Results for interactive

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:

# cl516: ProLoop iPhone App by Trapcode

Calvin Cardioid on ProLoop for iPhone:

I've been searching a long time for something like this. It's not on OSX, and it's not an audiounit plugin. It's called ProLoop and I got it for $5 on the iTunes store. It's a very hands-on loop player capable of handling 6 loops at a time. My usual audio clips didn't feel like it was fully explaining what's going on, so be sure to check out the video above for a slightly more in-depth look.

# TheBlackBox: Release v2.0 – Propeller HSS FX/Sequencer with Digital Audio SPDIF output

The Propeller BlackBox Audio Sequencer is a device for audio waveform creation and a 32 step sequencer.

BlackBox Audio Sequencer features

• Live fx mode to allow direct output of the current waveform set by 12 different potentiometers.
• The sequencer allows the fx to be loaded into any one of 32 steps in the sequencer.
• SPDIF audio output or analog output via a switch (not both at the same time).
• analog output to a monitor(at the same time as spdif/analog output above (headphones or studio speakers) to allow auditioning before outputting live.
• 3 encoders that allow – BPM, main volume, and BPM jumps(1/3, 1/2, 1/4, 3/4, 2/3) and a switch for jump direction. (main volume and bpm jump programming not complete yet).
• BlackBox to BlackBox CLOCK sync, input rca, output rca.(serial @ 150Kbps, works over 1 foot rca cable) (this is so many of these devices can be connected to one main BEAT CLOCK MASTER.).
• 32 LEDS are used as sequencer step indication, ALONG with using the 32 LEDS as buttons to load waveform.
• 2 leds that start/stop the sequencer and live fx waveform.
• fully open source that uses the HSS code to generate the audio.

# Exclusive Free Soundtrack: Osmos, Featuring Gas, Julien Neto, Loscil, High Skies

Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music writes:

The independent game Osmos won our hearts in 2009, with transcendent, meditative gameplay built on simulated particle physics, starting as a floating wonderland and ending with some deliciously punishing difficulty. But it’s the soundtrack that sealed the deal: ambient-tinged work by artists like Gas 0095, Julien Neto, Loscil, and High Skies helped us imagine an unseen, microscopic (or perhaps macroscopic) world. Their sonic craft is a great example of what digital music can be. Now, I’m pleased to offer a lot of that music for your listening pleasure, for free. It’s one of the rare game soundtracks you’d want to hear even after having heard it on repeat while solving some of the title’s trickier puzzles. A huge thanks to the artists, whose generosity made this compilation possible – check out their work if you haven’t already.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Meet Marv (Marv), a MIDI Actuated Robotic Vibraphone.

Marv can play music of high complexity, far more complex than a human player could ever achieve, as Marv is capable of striking any and all keys simultaneously, as well as damping each key individually. Marv can play much faster than a human vibraphonist, repeating single notes as quickly as 25ms apart. Marv can play with sensitivity and feeling limited only by MIDI programming effort. Marv is a platform for further research on musical automation and real-time musical interaction.

# Record grooves under an electron microscope

Via SynthGear:

Chris Supranowitz is a researcher at The Insitute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Along with a number of other spectacular studies (such as quantum optics, trapping of atoms, dark states and entanglement), Chris has decided to look at the relatively boring grooves of a vinyl record using the institute’s electron microscope. Well, not boring for me.

A single record groove, magnified 1000 times

Awesome images! Lots more on Chris’ website (note to those who are entomophobic; includes ladybug and fly images).

Some interesting things I found recently:

# The Virtual Piano for Songwriters, Singers, Producers and aspiring musicians

Not Only is The Virtual Piano a Virtual instrument that you can play chords and melodies on, it also shows you how to play all the chords (triads) in all twelve keys.

It's an excellent tool for you to learn to play piano, to transpose songs into any key or for writing songs.

# In-Depth Review of Percussa AudioCubes in Use with Ableton Live

Mark @ Modulate This! reviews Percussa's AudioCubes in Ableton Live:

Back in November I purchased a set of four Percussa AudioCubes. I've spent quite a bit of time working with them as a an interface to Ableton Live.

In this hands-on review I'll explain what they are, how they work, how I'm using them with Live and also offer some tips along the way.

# SIDstick – 100,000 chiptunes in your pocket!

The SIDstick is a pocket-sized chiptunes player featuring:

• Removable Storage supporting microSD cards, 1 card can hold 20,000 songs
• 20+ hour battery life
• Super Hi-Quality hardware-based playback at 31kHz sample rate, >16 bit resolution
• Completely Open, hardware and software are available under the MIT license
• Upgradable with connections on the board

# Nebulophone Kit Pre-Order

Now available to pre-order from Bleep Labs:

The Nebulophone is an Arduino based synth with a Stylophone like keyboard. It has adjustable waveforms, a light controlled analog filter, LFO, and arpeggiator that can be clocked over IR.

This is a beginner kit and does not require an Arduino programmer board.

# Multichord Hybrid Musical Instrument, a single-stringed instrument that plays multiple notes via varied tensioning rather than fretting.

From the project page:

The Multichord musical instrument is an acoustic stringed instrument with a single string, constructed from wood, a hard drive, 20-lb monofilament, and assorted electronic components. It was the culmination of a project to build an acoustic instrument capable of playing multiple notes without fretting or manual, time-consuming retuning. The Multichord achieves this by attaching a hard drive read/write head assembly between the resonant string and a tensioning spring to adjust the tension of the instrument's string. Careful adjustment was made to the tension of both the string and the spring with the hard drive head in a neutral, unpowered position to ensure a bipolar application of voltage within the safety ratings of the hard drive's coil could cause the string to cover a full musical octave. In the end, the Multichord was tuned to a C-major scale (no flats or sharps) running from A at 220Hz through (but not including) A at 440Hz.

The Smalls has launched Street Sounds, a new site created in association with Scion to capture location-based sounds that together reflect our surroundings and define our lives.

Street Sounds is a collaborative and interactive Web site where lovers of art, sound and humanity can document their lives through snippets of sound that are posted on a 3-D map. Filmmakers, musicians and other artists can then search for sounds by keyword and location to use when creating new collaborative works of their own.

Streets Sounds allows users to listen in on everything from such rousing moments as a campus protest in Berkley or subway performers in New York, to funny and intimate vignettes, such as one’s laughter, a patron ordering a beer, or the rain. For contributors and listeners alike, the experience can be enchanting and addictive.

“With The Smalls Street Sounds, we aim to create the largest online collaboration of free, user-generated sounds that will encourage people to listen to the sounds of America and stimulate creative expression,” said Anna Grund, Founder, The Smalls. “Most of our lives are made up of multi-sensory experiences. The Sound Map provides people with the opportunity to focus on one – sound – to present and explore their world, and most importantly to let their imagination wander.”

Every month, the biggest contributors of sounds can win a free iPod.

More information: The Smalls Street Sounds

Karlheinz Essl has released version 3.3 of Lexikon-Sonate, an interactive realtime composition environment for musical composition and live performances.

Lexikon-Sonate is a work-in-progress which was started in 1992. Instead of being a composition in which the structure is fixed by notation, it manifests itself as a computer program that composes the piece – or, more precisely: an excerpt of a virtually endless piano piece – in real time. Lexikon-Sonate lacks two characteristics of a traditional piano piece:

there is no pre-composed text to be interpreted, and
there is no need for a pianist or an interpreter.

Instead, the instructions for playing the piano – the indication “which key should be pressed how quickly and held down for how long” – are directly generated by a computer program and transmitted immediately to a player piano (or the built-in Quicktime synthesizer) which executes them.

Changes in Lexikon-Sonate v3.3

• Numerous improvements
• Slightly changed user interface
• Runs with MacOS X 10.4 – 10.6

Lexikon-Sonate is available to download for Mac OS X (10.4.11 – 10.6) – for Intel and PPC processors, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

More information: Lexikon-Sonate