Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Euclidean Rhythm MIDI File Resource in Ableton Live


The Euclidean Algorithm



If we were to imagine (n) as equal time intervals... let's say 16th notes in a bar of music and (k) as pulses that we were interested in triggering as evenly as possible over those time intervals, then we can generate on/off patterns for any combination of pulses and time intervals using the algorithm. These patterns have the distinction of being (as Toussaint described) "Euclidean Rhythms”, in other words.... some number of pulses (k) evenly and precisely distributed over some number of time intervals (n).

What's amazing here is that these Euclidean Rhythms happen to be the exact patterns that many cultures have traditionally defined their music by. Imagine these isolated cultures, independent of each other, with no prior (conscience) knowledge of Euclid, picking up on and embracing 1 pattern from a special set of patterns defined by an algorithm 2300 years ago!

It's best understood by seeing and hearing it in action.


[ x . . x . . x . ]



[ x . x . x . x . x ]

This is an Arab rhythm called Agsag-Samai


[ x . x . x . . ]





The Session/MIDI File Collection



Cool pattern after removing the repeats



That which makes tongues turn blue by SharksFin

X . . X . X . . X . .
X . . X . X . . X . .
X . .
The whole string of 25 is repeated twice for each theme.




Download, unzip and enjoy!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Circle of Fifths Chord Resource in Ableton Live

If you've turned on the radio in the last 30 years or so, you've probably noticed that almost all pop music sounds the same: rigidly formulaic, predictable and yet, oddly pleasing and familiar. This is no accident. Our Western ears have been trained to like music built around the circle of fifths.

I'm not an authority on music theory, but I've hacked together (from various resources) an Ableton Live session that can be used as a reference and compositional aid in this style. Yes, now you too can sound like a pop music hack! (Well... to be fair, a lot of really great music fits into this description as well).

The session file is just a container for several midi clips organized around the circle of fifths. Every note's major and minor key are described by the I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII chords that are grouped under it's heading. The chords grouped under each heading all sound good in that track's key.

More exotic chord extensions are grouped under the track/note heading and can be used to substitute for any chord they're based on, in any chord progression or grouping.

The beauty of Ableton Live's "object-oriented" session file format is that this container can be used to "inherit" from in your own session, by navigating to the session on disk, expanding individual tracks and dragging and dropping chord clips. The colors and names of the chord clips carry over into your composition. Excellent.

While Ableton Live comes with midi effect plug-ins, I find that having the chords and scales already printed and grouped into musically relevant banks suits a different work-flow.

If you use the session file and enjoy it, please consider making a donation to encourage me to make more of these types of things. Even $1 helps.

Download, unzip and enjoy!

The Super Basic Batch File Renamer

I had a buddy with a problem. He had hundreds and hundreds of audio samples ripped from assorted Akai and Emu disks from years gone by. The files weren't usable in modern computer software until he changed the file extension so I wrote a quick app for him that would auto-increment and rename files in batches (he had the samples organized already by sample type... snare, hi-hat, kick, etc). I figured someone else may get some use out of this so here you go.

Warning: This can do serious damage to your system if you point it to the wrong folder and just start renaming things like a mad man, so be sure you know what you're doing!

Download, Unzip and Enjoy!