The electroacoustic setup of Inside Out does not use any conventional loudspeaker system. Instead, seven percussion instruments and the piano bodies are put into vibration by small transducers.

The sound of these instruments is picked up thru piezo microphones.

The circulation of the sound from an instrument to the other is controlled and constantly modified by the max patch.

Three bass drums are augmented by Ircam Coala (v1) . Coalas are nano computer prototypes specifically designed to process the sound with very low latency to allow active control of the musical instruments vibrations.

The transducers and piezo microphones are stuck on the instruments with Shertler “Application Putty” green paste :

Adc/dacs routings

1. Thunder sheet

2. Bass Drum 1

3. Gong

4. Bass Drum 2

5. Tam

6. Bass Drum 3

7. Piano

8. Bass Drum 4

Check list

• open the “inside_out_concert” project with max 7 in 32 bit mode

• check max settings : 

  • sampling rate = 48000

  • io vector size = 512

  • vector size = 512

  • overdrive on

  • scheduler not in audio interrupt

• turn audio ON

• connect the ipad on an adhoc network or via usb

• launch mira on the ipad

Patch presentation

27 FX presets are recalled during the performance of the piece from the main max patch (where indicated in the score).

The main patch displays the graph of the sound energy circulating between the instruments.

For exemple, in FX 27, the sound path is :

Thunder Sheet (plaque) -> Tam -> Bass Drum 1 -> Gong -> Bass Drum 2 -> piano -> back to Thunder Sheet

creating a complex, indirect feedback loop (larsen effect).

Between each instrument, an effect can be inserted, here (in FX27) a “noiser” effect, consisting in a tuned resonating filter and a delay line.

ipad interface

The ipad is used to :

• recall the presets (the left and right buttons at the bottom recalls respectively the previous and the next scene)

• interpolate between the current and the next event with the rightmost slider (when required : cf. score)

• control the input levels from the K&K piezos

• control the output levels from the main matrix

• control the output level from the synthesis modules

• the three buttons at the right are used to record and freeze the percussionists voices when they are the singing (cf. score)