Welcome to Adam Jansch's Pact documentation, covering CreativePact, Hackpact and more
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Create A Week
1 January 2019
AnnualPact (24 posts)
Introducing a new formulation of Pact, over the whole of 2019 I will fit musical creativity into my schedule and document it in a weekly post.
- 29/12/19: An ‑otronic end of year - One year, one failed AnnualPact. But I did finish the year by opening Maschine and starting on some new ‑otron material. It was more like new/old material – I've been planning...
- 03/11/19: 30s piano loop - It has been quite a while, but I did log some hours this week building loops in the S5000. Of those, the one that stood out is this one, created from a recording from an LP of 30s...
- 14/07/19: Farthest Trex vocal recording - It's been a couple of months, but a completely free afternoon allowed me some vocal recording time. And the target project? Farthest Trex. Things didn't go entirely to plan. I en...
- 18/05/19: AnnualPact parameters updated - The time has come. I've realised the real truth is that I just don't have time for creativity at the moment. I've tried to push a creative line this year, but I don't have a sing...
- 11/05/19: Layton & Johnstone & The Caretaker - Audio! I did some audio this week! It is attached! This makes this post more interesting than of late. It was back to sampling, with the general direction to approach the sound w...
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Prism Fission
9 September 2017
CreativePact (32 posts)
In this CreativePact, following a couple of months in the creative doldrums, I will be working to complete Prism Exhilarated, a unique media music release by ‑otron.
- 30/11/17: Prism Fission: epilogue - Yes, it's true. In the final post of the Prism Fission CreativePact I did say I would write a summary post within a week. And it's now December. What the hell happened?? Creati...
- 08/10/17: Mastering mastering - For this, the final session of Prism Fission, I tried my mastering workflow on Prism Exhilarated's first track ‘Hxxr’. My plan is not to go to town on mastering here, but to ma...
- 07/10/17: Tape deck woes, distortion goes - Really a mixed up pact session this time, as I focussed on items from my Trello to-do list. The first was to check out my cassette deck, a Sansui SC-3110. I even took a nice pict...
- 06/10/17: Dealing with defaults - After yesterday's coding victory, today I came back down to earth, realising that while I had successfully constructed a unique process track, I wasn't taking into account defaul...
- 05/10/17: Unique process results! - Today I threw caution to wind and plowed into coding up the actual unique process construction routine. And BOOM, I now have a Python script that constructs unique renditions of P...
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Soundboard Record
1 August 2016
CreativePact (34 posts)
Taking material generation to a more granular level, I will spend this CreativePact building a sampling-centred soundboard in Ableton Live.
- 06/09/16: Soundboard Record epilogue - Last week the curtain closed on what ranks as one of my best CreativePacts, and, you know, by the end of the first week I had proved to myself that this method of creative generati...
- 31/08/16: ThoseStrings - Like the final crumpet of the packet being placed in the toaster and subsequently devoured, CreativePact 2016 has concluded (for the record, there is no significance behind the cru...
- 30/08/16: Squelch piano - This Pact session was a complex one: not only did I employ the Proteus and thus need to do some sampling, I also Instrument Racked up three samplers and then grouped that with th...
- 29/08/16: Mornings - This is the first Pact session in a few where I've not been time constrained, and hallelujah! it's a good feeling. Two parts came from this session, though they were based off a si...
- 28/08/16: Kit 06 (b) - I went ahead and mixed the drums I laid down yesterday (of course taking the intermediate step of Samplering all the necessary hits). Overall, pretty decent, nothing particularly n...
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Dorian Live
1 September 2015
CreativePact (32 posts)
Having lately developed my studio practice it's time to look at the live side, so with a big gig on the horizon I'll use this Pact to lay the groundwork for Dorian Live.
- 27/11/15: Dorian Live: epilogue - It's the Friday after the Wednesday, the Wednesday of the big night: Dorian Zoyd's live debut as part of Union Chapel's final Organ Project concert. The question of the moment: how...
- 02/10/15: Ending on a pedal - Actually, that should be "Ending on some pedals". In my final CreativePact session of 2015 I delved into the effects pedals situation for the vocal and saxophone parts in Automat...
- 01/10/15: Automaton tech setup - It's crept up on us, and all of a sudden we're at the penultimate day of CreativePact 2015. I have yet to discuss the tech setup I foresee for Automaton, so best get it in before f...
- 30/09/15: Automaton score, now with performer notes - Inching closer is the term. I now have an organ score for Automaton with performer notes, so really I'm awaiting feedback on the score from James before I can finally put a stamp o...
- 29/09/15: Score nearing completion - It has happened: the intro section to Automaton's score has been written. (Shock! Horror!) And, as it turns out, MuseScore accommodated the final graphical elements I required with...
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Man and Maschine
4 August 2014
CreativePact (33 posts)
With the Native Instruments Maschine Studio as focal point, this year I will generate a new sonic idea each day, towards a post-Pact electronic music release.
- 05/04/15: Man and Maschine epilogue - On March 20th 2015, ‑otron released Voltronic/Galaxer, a two-sided LP of electronic beats and atmospheres. And also the progeny of Man and Maschine. Following the end of th...
- 28/10/14: CreativePact 2014 summary, post-Pact movements - It has been almost two months since the conclusion of Man and Maschine, and amongst moving house, decorating and other things I have managed to form the material created during t...
- 06/09/14: Krentz, CreativePact conclusion! - The final day of my 2014 CreativePact has arrived! And to celebrate I present the kind of funky Krentz (which took two sessions to shape into something acceptable). I'm going to...
- 05/09/14: Mendel, end of school feeling - Penultimate day of my CreativePact! And I present the jittery-rhythmed Mendel, which makes use of the square wave sample pitch modulation technique I have mentioned previously. T...
- 04/09/14: Aegist, dulcet electronicism - A track I really like today in Aegist, lush and calming, and almost certain to make it onto the atmospheric side of the ‑otron release. One of the first tasks post-Pact will be t...
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IdeoVideo
1 September 2013
CreativePact (18 posts)
Looping video techniques and Apple's divisive video editor Final Cut Pro X will be the focus of this year's CreativePact exploration.
- 05/10/13: CreativePact 2013 epilogue - Pact directions - CreativePact month ended several days ago, and I've had some time to mull over my experience this year. How one approaches the Pact is central to my thinking. It's telling that f...
- 18/09/13: Final Cut Pro X hampers progress - At the beginning of this project I noted that a significant part of it was to jump in with Final Cut Pro X. It has been 18 days and I haven't talked much about the software, so her...
- 17/09/13: Morning Surface - Two videos in as many days! Back on day 13 I was thinking about where this project was headed and mentioned filmmaker Martin Arnold. That thought was brought on by finding a se...
- 16/09/13: Strain - Following a "weekend mulligan", here's my second looping video, which is actually a loop within a loop – a flux while Dr. Mark Hall worries about the detonation key around his neck...
- 13/09/13: Moving forward - As this project moves forward towards its second-half I just wanted to give an idea where I might go with the video element. For the last week I've been working on these forever...
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Cerebral Sister EP
1 September 2012
CreativePact (29 posts)
With work having commenced on an EP under the name Cerebral Sister, I will be dedicating the bulk of this CreativePact to writing lyrics towards this release.
- 15/06/13: CreativePact 2012 epilogue - Lost Zoyd, Threshold - So, it took a few more months to finish, but finally the EP Threshold – the completion of the music of this CreativePact project – has been released to the world. The 6-tracker i...
- 07/10/12: CreativePact end fail, and a summary - So yeah, it's obvious that the end of my CreativePact was a failure, having missed the last three days. I got overwhelmed with other things in my life which were more important, an...
- 27/09/12: Return to 'Stab' - Returning to lyrics! I worked some more on 'Stab', filling in the first section before the hand-over to the guest rapper. I also managed to poke myself in the eye with my lyric boo...
- 26/09/12: Back to sampling - Another busy evening (following another missed day), but I have managed to squeeze in a bit of sampling, having continued where I left off with 3x3 Eyes. I've captured some usefu...
- 24/09/12: More sampling - Another busy night has meant not much CreativePact action for me, so I went through another 3x3 Eyes episode for sampling purposes. I have found it requires more focus that with Ul...
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PhD write-up diary
1 September 2011
CreativePact (6 posts)
With the hand-in of my PhD not far away I have decided to spend this year's CreativePact writing a diary of its completion.
- 20/07/12: CreativePact 2011 epilogue - As predicted, my CreativePact for 2011 was cut short early on (primarily due to circumstances outside of my control). The good news though is that I successfully submitted my PhD i...
- 05/09/11: Short day, PhD submission extension - Today I didn't do too much as I arranged with Monty an extension to my PhD submission deadline, necessary as a number of things (which are not topics of this blog) have come togeth...
- 04/09/11: Swapping timers for observation/notification - Today I'm going to continue documenting my programming. Before I start on this just to mention I also worked on the mix of 'Futures', the second track of Futures EP. The order of...
- 03/09/11: Futures EP in development - Here is a shot of Futures EP running on my iPad. Today I started a new Objective-C class encapsulating an AVPlayer-based playback engine, timed using an instance of AVMutableCom...
- 02/09/11: iOS programming breakthrough - On my way to finishing my PhD today I started with editing speech for my track 'Futures' – with that completed all editing should be done and I can move on to mixing. In the aftern...
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A Month of Pixelmator
1 September 2010
CreativePact (32 posts)
The focal point for my first CreativePact is the image editing package Pixelmator, a lightweight and low-cost rival to Photoshop.
- 30/09/10: flower i - It's the final CreativePact post! So here is flower i and now I will sign off!
- 29/09/10: garden path i - In this penultimate CreativePact post I present garden path i, processed from a photograph of my dad's rainy garden path taken in the evening. I'll confess that there's nothing n...
- 28/09/10: girder i - Today a simple processing of a photograph taken on one of my extended jaunts with Scott Hewitt. The original is of a girder beneath the rail line between Huddersfield and Leeds,...
- 27/09/10: railing i - Further photographic processings, this time with railing i. The original photograph depicts a guard railing located outside Tesco in Huddersfield, by the ring road. This image mi...
- 26/09/10: aquarium i - Back to photographic material, this time a photo of a restaurant taken through a fish tank. The result is aquarium i.
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Supercollider a day
1 September 2009
Hackpact (30 posts)
For Hackpact I will attempt to learn the Supercollider audio programming language, updating this page with a new block of code each day.
- 30/09/09: Speaking patch (for the farewell) - To say goodbye to Hackpact, here's a speaking patch.
- 29/09/09: Something random in one function - Something random in one function.
- 28/09/09: Continuation of Keyboard synth - Continuation of the Keyboard synth.
- 27/09/09: ASCII keyboard testing - ASCII keyboard testing.
- 26/09/09: Beginnings of a Keyboard synth - Beginnings of a Keyboard synth.