Every time Trevor Henthorn and I hang out, we end up discussing possibilities…throwing ideas back and forth for different creative collaborations. This has been going on since we met in 2007. Last year it was all about sonification, and in a moment of caffeine “inspiration” I came up with the name Made Audible. (From the quote variously attributed to Pythagoras, Boethius, Aristotle and others, that “music is number [or mathematics] made audible”…and our belief that music can be many thing made audible.) A year later, we finally made Made Audible audible with two performances, one as part of Open Oscillator (a kind of synth open mic night, at The Whistle Stop) and the other at The Art of Espresso at UCSD.
Over the course of the week leading up to the performances I worked (with valuable insight from Trevor) on a series of instrument plugins for Ableton Live (with Max for Live) that use probability gates to generate possible pitch, rhythm, duration, velocity and other information. The performer then plays the ranges of these probabilities, rather than specific rhythms, notes and chords. In the case of Made Audible, we used them to generate probability-based chilltronica beats, melodies, bass lines, pads, “solos” and more. These plugins will be available shortly at https://jeffkaiser.com/max/.
In addition to the plugins, look for recordings soon, Trevor will have a solo album out on Angry Vegan that will be using the new plugins.