Results for Glenn Marshall

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Dance music with MindStorms sounds

organfairy writes:

It has been a while since I made music on the MindStorms bricks. But now I present the longest and most complicated piece of MindStorms music I have ever made. The title of the melody is “the Future Child” and the idea is to make a cheerfull bleepy melody with the NXT’s tones and use the other sounds as effects while an organ and a synthesizer supplies the orchestra. Most of the pictures are robots made by myself. The rest is something I photographed at the First LEGO League competition in Herning back in 2007. The screenshots are from the NXT-G PC programming tools.

# Tic Tac Tunes – Now with Tic Tac Beat Box

AndyGadget @ Instructables created a Micro-organ and drum-kit in a Tic Tac box

This tiny box will give you hours of fun composing your own tunes. You can vary the tune tempo and switch between a pentatonic and blues scale as well as producing a variety of percussion sounds.
Load up a different program and it will compose its own percussion rhythms(Tic Tac Beat Box) or play with half a dozen different musical scales (Tic Tac Scales). Another cool feature is no power switch – It will hibernate when it's not being used.

There are great musicians around . . . and then there's me with no musical talent at all, but even I can get some great sounding tunes out of this. Watch the video and have a listen to the MP3 files to get an idea of what this little marvel can do.

… read more

Some interesting things I found recently:

# WaldFlöte — The WaldFlöte project is basically a MIDI retrofit of a 1890's era 16 foot pipe organ. It converts MIDI input into solenoid drive to directly press the keys on one of the manuals – there is no permanent modification to the organ.

Members of Dorkbot Edinburgh have spent the last 7 months or so working on this and we're pretty pleased with it. It was publicly announced at the Electron Club Open Day on 18th October 2008 in Glasgow.

Check the project page for detailed info and some videos.

# Bodysnatchers – Zeno Music Visualiser

Glenn Marshall writes:

This is my first attempt at music visualisation, based on the Zeno animation system I’ve been developing for my first two videos Music is Math and Metamorphosis. This time it’s Radiohead with their Bodysnatchers track from In Rainbows.

# Propellerhead – Bassline Battle – Got funk? Got bass? For a chance to win astonishing prizes, enter the Propellerhead 2008 bassline battle. Fire up Reason and put together the funkiest, illest, baddest bassline and drum beat combination possible.
1st prize: Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Audio Interface, KRK Rokit Powered 5 G2 Monitors + KRK 10s Subwoofer and Novation ReMOTE SL COMPACT 25.

# Singing Sock Puppets – Matthew Irvine Brown's puppets can be tuned to sing in any scale or mode.

At the minute their voices come from a small Max/MSP patch and some very basic electronics, but he can also be rigged up to be a MIDI controller.

They can help illustrate relatively complex musical theory – such as the differences between blues, chromatic and pentatonic scales – through play and storytelling; this scale terminology is relatively advanced, and doesn't normally enter the school curriculum until children choose to specialise in music at GCSE level in the UK (ages 15 – 16).

# V-Synth GT FREE Sounds The download adds a synth museum’s worth of sounds to the V-Synth GT, with over 450 recreations of classic analog synthesizers from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s plus a host of classic Juno, Jupiter, SH, 303 and D-50 sounds. There are also new filter bank patches specifically designed to control external audio sources. Also available, the MV-Series Free Sounds: Dirt&Grime Drum Kit – This new drum kit is available for existing 8000 and 8800 owners and spans a range of musical styles from urban, R&B and electro house. The kit has a slighty gritty sound and a wider-than-normal range of sensitivity so you can experiment with changes in swing and volume.

Some interesting things I found on August 25th, 2008:

# product placements (2008) – 70,200 samples in 33 seconds: nightmare for GERMAN RIAA

If you want to register a song at GEMA (RIAA, ASCAP of Germany) you have to fill in a form for each sample you use, even the tiniest bit. On 12 Sept 08, German Avantgarde musician Johannes Kreidler will —as a live performance event—register a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA using 70,200 forms.

# Audio Cookbook – AudioCookbook.org is a non-profit resource for music and sound enthusiasts made possible by contributions from Unearthed Music. The content has a slant toward the avant-garde or experimental side of audio production. Whether you have years of technical experience or you are just getting your feet wet doing sound design, you’ll find unique, interesting and useful information that might inspire you, give you an idea, or simply entertain.

# “Bird Box” sequencer – LFSR (linear feedback shift register) for drum sequencing. “Bird Box” is loosely based on the Triadex Muse architecture, but stripped down to two feedback taps and one variable-modulus divider.

# Music Is Math (Finished HD version) – Glenn Marshall's HD and finished version of his video ‘Music Is Math’.

I just let the program run till the end of the music, I felt reluctant to interfere too much by trying to sculpt an ending, and just let the code run its own natural course.

# Phil Durrant on Reaktor and the Laptop as Improvisational Instrument

Peter Dines talks Reaktor with Phil Durrant.

Phil Durrant is familiar to most Reaktor users as Sowari on the NI messageboards, a helpful and knowledgeable presence there. He’s also a renowned experimental musician, having performed with, among others, Ticklish, Trio Sowari and MIMEO, the music in movement orchestra – a collective that includes Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and Keith Rowe.

# JamStudio – Create Music Beats – The online music factory – Jam, remix, chords, loops.

# Apocatastasis (feedback return for cheap digital delays) – Most expensive analog delay pedals have a feedback knob that lets you drive the output of the delay effect back into the input. My Ibanez DL5 Digital Delay did not have this feature, so I decided to make one and make it cheap. :-)

# DMGMITE-01: The Australian Chipmusic Compilation – A collection of tracks from some of the chippest blokes from Down Under.

# AudioWeevil08 – After many months of refinement, I can finally announce the new AudioWeevil08! This version really raises the bar in terms of response, feel and design.

Some interesting things I found on August 15th, 2008:

# Korg Kaossilator 4-Bar Loop Hack

David Battino writes:

My favorite electronic instrument so far this year is the Korg Kaossilator, a pocket-size, touchpad-controlled synthesizer with built-in loop recorder. I liked it so much I bought one after reviewing it for Electronic Musician magazine.

What loosened my credit card was a secret hack Korg revealed during fact-check: If you power up the Kaossilator while holding down the Tap and Loop Rec buttons, the loop memory doubles from two bars to four. That may not sound like much, but it gives you time to set up tension and release; I find four-bar loops just breathe better.

Check David’s post for detailed info on the bootup technique.

# Vector Surgeon 1.0 Read Me – Hello, good evening, and welcome to Vector Surgeon, the Prophet VS editor/librarian. This document explains some of the design principles surrounding the program, how to get started, and how to use it effectively.

# Music is Math animation: The ‘Mandela’ Variation

Glenn Marshall recently did his first Processing animation, set to the Boards of Canada track ‘Music is Math’. The Mandela Variation is the same animation with a small but significant difference.

Glenn writes:

I changed the random seed number. This number is basically the starting point for all random numbers throughout the code used to create the branches, particle motion etc.

I thought it would be interesting to see and compare the difference between the first and second videos, with only changing one number. The original seed value was 1973, the year I was born, and I was thinking of what other numbers I could use for a second video, and Nelson Mandela’s prison number came to mind – 46664, which is what is used here.

Glenn’s blog is a nice read, so check it out! He just posted some cool images from his Iris Generator done in Processing.

# mnk::GarageRemote – GarageRemote allows the control of GarageBand's transport functions from any MIDI controller that has programmable buttons.