Vadi
Vadi is an improvisation between sarod, a traditional fretless, plucked North Indian instrument, and a machine listener. The software accompanies the sarod by responding in real-time to timbral, melodic and rhythmic gestures. The textural accompaniment is derived from fragments of old archival recordings of Indian classical music, focusing on music in the cracks— the noise and detritus of old recordings. The machine listener, implemented as a MAX/MSP patch, tracks the pitch of the sarod and derives a representation of the music based on pitch statistics such as the pitch-class entropy. This information is used to control the textural accompaniment. Later the machine begins to respond melodically with a fragmented and broken imitation of the main melodic line. The piece culminates in a rhythmic exchange between the machine and the sarod set to teental, a rhythmic cycle of sixteen beats.