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Artist Bio | Website

PAMELA Z - MAX MSP Work During her Harvestworks residency, Pamela split her time between two projects–  one involving work with Harvestworks programmer Dafna Naftali to further develop the MAX patches used in live performance, and the other consisting of work in the ProTools studio with engineer Leslie Lavelanet on final mixes for her CD A Delay is Better

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Lori Eanes 

 

Since the early 1980s, I have been making works for voice with real-time electronic processing– largely based in layering of the voice through long digital delay lines, but also including the live triggering and manipulation of sampled sounds– usually via a gesture-based MIDI controller.  Until the late 90s, this was done with out-board equipment– a rack full of digital delays, multi-effects processors, a sampler, and a mixing board.  During an artist residency in 1999, I slowly began the process of porting all the functions of this out-board gear into Max MSP.  I began this process with a lot of help from Eric Lyon, who I met in Tokyo, and later worked with during a residency at Dartmouth College.  Eric was instrumental in the creation of my first delay patch.  From there, I worked extensively with my collaborator and colleague Donald Swearingen, who helped me in designing the Sampler portion of my Max Patches– starting with Les Stuck’s example patch and expanding it so that multiple sample banks could be loaded simultaneously.  Donald also designed and constructed for me some beautiful hardware controllers, which gave me physical control of my Max patches (including a set of faders and a pod that receives signal from analog footswitches).

 

 
When I came to Harvestworks, I consulted with Dafna Naftali about making my Max patches more performer-friendly.  My own Max skills were quite rudimentary, and the functionality of my patches was largely due to the generous help and tutelage of my friends and colleagues.  So, I was very happy to have the privilege of working with Dafna, and I used my time with her on Max consultations and hands-on work to improve functionality and add features to the patches.  Specifically, we added mechanisms by which I could achieve greater, instant control of the Max interface by combining keyboard commands with the MIDI interfaces that I use, to call up various states and access parameters of plug-ins as I perform. 

As an artist who’s work is centered very strongly in live performance, and a visual connection with the audience, it is important to me that my interfaces can be accessed with ease, and without pulling my concentration away from the physicality of performing.  I have always made it a point to use faders, for example, instead of knobs, because they offer a kind of physical feedback that allows control and awareness of state without even looking down.  So, one of the things Dafna and I worked on was putting in small modifications that inserted Max switches and gates activated by touching convenient keys such as the space bar or the return key to instantly re-assign faders from one set of parameters to another and simultaneously give me visual feedback on the screen, making it obvious which state the patch was in at a given moment. By hitting the space bar, for example, I could transfer control of my hardware faders from delay levels to granular synthesis parameters.  And when this would occur, a message in a large-sized font would display the name of the currently assigned function. (Example 1 shows the front of one of my delay patches of that vintage, and example 2 shows the input control sub-patcher. The two detail shots demonstrate the display of two different states.)

In addition to these modifications, Dafna helped me to explore possible methods of controlling vocal processing parameters using the BodySynth controller, which I was mainly using to trigger banks of samples at the time.  She offered some insights on the use of scaling in order to adjust the effects of sending, for example, pitch bend commands to Max.  And we experimented a little with some “fiddle” patches in order to add Pitch-to-MIDI control with my voice.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY:
Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, sampled sounds, and The BodySynth™ gesture controller. She has also composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her audio works have been presented in exhibitions at the Whitney in NY and the Diözesanmueum in Cologne. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan in concerts and festivals including Bang on a Can, the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds, and the Venice Biennale. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship.