Swarm (series)

Swarm (series) (2023)
for fixed media

The Swarm series of fixed media pieces were written with a patch that I developed in Max. I wanted to create a program that I could use to create sound-mass pieces like those of the 1960s, such as Ligeti’s Atmosphères and Xenakis’s Metastaseis, in which large tone clusters are manipulated and shaped over time with an almost architectural or sculptural ear. One of the nice things about working with electronic music for a piece like this is that the program can play pitches with incredibly fine accuracy, not just semitones and quarter tone. After I developed the patch over winter of 2022–23, I recorded an improvisation and then shaped the recording further through processing, editing, and adding layers.

Click here to download the Max patch. A demo video can be found here.