s_traits

"s_traits" is an album of generative electronic music I made with Bill Seaman. It was released in 2014 on the Manchester (UK) label Cotton Goods. We started our collaboration by making a sample library from the discarded electronic track to an early version of my percussion duo Straits. Eventually, we compiled more than 110 hours of audio source material over a three-year period. The sources included field recordings, analog and digital noise, acoustic and electronic instruments, cassette recordings of my juvenilia, recordings of Bill and me playing the piano (with and without preparations), and soundtracks from documentaries made in the 1960’s and 70‘s. Over time, it became clear that the collection of sound files was too large for us explore manually. Bill and I began to discuss the development of a musically intelligent system that could quickly access any files in any part of the sample library, and I shortly got to work prototyping it in Max/MSP. The final incarnation of the system, which we eventually gave the punning name “bearings_traits”, can select, edit, manipulate, and recombine samples from our library to create spontaneous, multitrack compositions. I let the bearings_traits run for hours during which it composed hundreds of “first drafts”. Each of the computer’s compositions starts with a short phrase, which is spoken by Bill. These phrases come from the 300-line recombinant poem Bill wrote in response to Kenneth Koch’s poem Straits. The phrases, which are chosen by the computer for each “draft”, function as titles. We chose 26 of these “drafts”–13 for each of us–to elaborate and refine into the 80-minute album. The finished pieces are arranged on alternating odd- and even-numbered tracks. We don’t, however, disclose who made the even tracks and who made the odd ones. Cotton Goods released s_traits in two physical editions in addition to a digital download.

Duke Scholars