Rajmil Fischman

Biography

Rajmil Fischman (b. Lima, Peru, 1956) is Professor of Composition at Keele University (UK), where he established the MA/MSc courses in Digital Music Technology and the Computer Music Laboratory. Attended musical studies at the National Conservatory of Lima (Peru), the Rubin Academy - Tel Aviv University (Israel) and York University (UK), where he obtained a DPhil in 1991. He studied composition with Abel Ehrlich, John Paynter and Richard Orton. He also obtained a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Israel Institute of Technology, in 1980.

Fischman was artistic director and principal conductor of the Keele Philharmonic Society (1990-1995), Director of Music (1998-2000) and Music Technology Programme Director (2001-4). He joined the Composers’ Desktop Project (CDP), becoming a director in 1988, and is a member of the Latin-American Sonic Arts Network (RedASLA), the Peruvian Circle of Composers (Circomper) and Sound and Music. He is editorial adviser for Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press, UK).

Research and scholarship

His main activities focus on composition, sonic arts theory and music software development. Compositions include acoustic, electro-acoustic, interactive, audiovisual and multimedia, and the use of gestures to operate digital controllers in conjunction with multi-channel spatialisation. These are part of the long term aim to realise structured interactive immersive musical experiences, in which users advance at their own pace, choosing their own trajectory through a musical work but having to act within its structure, rules and constraints.  His compositions have received numerous international performances and been broadcast worldwide.

Free software

AL

AL ...gorithmic Compositional Environment is a multiple document interface (MDI) application, with frame windows that present views of different documents and/or several views of the same document. It is designed for the creation and manipulation of sonic events and their organization into a structured musical work. In order to aid user familiarity with the software and a reasonably short learning curve, care was taken to develop an interface within an accepted general standard for windows applications; including a menu bar, a tool bar, common window components and typical mouse ‘drag and drop’ operations.

Download AL & Erwin

Please note that AL comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details see the GNU General Public License. (Adobe Acrobat Format). This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under the conditions detailed in the GNU General Public License. For more details, you can write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. The GNU website is here.

The author acknowledges the support of:
The Arts and Humanities Research Board, which made possible the creation of this software.
The Composers’ Desktop Project, for the technical advice and support provided during the development of the software.

Minimum requirements
Processor: Pentium (Pentium III onwards recommended)
Operating System: Windows 98/ME/XP/7/10 (AL was initially developed on Windows 2000 but the latest version has not been tested in this environment)
Screen Resolution: Although AL can run on lower resolutions, a minimum of 1024x 768 pixels or higher is recommended. The software will run on a smaller resolution but some graphics components may not fit in the screen.
Microsoft DirectX 8 TM: The AL and ERWIN installation disk should install DirectX 8TM, if required.
Soundcard: DirectXTM compatible (recommended).

NOTE: Rehearse and playback functions are optimised to work with DirectX TM. There may be delays and crackles when using soundcards which are not DirectX TM compatible.

Installation instructions

1. Download the programme. This should create a compressed, self-extracting file (ALandERWIN103.EXE) in your computer.
2. Double click on ALandERWIN103.EXE. This will extract all the files needed for installation, including a README file.
3. Double click on the extracted Setup.EXE file.
4. If you have not installed Direct X TM or have version lower than 8, SETUP.EXE will also install DirectX TM version 8 and may reboot your computer. If after rebooting the dialog for AL's installation does not reappear, double click on SETUP.EXE again.
5. Finally, the SETUP.EXE program may have to load the install shield and reboot your computer again. If this happens and the dialog for AL's installation does not reappear, double click on SETUP.EXE one more time.
6. After AL is installed, a shortcut on the desktop and an item on the programs menu should appear (Algorithmic Composition Environment).

Update history
17.7.03 Version 1.03 released: AL and ERWIN version 1.03 has the same functionality as version 1.02. However, the latter had a bug which could produce clicks when using certain kinds of audio sources, particularly in the case of pitched material. This has been corrected in version 1.03.

Please address any feedback regarding AL to: r.a.fischman@keele.ac.uk

MAES

Manual Actions Expressive System (MAES) aims to enable music creation and performance using natural hand actions (e.g. hitting virtual objects, shaking them, etc.). Gestures are fully programmable and result from tracking and analysing hand motion and finger bend, potentially allowing performers to concentrate on natural actions from our daily use of the hands. It is designed to work with the P5 Glove and has been used to create music for this device (see videos here or here). It can also be used without a controller, offering a standard graphic interface for real time control of synthesis and processing. Furthermore, the MAX external that communicates with the P5 glove can be easily replaced by any other external or subpatch that provides all or part of the corresponding data (position X,Y,Z; orientation X,Y,Z; velocity X,Y,Z and individual finger bend), with relatively little effort.

MAES installation & user guide (please read this before installing the software)

Download MAES

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License. For more details, you can write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. The GNU website is here.

The author acknowledges the support the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which made possible the creation of MAES.

System requirements
Ideally, a fast processor should be used (e.g. i7 quad core). However, it is also possible to run MAES in a slower system by reducing the CPU workload in MAX (see Troubleshooting at the end of the user guide).
The patch can be run as an executable (Windows: MAES.EXE or Mac OS: MAES.APP), or as a runtime MAX patch (MAES.MXE both in Windows and Mac OS) using MAX Runtime version 6 upwards (available for free from Cycling’74).

Important note
While the corresponding patches will run in both Windows and OS, at present P5 Glove tracking is only possible in Windows. Therefore, when running in OSX, MAX will inform the user that the external P5GloveRF is missing. However, apart from not tracking the P5 glove, the patch should work normally. This is because there are no available P5 drivers for OSX. I can provide the C sources for the external P5GloveRF to anyone interested in adapting it to OSX.
Finally, it is possible to use Boot Camp or a windows simulator (e.g. Parallels) in a Mac to run the patch in Windows and track the P5 Glove.

Screen resolution
The size of the full patch is approximately 1626 x 850 pixels. Therefore, it will appear in its entirety in HD resolution, but will extend beyond the screen at lower resolutions, requiring resizing of the window to enable scrolling.

Clouds

Clouds implements a multi-platform real-time asynchronous granular synthesis created with MAX (Cycling’74). It records audio into up to four different buffers, each with individual read position, wander, speed (time-stretch) and predominance (i.e. how often it is used in comparison to the other buffers). It also enables control of grain density, duration, transposition, envelope, spatial scatter and cloud envelope. The buffers can record a variety of sources, including synthesised waveforms, microphone capture and/or audio files. Clouds can produce mono, stereo, 5.1 surround and octophonic (eight channel) outputs, enabling panning within and beyond the circle of speakers with optional Doppler Shift. Granulation parameters can be controlled manually through the graphical user interface, generated randomly between set limits, and/or automated using QLists by means of text files containing breakpoint values. It is also possible to record outputs as audio files in a variety of formats. It includes a comprehensive user guide and tutorials which can be access from within the application.

Clouds is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4 International License.

Download Clouds

System requirements
Clouds should run in any modern computer running Windows or OSX. Performance will improve in faster processors, but it is also possible to run CLOUDS in a slower system by reducing the CPU workload in MAX (see Troubleshooting at the end of the user guide).

The patch can be run as an executable (Windows: Clouds_64.exe or Clouds_32.exe; Mac OS: Clouds.app), straight from the sources or as a runtime MAX patch (Clouds.mxe or Clouds.mxf) using MAX runtime version 7 upwards (available for free from Cycling’74).

Screen resolution
The size of the app is 1626 x 850 pixels. Therefore, it will appear in its entirety in HD resolution, but may extend beyond the screen at lower resolutions.

OSX users
A known issue with Apple is that it does not like users running non-Apple or non-Apple vetted apps. OSX sends an inaccurate message pointing out that the software is corrupted but in reality, it does so because it is produced by a non-identified developer. The good news is that this is very easy to fix: all users need to do is deactivate temporarily the security settings regarding non-Apple applications (Mac App store and identified developers), run the application once and then reactivate the security settings back. You can find how to do this in this web page.

Some Mac OSX users may find that Clouds does not fit the screen (it should be fully visible in a retina display since its size is 1626x850, which actually is much smaller than an HD display of 1920x1200). The problem is that Apple does not inform its users that the high resolution depends on how they set up the choices in the system preferences: the default display for Apple is not really 2560x1600. At best it can be set to 1680x1080 using the 'more space' display option in the system settings (which should be sufficient for Clouds), unless using a third-party app. This web page explains how to do this and also provides information on third-party apps.

Updates history
25.11.16 Version 1.01 released: CLOUDS version 1.01 rectifies the bug where the source reading Rate did not change in real time and it did not work when reversing the playback using negative values. This has now been rectified.
Many thanks to Julio Benavides (Lima, Peru) for identifying the bug.

Compositions

 Click here for all compositions by Rajmil Fischman