Creative funk busting 101-

• Re-read Brian Eno's creative strategies on studio as meta-instrument
• Listen to Eno's tape-delay work with Robert Fripp on No Pussyfooting
• Time-travel almost 20 years, listen to Adam Schabtach's excellent Max/MSP delay-line created Elephant Island
• Check out Cycling 74's delay bank Wash plugin from the Mode package
• Be led, as a horse to cool water, to delay-based compositional approaches.

That quickly, it's an excellent Solstice.

I've always been fascinated by delay line writing. You're the creative input and manipulator, but you're not in control. You're working in real-time, performing with the changing context of yourself. As Eno puts it, you're "riding on the dynamics of the system."

This time I'm doing it properly, an updated take on the concept.

Thus far, aided by the ejies new ej.function object, I have four massive, filtered delay lines created in Max/MSP, with variable amounts of interplay between them. Ej.function drives multiple line~ objects, providing two stages of visual enveloping for each delay line: one micro for the specific repeating events, one macro to adjust gain across long sweeps of time. A sweet feature of ej.function is the ability to layer function envelopes, so I can see overlays of all long envelopes at once. All envelopes can be free or bpm synchronized, and I'm working on adding a little chaos to various parameters today.

From here, I'm adding-

• a range of input possibilities: line in, mic, synced audio file, perhaps rewire
• control via Edirol PCR-M1, Doepfer 64, Logitech GamePad
• a slew of channel effects: tapped delay, granular processes, distortion, reverb

Lastly, direct-to-disk recording as five individual stereo tracks (one for each delay line plus master channel) for re-import or chopping up in Live and Digital Performer.

Just in testing as I build, the sounds are huge and organic, clouds of changing rhythm and tonal clusters flying everywhere. This is going to be all over the upcoming blueDeceiver and Sky Break Blue work, and may even find its way into some of my work on Chris Martinez' tracks.

Damn, it feels good to be a Max/MSP gangsta.