Results for Max/MSP

Symbolic Sound Corporation has expanded the list of real-time controllers and software that can communicate with its Kyma sound design environment by adding support for Open Sound Control (OSC) to its Paca(rana) sound engine.

By connecting a Paca or Pacarana to the Ethernet, sound designers, musicians, and researchers using Kyma on Windows or Macintosh computers can establish bi-directional communication with OSC-enabled devices and software on the network to control parameters of Kyma sound synthesis and processing algorithms. Open Sound Control (http://opensoundcontrol.org/introduction-osc) is an open communications protocol that delivers higher speeds, greater resolution, and more flexibility than is afforded by the standard MIDI protocol. (For a partial list of software and hardware currently supporting the OSC protocol, please see http://opensoundcontrol.org/implementations).

Doug Kraul, CEO of Harmony Systems, Inc. is enthusiastic about Kyma’s new OSC technology. “OSC is a brilliant addition to the already stellar Kyma sound design workstation”, said Kraul. “It immediately enables exciting new ways to use Kyma on stage or in the studio. But the true impact of this forward looking technology is the new, innovative controllers and applications that OSC makes possible for the Kyma platform”.

Symbolic Sound Paca(rana) with ethernet port on the back panel

Bidirectional MIDI streams over OSC is available for those who don’t have any OSC-enabled devices or software yet.

Symbolic Sound has announce that several third-party development partners are concurrently announcing new software that supports bi-directional communication with Kyma over OSC:

• OSCulator: Known as the Rosetta Stone of music controllers, Camille Troillard’s Mac OS X application OSCulator (http://osculator.net) is already familiar to Kyma users who utilize it for sending individual MIDI controls, OSC, and HID control data over FireWire to Kyma. Now, in OSCulator 2.9.2, you can also send OSC messages directly to the Paca(rana) over the network. OSCulator 2.9.2 also implements Symbolic Sound’s Bi-Directional-MIDI-streams-over-OSC protocol, enabling you to send streams of MIDI events from your software directly to Kyma without need for a MIDI interface on your computer and without having to map each controller individually in OSCulator.
• vM2 and PacaMidi: Harmony Systems, Inc. is offering two new Mac OS X applications in its Delora product line, vM2 and PacaMidi, that incorporate Kyma’s new “MIDI-over-OSC” technology to further enhance and facilitate real-time interaction with Kyma. vM2, a “virtual MotorMix”, enables JazzMutant Lemur owners to enjoy automatic, fully integrated tactile control over Kyma’s Virtual Control Surface. Recently updated to include several exciting new features, vM2 2.0 employs “MIDI-over-OSC” to eliminate the complication of physical MIDI cables and interfaces. PacaMidi, Harmony’s newest product, uses “MIDI-over-OSC” to create a “virtual MIDI interface and patchbay” that adds three merged MIDI inputs and one MIDI output to a Paca(rana). This expands Kyma’s connectivity options, while saving you the expense and complexity of using physical MIDI interfaces, hardware mergers, and numerous cables. For more information see http://www.delora.com.
• Max & M4L: If you are one of the many artists using Kyma in conjunction with Ableton’s Live and/or Cycling74’s Max, you’ll be happy to hear that Andrew Capon has written a Max external for bidirectional MIDI communication over OSC that works with both Max and Max For Live. For more details, please see: http://www.symbolicsound.com/Learn/AndyCaponMaxExternalOSC

OSC-enabled Kyma X.74 is a free software update for registered Kyma X owners. OSC communication requires the Paca or Pacarana sound engine.

Kyma X.74 also comes with additional features, including an 11-times speedup in the Virtual Control Surface, support for the MOTU UltraLite Hybrid mk3, TC Electronic Impact Twin, and Prism Audio Orpheus converters, track-pad compatible menus, refinements to the Tau resynthesis, and more.

More information: Symbolic Sound

Some interesting things I found recently:

# JAZARI (YouTube)

One human, three machines, rhythm.

# Beatseqr

Beatseqr is an arduino mega based computer interface by Steve Cooley.

It is aimed at electronic musicians and visualists. By itself, it connects to a desktop app that runs on mac or windows and can send out OSC messages to arbitrary network ports. However, combine beatseqr with a tightly integrated sequencer like Dajis Systems' Steppa (included in the price) and you have a powerful interface to create a MIDI loop which you can use to control sounds from pretty much any music software that accepts incoming midi data.

We've tested it out with Logic, Live, Reason, Quartz Composer, Max/MSP, PureData, and Processing. It works great!

# Bliptronome v2 w/ ADCs complete! – Bliptronic to Monome Conversion (YouTube)

The final working version of the Bliptronic 5000 hacked into a low cost Monome clone, with Bliptronome V2 firmware.

More info at Stray Technologies

# Pressure Controller "Hubert"

Hubert is small but powerful device to use with your modular synthesizer.

On each hand side there is one force sensing resistor turning applied pressure into a steady CV output. Each channel has three outputs: CV Out, Inverted CV Out and Gate out. Each side is capable of holding the current voltage on CV Out, whereas the inverted CV appears on Inverted CV Out. If a CV is held in the CV Out you still can use the inverted out, even switching from positive to negative voltage as often as you want without disturbing the held CV output. In addition each of the two channels fires a gate signal every time pressure is applied to the pressure pad. The CV can go from 0V to +/- 8V and can be controlled in sensitivity.

# TAPETRONIC demo video 2009 (YouTube)

# Reaktor Modular Sequencing, Pt. 2

John Fisher writes:

Well, looks like my weekend project has been working on my modular sequencing application for Reaktor.

I’ve detailed what this is all about in my previous blog. I’ve updated the sequencer and added some detailed comments on all the GUI elements to help people get up to speed with using it.

Leo van der Veen has released c74, an iPhone / iPod Touch app that let’s you connect your device with Cycling ’74’s Max/MSP 5.

Custom interfaces are built straight from within Max, presets can be stored etc. The external features some nice attributes for receiving accelerometer, GPS, compass, shake gesture and proximity data.

Communication between the apps does not rely on OpenSoundControl but in stead uses a straight forward communication socket, which offers a reliable connection.

c74 is available to purchase from the iTunes App Store, priced at $3.99 USD.

More information: nr74.org / c74

Grame, Centre National de Creation Musicale, has announced the release of Faust (Functional Audio Stream) 0.9.10, a functional programming language specifically designed for real-time signal processing and synthesis.

This version introduces several new possibilities. It is the first official release to offer full parallelization of the C++ code to exploit multicore architectures, as well as automatic generation of mathematical documentation.

New in Faust v0.9.10

• Several new options have been added to control how the C++ code is generated, in particular:
  • control of the floating point precision : single (default), double, quad
  • code re-organization in simple loops to facilitate automatic vectorization
  • automatic parallelization based on OpenMP
  • automatic parallelization based on a specific “Work-Stealing” algorithm
• Using formal methods the Faust compiler can automatically produce a complete mathematical documentation of a Faust program.
• Language Extensions
  • Sequential composition operator (A:B) has been restricted to expressions so that outputs(A) = inputs(B). This restriction has several advantages. It improves error detection, makes the code easier to understand and provides nicer and simpler formal semantic ( A:B is B o A)
  • User interface labels can now contain metadata. For example the label “volume[unit:dB][tooltip:control the output volume of the reverb]” contains two metadata, a unit definition and a tooltip message than can be exploited by an architecture file to fine tune the user interface.
  • User interface labels can contain absolute and relative pathnames to better control the hierarchical structure of the user interface. For example the label “../volume” points to place the widget one group higher in the hierarchy.
• Several new audio architectures have been included, in particular Action Script, CoreAudio, CSOUND, Chuck, Pure, SND-RT, for a total of about 20 different plateforms now supported: Action Script, Alsa, ChucK, CoreAudio, CSOUND, Jack, LADSPA, Matlab, MaxMSP, Octave, OSS, PortAudio, Pure, PureData, Q, Sndfile, Snd-RT, SuperCollider, SynthFile, VST, VSTi (mono)

More information: Faust / Faust @ Sourceforge

Robert Henke has released a number of free devices for Max For Live.

MaxForLive is a flavor of the Max programing language that only works in conjunction with Ableton Live and allows users to create their own devices and to share those. In order to use these effects, one needs to own Ableton Live Version 8.1 or higher and the MaxForLive extension.

Depending on my time and the feedback I consider uploading more devices, including some tricky Live.API stuff. However, this might not happen very soon.

Robert Henke Max For Live Devices

• PX-18 — Step sequencer originally written by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles around 1995. More or less all rhythmical Monolake tracks have been sequenced with the PX-18 and a lot of inspiration for the way how Ableton Live deals with ‘clips’ and ’scenes’ came from our experience with the PX-18. This version here offers the functionality of a single track of the original PX18.
• Black — A simple device which does two things: It displays songtime in hours:minutes:seconds- at least as long as you are working with a constant song tempo. And it allows to black out the computer screen while listening to the music.
• Distance — This audio effect device is for those who are into careful placement of sonic events in the stereo field. Its main parameter is a big ‘distance’ control. It affects volume, filtering, pan and stereo width of the incoming audio signal.
• Circular Doppler — Two virtual microphones rotate around a single sound source. Doppler delays, distance dependent amplitude modulation and filtering included. Movement of source and microphones synced to song position. This allows 100% reproducible effects.
• Grain Freeze — A granular audio freezer effect. Creates lush textures out of everything.

Robert Henke’s Max For Live devices are available to download at no cost, and can be modified in any way you want.

More information: Robert Henke’s Max For Live Devices

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.

… read more