Webbed Hand Records » Generative

wh196 Tim Doyle – Incarnation

C.P. McDill — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:03:19 +0000

A glittering soundscape, this long-form generative piece by experimentalist Tim Doyle is based on fractal algorithms.

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

About Incarnation:
“I had about 100 candidates for names in something like 29 subcategories under some 8 main categories, and Incarnation finally won out. This is one of what I call my “hinged” pieces, where there is a profound alteration at the midpoint, often opening up the piece in some way, although it can go the other way or just sideways in some cases. In this piece it feels as though what is implicit and immanent as well as imminent actually takes flesh in the middle and strides into this world, or extrudes like ectoplasm… more in my mind like the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. So Incarnation started feeling like exactly what I meant.” — Tim Doyle

About the Artist:
Tim Doyle was born Feb. 12, 1949 in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and spent his childhood as the oldest of 9 children in a rural setting on a heavily wooded lake.

He has been making music in one form or another since childhood, when he soloed in a performance of his piano concerto “Rhapsody #1” at age 9 in a school production, and had a band piece called “Rough Draft” performed a few years later.

He turned to jazz and blues piano in his teens, but although he studied music theory and composition, he was awarded his B.A. in mathematics, his first love. He was always intrigued by the connections between music and math, and made some early experiments at computer composition in the late sixties.

His love for jazz deepened when he discovered the Blue Note catalog at age 20, starting with Jimmy Smith, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Lee Morgan, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans. He still plays keyboard in various styles, but has not recorded his improvised music.

In 1999, he ran across a relatively simple fractal music generative program called Musinum, created by Dr. Lars Kindermann in Germany, who left it available as freeware and then moved on to other projects. Most of the sample music created by Musinum users was brief and (with a few notable exceptions) primitive, but the power inherent in the algorithms employed intrigued Doyle.

Many more of his recordings can be found at his last.fm page.

Track List:
01 Tim Doyle – Incarnation [01:00:11]

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

We at Webbed Hand hope you’ve been enjoying our many free albums. If from the kindness of your heart you’d like to give something to help us keep this label operating, we welcome you to donate securely using Paypal:

wh140 Gusev K.P. – Butafor

C.P. McDill — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 05:28:44 +0000

Butafor is a work by Gusev K.P. from Russia. He uses a modular technique to generate a subtle and sparkling electronic music.

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

According to the artist, the approach to each track is based in modules of different duration, consisting at minimum a single note and at the most a few seconds of sound, united by composition and choice of musical instruments.
Credits:
All songs composed and recorded by Gusev K.P., Russia, 2010.

Track list:
01 – Track 01 [03:20]
02 – Track 02 [03:16]
03 – Track 03 [03:29]
04 – Track 04 [03:41]
05 – Track 05 [03:10]
06 – Track 06 [03:28]
07 – Track 07 [03:14]
08 – Track 08 [03:15]
09 – Track 09 [03:19]

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

wh120 Mystified – SphereSlowChime

C.P. McDill — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:40:03 +0000

“SphereSlowChime” by Mystified is a subtle, meditative piece crafted using generative methods, characterized by long reverberating gong and chime sounds.

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

“SphereSlowChime” was derived from a piece of generative midi created in the late 1990′s by Thomas Park. The MIDI was made with fractal generation, using the geometry of a sphere for seed data. In 2009, this piece of MIDI was transformed into a WAV file, slightly edited, and then processed using a windchime effect and reverberation. Mystified would like to cite Akashic Crow’s Nest as an influence for this music. — Thomas Park

01 SphereSlowChime (01:00:00)

Recorded & Produced by Thomas Park, 2009
Cover illustration by Jake Eldridge

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

wh119 Akashic Crow’s Nest – Torment of the Metals

C.P. McDill — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:05:44 +0000

Akashic Crow’s Nest ventures into a new stage of transmutation with this soothing alchemy-themed album.

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

The sound of Akashic Crow’s Nest begins with the use of an image synthesizer which turns very long photographic images into audio output, in the manner of a piano roll. The initial part of composing this music is thus designing the picture. For this latest project, the first audio output is converted to MIDI and run through a different software synthesizer, before being subjected to a battery of effects to get to the sounds you hear on this album.

Recorded & Produced by C.P. McDill
March, 2009
cover art by Aria Nadii (arianadii.com)

01 Dissolve (00:23:28)
02 Distill (00:07:20)
03 Resolidify (00:36:54)

Download the whole album as a zip file or click here for more downloading and streaming options.

wh078 Akashic Crow’s Nest – Hawk of an Uncanny Nest

C.P. McDill — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:29:41 +0000

Akashic Crow’s Nest’s first regular album release of 2007 continues ACN’s adventures in ambient sound generated from images. The tracks in “Hawk of an Uncanny Nest” explore different mythic ideas of the otherworld. The sound spaces themselves are sculpted to create soothing and transporting experiences for the listener.

01 Antikythera pt 1
02 Limbus Fatuorum
03 Ophiuchus
04 Mournival
05 Telesterion
06 Onion Pennies
07 Manitou
08 Limbus Puerorum
09 Aladdin’s Window
10 The Serpent’s Thumb
11 Antikythera pt 2

The recordings of Akashic Crow’s Nest are created by first making a very long thin picture file that functions much like a piano roll, which is then fed into a software synthesizer which reads the picture from left to right, pixel by pixel, and translates the values into tones, adding variables such as loudness and panning based on information in the picture. The output is then treated to various digital effects such as delays and compression to give the final pieces a warmer, ambient quality.

All tracks recorded and produced by CP McDill
copyright 2007 under a Creative Commons license by-nc-nd 2.5

Visit the download page to stream or download the album for free.

wh063 Mystified & Others – Fractal Reflections

C.P. McDill — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 02:22:46 +0000

The indomitable Mystified has teamed up with some artists of his acquaintance to assemble this mix of unusual ambient works, based around a series of samples generated by programs that convert fractal information into sound files.

Visit the download page to stream or download this album.

01 High Sun (mystified)
02 Sphereslo Pan (Chris Melchior Mix)
03 Dandelion Fast Short Pan (mystified)
04 Spherefast Pan (mystified)
05 Circlslo Pan (Chris Melchior Mix 2)
06 Circlslo Pan (Mike Soucy Mix 1)
07 Circlslo Pan (Orange County Remix)
08 QFive (mystified)
09 Circlslo Pan (Mike Soucy Mix 2)
10 QSix (mystified)

“The pieces originated from fractal midi. “High Sun” is a fractal piece converted to .wav with very little interpretation. The piece was created using the program “Gingerbread”. The other pieces were derived from a fractal midi piece I created in the late nineties called “Circlslo Pan”. I used the geometry of a circle as a sort of seed for fractal generation, then created a larger midi file fractally using a program called “SoftStep” by Algo Arts. Participating artists were asked to render this midi in what way they chose, from more direct midi to mp3 renderings to actual re-interpretations ( such as in the Orange County remix ).

“Sphereslo Pan [mixes]: Using the geometry of a sphere and SoftStep fractal synthesis, midi was created and then converted into wav form.
Dandelion Fast Pan Short: This is a snippet of a piece created using the blooming fequency of a patch of dandelions.
QFive and QSix: These 2 pieces were created using Paul Whalley’s QMuse quasi-fractal generating software.”
–Thomas Park

Project conceived and produced by:
Thomas Park (aka Mystified)
Additional Artists:
Chris Melchior
Mike Soucy
Royce Lee
Cover painting by:
Sandy Spreitz

Visit the download page to stream or download this album.