Sword & Sworcery, the iPad album-as-game, has gotten plenty of love from this site before, and recognition for friend-of-the-site composer Jim Guthrie. (See Jim open up about what happened behind the scenes.)

Now, it seems the Canadian songwriter and soundmaker will meet up with some of the biggest game composers from Japan in a unique remix album. In the lineup:

Michiru Yamane (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill)
Baiyon (PixelJunk 4am)
Mitsuto Suzuki (Final Fantasy XIII-2)
macotom3 (JP chip music artist)
Decasségui Hip

The release will be on iTunes and Bandcamp – the new havens for the indie artist (and certainly for game music).

It’s terrific to see this cross-cultural, international fusion. And the preview clips released, while brief, should whet the appetite of fans of musical invention in the game medium. Have a listen below.

Preview tracks:

00:00 Little Furnace (00:15 PostProduction Mitsuto Suzuki Mix) Mitsuto Suzuki
00:37 The Ballad of the Space Babies (00:52 Supernova Babies Mix) macotom3
01:14 Lone Star (01:30 Baiyon Just Walking Remix) Baiyon
01:54 The Maelstrom (02:09 Radiant Darkness Mix) デカセギ・ヒップ
02:32 The Prettiest Weed (02:48 *’s Ambition Remix) デカセギ・ヒップ
03:10 Unknowable Geometry (03:27 Symphony Mix) 山根ミチル
03:48 Bones McCoy (04:04 Akira Yamaoka Mix) 山岡晃

The remix project coincides with the Japan release for Sword & Sworcery. Remember, kids, localization is the future of everything. Teaser for that:

More:
http://sworcery.jp/remix/

We hear you: amidst the various music doodling tools calibrated for casual taps on a phone screen, you want something you can actually make your own with your own sounds. Here’s one example of that: triqtraq. It’s got the “tap it on the bus to improvise a pattern” feel of some of the apps we’ve seen lately, but without sacrificing the sort of control that might keep you coming back to it. And because it lets you include your own samples, there is some depth. (No Audio Copy/Paste, though, before some reader chimes in and points that out.)

Creators Sebastian Schatz, Olaf van Zon, and Joerg Peschel say that they wanted to scratch an itch similar to the one we’ve heard from readers. They write in the press release: “With this app, we (a bunch of friends that are crazy about electronic music) are trying to take music jamming on the iPhone to the next level. Instead of creating an app that simplifies the creation of music on an iPhone so much that you are bored with the possibilities within a week, triqtraq gives you a lot of flexibility.”

Features:

create musical patterns fast and intuitively, by programming live or by using the ‘step edit’-feature
automate parameters like pitch, filter, delay, decay and level in real-time
change samples or sample kits on-the-fly while jamming
edit multiple tracks simultaneously
store up to 16 patterns and 32 samples per session
specify the length of a sequence per track, or set the automation length for each parameter individually
switch seamlessly between patterns
use the loop range feature to create poly-rhythmic sequences
use sounds from the 350+ factory sample library
import your own sounds via iTunes file sharing

Find it in the CDM apps section:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/triqtraq-jam-sequencer

Among other information, the developers have loads of tutorials on their site:
http://www.triqtraq.com/index.php/tutorials

Obscure and famous, people touch us in creative ways, ways that reverberate in patterns that reach clarity at odd times. With just such a story, our last entry in Bob Moog’s birthday this week, from Moog Music veteran and experimentalsynth.com artist Chris Stack:

Driving a truck into the night, headed to Nashville to tell the world about a new way to play guitar… no, wait… that’s a different (but related) story. Back on track… Here goes…

It’s late evening, May 23, 2012. Bob Moog’s birthday. It has been a great day with people remembering Bob in many ways. His birthday five years ago was a very special event in some very different ways. Michelle Moog-Koussa and I have been talking about writing about it ever since. I promised some people I would do it now, so here it is…

For me, this story encompasses not just Bob’s birthday in 2007, but also other events separated by many years, so this may jump around a bit. To understand the full impact on me you’ll need to know about these somewhat disparate points in my life.

An elementary school music teacher let my class listen to the Album “Swithced-on Bach”. As most (or all) of you know, this album was performed by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos on synthesizers designed by Bob Moog. This starts my near life-long interest in electronic music.

Around the same time I see Nipsey Russell on the Tonight Show recite the poem “Abu Ben Adhem”

“Abou Ben Adhem”
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

– By Leigh Hunt.

I loved the poem, looked it up and memorized it. I still remember it.

I graduate from highschool and work various factory jobs, primarily to enable me to buy synthesizers. My interest in electronic music (and five years in a zinc die-casting factory) prompts me to return to school to get an associates degree in Electrical Engineering, after which I go to work as a printed circuit board designer. I spend the next ten years designing PCBs for the industrial computer industry.

During that time, I learn that Bob Moog lives in Asheville and is giving a public lecture at UNCA. I attend the lecture and afterwards introduce myself. Bob calls me the next day and I wind up designing a few boards for him. This was back in the Big Briar days. These boards were for the Multi Touch Sensitive Keyboard that he designed for John Eaton, a product that according to the Moog Foundation, he considered to be his crowning achievement. This is of course a very significant event for me since he played a large part in me choosing electronics as a profession.

Many years go by…

After ten years as a printed circuit designer, I make a switch and spend the next ten years working primarily as a marketing manager, broken up by a year and a half stint as an engineering manager (high frequency CATV analog electronics). In addition to electronic music, I start playing music (on oud, flute etc) for belly dancers every weekend in Asheville, NC.

Mid-afternoon, Sunday, August 21, 2005 – Preparing for a bellydance music gig, I get the idea to start a song by reciting “Abu Ben Adhem” over a low drum beat with Ishani, the dancer that night, playing the part of the angel. I call her to see if she has a “book of gold” to use as a prop. She does.

Sunday night approximately 10:00pm, August 21, 2005 – We perform Abu Ben Adhem at Hookah Joe’s hookah lounge. Ishani is a great dancer and it is very well received.

Monday morning, August 22, 2005 – I get an email from Barry Darnell who also did printed circuit design for Bob. The email informs me of Bob’s death. I had been out of touch with Bob for a while at that point. I heard he was sick, but had no idea that it was terminal. Needless to say, it came as a shock.

Tuesday afternoon, August 23, 2005 – Barry and I attend Bob’s funeral at a local synagogue. After the rabbi finishes his part, one-by-one he calls the family members up to speak. The first one to speak is Bob’s oldest daughter. She says she wanted to start by reciting one of Bob’s favorite poems…
…Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream….

When I heard that, I almost passed out. I was standing at the edge of the room. My legs got weak and my vision grew dark. And then I remembered that the email mentioned that Bob died at 2:00 on Sunday… right about the time that I got the idea to add the poem to our performance. I was in a daze for quite a while after that.

I cannot say I knew Bob well. After doing the projects for him, I would see him occasionally here and there, but we never really hung out or talked about anything much other than electronics. The subject of poetry never came up.

I’m still trying to understand the significance (if any) of this. The mathematician in me says that everything we do, think or say is an opportunity for a coincidence. That would add up to billions, trillions or more opportunities in a lifetime. If some amazing ones didn’t come along every once in a while, that would be the strange thing. But still, when something like this happens to you, it’s hard to be objective about it.

In May of 2007, Moog Music hired me as Marketing Manager. This actually had little or nothing to do with the previous work I had done for Bob. Bob was gone and the only one there from the Big Briar days that even remembered me was Steve Dunnington.

My first week at Moog was also the week of Bob’s birthday. We had a nice birthday party at the office in his memory, and over ice-cream and cake we found out that SonicState.com (who had been doing a weekly countdown of the top 20 synthsizers of all time) had “coincidentially” just named the Minimoog as the top synth. When Mike Adams (President of Moog Music) called them to thank them for doing that on Bob’s birthday, their reply was something like “What… we didn’t know it was his birthday!”

It was at this party that I first met Michelle Moog-Koussa. When I told her the story about the poem, her response was “Oh my god, you’re the “Abou-Ben-Adhem-Guy”. After Bob’s funeral, I sent my story to the Caring Bridge website set up for Bob and his family. Mixed in with the hundreds (if not thousands) of other comments, I didn’t think that anyone had seen it. I was wrong.

Michelle and I spent much of the party talking about this coincidence… and many others. It turns out that my story was one of many surrounding Bob’s passing. She related numerous other similar stories (many of which I unfortunately can’t remember). There were one or two that were along the lines of “when I heard that Bob died, I went to turn on my old Minimoog that hadn’t worked in years… it worked!”

I thought that the birthday party supplied a nice end to the story. I was wrong. The next day Michelle called me. Our conversation went something like this…

Michelle: “Did you see LOST last night?”

Me: “No, why?”

Michelle: “It was the season finale (of season two). They were breaking into a bunker to stop the device that was jamming their radio transmissions. In doing so, they mortally wounded the person inside. As this person was dying they divulged, “The programmer was a musician. The password is GOOD VIBRATIONS”.

Me: “Yeah? Beach Boys… so?”

Michelle: “GOOD VIBRATIONS is the epitaph on dad’s tombstone.”

Me: “Hoe-lee _________ !!!!!!” (Insert uniquely Southern expression of surprise)

It wasn’t over then either. At NAMM shows or during factory visits I heard many similar stories. It helped give my time at Moog a very surrealistic edge.

Every year about this time Michelle and I talk about how all this needs to be written down. This was the year it happened.

Chris also sends this image along, with another story:

Trying to think of a good photo for this. I remembered this image. It has a bit of historical connection to the story. I created this in the early 90s. It was one of my first forays into computer graphics and photography. I think I did this in Aldus Photostyler on an 80386-based PC.

It kind of has a vaguely cosmic/spiritual feel that fits the story.

The circuit elements came from my PCB design work for Bob. He got a kick out of seeing it used this way. This image was used in the poster and ticket design for the first (and possibly only) rave in Spartanburg SC.

Here’s to all the ghosts in our machines, from Bob Moog to Max Mathews. I certainly feel their gifts in the work I’ve done just in the last couple of weeks alone.

You’re not, in fact, a lonely bedroom musician with no friends. You’ve got friends. You’ve got collaborators. You’ve got audio and visual artists who want to play with your laptop with sync piped between you, and yet wireless synchronization for laptop performance has often been an elusive ideal. Here, in spectacular fashion, you can see it all come together over WiFi with Ableton Live, a projection-mapped coffeemaker, and everything from percolation sounds to the keypad sound effect from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This just in from Barcelona – a new Max for Live plug-in is making laptops and coffee pots jam in harmony. A proper review is in order from CDM. (Well, once we find a few friends… by astounding coincidence, I’ll be surrounded by Ableton users – visual and audio – next week in Rome. I’ll make it happen.) But that’s no reason to deny you the pleasure of the video now. It’s the best part of waking up.

More: http://www.ooeevv.com/

Chris Stack writes:

Jon Hassell just shared with me a very interesting and historic letter. Very timely too, with tomorrow being Bob Moog’s Birthday celebration…

16nov64
Letter to Jon Hassell
Electronic Music – The Early Years

I had a very interesting experience about one week ago. A gentleman, Mr. Robert Moog, who claims to know of you, visited Washington and demonstrated a compact electronic studio. He claims to be the only man in the country building and designing equipment solely for the creation of electronic music. He was tremendously impressed with your proposals. [For - among other things - applying the principles of electronic music manipulation to the video domain.]

He stated that he would be able to provide much of the equipment called for in those proposals at the same quality or better at considerably less cost. He also demonstrated equipment (in a crude state of development) which could provide great flexibility with extremely simple manipulation involved, almost to the point of being able to improvise an electronic composition – to be recorded or not.

He is going to send me descriptive material and quotations, copies of which I will either forward to you or hold for your interest and considerations.

Lloyd Ultan
Head, Music Department
American University
Washington D. C. 20016

Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)

What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.

GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)

I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:

Design Strengths

I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting.

It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length.

It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.

Now, for a few details you might not know.

A showcase for the iPad’s tech

Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:

• It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
• It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
• The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
• You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
• You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.

I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.

Playability

The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.

Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.

Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)

My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.

In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.

Editability

Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.

A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)

It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.

Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.

It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.

The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.

Sharing and workflow features:

Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.

You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.

You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.

But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes.

Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.

Conclusions

Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.

On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.

When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.

My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.

Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.

I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:

Ah, I remember March 2011…

Grab the app or review it yourself:
GarageBand for iOS @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

Sound technology pioneer Bob Moog’s birthday is May 23, and just about the whole Web will be in on the celebration.

Play Google like a Minimoog: Google’s Doodle, the image you see on their homepage, is one of their best yet: it’s a fully interactive, playable Minimoog synthesizer. You can even record and playback little musical sketches and share with friends. Since the Earth is round, Google Japan gets an early scoop. (Yes, the Moog sun will rise first on the land of Roland, Yamaha, and KORG.)

Bonus (for Web nerds): this all uses the Web Audio API, which promises to bring real sound into the browser. Check out the technical details on html5audio.org, but if you love synths, and you use the Internet, this is good news.

Get swag, save cash, benefit the Moog Foundation: Rags and riches will be on sale for your shopping pleasure, including a benefit for the Moog Foundation on Moog-logo merchandise and clothes, with 50% of proceeds going to the Foundation’s educational and historical mission, which goes far beyond just Bob Moog to synthesis in general. That one-day birthday sale includes the lovely new Moog travel mug (I need one, after mine sadly broke in the mail to Germany), and a huge knob on a t-shirt (nice). See image, below.

Moog Music is also discounting their iOS apps, in case you missed discount pricing on their superb Animoog synth.

I Want My Moog TV. But let’s get back to the man himself, with a series of videos shared by the folks at Moog Music.

From an 80s BBC TV special, here’s Bob Moog demonstrating the synthesizer:

Moog Music are painting their spiritual father and founder’s image on their offices in North Carolina; see a timelapse of this gorgeous mural:

And in the sweetest gesture for the day:

To #celebratebob on what would have been his his 78th birthday local Asheville piano teacher, Kim Roney, brought two of her pupils to the Moog Store to perform a song in celebration of Bob Moog’s life and legacy. Bob Moog is still inspiring creative exploration in children of all ages. Thank you Dr. Moog, Happy Birthday! How has Bob Moog inspired you? #celebratebob

Finally, here’s a five-part series on synthesis fundamentals that uses the Moog Voyager. That seems, perhaps, the best way to celebrate Bob Moog’s legacy: it’s a chance to learn ideas about sound that can allow you to unlock the world of electronic music. With that knowledge, you can use any synthesis, anywhere, with or without a Moog logo on it – or use your imagination to invent the next great music technology, something Bob Moog I’m sure would have loved to see you build.

Moog Music Inc. is proud to present Dr. Joseph Akins’ five part series on the fundamentals of synthesizer programming. Dr. Akins is an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University and strives to teach his students a complete understanding of synthesizers and computers as tools for modern music production. In this five part series Dr. Akins uses a Voyager to teach the process through which a synthesizer’s sound is generated and the techniques needed to program your own sounds and sonic experiments. In part one of this five part series Dr. Akins gives a brief history of synthesizers, goes over basic synthesizer theory, and overviews basic signal flow.

http://www.moogfoundation.org/

Here’s how interfaces normally break down. You’ve got your conventional, tactile interfaces, like a knob. You’ve got your touch interfaces, which lack tactile feedback (you touch them, but they don’t push back). You’ve got your gestural interfaces, which have you waving your hands in the air without touching anything and without any tactile feedback. (They’re generally the most challenging, because your brain has no feedback for what it’s doing.)

Syntact creates an entirely new category. It’s a gestural interface, of the “waving your hands around in the air” sort. But while your hand is in mid-air and isn’t touching anything, it does provide tactile feedback. It pushes back as you move your hand around, giving you interactive feedback. The way it pulls it off: sound. 121 ultrasonic transducers beam sound at a particular point, so that you feel something as you move.

You can see a bit of what this means in the new video, above. I’m hoping to get a hands-on (erm, hands-off) demo soon from the designer. The basic specs:

• Optical analysis of gestures, using a USB camera built into the interface
• MIDI control, for use with any live performance or music making rig (or other media)
• A control panel for selecting different sonic images and adjusting scaling.
• A built-in music solution visualizes sound and makes it easier to map to your own MIDI files.

More information:
http://www.ultrasonic-audio.com/products/syntact.html

Also well worth checking out the directional speaker tech from these Slovenia-based developers – directional sound is another huge area of innovation.
http://www.ultrasonic-audio.com/products/acouspade.html

If you want to try this in person, it’ll be at the Beam Festival in London in late June.

Side note: Yes, I’m looking into that LEAP thing, for more gestures, albeit without tactile feedback. Stay tuned.

luanna is a beautiful new application out of Tokyo-based visual/sound collective Phontwerp_. Amidst a wave of audiovisual iPad toys, luanna is notable for its elegance, connecting swirling flurries of particles with gestures for manipulation. I imagine I’m not alone when I say I have various sample manipulation patches lying around, many in Pd, lacking visualization, and wonder what I might use in place of a knob or fader to manipulate them. In the case of luanna, these developers find one way of “touching” the sound.

As the developers put it:

luanna is an audio-visual application designed for the iPad
that allows you to create and control music through the manipulation of moving images.

The luanna app has been designed to be visually simple and intuitive, whilst retaining a set of rich and comprehensive functions. Through hand gestures you can touch, tap and manipulate the image, as if you were touching the sound. The image changes dynamically with your hand movements, engaging you with the iPad’s environment.

The interface is multi-modal, with gestures activating different modes. This allows you to select samples, play in reverse, swap different playback options, mute, and add a rhythm track or crashing noises. It’s sort of half-instrument, half-generative.

Phontwerp_ themselves are an interesting shop, descibed as a “unit” that will “create tangible/intangible products all related to sound.” Cleverly naming each as chord symbols, ∆7, -7, add9, and +5 handle sound art, merch, music performance / composition / sound design, and code, respectively. That nexus of four dimensions sounds a familiar one for our age.

Sadly, this particular creation is one of a growing number of applications that skips over the first-generation iPad and its lower-powered processor and less-ample RAM. Given Apple can make some hefty apps run on that hardware, though, I hope that if independent developers find success supporting the later models, they back-port some of their apps.

See the tutorial for more (including a reminder that Apple’s multitasking gestures are a no-no).

US$16.99 on the App Store. (Interested to see the higher price, as price points have been low for this sort of app – but I wonder if going higher will eventually be a trend, given that some of the audiovisual stuff we love has a more limited audience!)

Readers request Audio Copy and sample import right away. I think sample import, at least, could easily justify a higher price, by making this a more flexible tool.

Find it on our own directory, CDM Apps:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/luanna

http://phontwerp.jp/luanna/

Very similar in its approach is the wonderful Thicket, well worth considering:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/thicket

See our recent, extensive profile of that application’s development:
Thicket for iOS Thickens; Artists Describe the Growth of an Audiovisual Playground

See also, in a similar vein, Julien Bayle’s recent release US$4.99 Digital Collisions:

http://julienbayle.net/2012/04/07/digital-collisions-1-1-new-features/

http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/digital-collisions-hd

Benga’s latest video was released early last month and made the blog rounds, but it’s worth considering as we continue our ongoing thread on visual music and how sound can go from invisible to tangible. A stunning video whets fans appetite for the upcoming Benga full-length Chapter 2, constructing a wave shape in physical form as a series of vinyl records. Using some 960 hand-cut vinyl records, the track’s waveform materializes in stop motion-filmed animation.

Physical as it may be, the inspiration, say the creative team, was SoundCloud. UK-based creative team Us, consisting of Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, explain:

When we were asked to pitch on the promo they sent us the track as a ‘Soundcloud’ link, we usually get it sent as an MP3. For the first time we were not just listening to the track we were also watching it. There was something mesmerising about this in its simplicity. This ignited the idea to create a real life three dimensional waveform. We started to think about the fact that a vast amount of our music is consumed online and has lost a sense of physicality this lead us to the idea of using vinyl records. We also loved the way it related to Benga as an artist who’s background comes from using records as a DJ or producer.

The maths worked we would need 960 records to create 1 minute and 20 seconds worth of wave form. Each one had to be individually cut to a specific size, hand labeled, hand numbered and then finally polished. This prep took 7 full working days and then the animation process took around 30 hours.

No 3D printers here: the process of making the individual, differently-sized records sounds painstaking. Us tells Creative Review:

To animate the wave form, we built it and then carefully removed each individual record. This had to be done very gently as any shift in the position of the sculpture would result in the failure of the animation and as we had to literally destroy each piece of vinyl to get it off, there was only one chance to get it right. Once the sculpture was finally built, the animation process took about 30 hours.

As you can see in the behind-the-scenes photos, actually working those records onto the pipe involved removing the far end, making this still more challenging (though adding a great deal to the impact of the effect).

This is all quite similar to another radial, sample-by-sample waveform made of physical circles we saw earlier this year:
Voice Messages Become 3D Paper Waveform Sculptures: Paper Note

Making a waveform view in the digital realm is dead-simple. But something about going to physical media makes that decision more than just afterthought, as though these creators really are touching frozen sound.

Having Benga as your soundtrack doesn’t hurt, either. You can grab this single on iTunes.

Full credits:

Directors – Us
Producer – Liz Kessler
Line Producer – Connor Hollman
DoP – Matt Fox
Gaffer – Ben Fordesman
Editor – Vid Price
Grade – Mark Horrobin
Animation – Alice Dupre
Structural consultant – Jorge Betancor
Runners – Tayo Rapoport, Paul Mckelvie, Chaelyn Allcock
Production Company – A+
Commissioner – Dan Millar
Management – Phil Hutcheon / Andrew Foggin

Behind-the-scenes photos courtesy Us.

See the full project page for lots of additional images and details:

http://www.weareus.co.uk/projects/benga-i-will-never-change

Thanks, Andrew Cavette!