Results for little-scale

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:

# TRASH_AUDIO: Roland TR-808 Sample Pack

Surachai writes:

Justin graciously let me borrow his Roland TR-808 and when trying to program some patterns I noticed a few problems. A) I'm clearly too stupid to work this machine – I eventually figured it out but off the bat, both the Pattern knob the Auto Fill In knob were double teaming my brain and left me staring at shifting patterns that mocked me with changing tempos. B) The sequencing buttons themselves have been accumulating grime over the years which makes it difficult to activate a note. I would gladly take this thing apart and clean it but it's not mine. C) It's outdated. While the interface is preferred for many people, I'd rather do this on a computer or something more flexible like a Machinedrum. Long story short, I decided to sample it and save people the hassle of finding/buying one. Oh yeah and it's free.

# Soundsnap.com presents Frank Serafine (YouTube)

A peek into the world of Hollywood sound designer (and Soundsnap contributor) Frank Serafine.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Even retro record covers can be used to create something amazing

There are those who will throw away their old record covers but there are those that will use them to create some mind blowing artistic stuff.

One of them is definitely Christian Marclay, a New York visual artist, DJ and composer who used record covers of Michael Jackson , Doors, Donna Summer, David Bowie and many others for this piece of art. The relationship of sound, vision, music, art and performance is the focus of his work.

More on Christian Marclay

# Two Garbage Cans and a Microphone

Rock the party with this DIY sound system.

Peter Kirn writes:

Say you’re an up-and-coming crew with a turntable and some mics. You’ve got a gig this Friday at the middle school gym (the janitor has been bribed appropriately) and the boys on the corner have been passing out your flyers to all the lovely ladies. Everything’s set, except you heard that Kool Herc is coming to battle. Herc and his mighty sound system schooled you last go-round, so you know you need something fresh to rock the bodies proper. Your DIY solution? The 55-gallon drum sound system.

… read more

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Robot playing Rockband on the iPhone

Joe Bowers combines light sensors, servos and Arduino to build a robot that plays Rock Band on his iPhone.

He writes:

Rock Band has been released on the iPhone, and even though its a lot of fun, I would rather have something play it for me. Preferably a robot!

# Mark Mosher: REBOOT

Mark Mosher of the excellent Modulate This! blog has released REBOOT, a new album featuring some great electronic music.

Mark Mosher is an electronic music artist from Louisville Colorado just outside of Boulder. He is a BMI recording artist and composes and produces electronic music and sound completely in the digital realm using state-of-the-art virtual synthesizers and instruments within Ableton Live.

Two years in the making, REBOOT is an album containing 7 richly layered electronica songs that blend contemporary synthesizer sounds with classical music motifs. The end result is dark electronica for those who love synth "ear candy" with a “dirty” industrial edge.

While the songs on REBOOT stand alone as singles, the collection is an album in the true sense of the word. They share a common palette and when played in sequence conjure an epic and dynamic story for the listener.

Prior to the release of the album, the first three tracks were released as singles. "Midnight" and "Stealth" went to #1 and "They Walk Among Us" went to #2 on the Soundclick.com electronica charts.

REBOOT is available to download at Bandcamp. The album is currently being offered using the “pay what you will” model. Although the suggested pricing is $6 for the 7 song album + digital booklet and $1 for singles, users can name their own price including specifying 0$ for free downloads. There are future plans to make the album available on iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store.

# Filter control via light blob tracking in Processing (YouTube)

Filter control via light blob tracking in Processing This video shows how I can set and control a filter's parameters via MIDI mapping, creating a control surface via a webcam and a torch. I realized a little Processing sketch that tracks the light blob I shot in front of webcam, normalizes X and Y coordinates to MIDI acceptable values, and then sends them to a filter effect in Ableton Live. I also realized the little control panel that allows to correctly make the MIDI mapping and set some blob detection's params. My toolkit: Processing MIDI

Are old digital drum machines better than your Ableton Live?

# Getting Outside “The Box” – Hybrid Recording And Mixing

Jon @ Audio Geek Zine writes:

Plugins are great, they’re very close to the real hardware counterparts, sometimes better. I don’t want to debate that. This article is all about options for getting electrons flowing through gear to get better mixes.

There are very few (if any) professional mixing engineers that work 100% ITB (in the box), at some point you’ll need to get outside.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Drummer – A Collaborative Musical Interface with Mobility

Andrea Bianchi, a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Culture Technology (GSCT) in the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea, wrote in to report about a homebrew music application named Drummer for the Nintendo DS which was presented at the NIME 2009 conference (New Interfaces for Musical Expression).

Andrea writes:

It is basically a collaborative musical instrument, where multiple Nintendo DS users can play individually on their devices in order to collaborate on a track. Tracks can be recorded simultaneously, one per user. The project tries to bridge mobile interfaces with collaborative music instruments (usually constrained by the need of physical proximity among players), in order to create a collaborative instrument for the stage.

The system is based on client-server architecture over a wireless network; every client runs on a Nintendo DS -one of the most popular wireless handheld game devices with touch-screen functionality- while the server computer handles the clients’ requests and plays matching drum sounds with the software synthesizer.

Each user can take advantage of this small and intuitive pen-based device in order to create or customize a drum kit, and then perform together with other users simply by tapping and sliding the pen on the screen.

# Commodore 64 SID 8580 Basic Sample Pack (112 Samples)

Sebastian Tomczak offers yet another pack of lovely samples.

I’ve made a C64 sample pack. To be precise, it’s a sample pack, featuring every C and G note from C-2 to G 6 for the main basic waveforms of a Commodore 64 (8580 SID chip). The waveforms are triangle, sawtooth, pulse and noise. The duty cycle for the pulse wave was set to approximately 50%. The samples were recorded from C64 hardware directly using a custom designed interface.

The samples are available for download in wav and mp3 formats.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Arduino Contest

Show what you can do with Arduino!

Arduinos are awesome – with one simple controller, you can make almost anything! What new things can you make with Arduino? We've teamed up with the creative folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and the Arduino Team on an Arduino contest to find out.

The rules are simple: to enter you must make a new Instructable that involves the Arduino IDE. You can use any hardware that you like, or none at all. Be sure to provide the code you used so that others can follow in your footsteps. Make something amazing and win a sweet Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Science or an Arduino Mega from the Arduino Team to power your next project!

So what are you waiting for? Document a project you've been meaning to write up, or make something new! We can't wait to see what it is.

The contest deadline is 15 November, 2009.

# Beaterator Music Challenge

Rockstar Games has launched the Beaterator and MySpace Music Challenge, a contest for the recently released music application Beaterator for PSP system. The aim of the Challenge is to highlight emerging artists using the Beaterator platform as a tool for music production. The Challenge winner will receive a cash prize of $5,000!

Artists that are chosen as semi-finalists will have the opportunity to have two songs featured on the Challenge promotion page, where MySpace Music and Rockstar Games fans will be able to check out the competition and vote on their favorite songs. The first song will be your “featured song” — the one that you feel best represents your sound.
The second song will be one that you create using Beaterator, which can be an original track, remix, or other song that showcases your use of the Beaterator software.
The winning artist or band will receive $5,000, have their winning track featured on the PlayStation®Network – which is visited by millions of PlayStation owners every day, and they will also have the opportunity to be featured on the MySpace homepage.

Beaterator is a music-making application for PSP system that acts as a portable 8-track music studio. In addition to the 3,000 included loops, it features a drum machine, full keyboard, synthesizer and sequencer; as well as the ability to import any sound via either a Memory Stick Duo™ or the PSP system’s built-in microphone. This is a true portable music studio.

# Modulate This Electronic Music Blog Turns 4

Mark Mosher writes:

Modulate This has turned 4 years old! In year 3 the blog experienced non-linear growth in page views and subscribers.

Congrats, Mark! Love the blog.

If you’ve never checked Modulate This! before make sure you do. This blog on electronic music production and sound design is a wonderful source of articles, videos, downloads etc.

# cl516: Omega 8 as a Drum Machine.

cl516 turns a Studio Electronics Omega 8 into a drum machine.

Rather than play the usual handful of musical hooks, I thought wouldn't it be useful if it was drum loop time.

Well, long gone are my TR-909, TR-808, Machinedrum, Xbase09, MFB-502, and I haven't picked up those D16 plugins yet. So I decided, why not use the Omega 8?

# Video Ram Synth 1

Gijs Gieskes uses the video ram of a Sega as an audio source.

The video ram of the sega gets slowed down by a binary counter, so it can be used as a audio source.

There are 3 oscillators that control a multiplexer, the multiplexer connects 1 out of 8 patch cables to the binary counters input, so there are some nice changing patterns in the sound.
Another multiplexer is connected to the same oscillators and makes some extra connections to glitch some more video.

There is a magnetic patch bay for the video ram, and the sega controller on the front can also be connected with magnets or metal wands.
The original idea was that the device can be used for drums, buts more a synth.. In another version i will probably build a small sequencer into it..

I will probably mainly use it for exhibitions, it is allot of fun to play with, because you control the sound and the video at the same time.