slicedbread, on behalf of The Covert Operators, has released a free Windows utility that generates “endless harmonic oscillators” for Ableton Live’s Simpler and Sampler instruments. (Since this was a released, a Mac build has been made available, as well; see link below.) Even if you don’t intend to use the utility directly, pay attention – The Covert Ops already have a sample pack up full of oscillators, and you can bet the presence of this utility means more will come. (Even Robert Henke was impressed on the forums.)

Live 6 introduced the file format for “Ableton Meta Sounds.” Bjorn Vayner is currently breaking down how the format works, but the short upshot is that you can make oscillator sources that won’t alias for sound design in Simpler and Sampler. The AMS File Utility does more, too – export tunings (even microtuned stuff), and make oscillator variations. It’s sampling for people who like synthesis. In fact, not only is it fun to make additive synthesis-style oscillators dragging individual harmonics, but it’s a total breeze to change the offset and make equal-tempered stuff, negative scales, and other tunings.

Description on the forums:

AMS File Utility for Microtonal/Traditional Tunings

And from the very awesome Covert Operators site, some of the behind-the-scenes action, plus the Mac build (updated with additional links!):

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 1

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 2

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 3

Mac OS X Meta Application

Thanks for reminding us of this, Tony. I’m a bit behind on all this, but better late than never. Since I am lagging, has anyone made some AMS packs since this came out in September?

Stribe1: Touchstrip + LED Bargraph Display from CuriousInventor on Vimeo.

The Stribe, created by DIYer Josh Boughey, was always an interesting concept. It combines a set of touch sensors with strips of LEDs for visual feedback. But partly because of the nature of the problem, and partly because of how it was designed, the original Stribe was something of a beast, both in size and underlying hardware complexity (meaning, too, cost).

I see via the rapid-fire feed at Synthtopia that Josh has revised that design to a set of just two columns of (stereo-style) LEDs. The result: the design is much more compact, and it’s just US$79.99 for the kit. Now, arguably, you could do the same with a fader. And, true, you can daisy chain these units together to form more units. But I think the Stribe1 benefits from its slimmed-down new form.

New Kit: Stribe1 Touch LED Strip Controller

It’s always interesting to see how things evolve. Let us know your thoughts on the new Stribe1, and if you get one, do send us a report. For more on the Stribe, check out our original exclusive-scoop interview with Josh from February:

Hands-on, Interview: Stribe Multi-Touch Controller

… and, more recently, some reflections on touch interfaces in general (with plenty of interesting comments):

Stanton to Release Touch DJ Controller; Surface One, Thunder, Reborn?

Earlier this fall, we got an inside look at the various Vista optimizations in Cakewalk’s SONAR 8. It was all fairly technical stuff, but odds are you may have been puzzled by a mention of support for custom “MMCSS task profiles.” Don’t worry – the correct response here is, indeed, “say WHA?” These refer to specialized task profiles, or configurations by which Vista determines how to prioritize access to the CPU. It’s not strictly necessary for end users to ever have to touch these. You can theoretically squeeze some additional performance and reliability out of your system by using them with SONAR 8, but that would require knowing how to do so.

Well, you’re in luck. I convinced Noel Borthwick, CTO at Cakewalk, to share his personal MMCSS profile with CDM. This will only work in SONAR 8 for the moment, as far as I know, until another host implements the same feature. Now, don’t get me wrong — it’s not necessary to use this tweak with SONAR 8 and Vista; I’ve been testing SONAR without it with no issue. This is just “because you can.” Here’s how to use it:

From the time we’re kids, we use gestures to make music – shaking, tapping, moving our bodies around, and connecting physical movement to sound. The idea of using these kinds of gestures to control digital music has been something researchers have worked on for many years. But with increasingly smart phones, equipped with mics, tilt and acceleration sensors, cameras, and other inputs, it’s possible to actually deliver these tools to average users.

The latest entry in the field is ZooZBeat. Its life as a mobile app is just a matter of months, but the research behind it involves years of work at Georgia Tech (which recently opened the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology). The work comes from Gil Weinberg and and co-designers/programmers Andrew Beck and Mark Godfrey. We’ve followed Gil’s work with smart music apps for some time. I got the chance to talk to him about ZooZBeat.

ZooZBeat Website

Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Neither of these items is “news,” but since I missed them, you may have, too — and because they’re so absurd and wonderful, I can’t let that happen. Some things are timeless.

Via Chris Cheung’s Hong Kong’s-based Special Interest Group comes the Theremin Watch, “Modified (circuit bend) from 大人之科學 kit set.” I love the idea of a wrist-mounted Theremin. On one hand (ahem), it does mean that you can calibrate relative to your body, because it’s always strapped to your wrist. On the other, I expect that’s still something of a challenge. But it’s not so often you get wearable Theremins.

SIG Theremin Watch [specialinterestgroup.hk]
See also the more current honhim.com/blog

Andrew Cavette points to the Theremug, a combination of delicious tea and Theremin sound making, by the always-talented Kyle McDonald. This item made the music tech blog rounds in the summer and hit Make’s blog nearly a year ago, but then, unlike recent fads like iPhones and Windows Vista, tea is centuries old.

Instructions:

1 Prepare some tea
2 Expose the L/R leads on an 1/8″ cable
3 Immerse leads in tea
4 Plug cable into audio input
5 Start up max/pd/processing/etc. and average every 735 samples (882 if you’re in Europe/running on 50Hz)
6 Scale value and drive oscillator

I can’t believe that not a single blogger made an Infinite Improbability Drive reference here. Sloppy. Technically speaking, this gives you only the Brownian Motion Generator — you’ll still need the sub-meson Brain and atomic vector plotter. Rest in peace, Douglas Adams.

If you want to do this with Pd, Kyle wrote on Make:

For an idea of what the pd patch would like like… I just posted a screen shot of the max patch: http://flickr.com/photos/kylemcdonald/2126494098/

You’d use osc~ instead of cycle~ of course, and could reduce the mess between average~ 1024 and sqrt~ into a -~ and *~ that you set manually.

Theremug from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Update: Keith writes to tell us more about his wrist-Theremin:

thanks for posting my wearable theremin!! Me and Chris Cheung is SIG. This product is by me. The original post is here that has more photo: http://www.the-demos.com/2007/11/28/theremin-watch/

May be you also interest my work Moving Mario , which is awarded in Ars Electronica 2008, interactive art!!

http://www.the-demos.com/movingmario/moving-mario/

I am also interested in Moving Mario — but that sounds like a job for Create Digital Motion.

Google has responded to widespread concerns about political ads, particularly those promoting California’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban prior to last week’s US election. On one hand, I think their answers on policy and placement are incomplete. On the other, it looks like the upshot of this will be better tools for publishers to make their own decisions, which to me is fundamentally what the issue is about. For now, it’s a waiting game until promised improvements appear.

(If you’re bored by this discussion, don’t worry – we’ve got lots more music tech-specific stuff to talk about. But I know it matters to at least some of you directly, including music/music tech publishers out there.)

The response is on Google’s Inside AdSense blog, as posted at the end of the day Friday.

Political ads on AdSense sites

See my previous posts here on CDM. I posted these items because this issue hit music tech in a big way, from individual bloggers to big commercial press outlets – and advertising support is often used to describe what future revenue could look like for musicians:

Google AdSense Fails on Relevancy, Control, Policy, and Google Says Nothing

Google Ads Disabled; Your Partner is Your Business

In fact, the fact that readers didn’t universally agree with me – either on the political issues or my own spin on what this meant for publishers – only proves my point. You need individual publisher control of ads, just as you need human beings controlling editorial content. (If search engines alone told you everything, I don’t think we’d have any regular readers of anything.)

It’s worth reading Google’s complete response, but let’s evaluate it based on my original complaints – relevancy, policy, and publisher control:

There’s a massive misconception of digital formats, that somehow if something’s digital it’ll last forever in a pristine state. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: because digital formats are so intolerant of any error, they’re actually more susceptible to physical harm than analog formats. (If you don’t believe me, compare a vinyl LP with some scratches on it to a CD with a single scratch.)

Now, the question is, how dedicated are you to proper care and feeding of your discs? Enough to care whether you’re handling your CDs and Blu-ray discs according to an internationally-recognized standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (better known as ISO … not IOS)? Got 108 Swiss francs burning a hole in your pocket and want some unusually dry bedside reading?

ISO 18938:2008 addresses the issues of physical integrity of the medium necessary to preserve access to the recorded data. These include:

• use and handling environments, including pollutants, temperature and humidity and light exposure
• contamination concerns
• inspection
• cleaning and maintenance, including cleaning methods and frequency
• transportation
• disasters, including water, fire, construction and post-disaster procedures
• staff training

I kid, of course – I imagine there could be some utility to this document for people who depend on optical storage and want this sort of official document. I will say, though, ISO – any thought of releasing a free executive summary for everyone else?

New ISO standard gives recommendations for care of optical discs [iso.org]

Proper care and handling isn’t the only challenge facing optically-stored digital information. The materials from which discs are made don’t last forever. (They don’t bio-degrade, either, but what they will do is fatigue and age to the point that you can’t read the information on them or return them to the Earth, ashes to ashes style.)

So, I’m curious, optical experts out there? What do you recommend for care of optical discs? And for long-term archiving, what sort of options do people have?

Blue Mic’s new Icicle and subsequent discussion of alternatives like CEntrance’s MicPort Pro has generated some interest and chatter. Matej Isak sends over a review he did of the MicPort Pro:

CEntrance MicPort Pro review [Mono & Stereo]

CEntrance links to some other good reviews online on their product page. Highlights:

• Craig Anderton writes a detailed review for Harmony Central and in March did a short round-up of “fun stuff to plug into your USB bus.”
• Steve Fortner at Keyboard is quite fond of the thing.
• MusicTech gives it a perfect score, even though I’m always suspicious of perfect scores and, well, scores in general.
• Chris Breen likes it at Macworld, as does Joshua Topolsky for Engadget

So, there’s a round-up of people I know and like. I’m still sticking to a dedicated interface, at least until someone makes one of these that doubles as a standalone mic pre. (CEntrance, you listening? I’d even add a little bulk for that, honestly.) Interestingly, one commenter points out that while I didn’t like the lack of a headphone jack for direct monitoring, some people might prefer to listen through the host, so that keeps Blue’s offering in the running.

Certainly, to anyone who thought an XLR-to-USB mic pre wouldn’t appeal to anyone, this proves otherwise.

I’ve had the weekend to begin working with Sonic Charge Synplant, a wonderful new synth creation from Magnus Lidström. Lidström is a Propellerhead veteran best known for creating Reason’s Malström synth. But while Lidström has made a name in sound, I have to say, Synplant is something very, very different. Partly because of the user interface, partly because of the strange and mysterious sounds that emerge, Synplant makes you feel like you’re on an episode of Star Trek – like you’ve smuggled some alien vegetation after shore leave and are squeezing its leafy bits so it makes odd sounds. (Watch out for spores!)

Sick of hearing about music apps for the iPhone?

This is going to make you feel much worse. In fact, you might just want to go somewhere else right now.

Okay, before you start throwing your cell phones at me, they are experimenting with some nice ideas:

• Tilt
• “Wind input” using the mic
• Finger placement over multi-touch holes on the device

Breath controllers haven’t gotten the play recently they once did. What this demonstrates is that you can use a mic input to fake it – though they don’t make that input variable; that is, you can’t blow harder or lighter to get different results. (In fairness, that doesn’t work quite as well with a mic, at least not without some effort.) So there’s plenty here to experiment with – and nothing stopping you from, say, using the internal mic on your laptop to play around.

Whether or not it’s a serious musical instrument, as a toy it’s a bit like a 21st Century kazoo. There’s even online sharing of songs. So I can’t knock it as a toy. I’d just like to see someone make a DIY breath controller – any ideas? (Musical breathalyzer?)

The software is $0.99. I’ll be they sell a whole bunch of them. But if you do a Zelda cover, dress up in the green suit – it helps the effect. [iTunes link]

Also on Synthtopia, who grabbed this first.