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core pop notespatial
1 folder · 2 files
bin
CLIMBALIFT.md
README.md
README.md

notespatial — the ring, heard from the middle #

Two records live here: the binaural print of the whole suite (below), and climbalift, the Climb and the Lift cut out of it and rebuilt as a club record — see CLIMBALIFT.md.

A suite in eleven chapters for five laptops in a ring and one held at the center, printed binaurally from the listener's seat. 12:54 · instrumental · headphones. On speakers the room folds to a stereo sketch; in headphones the theme walks around your head.

bash pop/notespatial/bin/render.sh        # print → master → out/notespatial-MASTER.flac

What it is #

Note(s)pat(ial) Native is the spatial score written for the September 24, 2026 CultureHub LA performance: fedac/native/scores/notespatial-native.nsscore, composed by fedac/native/tools/compose-notespatial-native.mjs. Six salvaged laptops run AC OS; seats 1 to 5 sit in a pentagon around the audience (seat 1 front, numbers clockwise) and the sixth is in the performer's hands at the center on a small speaker. A Windows sub under seat 1 carries what a laptop cannot. The arrangement, chapter by chapter, is grants/culturehub-la-2026/NOTESPATIAL-ARRANGEMENT.md; the reading behind it is papers/chamber-platter/.

The release is not a recording of the room. It is the score rendered by the studio's model of the room — fedac/native/tools/notespatial-native-render.mjs — every seat's feed synthesized with the runtime's own envelopes and the gm_synth core, run through a mono model of the seat effects, and placed around a listener at the center with measured KEMAR head-related transfer functions (fedac/native/tools/hrir/). Seat energies are equalized so only the direction cues survive (delay, spectrum, left–right balance). The sub feed sits front at the render's default level (0.25, 80 Hz low-pass).

Chapter Starts Key · meter · tempo Where it is
I Overture 0:00 free, pulse 55→136 center, then a circle drawn faster
II The Walk 1:00 C · 4/4 · 100→104 front–back axis, an opposing line
III Waltz 1:56 A minor · 3/4 · 132→112 a sway; melody circling under a held line
IV Chase 3:15 F · 4/4 · 152→200 two runners circling
V Sneak 4:03 C minor · 4/4 · 84 one seat at a time, behind you
VI Lullaby 5:01 F · 6/8 · 72 a slow cradle; the room revolves
VII The Climb 6:15 C · 4/4 · 112→124 two directions, then percussion alone
VIII The Lift 7:21 D · 4/4 · 120→124→118 everything, spinning; then one chord
IX Fanfare 9:14 G · 4/4 · 132 pairs across the room
X Return 9:52 C · 4/4 · 104→88 the ring closes to the front, then the center
XI Vanish 11:53 free, pulse 60 a circle drawn backwards, a point, one knock

The print and the master #

bin/render.sh is two steps, both deterministic:

  1. Print. notespatial-native-render.mjs --audio-only --sub --float → out/notespatial-binaural-sub-f32.wav (32-bit float, 44.1 kHz, peak 0.95). The --float flag was added for this release; the tool's 16-bit print is for review, not mastering.
  2. Master. bin/master.sh <print> 3 out/notespatial-MASTER.flac — the house law (pop/MASTERING.md): 20 Hz subsonic high-pass, bass mono below 120 Hz (the side channel high-passed at 120 Hz), one static +3 dB, a 4× oversampled true-peak limiter (6 ms / 90 ms, ASC, ceiling −2.2 dBTP), 24-bit FLAC at the project rate. Nothing rides the song; the composed level arc (0.3 → 0.8 → 0.3) is the record's dynamics.

The gain was chosen by measuring the limiter's work against a limiter-less pass of the same chain: at +3 dB it reduces more than 2 dB for 2.2 s of the 13 minutes and peaks at 4.5 dB once, on the Lift's tutti D chord (9:08). At +4 dB that grows to 5.1 s and 5.5 dB; at +2.5 dB it is 1.3 s and 4.0 dB.

Master: −16.7 LUFS · −2.1 dBTP · LRA 15.7 · PLR 14.6 · 775.9 s. That is quiet against the pop catalog on purpose. A 13-minute chamber suite whose chapters sit between −25 and −15 LUFS is not a single to press to −10; the ambient exception in MASTERING.md applies. Mono fold on the loudest 8 s loses 2.1 dB (gate: 1.5) — the binaural placement is the composition, as with pop/bracelet/; phone proxy loses 2.9 dB (gate: 5), fine.

Cover #

out/notespatial-cover-dark-3000.jpg — the render tool's own isometric view of the room at 8:35, inside the Lift's eight-turn spin: the pentagon of laptops lit by what they are playing, the held laptop at the center, a kick, and the notes flying in along their radials. Rendered at 1500², cropped to the ring, scaled ×3 nearest-neighbor. A light-theme sibling sits beside it. No AI.

Files #

  • bin/render.sh · bin/master.sh — the whole record from the repo
  • out/ (gitignored) — print, candidates, master, preview mp3, covers, audit
  • Release ledger: pop/RELEASES.md; public record: pop/releases/notespatial/release.json; DistroKid packet: ~/Documents/Shelf/notespatial-DISTROKID/