Tag Archives: Christmas

A Way It’s All Mangled

[play]A Way Its All Mangled (2015)

If you like this piece, please consider donating to Shelter, a charity that deals with homelessness in the UK.

This piece uses both the British and American melodies for Away in a Manger. I found a hymn-foccussed website that had both versions, which was especially good as both were in the same tempo and key, with all the same presets, so the files were already very closely related.

Then I forked wslib, which has some nice SuperCollider classes for reading MIDI files, but the method that outputs arrays for use in patterns was kind of broken, so I made some changed there. Then I wrote a quantising function and made lists of all the unique note, duration pairs (or chord duration pairs) in both pieces. A lot of the same pairs appeared in both. I gave each pair an ID, so that each song could be expressed as a list of IDs

I used the lists of IDs to generate Markov chains. Then I just kept asking for the next one for two minutes and ended a minor chord.

The sound synthesis is based on Nick Collins’s demo of how to synthesize a soprano. I added an envelope to add some unvoiced transients at the start of every note, plus panning, etc.

This track is part of a larger project, ’12 days of Crimbo’, which will raise funds for homeless and/or LGBT charities.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05 — 2.9MB)

I Love Christmas

I Love Christmas (2015)

If you enjoy this piece, please consider making a donation to the Refugee Council. We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis since WWII. Refugees need our support in staying housed, clothed and fed.

this pieces uses more or less the same structure as a previous piece, Music for Panic Attacks, however, the synthesised timbres are seasonal for the holidays. It uses FM tubular bells, STKShaker Sleighbells and a Karplus Strong harp.

The voice is Donald Trump from two different occasions, talking about how, as president, he will pass a law mandating that all shops in the US wish patrons ‘Merry Christmas’, instead of ‘Happy Holidays.’ He doesn’t mention what will happen to shops owned by religious minorities,but let’s not dwell on that.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:53 — 5.3MB)

Dronesleeves

Dronesleeves (2015)

If you enjoy this piece, please consider making a donation to the Refugee Council. We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis since WWII. Refugees need our support in staying housed, clothed and fed.

In my home country, the song ‘What Child is This’ uses the melody from Greensleeves, which was not written by Henry VII. I picked it because it is not in a major key.

This piece was made with SuperCollider. I downloaded a MIDI version of What Child is This and used SimpleMidiFile class in the wslib quark to read the file at the leisurely pace of 4.5 BPM. The synthesis is a Risset Bell with some added subharmonics and sinusoidal envelopes. There were thousands of SinOscs playing at once as this recorded.

This track is part of a larger project, ’12 days of Crimbo’, which will raise funds for homeless and/or LGBT charities.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:03 — 31.6MB)

Little Dubstep Boy

[play]Little Dubstep Boy (2015)

If you enjoy this piece, please consider making a donation to Stonewall Housing (click the donate button in the upper-right corner). This is a charity that works helping LGBT people get housed and stay housed. They do a lot of good work, especially with LGBT youth, who still get thrown out of their family homes disturbingly often and sometimes also have trouble accessing shelters. Stonewall Housing has worked with trans people since its inception and is aware of and responsive to the needs of trans people who need housing. They deserve your support, if you are able.

This piece was created using MCLD‘s dubstep patch with the BBCut Library in SuperCollider, as described in an old blog post. It was modified slightly from that version so that \dub instrument’s triggers come from a bus and so that it steps through the melody of Little Drummer Boy instead of picking notes semi-randomly.

This track is part of a larger project, ’12 days of Crimbo’, which will raise funds for homeless and/or LGBT charities.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:00 — 2.7MB)

Jingle Hell

Jingle Hell (2015). This piece was created using a version of ixiLang that was made (barely) to run with SuperCollider 3.6 on some arrays representing melody, chords and drums for Jingle Bells.

It is available to download via Bandcamp, in exchange for a donation to Crisis, a UK charity working with homeless people.

This particular track is part of a larger album, No Room 2015 and also a larger personal project ’12 days of Crimbo’, which will raise funds for homeless and/or LGBT charities.