Results for sounds

Some interesting things I found recently:

# An interview with Richard Devine

Percussa's Bert Schiettecatte writes:

A while ago we went to Winter NAMM (in January 2008), to show the AudioCubes. We were lucky to hang out with our good friends Kyle and Ryan from Subtractive, they have a studio in Santa Monica and do a lot of great sound design and composition work, while at the same time producing film and working on their album (see the Test Short Starfish remix contest from a while ago, which was featured on Percussa’s main website).

Ryan and Kyle have been AudioCube users since the very beginning, I think they have serial number 10 on their cubes. They introduced us to Richard Devine, and naturally a discussion about his work and music technology emerged.

# true – The new sound, light and dance performance, true is a stage performance piece that explores the relationship between the brain and the reality we face, and is, performed by two performers.

# ISM: The Quantum Hall Effects — impulse responses from nanospace for convolution reverb. Tony Dubshot writes:

After many years of fundamental research in cooperation with the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory (Leiden Institute of Physics) the ISM studio proudly presents 'the sound of nanospace'. It's all about levels of magnification and breaking down the wall between analog and digital sound. Quantum hall fx are nothing less than a paradigm shift in the perception of time and space.

You can download a 27.1 MB archive of 24bit impulse responses released under a Creative Commons license from the ISM blog.

# SOUNDS.BUTTER Visible Sound – The "Visible Sound" project attempts to create a physical version of the sound around it by sewing sound waves in realtime. Although this was just a concept, we like ways of making invisible objects like sound waves into tangible forms.

For the third successive time the center of Eindhoven is the stage and podium for GLOW, an open air exhibition providing a fascinating spectacle of applied light art and design on landmarks and other unique locations in Holland’s City of Light.

From 7 to 16 November, 19 works by artists, designers and architects from home and abroad can be seen and experienced along the exhibition route.

One of the works at GLOW 2008 is an audio-visual project by two German guys.

In collaboration with two software designers Kurt Laurenz Theinert developed a visual piano, with a keyboard that produces graphics instead of sounds. The drawings are projected on a 360° panorama in a darkened space. The space is filled with sounds, colors and lines and undergoes a surprising modification. He has adapted the setting of “Hammerhaus” for GLOW in cooperation with the musician Axel Hanfreich.

Kurt Laurenz Theinert / Axel Hanfreich @ GLOW — check Flickr for more images of GLOW

I had the pleasure of a show last night and I had a little talk with Axel afterwards. I thought an Ableton Live + controller setup would be great for this type of thing, but Axel was mainly using his Yamaha RS7000 sampler/sequencer for the performance. He explained he likes working with this particular sampler because of its wide range of effects and it’s easy to modify and tweak the sounds during a performance.

The equipment for sound and visuals isn’t physically linked, everything is played live. Kurt and Axel simply sync audio and light by using ears and eyes, so even though they have a limited repertoire of a dozen tracks the show will be different every time.

Here’s a video with some snippets from an earlier Hammerhouse performance.

Since we only had a few minutes before they were doing another show I unfortunately didn’t have time to talk to Kurt as well, but I got from Axel that Kurt was using a MIDI controlled setup powered by vvvv for his visual piano, developed in collaboration with Roland Blach and Philip Rahlenbeck.

Visit the websites of Kurt and Axel for more information about their work and if you happen to be in Eindhoven in the next few days you should definitely check them out at GLOW.

Percussa has released Emissions, a real-time soundscape generating instrument by Ableton Live content developer Puremagnetik.

It utilizes an array of textural ambiances, specifically designed for use with Percussa’s AudioCubes. It will morph, react and evolve depending on what the user (and the cubes!) decide to do.

Visit Percussa for more information about AudioCubes, and a link to download the free Emissions.

NUSofting has released Gaming Athmosphere, a collection of external sounds and presets for the native Ableton devices that is intended to provide key elements of sound, structure and function.

“Gaming Athmosphere” pack was created with a ‘retro-ish’ gaming feel in mind, and is ready to use for your productions. The included loops were designed to inspire creativity in the studio or stage, with a variety of fresh melodies, basslines and MIDI grooves to get you started right away.

Gaming Athmosphere LivePack features

• 47 Audio loops in a “Gaming Atmosphere”, of various lengths from 2 to 16 bars
• 41 MIDI loops, the notes source used for “Gaming Atmosphere” audio loops
• 12 MIDI Drums loops, already mapped as clips to 4 Impulse presets, arranged in 4 Live Set files = 4×12 clips
• 10 Audio Drums loops
• 3 “Workspace Projects”: a “workspace project” is a Live Set with many clips and devices (instruments and effect chains) neatly combined in one Session View. A “workspace project” is designed for your creativity: the clips (both audio and MIDI) are selected to allow easy song construction, just turn them on and try several combinations. A “workspace project” is also full of useful examples of what you can do with your Ableton Live.

The Gaming Athmosphere LivePack is available now for $25.95 USD.

Visit NUSofting for more information, audio demos and a link to download the Gaming Atmosphere PDF manual.

Some interesting things I found on September 2nd, 2008:

# SmadSteck – SmadSteck specializes in real-time interactive sampling technology. We provide the technical basis of the various audiovisual sampling projects initiated in the context of Sample madnesS.

This composition was produced for the Lowlands Festival by Eboman and performed live at the Lowlands Festival on 15, 16 and 17 August 2008 (SenSorSuit = played by Eboman, Camera = played by Mascha Rutten, Software = SenS IV by www.smadsteck.nl).

For more info visit Eboman.

# Ben Fino-Radin – Oscillator cabinets – Oscillator cabinets – aural and visual vibration, 2007
Behind each needlepoint cone is a speaker, the speakers are playing recordings of people who wore headphones, listened to oscillators, and sang the tones they heard in real time. there are tweve voices, each with it's own cone.

# Matrixsynth: The Red Rig – Made to mimic the look of the vintage drum pads, it's made of 100% PVC pipe and copper pad fittings. All custom designed – made it up as I went along. The wiring harness took about a day to make, and is almost completely hidden inside the tubes themselves. The ends just hang in place for quick connection to the pads when setting up, and to connect to the snake that feeds the equipment rack.

# Ruin & Wesen: Lovely, Petite, Hackable Controllers for Machinedrum, Ableton, More

Peter Kirn writes:

Today, Ruin & Wesen have launched their website, with two nice-looking products ready for pre-order. The MIDI Command is a small box with five endless rotary encoders on it and a “Macro Knob.” Here’s where things start to get interesting: not only does the unit ship with support for Ableton Live and Elektron Machinedrum support out of the box, but you can flash your own firmware using SysEx. There’s also an LED display, so combined with the software editors and MIDI mappings, this could even allow you to “roll your own” Kore-style controller.

# The Umbrella Company Suitcase SK-1 – The Umbrella Company have created a series of modified Casio SK-1 keyboards housed in antique suitcases.

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.