausen would have used and again no two performances are the same.
soundclick.com/share?songid=6016729

[xencage]

The version I'm referring to is the koch schwann musica mundi recording - 310 020 H1 1988.

It's surely not the entire composition that I would expect to reproduce (please review my initial post for clarification)

The particular "event" I was referring to starts at about 16:58 thru to about 17:13 (on the version I am referring to)

I've also heard several versions, and am familiar, at least in passing, with some elements of the graphic score.
But the instance I'm referring to is fairly consistent and obvious in all those versions I've heard, since the particular event is part of the 4 channel tape, and not one of the live instruments in the piece.

Again it's the particular "type" of sonic event which is obviously "synthetic" that I am interested in reproducing - and have already made a little head-way. I'm not saying I want an exact static copy - if I did, I'd just sample it.

Anyway, it's apparent that it's some type of analog process, with envelopes, pitch, etc going on, and due to my lack of programing expertise, I can't quite get my head around it - but I can tell it's do-able.

So, I'm just seeking opinions on that particular event - I can even extract the bit (very small) and e-mail it as a wav. or mp3 to someone interested

Thanks
kev

[jpvideo]

Yes, email those 15-20 seconds to me. .MP3 or .WAV is fine...

[ray]

It's not Stockhausen, but I've been pondering on buying and porting over the John Cage Prepared Piano sample library:
www.bigfishaudio.com/4DCGI/detail.html?325

Not sure how big they are and whether they'd fit easily on the Fusion's available memory, but there is a S1000 version available, and one presumes thats not too big? It sounds great, and I remember playing it somewhere once.

[jpvideo]

Hmmmmm...very interesting. Is there nothing we cannot get anymore? Wowie Zowie! Prepared Piano! I'm still waiting for a 'virtual' VCS3 and the 'Forbidden Planet' special Krell edition. strictly for medicimal purposes you understand.

I checked out SPECTRASONICS Omnisphere Power synth. It sounds a lot like the Fusion without all the features. But at $499.00 list, it would make a nice complement to the Alesis Fusion. The Power Synth has incredible processing power.

Omnisphere Power Synth (1 of 8) NAMM
youtube.com/watch?v=oQmd_A9pHhM

[Hollow Sun]

jpvidep said:

I'm still waiting for a 'virtual' VCS3

I did propose this to a team of programmers I was working with a while back but nothing came of it for a variety of reasons.


.


That would be a cool VSTi!

[mps]

There is this one...

www.emsrehberg.de/SYNTHI__s/SYNTHI_Avs_plugin/synthi_avs_plugin.html

[jpvideo]

admin said:

jpvidep said:

I'm still waiting for a 'virtual' VCS3

I did propose this to a team of programmers I was working with a while back but nothing came of it for a variety of reasons.
.

I like this picture so much I'm going to hang on my wall in the office. The EMS 101 VST is much too expensive for Americans right now.

[ray]

admin said:

I did propose this to a team of programmers I was working with a while back but nothing came of it for a variety of reasons.
...
That would be a cool VSTi!

Hmm ... gwen's looking for a job isn't he?

Alas, I'm still of the make-music-with-hardware-not-software persuasion. It's a somewhat unreasonable opinion, but it's the reason why I got a Fusion in the first place, instead of using a collection of VSTi's and software samplers.

I think the problem is largely the fact that I code for a living, and as a software engineer, a computer running Windows or just about anything else, has too much going on in the background for me to be concerned with (swap space... memory, disk defragmentation, Windows deciding to check for updates, or swapping applications in and out of memory), it distracts me infinitely. Whereas a piece of hardware dedicated to the task, allows me to concentrate on the audio aspect much better.

But it certainly seems to be the way the industry's headed with far more VSTi's out there than new synths. It's understandable - much cheaper to produce, thus, more affordable, thus sells in greater volume (not to mention next to no distribution and manufacturing costs).