Come on – you know that occasionally you want technology to respond when you slap it.
As my sister watched an episode of the television show Quantum Leap, I thoroughly enjoyed watch Dean Stockwell’s character Al give his pocket computer, looking for all the world like a 7″ tablet, little helpful smacks.
SmackTop does that for music. Yes, we hear, ad infinitum, the complaint that laptop musicians simply stare inertly at blue glowing laptops as if checking their email. Now they get to put a little skin in the game, literally. And a version 0.3 update makes this humorous novelty genuinely useful:
Imagine your laptop as a MIDI drum kit. SmackTop is an open-source application for Mac laptops which translates physical motion into MIDI messages. Through real-time analysis of the built-in accelerometer’s output, SmackTop is able to classify four different ‘smacks’. Now you can control your favorite DAW by simply tapping your computer. Slap samples, ping notes and hit record – SmackTop is the MIDI controller you already own.
Got another motion-sensing laptop that’s not a Mac and feel jealous? Maybe someone can port this.
In January, we also expect to catch up in person with developer Raymond Weitekamp and Interface LA, the awesome live performance collective in southern California. Stay tuned.
The weather outside is frightful, but the hi-fi is so delightful. Let it snow. Photo (CC-BY) Junichiro AOYAMA, Kyoto.
From Berlin’s Melissa Taylor and Tailored Communication, for my money, just about the best publicist for electronic music out there, we get one epic playlist. If you’re lucky enough to get one holiday or another (Christmas? Boxing Day?) in the next few days, fire up this terrific playlist. You get a full range, from some favorites of mine in 2011 like best-of-toppers Sepalcure, Ghostly’s Mark E, mainstay Thomas Fehlmann, Four Tet, and many more.
It’s exceptional quality stuff, perfect to settle back and take your ears and musical mind on a much-needed vacation.
Clocking in at one hour, forty five minutes, you can stream or download via SoundCloud. Just remember, as Melissa reminds us, “music is for life, not just for Christmas. Buy vinyl!”
(Or, uh, this being a site with ‘digital’ in its name, go lossless and make backups, too. Actually – do both.)
Christmas in Cork, at – where else – McDonald’s. Photo (CC-BY-SA) jf1234.
If you can find a spot in the rotation with your Mannheim Steamroller collection for something a bit different, CDM reader Leigh Walsh of Cork, Ireland sends in her work. She describes it as “punky gothy electronic … for Christmas,” with any proceeds benefiting Autism research. The single sounds crazy, but for me, things get good with the game world-like, shimmering “Secret Inside the Ice Level” and “Melody for the Sewn Princess” tracks.
I can find myself mentally wandering an 8-bit ice cave level right now…
Loving her work, hoping to here more, hoping not to get folks’ genders wrong next time… oops.
Heck, let’s take this playlist a little further out.
One darned trippy Christmas: HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF! By London-based artist Affie Yusuf, via SoundCloud:
As Christmas revelers head out for last-minute shopping in the last surge of pre-holiday capitalism, they might catch over piped music the ouvre of one Mannheim Steamroller. For all the electronic artists we might imagine as representing the genre, this guy has sold one heck of a lot of Christmas records, in a strange brew of hyper-active electrified timbres and New Age. How many records? Well, enough that he is able to, from his Omaha home, raise wolves.
Not yet fully grown, they require a full-time trainer (they now respond to commands in German), walks up to three hours long, acres of space to roam and a professional meat grinder to create their diet of sushi-grade raw salmon and whole chickens ground up with their bones.
And thus begins the tale of how Mr. Steamroller – erm, Mr. Chip Davis, in fact – lives on the fortune of his musical output, one that might be described, fairly, as a bit eccentric. Hence, the Egyptian artefacts and replica sarcophagus, and crystal balls and cape (yes, he’s worn it while producing, at least on occasion), and apparently flown-in female companionship. Even the wolves get their own iPod speaker and framed pork chop artwork. (Come to think of it, actually, I could go for a picture of some pork in my living space, so maybe I’m not so unlike the wolves. I’m, meanwhile, learning to respond to words in German.)
A must-read article in The Wall Street Journal Real Estate section. (This will be the first and last time you ever hear me say that.)
Have an uncommon yule with tools and music from the Commons.
That’s the pitch (so to speak) of the Ultimate Christmas Songbook, an iPad app built with 50 Christmas songs and a fully free and open source notation engine. Making use of public domain songs, the number of songs available continues to grow as the community contributes tunes. (Those contributors got the app for free.)
As notation proliferates on tablets, the app also suggests that “commercial” doesn’t have to mean “closed.” The scores themselves are available in open, cross-platform formats (MIDI, MusicXML, MuseScore, and PDF). But by generating revenues, the app can support further development – something that’s often been missing in open source music software projects.
And if you’re looking for a way to help family and friends play music, and they have iPads, the score reading features are quite reasonable. You get lovely display of scores, audio playback, tempo change, transpose, and the all-important font resize with reflow so you don’t have to squint.
The app is on iOS now, but other platforms are planned; an Android version is already in testing. And we hear lots more is coming from MuseScore, too, hot on the heals of a release that earned half a million downloads: Continue reading »
It’s that time of the year, when the halls echo with the sound of … horrible electronic synthesized Christmas tunes, playing on endless loops from strings of lights and other cheap electronics!
But wait – what if you could take those sounds and embrace their low-fidelity, chippy sounds to more inventive musical purposes?
Turn to our friend AfroDJ, who has gradually built up several dozen Ableton Live racks. The latest samples Christmas tree lights for a festive, chiptastic holiday timbre.
I just put up my Christmas tree and put on some lights that play Christmas songs. The songs are comprised of very simple monophonic melodies, coming out of a tiny little speaker, but as soon as I heard it I was transported back to my youth sitting around the tree late at night. Naturally I had to sample it. So I put my AKG C3000 right up to the speaker and let it play. I selected four different notes to use in the instrument.
With reverb and the wave shaper inside Ableton’s sampler, those samples get a bit more creative. (If you don’t have a copy of Live, you can use the samples and add your own effects chain.)
The results are good fun, and could be just the thing for an improvised track while fiddling with your laptop, the warm glow of Egg Nog spreading through your fingers. Enjoy! (And if you make a track with this, do send it our way!)
Want more inspiration? AfroDJ is selling packs at 50% off through January 1. So take that holiday, and make some music.
Music lovers are hacking Apple’s Siri voice recognition technology. By connecting to some of the “intelligence” of the cloud, these tools can make your phone rap or send music files to a player piano for instant musical playback.
First up: Yamaha’s piano taking requests, thanks to music grabbed online. A Yamaha rep explains:
Yamaha consultant Craig Knudsen demonstrates a unique implementation of Apple’s incredible Airplay technology in an exciting new way.
Here’s how it works:
Take a standard MIDI songfile and convert it to an audio file (while maintaining the MIDI data). The songfile is then sent wirelessly via WiFi to an Apple Airport Express (which is mounted underneath a Yamaha Disklavier reproducing piano. The audio output of the Airport Express is then connected to the analog MIDI inputs of the Disklavier, using a standard audio cable.
Then, you simply ask Siri to play your favorite song from your iTunes library, and Siri responds immediately, by making the Disklavier’s keys and pedal move up and down, recreating the performance, including full orchestration.
The result is nothing short of magical.
Of course, the actual “playing” is thanks to the capabilities of the Yamaha Disklavier. I’m actually a bit puzzled as to how the online conversion works, exactly, and I was curious for any Disklavier-owning CDM readers whether this is something publicly available. I’m waiting to hear back from Yamaha.
And now, for something completely different: Siri rapping. (Somewhat … erm … badly, if amusingly. It is a hack.)
Peter Kirn
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James Grahame
Primus Luta
michaeluna
Kim Cascone
Ben Long
Tom Whitwell
John Jacobus
Chris Stack
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Markus Schroeder
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