Jitter and random Midi Music
Working the week before last on the first Jitter task and getting used to using the matrix system has been really good fun. The first really useful object I discovered was ‘Drunk’ which is a random number generator that takes ‘drunken’ steps through the specified range. You can set the maximum step as well which can make really interesting results when altered. The first use I found for it was to change the ARGB values AND the co-ordinates affected. This, in a 100 by 100 matrix creates a really cool random visualizer, giving the effect of slowly fading colours randomly plotting a course around the matrix.
I then created a random midi music generator using the scale techniques discussed in last weeks class (using the Select and Urn objects), and a bass note generator which has four notes to choose from and with the use of a +7 and +12 adds a fifth and octave, which really expands the sound. I then made these notes trigger where in the matrix the ‘drunk’ colours would go. In order to make these effects clearer I downsized the matrix from the previous task (100×100) to 8 by 2. Allowing one row for melody and one for bass notes and a column for each degree of the scale. Using a Coll object I then added the possibility of a melodic motif which I later made replace the random scale generator every 16 bars. This causes the result to be much more musical.
In order to display my patch here to clarify what I’ve just struggled to explain with only words I am now looking for a way to save the resulting matrix display to a movie file. If anyone knows how this can be done it would be much appreciated!
