Time-Folding V.3.4, Solo Live Electronics

By JyKang in Electro-Acoustic, Ji's, SuperCollider, [EA]ComputerMusic, [EA]OtherTools 0 Comment

Somehow, I think that the direction toward my solo live electronics set has been built up for last few months. Considering my previous experiences with the electro-acoustic music for conventional instruments, I believe the world that those acoustic instruments and their tradition have brought, the values on themselves, the fact that they ‘still’ shine as they are, with enormous amount of possibilities that they can do, different from the digital sound, the power of acoustics. Again, they are different, and I don’t prefer one among the other. My point is that I’d like to use them both, in my own way.

Those analog synthesisers are the same for me. I simply would like to use them all because they are amazing as they are. So I am currently developing the way to combine those three worlds: analog, digital sounds and acoustic sound together, and I believe that this is not my first attempt, but the one that I was more aware of what I’d like to do with all the instruments.

So here it comes: Time-Folding V.3.4 for Gong, Benjolin, 16step sequencer, 555 timer, 4096 NAND atari junk, and laptop with Supercollider.

The main instrument here is the Gong, ‘Kweng-ga-ri,’ one of the most representative metal instruments in Korea, vividly in use with other percussions, and it creates very un-defined loud noise, as well as a soft resonance. Normally the instrument is played by a person holding vertically with one hand, and use a mallet to hit the surface with the other hand. The hand that is holding the gong is controlling the resonance too using fingers.

I wanted it to have all those qualities, but by playing in a completely different way. What I did is to use a loudspeaker underneath the gong and give a overloaded impulse to the speaker so that the speaker can hit the gong. I use an object to bounce inside too. It is much easier. Since I am using a speaker, I use the feedback too to create some sort of melodic(?) noise, which I love in this system.

Since this instrument carries mostly the rhythmic part, all the rest do some other jobs: like more linear motion, adding some weight into the musical drama. But mostly I wanted the Gong to be the main actor of the drama, and all the others can support this role. Nothing is less important.

One can probably say that I use too much equipments. That might be true so that I can’t carry them all by myself anymore. -I am too small for such music.- However those are very clearly categorised: The gong with speaker+mics for the sound input, The analogue devices are having its own network, and The laptop with Supercollider, controlled by midi controllers, are the effectors: again, acoustic+analog+digital respectively. Those three are very much bound together, especially by the system of Supercollider. The effector sometimes differentiate what to treat -either from the Gong or from the synthesisers. But often the effectors apply to both and create feedback too. Then they are equality treated at the same time. But still it is an ongoing project, and I am enjoying finding a number of possibilities from all of those.

Well, I hope you enjoy watching the video. I’ll see how many version of this Time-folding series will last. I hope it goes further.

Liveset @ HetNutshuis, Test Extra:Tele-li(f/v)e 31/Jan/2014 from Ji Youn Kang on Vimeo.

KANG, solo Live Electronics @ Noodlebar, Rotterdam from Ji Youn Kang on Vimeo.

Time-Folding V.22, Solo Live Electronics

By JyKang in Ji's, SuperCollider, [EA]ComputerMusic 0 Comment

I, as a composer, had been quite skeptical about improvised music until some time ago. I love to listen and experience of course, but I always thought that it should be done after a number of ‘formal music’ performances. In a way I still think that playing ‘formal’ music could help to give insight on the way music flows.

However, the  improvisation itself also needs practices : not only about musical practices, but also trusting your intuition, showing the moments, what you are aiming to throughout what you are playing. So I tried as well.

It’s been just a couple of years that I seriously started making my own solo project, using the instruments that I can play, and still treat them in the way that I do in my own composed music.

Here I’d like to share one recording of those. Recently I performed at Studio Loos in Den Haag, and this recording is made with the same setup. The only difference is that I used the ground noise at the beginning, without touching any devices, I only ‘approach’ toward the device with one hand, while the other hand was touching a different electronic device, connected to the same ground.

I liked the result. There was a big plan behind, but not all the details.

The process:

Benjolin, the chaotic analog sound generator, gives an input signal to the computer system, which was developed in SuperCollider. The signal not only works as the sound input, but also as the control rate, manipulating the buffer that was live-sampled inside the computer endlessly. The performer -me- is constantly choosing the moment for the live sampling, and looping the samples. There are 4 layers doing the same. The 1st layer as more aiming toward the base line, and the 2nd layer receives the first layer as the input. The 3rd layer is directly receiving the Benjolin sound as the input without any treatment, and 4th layer receives the 3rd layer. All the buffer lengths are different.

Those 4 layers are then processed, treated as an instrumental sound. The processings include  -several wave shapings and distortion, -spectrum manipulation, -binaural spatialization. An interesting aspect could be that I used a single output channel as the input channel for the processing. That means when the processing starts, it will also give a feedback to the result itself.

This is how the setup looks like:

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And the Recording:

This was performed recently in Seoul, South Korea at the event,  “Unsold Art.”

Hope you enjoy!

Recording of ‘Jing’ for Jing and Computer

By JyKang in Ji's, SuperCollider 0 Comment

Here I would like to share one of my pieces called ‘Jing.’

This was composed in 2010, quite challenged piece, and I worked together with the percussionist ‘Mei-Yi Lee.’

Everything was written on score (sample below) and the live electronics was done with SuperCollider.

The recording was made with two microphones, (Thanks to Kassen and Rob) and it was very challenging due to the characteristics of the instruments and how the composition itself was aimed. More specifically, the range of the dynamic goes from Zero to .. I don’t know.. easily up to 120 db. I was having a hard time when I was right beside the instrument in order not to change my facial expression because it was just really really loud.

We needed to record several times because of this, avoiding clipping, and very small editing was involved because of the soft parts.

Of course live music should be heard in live for sure. But it was a happy moment when we finally managed to finish this recording, and now I can share with many more people.

Oh, by the way, Jing is a Korean percussion that is used in many other occasions especially in rituals. It has both a very gentle warm, embracing base sound to very hard crazy complex noise. So that I wanted to show all the character, and the percussionist is shown as he/she is communicating and triggering it. So in the piece, Jing is answering, expressing, angry, and so on. It has its own personality. Electronics is used for this conversation and also help to create what moods it is going to be.

I hope anyone who reads this can enjoy the piece. Thanks!