Monday Morning in Lagos (2015) is a generative composition made with the Pure Data software. It is based on a Lagos Soundscape recording of the same title by Emeka Ogboh, and forms part of our LOS-HEL project in which Lagos and Helsinki come together through sound, image and text.

In the beginning of Ogboh’s recording, an itinerant young beggar is heard singing a beautiful tune on a street corner in Lagos. I have chosen a few short phrases of the singing and turned these into ‘seeds’ (audio samples), from which the piece then generates itself. Additionally, I have created few ‘seeds’ of harmonic chords to accompany the singing and which similarly grow over time. Both of these ‘seed sets’ are further subjected to a chain of audio treatments such as granular synthesis, convolution, delays and modulation that enable the piece to grow more abstract as it progresses.

The engine behind the piece is an elaborate sample player created in Pure Data, operated by a probabilistic algorithm; the treatments are similarly operated by a set of probabilistic algorithms using mostly Markov chains. This probabilistic character means that while the piece is slightly different and randomized each time it is played, it always retains a unified character throughout. This to me is more interesting than if the piece had a completely random and unpredictable behaviour: it becomes like a river, always changing yet always retaining its character.

Here is a 9-minute recording of one of the variations of the piece:

Original Lagos Soundscape – Emeka Ogboh
Afrorithmic programming – Ilpo Jauhiainen