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There are so many ways of using Virtual ANS that I hate to mention even in passing any one approach to slight anyone toward using it. Inevitably, anyone creating with this or anything else will find some preferred ways of doing so.

One I didn’t use here was back when my former wife/current friend was teaching a college art class at some somewhat far flung state university. I’d pitch in by driving her to another private college and later on back home in traffic. I have no suggestions on how to create anything while driving. No longer a songwriter, no lyrics nor any other sorts of notes were being fashioned as I dragged us back through afternoon congestion.

But earlier in the day I had blank sheets of paper and a pen and just drew lines right-to-left along the longest dimension of the pages. And later scanned these pages, and loaded the scans into Virtual ANS as jpegs to be inverted and otherwise edited for use. White lines equal pitched sound, black/formerly white space equalled silence. Granted everything needed adjustments, like tweaks of the contrast, via the features of VANS. So, few if any such scans, even inverted, were used as they were. Other, odd tweaks done included what might seem to some ears listening back on certain speakers a wrong and/or unnecessary bandlimiting/application of the line information to certain octaves. To avoid recipes or serving suggestions, I will be vaguely honest and admit to such bandlimiting without giving any specifics that might yet mislead others. I had a strong notion, if no direct proof, that some lower register sounds were unnecessary and so I edited them out. Again, Virtual ANS is a very flexible program that may well allow other, simpler ways to leave out lower, unused registers. Your usage might vary.

[Another I haven’t used in a while is a form of abstracted mourning. Copying and editing handwritten text, some done in calligraphy, as a basis for something done (and likely further edited) in Virtual ANS. Any use of lines likely involves so many choices about resizing as to call into question the supposed objectivity of any sonification of data—think data sets, frame sizes and scaling (but we’ll leave all that to aesthetes, philosophers and sundry art historians at large). Think more of gestures here, some residue of the person.]

That was then, back years ago. Now with the proliferation of smartphones and simple graphics apps, such things might happen rather differently. And with me, likely would. But the choice of starting with ink or pencil on paper remains for anyone so inclined.

Let’s just say that what I do is likely far greater than who I am. Most would say the opposite of themselves and their work. Let them. I see no point in limiiting whatever I do that way. [Avoiding topic drift, moving on . . . ]

Another similar but different sometimes use is pasting images into Virtual ANS and editing them. One set up is to use or emphasize horizontal lines.

If one is inclined (as I’m not) to create percussive beats, vertical lines etc. make for quick broad spectrum noises (think drum machine, beat box sounds). But if one is inclined toward drones and such, horizontal lines do best.

Many will advise one against recipes and such, but the above seems true enough to be useful.

Another possibly dodgy pointer/potential recipe is to set things to run s l o w l y (Composer Nicolas Collins calls this a notion of the avant garde, to do anything one can, very slowly.) This happens in the VANS project settings, a low number of pixels per minute draws things out in a low-res way. And gets more from fewer pixels/less data. Which also encourages function and malfunction in idiomatic ways.

General notion here is finding and using the odd quirks and idiomatic twists of any given tool. Seem to recall maybe the likes of Brian Eno suggesting such a thing, pushing various tools, gizmos and bits of whatnot to their failure point, and beyond. So it is, sometimes at least, with my use of Virtual ANS. Pushing it to fail in useful and interesting ways. Welcome to modern cray. We get these new things to be strong, but how strong do we need to be to make interesting things​? So new things have new ways to fail and be weak (albeit in strong and useful ways).

The program, Virtual ANS, is a multi platform bit of donationware available online as an emulation of a very powerful and (then, at least) elaborate piece of Soviet hardware, that was named affer the Russian composer Alexander Nikolayevich Sciabin and used light and image to create and organize sound. Indeed, to make music and sound for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Eduard Artemyev used the ANS synthesizer. Plus all this bears some connection to British composer and innovator, Daphne Oram, and her Oramics.

So sight into sound is a not uncommon theme or approach. Likewise. Canadian filmmaker and animator Norman McLaren, who innovated so much, used film to make “visual music”.

I do avoid “program music” and its cliches/dodgy associations. Still this tool is handy to bring one sort of thing like the visual into the making of sound. Especially as one might well learn the limits of how one thing translates into another, like the vertical broad burst percussion versus the horizontal drones. Or to learning how to brush up against the limits to find and use them to do what might not otherwise happen.

One starts with scans or photos or pure digital drawings done with the tools within the program. Moving forward in various ways from various starting points.

So it with the Virtual ANS