Results for CDM

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer Exclusive Demo and Interview

A closer look at the OP-1 portable synthesizer and controller (no release date yet though).

Last week, Ihavesynth.com got the chance to meet up with Teenage Engineering to get a closer look at the OP-1 synthesizer/sampler/controller/you-name-it. Teenage Engineering revealed their eye-catching OP-1 at Musikmesse in 2009 and the hype around the synthesizer has been massive, even though it is not yet released. We have posted about the OP-1 before and offcourse we are as curious about the OP-1 as the rest of the world seems to be.

Teenage Engineering is a great gang of 7 tech guys in a white painted garage filled with wonderful stuff like computers, synthesizers, all sorts of tech gear, an electronics shop, 3D printers, bikes, mopeds and a little dog which you can hear in the interview. The Teenage Engineering crew has experience from a lot of different areas, like the gaming industry, programming, electronic music – and it all comes together in their cozy garage.My mate Bjorn had a chat with David at Teenage Engineering, check it out in this clip.

# RockBandStageKit

This project demonstrates how to use the Xbox Rock Band Stage Kit with Micro framework using GHI's USB Host feature….no Xbox is necessary!

This kit uses USB and it has special requests to set the strobe speed, LEDs and fog. But no worries! This still works with GHI NETMF devices. We use USB host on a low level using USBH Raw Device. This allows us to control the Stage kit as we like! It is actually easy if you know how USB works.

# Diego Stocco "Experibass Suite"

Diego Stocco @ Soundcloud: In the past months I've been working on some new tracks with my Experibass. Since I built it, I discovered many new ways of interacting with it
Take a look at this gallery to know more about the Experibass: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Experibass/312989

# PIXEL – A pixel art documentary

An 11 minute documentary exploring the merits and impact of pixel art, animation and chiptune music.

# Kaoss Pad Pitch Modification w/Internal Controls

GetLoFi reports:

David M. just sent us useful information on how to add internal pitch controls for both Kaossilator and the Kaoss Pad, below are his words of wisdom…

After reading about the GetLoFi Tutorial for 1799 oscillator circuit mod on the KORG Mini KP/KO and with a few of the LTC Modules on hand I decided to give it a go on a brand new Kaossilator. The conversion took about 45 minutes to do, but the results just blew me away. A real transformer for this instrument.

# The Creators Project

The Creators Project event series—a roving global celebration—launches this summer on June 26, when The Creators rolls into 80,000-square-feet of display and performance space honeycombed throughout the legendary Milk Studios in New York’s Meatpacking District.

The event is going to be a groundbreaking combination of interactive art and installations, panels, workshops, screenings, and live performances. As much as The Creators Project is a digital archive of our digital world, it is also a testament to the enduring appeal of the Real. Many of the artists within the program explore the way that digitally manipulated images, sounds, and motions converge in real time, in real spaces.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact

Peter Kirn has a lengthy post on the matter:

With the regularity of clockwork, stories about how digital audio consumption is degrading the quality of music are published and then re-published. Nearly a decade after the introduction of Apple’s iPod, this still apparently qualifies as news. The content of the articles is so identical, you could believe the bylines are a ruse, a nom-de-plume for the same author re-publishing the same story.

Whatever the reason for their supposed newsworthiness, the problem with these stories isn’t their claims about the variable quality of music listening. I think it’d be hard to overstate just how sub-optimal real-world listening by real-world consumers can get. The problem is that these journalists, inexperienced in the actual history of the technology they’re covering, falsely identify a technological trend.

In the process, they miss the real story of how listeners listen.

All I can say is +1.

# Color a Sound

A demo/walkthrough of my installation entitled 'Color a Sound' which was set up at RPI's West Hall Gallery 111 for the month of April 2010.

The interaction is meant to be very simple and playful, hence the major scale. It would be much more difficult for someone to walk up and have fun with a chromatic scale. Like any instrument, one would have to spend a lot of time to make a composition worth listening to and this is just a demo of the sonic abilities/responsiveness.

# Youtube MIDI interface

Gijs Gieskes is back with something new:

A arduino usb hid keyboard emulator is used to convert midi note messages to keypresses. This can be usefull to controle online videos with midi, in combination with the youtube mixer (uses the youtube javascript api).

The midi part is from this script. And the keyboard emulator is from the arduino USB keyboard library.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Phillips SAA-1099 Sample Pack (Copyright-free and License-free)

A new pack of samples by Sebastian Tomczak:

I have made a copyright-free and license-free sample pack of the Phillips SAA-1099 sound generator chip. It is a very straightforward sample pack, consisting of 96 pitched samples and 16 noise samples, across a range of frequencies. These samples have been recorded from hardware. The audio output stage of the sound chip has not been filtered.

Sebastian has also announced a music contest:

It's time to get your chipmusic on! This is your chance to win a SEGA Master System MIDI Interface. Be the coolest musician in your town with this brand new tool that lets you control the sound chip in your SEGA Master System with MIDI data.

More information: SEGA Music Competition: Win A SEGA Master System MIDI Interface!

# Jim Reekes, The Man Behind Mac Sound

From Create Digital Music:

The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup sound.

# New Block Construction

Livid Instruments improves its Block:

Improving on a design and sharing the results with our users is always at the top of our list at Livid. The Block controller has been a great success and we have just made some minor design changes to make it even better. Originally milled from a solid block of wood, the square body with thin bottom has had its challenges, mostly warping and cupping. We have experienced a bit higher reject rate for bodies at the shop before they were built then we would like. Thus, the up and coming stash of rejected bodies in the Livid Graveyard that were never meant to be!

# Waveformless: 5 Ways of Emulating Vintage Samplers

Tom Shear on how to emulate vintage samplers:

When sampling technology finally became accessible to mere mortals and not just uber-rich Fairlight and Synclavier enthusiasts, the race was on to increase fidelity and leave behind the limitations of those first 8-bit samplers. Bit depth and sampling rates increased and memory capacity expanded until the average sampled sound was indistinguishable from the same sound recorded on a CD.

But sure enough, after many years of enjoying the pristine sound quality of the new sampling technology, musicians began to explore and exploit the limitations of the old school samplers. Suddenly the grain of low bit-rate samples and the metallic grit of aliasing is very much in style. So how can you emulate the sonic artifacts of some of the long forgotten vintage samplers? I'm glad you asked…

# Intello – Better Demo of first version (YouTube)

This is the plugin I am currently working on. It's called "Intello". Basically it's a glitch producing plugin and in this first short demo I'm showing you one of the 5 planned glitching modes. The plugin will be controllable by an iPhone application from a listening audience. So the listeners can interact with a performer.

More information: www.zettt.de

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Neurosonics Live (Vimeo)

Chris Cairns of Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. posted another Neurosonics video, the Holographic Drumkit and Turntables test.

# OTO machines – Biscuit

Hardware unit with real 8-bit A/D and D/A converters, true analog multimode filter with resonance control, an FX section with Waveshaper, Delay, Pitch Shifter and Step Filter, and more…

OTO Biscuit

Add depth, texture and organic behavior to synths, basslines, drum machines and virtual sounds from computers with BISCUIT !

By using 8-bit converters, digital processing and analog resonant filters, Biscuit opens up a wide range of sounds from harsh distortion, digital and aliasing artifacts to warm and fat 8-bit sounds.

Producers, deejays, musicians and sound lovers can use BISCUIT to extend their sound creation possi- bilities.
BISCUIT will find its place in studios, on stages or even in clubs.

via CDM, where you can also find an interview with creator Denis Cazajeux.

# Image Line Drumaxx Tutorial – Routing Pad Output to Separate Audio Tracks in Ableton Live

Mark Mosher posted a tutorial on how to route pad output of Image-Line's Drumaxx percussion synth to separate audio tracks in Ableton Live.

Image Line has just released a new Percussion Modeling Instrument called Drumaxx made by Maxx Claster. Drumaxx includes 130 drumkits, 900 drum patches, 200 drum patterns. If you use Sawer, Sakura, Morphine, Poizone, or Toxic Biohazard instruments, then you are familiar with Maxx’s work.

Image Line is offering Drumaxx as a “name your price” download for limited until March 31st,2010 with a minimum price of $13 USD with $1 going to support Haiti earthquake victims. With a deal like this I thought it was a “no brainer” so I picked it up.

One of the coolest features is that each of the 16 physically modeled drums can be routed to individual tracks within your host so you can add additional effects. Below I’ll show you how to set this up on Ableton Live.

Music for Our Future is a special compilation inspired by the SyFy original series, Caprica.

Peter Kirn writes:

Working with music production today is a bit like science fiction. It’s fitting that visions of technology’s promise, menace, and humanity would inspire electronic music.

Create Digital Music, XLR8R, and Pitchfork got to join together with TV network SyFy to curate a free, 13-track compilation of “Music for Our Future.” Inspired by the world of SyFy’s new TV series Caprica, which is set just before the recently-concluded Battlestar Galactica, this is science fiction as the familiar. It’s the near future, not simply fantasy.

The full compilation is available to download for free, exclusively at: http://www.xlr8r.com/musicforourfuture

The compilation includes tracks by Lusine, Willits & Sakamoto, The Field, Richard Devine, and more. Also features some exclusive material by White Rainbows, Nice Nice, and CDM’s Peter Kirn, who also talks to some of the artists to find out what inspired them and which techniques were used for these tracks.

More information: Music for Our Future / Create Digital Music

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Make: Online : Open source hardware 2009

Make’s definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009.

Welcome to definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009. First up – What is open source hardware? These are projects in which the creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and "board" files to recreate the hardware – they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware centric.

Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 125 unique projects/kits in 19 categories, up from about 60 in 2008, more than doubling the projects out there! – it’s incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (shipping over 100,000 units, estimated) but there are many other projects just as exciting and filled with amazing communities – we think we’ve captured nearly all of them in this list. Some of these projects and kits are available from MAKE others from the makers themselves or other hardware manufacturers – but since it’s open source hardware you can make any of these yourself, start a business, everything is available, that’s the point.

# fridgebuzzz electronics MK1 MIDI controller

The MK1 prototype is a user programmable midi controller featuring 32 LED pushbutton switches and 6 touch sensitive copper plate switches.

# satrap activ portable analog synthesizer (YouTube)

Flo Kaufmann shows his “satrap activ” portable analog synthesizer made out of a vacuum cleaner.

It contains 2 cmos based VCO’s , a Moog ladder filter, a 555 based ADSR, a cmos based 8 step sequencer, a PIC based vc to midi interface and a PIC based auto trigger unit. There are 4 tunable knobs on top, mostly to play base lines, and 2 conductable wires, which act as voltage dividers to generate variable tones. the wires do not vibrate. so it is not a cord instrument. satrap activ can also control other synthesizers either by midi or cv/gate interface.

# Percussa Audio Cubes: Lights & Tangible Interface with Ableton Live and Alchemy

Mark Mosher writes about his Audio Cubes:

I recently added Percussa AudioCubes to my studio and performance rig.

While I’m planning a longer post offering an overview of how AudioCubes work, this is a quick post to mention two applications of AudioCube technology I’ve been experimenting with.

# Larry Cotton’s MIDI Marimba

Larry Cotton’s 3-octave “player marimba” was featured in MAKE, Volume 4. Larry added two MD24 MIDI Decoders and the marimba can now be controlled by any MIDI sequencer or keyboard.

# An Orchestra of Linux Laptops, and How to Make Your Own Laptop Instrument

Peter Kirn @ Create Digital Music:

For a generation of musicians of nearly every genre, the laptop has become an instrument. It’s easy to take for granted, but the rise of the computer for music has been remarkable. Less than twenty years ago, real-time digital synthesis and audio processing was the domain of expensive, specialized workstations. Now, $700 per seat can buy you a full-blown musical rig, with the computer hardware, gestural input courtesy the Nintendo Wii controller, and even a DIY speaker made from IKEA salad bowls. The next challenge is to make this setup as flexible and reliable as possible. Enter Linux.

# Marblephone

g000ze @ Let's Make Robots writes:

Inspired by Animusic's bodacious films, I was wondering whether a music robot in a much more simple way would be possible to make. Here is what my little boys and I created.

Still unfinished, but already working. Thank you Animusic for activating my imagination building the music machine that I am calling Marblephone.

PongThatBeat! (Vimeo)

PingPong sequencer made with max/msp and processing.