less concepts by dani derks

*less concepts* was recorded between 5/16/2018 - 6/22/2018.

The song titles are (respectfully, if a little tastelessly) stolen from short stories + drawings made by kiddos at the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

The compositional content — rhythms, melodies, harmonies — was all decided in real time by algorithms. This was made possible by Teletype, a small computer-y device that allows a person to code *how* and *when* they want musical events to happen. Among other things, it uses lists to keep track of notes and voltage to communicate with oscillators (the raw voice of a synthesizer).

Teletype is also a platform that’s been heavily developed by the community that uses it (llllllll.co), through the curation and expansion of its musical code language.

These pieces were created using one of the operators in Teletype’s code: cellular automata. It has been a real, deep joy to explore and I didn’t know much about the science of it before, so I made a free app for you to explore it too. The app and + in-depth explanation of the process can be downloaded at https://github.com/dndrks/less_concepts.

Tracklist

1.	take away my hands	3:06

2.	noah the alligator shark	1:52

3.	I don't want the others to know I do not have a hoverboard	4:27

4.	they swam with their moms and lived happily ever after	2:35

5.	his name was squeeze	4:56

6.	I had depression for MONTHS	5:34

Credits

released October 28, 2018

The master was wonderfully handled + helmed by Sage Kim at Lacquer Channel Mastering in Toronto, Ontario. I chose Sage based on her excellent treatment of folk material, which manifested nicely in this master -- she unearthed harmonic relationships I had long forgot about and put enough of her fingerprint into the project that I can listen without hearing *myself* in the work.

The artwork is an original piece by Racquel Cable. Her work can be found on Instagram under @suitcasedog

Extra thanks to Jonny Butler, Kyle Chamberlin, Sean Hellfritsch, Michael Hetrick, and Nick Sanborn for their guidance and feedback through the mastering process + documentation build.

License