Electronic Frequencies

Massed brass synthesis by Tom Mudd: Created with digital models of physically impossible brass instruments, Brass Cultures sits uncomfortably somewhere between radical computer music and 19th century band music.

 Physical modelling synthesis digitally simulates the behaviours of acoustic objects and instruments. The synthesis process differs significantly from many more established synthesis processes, both in sound and in the practicalities of actually using it to generate sounds. The reliance on nonlinear feedback processes can make it feel closer in kind to the cybernetic experiments of David Tudor, Insook Choi, Toshimaru Nakamura and others, than it is to conventional digital synthesis processes such as additive or phase distortion synthesis.

This release plays with the boundary between the two; the ambiguity between acoustic simulation and chaotic digital synthesis.

 The tracks are made exclusively with the Next Generation Sound Synthesis (NESS) Brass environment, created by researchers at the University of Edinburgh (freely available from the NESS website). Algorithms were created in Python to specify both the size and shape of the instrument, and how these instruments are played over time in terms of parameters such as breath pressure, lip frequency, lip mass, valve fingering, and even temperature.

Research with the Nord Modular synthesizer in such network systems as string quartets by Roland Kuit with feedback techniques in 1996. Physical modeling it is the actual physics of the instrument and its playing techniques which are modelled by the computer, simulating the properties of acoustic sound sources.

The initial contents of the delay line, and the details of the modification process play a key role in determining the character of the sound produced. We can dissect acoustic instruments and reduce them to specific parts and mimic them as models by creating feedback networks. In this way it is possible to create plucked stings, blown flutes, struck menbrames etc. Vitual mouth pieces and tubes with valves or finger holes and other acoustic bodies are shaped by the length of the delay-lines.

01/  Brass Cultures A*. 03:04.
02/  Brass Cultures B*. 03:01.
03/  Solo A*. 01:24.
04/  Brass Cultures C*. 03:01.
05/  Break*. 02:49.
06/  Brass Cultures C*. 03:09.
07/  Brass Cultures D*. 04:52.
08/  Brass Cultures E*. 04:35.
09/  Solo B*. 00:54.
10/ Solo C*. 03:03.
11/ Karplus-Strong Pluk example. 00:13.
12/ Koto example. 00:17.
13/ Flute example. 00:13.
14/ XOR for strings**. 04:07.
15/ NOR for strings**. 02:32.
16/ OR for strings**. 08:16.
17/ Violence**. 10:50.

*Tom Mudd.
Brass Cultures Bandcamp.
https://tommudd.bandcamp.com/album/brass-cultures

**Roland Kuit.
New Chamber Music.
2014 Composers Voice.