Sunday Synth Jam: Composer and maker Sarah Angliss creates compositions for musical automata, of her own design, using Max/MSP, Supercollider, PRAAT and other tools.

This video captures a performance by the Ealing Feader – an musical automata that plays bells. In the video, the instrument plays an algorithmic composition.

Here’s what Angliss has to say about it:

Here’s the Ealing Feeder playing an algorithm rather like the one I cooked up in our studio afternoon. It’s not following a notated, conventional score. It’s playing a circular, mathematical pattern which I programmed in MaxMSP.

Halfway through the video, there’s a double (in Baroque style), where quavers are interspersed with semiquavers playing in counterpoint with the original tune.

Angliss notes:

I’m most interested in the Ealing Feeder when it plays music which humans can’t perform. This might be a lightning fast ostinato or music where 5 beats play against 7, 8 play against 13 or notes spill out in some other fiendish pattern.