You might not expect a handheld game console, the gadget kids use to play Pokemon, to prove much worth as a musical instrument. But even in the age of readily-available computer plug-ins and iPhone apps, the DS holds its own. In the hands of two sets of artists, we find music that stands alone, independent of the gimmick of the device on which it was made. For these artists, the limitations of a fold-up touchscreen – entirely independent of doubling as a phone, or a computer, or a Facebook-browsing engine, or a powerful 64-bit DAW – apparently prove enticing. Beginning with Korg’s DS-10 cartridge, they use a stylus-operated software synth with its own unique character.

On some level, I almost hesitate to wax poetic about the fact that these were made with a Nintendo DS at all, because what these are, really, is love letters to synthesis.

And as it happens, both are available as free downloads from Bandcamp.

First up: AuxPulse is the duo of Rutger Muller and Michael Vultoo, based in Amsterdam and Kockengen, Netherlands, respectively. Late last year, they debuted their first album at Amsterdam’s prestgious Stedelijk Museum of modern art, playing a big set (two and a half hours) on small devices. Primarily employing the Nintendo DS, they nonetheless produce sounds that are rich and layered, sometimes even tending to the ambient exploration, not just the rawer chip-music sounds regularly associated with Nintendo handhelds.

Their music is trippy but danceable, unapologetically electronic, fully exploiting the DS-10′s idiosyncratic sonic character, one that’s slightly lower-fidelity than many soft synths (or even iPhone apps), without being “chippy” in the sense of retro devices. Dark textures collide with precise, clockwork rhythms, in sounds that sometimes tend to acid techno and sci fi game realms. (Lo-acid-fi, anyone?)

As you watch them live, you also see the value of the interface compositionally, both in terms of its pattern banks and its more conventional synth controls, all manipulated with the added precision of a stylus.

As they put it:

We aim to bring experimentation back to the dancefloor by expressing a psychedelic atmosphere through the use of a variety of rhythms and moods. Some of our inspirations are analogue synthesizers, acid, IDM, hardcore, gabber, ambient and oldschool electro.

Right now we mainly use the KORG DS-10 synthesizer for Nintendo DS to compose and improvise our music. When playing live we fuck with the synths as much as we can, trying to surprise ourselves with new sounds.

Our first album was recently released in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam! Now we perform regularly, trying to open up some minds and move some feet.

The album, on Bandcamp:

And on SoundCloud:
Dream Stages (FREE ALBUM!) by AuxPulse

Bonus: an interview with them (in Dutch, naturally)

In a very different direction, Princeton, New Jersey-based DJ and producer Christian Montoya (love and tonic records) produces music on the DS-10 that’s drier and more exposed, as he programs intricate bass music on the unprocessed Nintendo cart. Christian works as a game designer by day, and channels some of the DS-10′s game music and so-called “chip music” heritage. The results, though, are a perfect marriage of game chip-waveform rawness, nude bass and synth and percussion sounds, and carefully-concocted grooves. For anyone concerned that game systems could hinder moving your butt out of the seat, this album is required listening. It’s utterly stripped-bare dance goodness – and it turns out the DS bass sounds fantastic.

Grab the record for free:

DS-10 users, got any tips for us on getting the most out of a Nintendo handheld and this KORG synth? Let us know.

Also, from comments but worth pointing out, Rutger directs us to good resources for getting the most out of DS-10:

If you’re interested in making DS-10 music you can check out http://www.ds10forum.com

I (Rutger, DS-10 Dominator, 1/2 of AuxPulse) run it with Harley (http://harleylikesmusic.com, superb DS-10 composer!) and we try to help out beginner’s and advanced users as much as we can.

Melbourne, Australia-based acid music lover dyLab posts 303-made goodness on the Acid Box Blues blog. And here’s a great way to get in the holiday mood — well, that is, if acid music gets you in the holiday mood. It’s a pattern laid out on paper, ready to program into your TB-303 hardware, software emulation, x0xb0x, Pd patch, or however you get your real/fake 303 on. The pattern is the work of Honeysmack (Soundcloud site), a fellow Melbourne-based artist.

The December Acid Pattern

I’m rather hoping that putting patterns and presets on paper catches on; I dubbed our MeeBlip version “hipster patch storage.” As it happens, in this case you can download the blank template for your 303 activities. There’s something about committing something electronic in nature to actual paper. And once you’re done, you can share with others with a SoundCloud group. Or, better yet, if you have enough music-making friends, make this your holiday card. (Start on that New Year’s card now, kids.)

There’s more in the way of giveaways, too. Try on a free TR-606 sample set and check out other goodies on the rest of the site.

http://acidboxblues.blogspot.com/

In Christmas We Trust by Honeysmack by DyLABs

Let’s start with what’s really important: Chris McCormick’s squeakyshoecore tunes may well make you tap your All Stars and smile. The words “algorithmically-generated acid” and mention of the multimedia patching environment Pd might not suggest feel-goody, cheery, geeky-sounding electronic grooves, but that’s exactly what’s come out. These robots know what they’re doing.

And yes, even a tune named after Chris’ favorite fractal can be good summer fun.

Behind the scenes, Chris’ music is produced generatively using algorithms created in the free and open source visual patching and programming environment Pure Data. The patches actually began as a scene for the iPhone/iPod touch interactive music environment RjDj, but you can now grab all the patches, try them out, and learn them, all with an explicit GPLv3 open source license.

GarageAcidLab

It’s not just about sitting back and letting the robots do the work, either; you can control the results live with a MIDI controller.

Check out the tunes, which are themselves available under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA):
http://sciencegirlrecords.com/chr15m/squeakyshoecore/
On Archive.org / CC-licensed download page

And read the blog:
http://mccormick.cx/news/tags/squeakyshoecore

And great work, Chris. I hope that soon we can work with Chris and others to get some more information for newcomers to Pd on making their own musical creation and performance tools.

It’s iPhones being used by cute babies! And if that doesn’t sum up the ways in which Apple’s mobile is divisive, I don’t know what does. It’s time for our Monday round-up of the latest from the Apple iStuff world.

I’ve never been an advocate of the iPhone and iPod touch; the idea is to cover all digital music platforms on CDM, and as regular readers know, I have no love of Apple’s strict NDA and restrictive developer policies. But I did find this reader comment by PLP amusing:

I was getting annoyed with the amount of iphone info on CDM as well…then I broke down and bought one today i really like itouch midi. little XY pad perfect.

If you’ve found yourself in that boat, today’s round-up of iPhone and iPod touch news brings some very good news: BtBx, the PSP Rhythm creators’ wonderful beat machine, in action, iDrum working with round-trip workflows and operated by babies, and a multi-touch OpenSoundControl app on the app store.

BtBx in Action

What it is: The creators of the popular PSP Rhythm for Sony PSP show off their latest beat-making app for Apple. And it costs about as much as one beer — during happy hour.
Why it matters: Designing UIs for mobile apps requires a return to efficient, minimal interface design. Mark my words – that’ll start to influence desktop UI design for music software. And, yo, Sony: this could have been an official app on your platform, except you refused to make them an official developer. Indie PSP store, please?

Louie (RCON) shares two tasty BtBx videos. First on deck: making some acid basslines with BtBx. Skip the first couple of minutes — it’s the usual beat step sequencer you’ve seen before. Things start to get interesting further in as he sequences a live bassline. Note this is also the first time we’ve seen a full-blown synth in one of these apps, which for me put BtBx at the front of the pack. Part of why I like the Sony PSP is that it’s very capable of doing a lot of hard-core synthesis; we’re still waiting to see how much the iPhone can do.

For a sense of BtBx’s workflow, here’s a video demo of mixing songs:

BtBx was later to the game than iDrum and BeatMaker, but my guess is it’s going to start to earn some attention. I’ve just gotten my refurb iPod touch for testing these apps, so watch for a three-way battle soon. They each have their own strengths, and they’re very different. But don’t think that’ll stop me from letting my own biases loose and choosing a favorite.

iDrum + iDrum = Round-Trip Ticket

What it is: An update to the iDrum desktop app means you can take samples and patterns from your Mac and PC, then to your iPhone / iPod touch, and back again.
Why it matters: The laptop/desktop computer remains the center of music making for most people, and mobile tech isn’t likely to change that. But imagine simpler, portable versions of your favorite music apps, so you can develop ideas on the road and bring them back to the main environment. (Ableton, are you listening?)

iDrum has a unique feature, which is the ability to make custom sample packs and/or patterns in iDrum on your desktop Mac or PC, load them on your iPod touch or iPhone, edit them in iDrum, and then bring the full patterns back to your desktop. That solves an important issue, which is that MIDI export from a mobile device gives you patterns but not the sounds you created them for, whereas audio export gives you both but can’t be edited as easily as MIDI. It’s the first real round-trip workflow we’ve seen on the Apple platform. (Palm and Windows Mobile have done something like that before with music apps, but it’s still big news. Any Palm/WinMo historians, did any match up the desktop and mobile app quite like this?)

The trick was, we were waiting on a desktop update to actually use this. It’s now here, in the form of iDrum 1.64 (and later):

iDrum Product Page

Here’s a great demo of how iDrum in general works:

And for all of you iPhone haters who said these are just toys with UIs that look like they were designed for babies — okay, maybe you were right. But Baby Nicolina would like to have a word for you. If you insult her mad production skills, she gets really angry.

(The uploader notes Nicolina can “* Sequences notes * Turn the sequencer on * Solo the kick drum and modify which notes play * Bring in the modified kick drum part with the overall beat!”)

OpenSoundControl App on App Store

OpenSoundControl is a terrific, open protocol for controlling music and visual software more flexibly than you can with MIDI. It’s ideal for the iPhone and iPod touch, because these devices use networking protocols to communicate with the outside world.

We’ve seen controller apps on the “jailbroken” iPhone, but OSCemote is the first to be available via the official SDK and App Store. (That should be a reasonably good sign, in that it means at least some of this functionality is possible using Apple’s official SDK.)

It’s quite a nice app, as you can see. I like the simplicity of it, actually, as there’s not a whole lot of space on an iPhone for your fingers. The killer feature is clearly the Lemur-like multi-touch mode. And because it uses OSC, it should be a snap to hook this up to apps like Processing or the new Circle synth.

iTunes links:
OSCemote
OSCemote Light

I’ll definitely be testing this and will report back. A free version gives you pads, so try that out first; the full version is US$5. I am still interested to watch for jailbroken apps to make their way through the hurdles of the new SDK and, hopefully, show up on the official store. Some of those apps do things this one doesn’t, one (mrmr) has been open source, and choice is good. (I’m unclear on the implications of Apple’s developer agreement for open source; maybe someone has some idea.)

Here’s a quick review of those apps:

iPod / iPhone Touch as Visualist Controller: Free, Multiplatform with Pd (Pure Data)
Mrmr : iPhone + 10.5 + Quartz Composer = Wireless VJ Nirvana
MIDI Control with iPhone and iPod Touch: i3L MIDI Bridge
aka.iphone 2.1: More iPhone and iPod Touch Performance Tools; launch video

These won’t work even if you jailbreak your 2.0 iPhone/iPod touch, because the firmware changes are incompatible with these 1.x jailbroken apps.

We’ve also seen one official DMX controller

More entries for our next iTouch round-up? Send them our way!