It might blur the line between VJ/animation tool and score generator. But SIGN/e lets you produce graphical scores that live inside an Ableton Live session, as abstract shapes appear and shift in time with the electronic music. And with the right players, it looks like a godsend — free, provided you can run Max for Live.
SIGN/e is a set of devices for Ableton Live intended for creating visual scores. It’s not unlike some other visual tools for Ableton Live we’ve looked at, but it’s not a visualizer. The idea is, you grab your PNG files and animate visual instructions for players. And since you’re not limited to paper, that score can move, a bit like you’re playing in an enchanted music academy haunted by the ghost of Oskar Fischinger. (See below.)
Programmer Evan Montpellier worked with a team at Université de Montréal to develop this suite of tools.
It’s all free in Max for Live.
https://github.com/LFO-lab/SIGNe
That lab is Montreal’s Laboratoire formes • ondes, co-directed by some familiar folks — Nicolas Bernier, Myriam Boucher, Dominic Thibault, and Pierre Michaud.
SIGN/e • SYMBOL-BASED INTERFACE FOR GRAPHIC NOTATION/EDITION Visual editing plugin (AMXD) to read & write graphic scores directly in Ableton Live. Import, modify, and animate PNGs images as instructions for live performers. SIGN/e lets you push beyond the limitations of conventional notation software to create scores that bridges the gap between your Ableton Live session and live performance.
Programmed by Evan Montpellier for Laboratoire formes • ondes at the Digital Music Dept. of Université de Montréal.
Brilliant. Let’s go.
Oh, and this definitely makes me think of folks like Fischinger, among others. For added inspiration:
But the ability to do that in Live in a way that can work with electronics and players — wow, that’s great. And it also becomes an imaginative way to make the ideas in that Live set explode out of the software and get back to human players. SIGN/e may not work the way you want graphic notation to work, but then a) it’s modifiable and b) if this challenges you to say, “no, it should work like this,” that’s also a great outcome in my book!
Time to recruit a harpist!
