FluCoMa Podcast #09: Ben Hackbarth

by Jacob Hart

The ninth episode of the FluCoMa Podcast where Jacob Hart talks with creative coder, composer and creator of AudioGuide Ben Hackbarth.

Ben Hackbarth

The Podcast

Chapters

1. Introduction (0:0)

2. Getting into music and music technology (1:55)

3. Introduction to AudioGuide (3:5)

4. The story of AudioGuide’s development (5:38)

5. Initial pieces made with AudioGuide (9:37)

6. Concat synthesis in Ben’s practice (14:4)

7. Working with instrumentalists (16:54)

8. Time and perspectives on live concat synthesis (22:4)

9. Questions of interface (30:18)

10. Approach to corpus curation (39:28)

11. Having your tool used by others (46:40)

Overview

In this episode of the FluCoMa Podcast, I talk to Dr. Ben Hackbarth who is currently the Head of Composition at the University of Liverpool. We talk about his creative process, and the tool he has been developing for many years for enabling complex offline concatenative synthesis: AudioGuide. We discuss his approach to development, and also how concatenative synthesis enters into his creative practice as a composer.

Links

Here are the links to some of the things that were discussed during the podcast:

• The University of Liverpool: Interdisciplinary Centre for Composition and Technology (ICCaT). Musical Features Festival.

• “Compositeur en résidence” at IRCAM.

• Residencies at the Cité des Arts, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and more.

• Presentation at Huddersfiled’s Creative Coding Lab:

• Rebecca Fiebrink’s presentation:

• Leafcutter John’s Presentation:

• Part 1/5 of the in-depth AudioGuide tutorial:

• Tutorial for algorithmic selection of simultaneous corpus samples:

• AudioGuide was developed by Ben, Norbert Schnell, Philippe Esling, and Diemo Schwarz.

• IRCAM’s Artistic research residency program.

• Diemo Schwarz’s CataRT.

• Norbert Schnell’s work with Marco Antonio Suarez-Cifuentes and MuBu.

• Philippe Esling’s Orchidea.

• Am I a Particle or a Wave? (2011):

• Steven Takasugi’s Die Klavierübung (2007):

• Ben’s Liquid Studies (2017-2018).

• Example 1:

• Example 2:

• FluCoMa Podcast with Zakiya Leeming and Chris Melen.

• Rodrigo Constanzo’s C-C-Combine.

• Article about James Bradbury’s creative work and Finding Things In Stuff (FTIS).

• Example 3:

• Article about Gerard Roma’s piece for FluCoMa.

• Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s (un)weave (2019), made using AudioGuide:

• Olivier Pasquet’s One thousand and one nights made using AudioGuide.