Not Much Else - A Clarinet Piece with Live Electronics Composed by Connor Bohn
Blurb from the composer, Connor Bohn:
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Not Much Else was created in close collaboration with my great friend Dominic Frugoli. The clarinet part is semi-improvised, based on modal harmony and a few melodic motifs that interact and play with the clarinet's electronic remnants. Dom created personalized effects that “freeze” the sound of my clarinet, along with delays that echo it. Each of these give my gestures something different to interact with. Sometimes a mirror, sometimes a memory, sometimes something completely unexpected.
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Not Much Else was a clarinet performance that I was able to perform in with my friend Connor Bohn. It was for his ​senior recital at Columbia College Chicago and he approached me as he wanted to do something more electronic for one of his pieces and he knew that I was into DSP programming. It started off as me agreeing to advise on sounds and build a program for him to control, but quickly became me performing on stage with him as it made more sense for me to control the effects. We had just a few meetings where he would describe to me the sounds he was looking for and then I would go off and build it.
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The programming was all done in Max/MSP and consisted of three main components for the 2 main sections of the piece. The first section consists of a shimmer reverb that is slowly introduced to add texture and a spectral freeze effect. This spectral freeze is taken from a buffer that is recorded into live and allowed Connor to play above themselves basically. The next section is more rhythmic and plays with the 4 tap delay to add a lot of different rhythmic play. After this it goes back to the first section and slowly fades out.
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Once I had the full patch built, we only had a few practice sessions so it was a bit nerve wracking being up on stage, but it turned out alright and was a very rewarding experience. I spend a lot of time building and designing things, but its not often I get to see an end product being used and performed. It really was a special feeling.
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Video
Downloads
Feel free to check out the patch that I used for the performance. Just a heads up though, it's not very refined or optimized. The controls also don't make sense as the only person who needed to know how it worked and made sense was me. If I was to ever make this with the intent to share it, I would do a total rebuild with a focus on the interface and usability.
