Margaret Anne Schedel:
Ferociously Interactive Multimedia
Working Outside the Beat
As computer music geek-in-chief, Schedel works her music software like a veteran conductor subtly wielding her baton. “I use the Logic sequencer and multi-track recording system to create a different kind of music,” she notes, adding, “I’ve worked with a lot of sequencers over the years, and Logic is my favorite because it’s so flexible. It doesn’t compel you to think in a particular way. With other programs, you feel you’re fighting with them. But Logic doesn’t box you in — it’s easy to write free-form music.”
The King’s Throne. The angles in the stairs are taken from angles in the building design.
Schedel explains how music software can restrict a composer’s options. “Most programs force you to put everything on a beat,” she says, “or you have to really search to find a way not to. But in electro-acoustic music, we often want to work outside the beat. Logic doesn’t manipulate where you put the beat. So it’s great for advanced musicians who want to work beyond that structure.”
“We wondered, how to convey that he’s going mad? We created a video portrait showing the king progress through six stages of madness — kind of like ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.”
Moreover, says Schedel, the program handles each tough computing task she throws at it. “I appreciate the power and stability of Logic,” she says. “It doesn’t crash, even when I line up eight 50-minute tracks, one on top of the other. Sure, other programs may run the tracks, but they tend to crash or to stutter and slow down when I’m scrolling. Logic lets me play my sound files and scroll quickly between sections. Being able to do that without problems is impressive. And it’s fast! Screen redraws play at the touch of the space bar, so I don’t have to wait.”
To this composer, who’s herself composed of near-equal parts musician and technologist, Logic delivers the best of both worlds.
“There have been other music programs that felt like they were programmed by programmers,” she says, “but Logic feels programmed by musicians.”
Performing in Real-Time
Once her tracks for “A King Listens” were completed in Logic, Schedel read them into Max/MSP/Jitter, an object-oriented programming environment which has extensions for performing music and multimedia. MSP is the audio plugin that allows Max to use Logic sound files, while Jitter allows live performance of video images. The program also includes extensive support for QuickTime audio and video. “We made the raw materials in other programs” she says, “and used Max/MSP/Jitter to activate the data in real-time.”
On stage, explains Schedel, “The king wears wireless sensors that control the audio tracks and the interactive videos. He’s performing the sounds and images via sensors attached to his elbows and wrists, which send values from 1 to 127 — the MIDI range — to the computer.”
Schedel’s script directs the king to tell the story by making certain gestures. “Each soundtrack corresponds to a geographic area on the set,” she says, “in concentric circles that start from the king’s own body and go out to the throne room, castle grounds, town, village, forest, ocean.” The creative staging enables Schedel to depict the king’s evolving state of mind without resorting to literal prop devices.
A Portrait of Madness
“As the king goes mad,” relates Schedel, “his appearance is supposed to change. But he’s on his throne, four feet off the ground, so we knew we couldn’t get him up and down in time for makeup and costume changes. And we thought using facial expressions alone wouldn’t be enough for the audience. We wondered, how to convey that he’s going mad?” Schedel found a typically inventive solution. “We created a video portrait showing the king progress through six stages of madness — kind of like ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.”
Schedel turned to teammate and videographer Trinidad Mac-Auliffe, who used Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Flash and After Effects for the six videos. “You see the king start out all stern and rigid,” she says, “and then it cross-fades to the next video. I use digital effects like streaking and pixellation to show him getting more crazy and paranoid. Then during the love song, when he focuses on his lover, the portrait dissolves into nothing.”
Mac-Auliffe took advantage of Final Cut Pro’s masking and color correction features for the “Whisper” series, where the chorus enters the video. “We wanted the chorus to look uniform,” she explains, “but they all have different skin tones. So I used cropping and color correcting, and I was amazed at how quickly it went.” She also used LiveType for titles. “In the past, I had to export a QuickTime file to After Effects to generate visually interesting title treatments,” she relates. “But now I rely on LiveType, which is right there — and I’m eager to start using Motion.”
