tairseach & ciorcal

2026 · in development · eight-voice drone instrument and audio-reactive visualiser, built in Max/MSP and Jitter

Tairseach (trans. ‘threshold’) is an eight-voice drone instrument. Its voices are tuned from sets of frequency ratios (just-intonation harmonics, utonal and Pythagorean series, 7-limit clusters, Bohlen–Pierce) and glide slowly from chord to chord, each with its own waveform, passing through a modulated delay network and tape-style wear.

Ciorcal (trans. ‘circle’) is a separate visualiser that listens to Tairseach. Eight concentric rings, one for each voice, take their shape from that voice’s waveform and partials; beating between close voices appears as moiré, and the palettes are drawn from Irish landscape materials: stone, moss, wood, embers, bog and frost. Screen recordings of both will be added here.