We did it…
Our concept was inspired by the musical Wicked. We wanted to create a piece that was playful but also something that showcased our personality. This project does not just encapsulate the skills we learnt across this course, but also how we learnt to improvise efficiently and stay on track with our vision.
Ziya and Linh were in charge of the visuals for this performance. As we are inspired by the musical “Wicked”, we want to develop a similar theme for the visual, including the images from “Wicked” itself, and also a theme of witches. As the audio starts with a simple and slow pace, we used simple patterns with simple changes using MIDI value to match with the sample. From the start, we knew we wanted to include a theme of the musical itself into our performance as we were big fans of it, but we of course did not want to make it entirely Wicked-centered, therefore, we thought of telling the story of Wicked through campus cats. We decided that we’d take pictures and videos, and edit them to make them related to the wicked theme. However, when we were executing this, we quickly grew sick of these images, and decided to draw images directly from the wicked musical itself.
One of our prominent challenges was working on transitions, particularly the part where we were switching between the two images. We found that we had to be very careful about what functions and details to include and at what time. Furthermore, we also had to listen carefully to the sound to ensure that the beat drop and the overall transitions were in sync. One of the strategies we approached was layering the first and second visuals on top of each other for transition. Then, we can just fade out the first visual to reveal our final intention. Also, we decided to change the visuals significantly after the drop as the musical color and timbre changes at that point.
Another challenge for us is to sync with the sound so that the audience can see the relations between the changes in visuals and the audio together. As Linh did not have any extensive experience in music, she could not catch on when the audio changes by listening. Therefore, we asked Luke and Rashed to signal us when they are moving to a new section so that the visual can adapt to change.
Staying on theme was important to us, and we had two: Brat and Wicked. And somewhere in the corner of Tiktok, this subculture exists, so we decided to bring it to the stage of NYUAD in our performance. This was exemplified through the sounds used such as the “365” which were sampled from Charlie XCX, who is the originator of “Brat”. Brat also fit well with Wicked, and both were prominent with the colour green — Brat was neon green, and Wicked is a darker green. Colour for us was just as important, and in Wicked, there are two main colours which are Green and Pink – representing the opposing sides of Glinda and Elphaba. Hencewhy, throughout our entire performance we referenced these two colours, hopefully in a manner that did not seem too repetitive.
voronoi(100, 0.15) //shape(2,0.15)
.thresh(0.8)
.modulateRotate(osc(10), 0.4, () => cc[0]*50) // cc
.thresh(0.5)
.diff(src(o0).scale(1.8))
.modulateScale(osc(10) // cc
.modulateRotate(o0, 0.74))
.diff(src(o0))
.mult(osc(()=>cc[0], 0.1, 3))
.out()
hush()
// VIDEO SECTION
s0.initVideo("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/the-bratty-vid.mp4")
p5 = new P5()
vid = p5.createVideo("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/the-bratty-vid.mp4");
vid.size(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight);
vid.hide()
p5.draw=()=> {
let img = vid.get();
p5.image(img, 0, 0, width, height); // redraws the video frame by frame in p5
}
s0.init({src: p5.canvas})
vid.play()
src(s0).out()
s5.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/wckd-scaled.png")
src(s5)
//.modulateRotate(osc(10), 0.4, () => cc[0]*50) // cc
.scale(0.6,() => cc[0]*1)
.scrollX(2, 1)
.out()
hush()
s0.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/witch-hat.png")
s1.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/oz-img.png")
s2.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/witch-kingdom.png")
s3.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/nessarose-cat.png")
// -- HAT SECTION
src(o0)
.layer(src(s0)
.add(o1)
.scale(()=>0.5 + cc[2])
)
.out(o1)
render(o1)
hush()
render()
// o3 -> o0 -> scale -> pixelate -> ccActual
src(s2)
.diff(src(s1).diff(src(o3).scale(()=>cc[0])))
.diff(src(o1))
// .blend(src(s1), ()=>ccActual[4])
// .diff(src(o0))
// .modulateRotate(o0)
// .scale(() => cc[0]*2)
.out(o3)
render(o3)
hush()
s0.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/boq-img.png")
s3.initImage("https://blog.livecoding.nyuadim.com/wp-content/uploads/nessarose-cat.png")
// look glinda pt 2
src(s3)
.scale(()=>cc[5]/2)
.blend(
src(s0).invert().luma(0.3).invert().scale(0.5)
.rotate(()=> (cc[2] - 0.5)* 50 * 0.02)
.scale(()=>cc[3]*0.5)
//.modulateScale(osc(5, 0.1), () => cc[0])
, ()=>cc[6])
.out()
src(o2)
.layer(src(o0))
.out(o1)
render(o1)
render()
hush()
////////////////////////////////
let p5 = new P5()
let lastCountdown = null;
let ellipses = [];
p5.hide();
s4.init({src: p5.canvas})
p5.hide();
p5.noFill()
p5.strokeWeight(20);
p5.stroke(255);
p5.draw = () => {
p5.background(0);
p5.fill(255);
p5.textAlign(p5.CENTER, p5.CENTER);
p5.textSize(200);
// Get the current CC value
let ccValue = 1; // or cc[0] if it's from another source
// Decide which text to display based on the CC value
if (ccValue == 1) {
p5.text("wicked",cc[0]*p5.width, p5.noise(cc[0]*2)*p5.height);
}
}
src(s4).mult(osc(10,0,3)).modulate(voronoi((10, 0.5, 2)))
.luma(0.1)
.repeat(()=>cc[2]*10, ()=>cc[2]*10)
.out(o4)
render(o4)
/// NEW PRPOSED VISUALS
a.show()
a.setBins(8)
a.setSmooth(0.8)
solid(1, 0, 1) // pink
.mask(
shape(999, 0.5, 0.5)
.scale(() => a.fft[1] + 0.2)
.scrollX(-0.3)
)
.layer(
solid(0, 1, 0.5) // green
.mask(
shape(4, 0.5, 0.5)
.scale(() => a.fft[1] + 0.2)
// .scrollX(0.3)
)
)
// .modulate(voronoi(999,3),0.8)
// .modulatePixelate(noise(55,0.5))
// .modulate(noise(0.9, 0.1))
.out()
hush()
hush()
In terms of the audio, we initially wanted to combine the idea of campus cats and simultaneously tell the story of ACT 1 of Wicked the musical and after further experimenting, we realized that we would have to split our performance into 9 different sections (That is, for each of the songs in ACT 1, so we decided to abandon the campus cats and we decided to put our energy into three main songs in ACT 1 which are The Wizard and I, What is this Feeling, and Defying Gravity. However, Rashed could not handle making the performance about one singular thing because he likes, as he says, “mixing things together that don’t really make sense but they somehow also do make sense” So he suggested adding Brat. The thing is, we did not know how we would add that element because that is an entirely different concept and Rashed found a clip of Abby Lee Miller stating “Oh, that sounded really bratty” and after further discussion we decided that clip would be a perfect transition from wicked to Brat. But that was not enough, Rashed wanted to add more things and he brought up the idea of using “Crazy” by Le Sserafim because he also like voguing and that song would reach the Kpop lovers and all the gaming community since it’s been used in various games and edits and so we added it. Rashed suggested adding one more thing from a Nicki Minaj song but he wanted to make it Wicked themed to which we said yes but he had to censor the one curse word to which he agreed. After further discussion, we decided that Rashed and Ziya would say/ sing the first part of the song “What is This Feeling” to add a humorous aspect and Rashed would say the Nicki Minaj part and the ending War Cry which is a reference to Cythia Erivo’s Target Commercial.
At first when we approached the composition, we were not sure how it would sound. We know the musical songs from Wicked are already very theatrical and professionally composed and sung. What we came up with was our interpretation, our own twist of the music. We worked on the composition section by section, that is intro, build-up, drop, bridge, final ending, and I would say interlude. Starting out, we let every idea that came across our minds be realized into codes. In our first attempt, we ended up having a composition that had a runtime of roughly 7 – 8 minutes. After many more rehearsals, we realized that every section seemed to exist on its own term and didn’t connect much to the previous or next section, which was a little bit frustrating given that each section sounded so good on their own. We worked a lot on the transitions between sections. After multiple attempts at rehearsal, we realized the main issue with the transition was the sonic palette itself. We were using too many different samples; almost each pattern used a distinct sample. We figured out a good way to fix the problem is to narrow down the number of samples used, so we replaced the samples used in a few patterns with the samples that we already had, or reuse a few of them. Specifically, putting patterns that share the same sample next to each other helped a lot with smoothing out the transition. Moving forward, the lesson learned is that simplicity is better than complexity. At first in each section, we had a lot of sounds stuffed together. But as we progressed, we had to cut down the sounds and the patterns, either combining a few or removing a few completely. Critical thinking and feedback from the visual team, our classmates, and Professor Aaron helped us to reflect on the composition. Cleaning up and tightening the composition took a lot of time because we had to rearrange, add, remove patterns here and there. In addition to cleaning up, we also had to keep the filter and effects consistent. We ran into a few issues but eventually things got sorted out thanks to Professor Aaron’s help. One final thing, even though it is live coding, we also had a good time composing the music with code and mixing the sounds together. I wish we had more time to develop the live composing skill.
Overall, we are proud of our final composition and the way we were able to execute our idea in a unique yet smooth manner to the extent that the audience also enjoyed.
Tidal code:
setcps(135/60/4)
do
once "loath"
p "background" $ slow 2 $ ccv ((segment 10 (range 0 127 saw))) # ccn "0" # s "midi"
once "loath:5"
do
resetCycles
d11 $ loopAt 4 $ s "360b:3"
p "360b visuals" $ ccv "20 90 40" # ccn "0" # s "midi"
hush
--blonde--
do -- evaluate the hat section
d1 $ s "gra" # legato 1 -- add in scrollX
p "hat" $ ccv "50 65" # ccn "2" # s "midi"
d2 $ "hh*8"
--
do
d3 $ fast 2 $ n "1*2" # s "bd" # amp 1 -- comment out diff
p "background" $ fast 4 $ ccv ((segment 10 (range 0 127 saw))) # ccn "0" # s "midi" -- change voronoi to shape
do
d3 $ fast 2 $ n "0 1*2 2 1*2" # s "bd" # amp 7
p "switch" $ ccv "0 1" # ccn "4" # s "midi" -- comment out the blend
d4 $ s "909(5,16)"
do -- do the shape NOT BLEND -- EVALUATE PIXELATE SECTION
d5 $ s "bass1:11*4" # speed "2" # gain 1 # cutoff "70"
--p "pixelate" $ ccv ((segment 4 (range 0 100 saw))) # ccn "0" # s "midi"
p "pixelate" $ ccv "80 100 120 127" # ccn "0" # s "midi"
--
d6 $ swingBy (1/3) 4 $ sound "hh:13*4" # speed "0.5" # hcutoff "7000" # gain 1
d7 $ jux rev $ fast 0.5 $ s "crzy:6" # gain 0.6 # legato 1
hush
d1 silence
d2 silence
d3 silence
d4 silence
d5 silence
d6 silence
d7 silence
d8 silence
hush
-- build-up and beatdrop --
lookGlinda = do
d1 $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (0, 1, s "bd*4" # room 0.3)
, (1, 2, s "bd*8" # room 0.3)
, (2, 3, s "bd*16" # room 0.3)
, (3, 4, s "bd*32" # room 0.3)
]
# hpf (range 100 1000 $ slow 4 saw)
# speed (range 1 4 $ slow 4 saw)
# gain 1.2
# legato 0.5
p "popkick visual" $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (0, 1, ccv "30 60 90 120" # ccn "0" # s "midi")
, (1, 2, ccv "15 30 45 60 75 90 120" # ccn "0" # s "midi")
, (2, 3, ccv "30 10 20 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 10 30 60" # ccn "0" # s "midi")
, (3, 4, ccv ((segment 32 (range 0 127 saw))) # ccn "0" # s "midi")
]
d2 $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (0, 4, stack
[ s "~ cp" # room 0.9
, fast 2 $ s "hh*4 ~ hh*2 <superchip*2>"
])
]
# room 0.4
# legato 1
# gain (range 1 6 rand)
# speed (range 1 2 $ slow 4 saw)
d3 $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (4, 5, s "boq:1" # room 0.3 # gain 2) ]
lookGlinda
-- LOOK GLINDA P2 --
do
lookGlinda
p "disappear" $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (0, 4, ccv "0" # ccn "6" # s "midi") ]
p "disappearcat" $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (0, 4, ccv "0" # ccn "5" # s "midi") ]
p "me" $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (4, 5, ccv "[0 40 80 100 120] ~" # ccn "5" # s "midi") ]
p "boq" $ qtrigger $ filterWhen (>=0) $
seqP
[ (4, 5, ccv "0 127" # ccn "6" # s "midi") ]
once $ "boq:1"
d11 silence
-- beat drop --
hush
-- change to :1 --
do -- uncomment the rotate
d1 $ fast 1 $ s "crzy" # legato 1 # gain 1.5
p "rotate" $ ccv "100 20" # ccn "2" # s "midi"
d1 silence
-- Act like witches, dress like crazy --
d5 $ fast 2 $ sound "bd:13 [~ bd] sd:2 bd:13" #krush "4" # gain 2
do
setcps(120/60/4)
resetCycles
d5 silence
d1 $ loopAt 4 $ s "crzy:4" # gain 1.2
p "rotate" $ ccv "100 20" # ccn "2" # s "midi"
hush
d1 silence
d2 silence
d3 silence
hush
-- LOOK AT GLINDA PART 2
do --comment out scale
d4 $ slice 32 "2" $ sound "twai:1" # gain 1
p "scale" $ slow 2 $ ccv "100 20" # ccn "3" # s "midi"
d6 $ striate 8 $ s "ykw" # legato 1 # gain 1.2
do
d7 $ fast 0.5 $ s "oiia" # gain 1.1 # speed 0.8
p "shape-popular" $ fast 1 $ ccv "40 120 40" # ccn "0" # s "midi"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
hush
do
d10 $ sound "bd:13 [~ bd] sd:2 bd:13" #krush "4" # gain 1.8
p "d10 sound" $ ccv "124*3 [~10] 10*2 30*13" # ccn "2" # s "midi"
d10 silence
d12 $ s "gra"
hush
d1 silence
d2 silence
d3 silence
d4 silence
d5 silence
d6 silence
d7 silence
d8 silence
d9 silence
d10 silence
hush
--ENDING VORONOI--
do
d12 silence
once $ s "chun"
-- defying gravity --
once $ s "defy:2" # gain 1.5
d1 $ loopAt 1.2 $ "defy:6"
hush
d2 $ fast 2 $ sometimes (|+ n 12) $ scramble 4 $ n "<af5 ef6 df6 f5> df5 ef5 _" # s "superpiano" # legato 2
# pitch2 4
--change 4 to 8
# pitch3 2
# voice 0
# orbit 2
# room 0.1
# size 0.7
# slide 0
# speed 1
# gain 1.2
# accelerate 0
# cutoff 200
d3 $ slow 4 $ n "af5 ~ ef5 ~ df5 ~ f5 ~"
# s "supersaw"
# gain 0.6
# attack 0.2
# sustain 2
# release 3
# cutoff 800
# room 0.9
# size 0.8
d4 $ n "<[0 ~ 1 ~][~ 0 1 ~]>" # s "tink:4"
do
d5 $ slow 2 $ sound "superpiano:2" <| up "af5 af5 ef6 df6 ~*4 f5 af5 ~*24 df5 ~*2 f5 ef5 ~*12" # gain "0.6" # room "0.9"
p "endingpiano" $ slow 2 $ ccv "30 30 40 35 ~*4 50 50 ~*24 30 ~*2 50 40 ~*12" # ccn "0" # s "midi"
--d5 $ sound "superpiano:2" <| up "g5 f6 ~ [e6 c6]"
d5 $ slow 2 $ sound "superpiano:2" <| up "af5 af5 ef6 df6 ~*4 f5 af5 ~*12 df5 ~*2 f5 ef5 ~*8" # gain "0.6" # room "0.9" $ slow 2 $ sound "superpiano:2" <| up "af5 af5 ef6 df6 ~*4 f5 af5 ~*12 df5 ~*2 f5 ef5 ~*8" # gain "0.6" # room "0.9"
hush
once $ s "defy:5"
