If you’re heading out into the wilderness to find a record store, why not actually head out into the wilderness – the one with trees – and find music there?

Today, a you’ve no doubt heard, is Record Store Day. The official site is a useful resource, today and around the year. Today brings a number of special physical releases, favoring vinyl but also including CDs. A mobile app download will help you locate record stores in your city, both in the US and other countries around the world.

All of this does raise some deeper issues. Record stores can be terrific places, supporting artists with in-store events and introducing listeners to their music. But, more generally, is it meaningful to find ways of making music physical, and then finding a place to go hear it?

That question was asked compellingly this year by Really. Really itself is more than a conventional record label; it’s an inter-media arts collective (design, coding, visual arts, and the like included). Its charter sets out the goal between releases “to focus on the live aspect of music, on the fact that it is made first to be interpreted, by the musician and the audience.”

In a project called “Out of the Woods,” Really took a music release and made it truly locative in the physical sense. Playing with the digital intervention of placing physical USB drops in locations, the artists sent would-be listeners into the woods of the Grunewald. (I’m reminded of my dear friend Dave Karpf, with whom I worked at the Sierra Club, whose favorite motto was “get the f*** outdoors.”)

You need GPS to find the spot, and then, espionage-style, you pick up music from a log. Instructions read, charmingly, like this:

You will find Verspätete Erinnerung close to a path crossing almost the whole forest.
The dead tree, laying on the ground, is burnt from the inside, but blossoms on the outside. Have a look at its heart, we tried to bring our own kind of life there as well!

GPS: 52.486442,13.243954

look carefully for a black cable
inside the tree

We’ve seen other locative works, of course – most recently, a virtual piece employed GPS in locations like Central Park. But here, much like that expedition to your record store, you travel to a location on a quest to get music that you can’t find via other means. You acquire, hunter-gatherer style.

It’s worth considering that the recording itself is an anomaly in the history of music. “Old-timers” talk about recordings as though these strange objects are music, and as such, the perceived assault on their physical distribution and attack on the value of music itself. Yet, travel back in time just a couple of centuries in the millennia-long saga of human music making, and the recorded music object would seem like some dark art, a captured moment in time freezing something that is normally live, in-person, and human.

This is not to say that these strange inventions we’ve created that store frozen time are a bad thing. But, then, maybe that explains the record store: it treats them as something sacred, and restores the sense of place. It requires that you experience music with other human beings.

And while I admire Record Store Day, there is a certain throwback quality to the entire event – Android and iPhone apps notwithstanding. Even the graphic design of the site, complete with retro records, and the contests, with historically-styled record players and commemorative Queen drums, seems tinged with nostalgia.

Nostalgia is one of the things that music can make us feel, but music can also send us out into the wilderness. And if the record industry grew out of absurd ideas – Edison and his imagined technology for recording business memos – maybe music can take on more absurd and wonderful ideas yet.

It’s enough to make you want to wander out in the woods, and off the beaten path. Record store today, wilderness tomorrow.

Really used a collaborative team to make their project (below). How will you figure out how to distribute your next album? Will you try to get it in the hands of lots of people – or make just one, and give it to someone you love?

— Lorenzo Cercelletta – organization, installation, design process & video editing
— Valentina Ciarapica – video shooting & editing
— Katrin Dathe – installation support
— Wiley Hoard – photographs
— Matthieu Pons – organization, installation, design process & coding
— Gino Ruggeri – backstage video shooting & editing
— Juliane Teitge – organization, drawings & installation

http://rreeaallllyy.com/map.php

Music in the woods, as seen on The Creators Project and Sugarhigh

Record Store Day, as seen many places, including our friends at Synthtopia

Technology may be about the next Big New Thing, but as with music making in general, making music with tech is for many of us a lifetime vocation. So, it’s welcome news to find that time-tested tools, maturing over decades rather than months, are enjoying greater use than ever before. We saw Pure Data (Pd) attracting new interest as the embeddable libpd version allows use in a range of development environments and mobile platforms. Now, it’s about to be Csound’s turn.

Of course, before we get to that, if you’ve got an iPad 2 or “3″ (aka “the new iPad”), you can more or less skip this entire article and start making wild new granular sounds on your tablet. (Sadly, the original iPad is excluded here because it’s a resource-intensive application, though owners of that tablet – and other mobile devices – have plenty more to anticipate in Csound world.)

csGrain is a multi-effects processor that works its sonic-mangling magic live on sound, making use of something called “SyncGrain,” a real-time granular synthesizer. You can record from a mic or import tracks from the iTunes library (including, of course, your own music), or even use an included sample loop. csGrain then processes those sounds via a rich set of sonic tools, either live or to a recording, with sharing via AudioCopy, AudioPaste, email, and Dropbox. You also get setting randomization and a range of live effects, too. If you’re unsatisfied by the “finger against bathroom mirror glass” feeling of the tablet, you can connect an external MIDI input.

And, of course, it sounds amazing:

All of that is nice enough, but the bigger news is how this is all possible – and what is yet in store. Think Csound running everywhere, including learning about the tool and coding with it directly on an iPad.

csGrain uses Csound, the composition and sound design language that traces its roots back to the first-ever digital synthesis languages developed by pioneer Max Mathews. (It’s worth noting that Max’s ideas inspired the work of Miller Puckette on Pd and Max/MSP, too, meaning these are “all in the family,” as it were. Some even argue the model had an indirect influence on modular synths.)

csGrain is the first of a series of apps using Csound, including a massive, promising, everything-you’d-ever-want-with-Csound-on-an-Ipad app, covering documentation and code. This isn’t just an attempt to “cash in” on a geeky sound tool in the midst of the App Gold Rush — far from it. The application is as much a teaching opportunity as product. You’ll be able to use the application and its documentation to learn more about the sound processing technique, and discover the Csound code that makes the app tick. For some, it could be a first introduction to Csound, without having to be enrolled in an academic class. And for developers and sound artists who do want to make their own Csound creations, an upcoming SDK will unlock the power of Csound on other platforms (iOS being just one). That brings the power of “run anywhere” portability to text-based language Csound much as libpd has done for the graphical-patching tool Pd.

This image of a developer build of Csound Touch should be enough to set Csound fans’ hearts racing. (Okay, not a huge segment of the population at large, but I’m fairly certain most of them read this site.)

Developer Dr. Richard Boulanger, who has been a driving force behind almost every element of Csound’s recent development from the stuff under the hood to the documentation and the community, is now taking that sonic energy and applying it here. (And I do mean energy: sonic whiz “Dr. B,” as he’s affectionately called by his students, practically bubbles with enthusiasm and ideas. I’ll have what he’s having.)

He tells us that even in its first day, csGrain has made a big impact – no small task for an App Store inundated with volume and an application most would consider to be pretty niche in appeal.

The launch of csGrain has been pretty exciting. At the App Store, on day one, in the Paid Music Apps Catagory, we reached the rank of #8 (out of 4000+ paid music apps). We had over 957 people view the csGrain video at the Boulanger Labs site, and we were contacted by Richard Devine and Jordan Rudess with praise, congratulations and advice. We got some pretty great reviews at the App Store such as this one…. (I have no idea who this is by the way… which makes it even cooler….

“csGrain is a must-have effects powerhouse for the iPad. The sounds, usability, and musicality of the instrument are at least on par with the Moog apps, but the the potential for extension and customization far surpasses anything else. If you want to blow your mind in two seconds flat with this app, just press and hold any of the parameters (esp the sync grain ones) and a randomization window pops up, change the parameters and get instantly out of this world sounds. I really like the integration with Dropbox and AudioPaste functionality. And while you don’t need it at first, the manual is very well written for when you want to dig deeper. My only complaint is that the app is not yet in Retina-display, but I am sure that will be coming soon. Another nice feature improvement would be to augment the midi capability, which is already awesome, to allow for automatic learning of cc messages based on input like the way Ableton Live works. All in all, this is most powerful effects application on the iPad. Good job!”

I should also direct owners of the first-generation iPad to Richard’s explanation of why you can’t have the app:

It really doesn’t work on iPad1. It’s optimized for iPad2 and the new iPad. In particular, the stereo granular processing is both efficient and amazing, but… it’s also pretty heavy for the iPad1 and we would get some
breakUps in the audio on that platform – so we just made if for the 2 and the new.

But let’s get to what’s coming next. Dr. Boulanger gives us the full scoop. I imagine him sounding like Vince, the Slap Chop guy (and with good reason):

[Last week] was the release of csGrain (one of Boulanger Labs’ focused/targeted “spin-off” apps) and there are others coming over the next few months. But Csound Touch – which is coming in about 1 month – is ALL of Csound on the iPad…

The Csound for iOS API and SDK will be offered in the next day or two with all sorts of working models…
It will blow you away… how “easy” it is to develop audio apps with Csound as the DSP engine.

our .csd files are all offered with the apps.

One will be able to incorporate Csound into their own apps, games, whatever.

csGrain is just ONE huge .csd file – running under the hood… and there is a button there to see the code and it’s in the manual that is included too.

- we are sharing many tricks right there. But there are also tons of tricks shown in all the models that come with the SDK

Csound Touch IS Csound – all of Csound – for the iPad.

It is built upon and synchronized with the latest version of Csound5

It supports the realtime “rendering” of any Csound “.csd” file.

It can render .csd files from within the Csound Touch App or from the Internet.

It includes realTime “Console Output” (for diagnostics and progress monitoring) and supports “OFFline Rendering” for the realization of the most complex and demanding of “orchestras and compositions.” (For instance, if you wanted to create a sound with ten thousand oscillators and five hundred reverbs and two thousands filters it’s not a problem. This is Csound… all of Csound… and with Csound the only limitation is your imagination!)

Csound Touch supports Realtime MIDI control of any Csound-based MIDI instrument.

Csound Touch supports Realtime iPad/GUI Control of Csound Instruments via custom OnScreen Sliders, Knobs, XY controls and a Piano Keyboard.

One can Save to Disk or Render to the speaker or any pro audio interface in RealTime or once can do both Simultaneously! Jam and Capture! Remix and Record.

Csound Touch supports Interapplication File Transfer on the iPad Import/Export via DropBox, Email and AudioCopy.

To get you started with Csound; to inspire your creative spirit; and to support your study and exploration of Computer Music Composition, Software Synthesis, Signal Processing, Algorithmic Composition, Physical Modeling, and so much more…
the Csound Touch App includes:

Chapter 1 of Boulanger’s “foundational text” published by MIT Press – The Csound Book

The “classic” Boulanger Csound “Toots” from the Csound Manual

Boulanger’s “Mastering Csound” Tutorials

and there’s more!

We include the latest Csound FLOSS Manual (and all the Floss Instruments)
We include the Canonical Csound Reference Manual (and all the Manual Instruments)

and even more….

Selections from Boulanger’s Csound Instrument Catalog (30 years of Csound Instruments)
Selected Csound Compositions from the Boulanger Collection and The Csound Mailing List

Selected Algorithmic/Generative Compositions

A diverse and useful assortment of Dr.B’s favorite DSP Instruments
A varied collection of Dr.B’s favorite MIDI Instruments

A collection of OpenSource Audio Samples from the OLPC Sound Sample Archive.

Of course, this isn’t just about iOS: Csound is now in one form another either available or coming soon to Android, Ableton Live (via Max for Live), Max/MSP, standalone desktop applications, and the Mac AudioUnit plug-in format. I agree when Richard calls it “The Csound Renaissance of 2012.”

By the way, I think Richard has given those of us working on Pd, too, a real sense of what we could do with that tool (as well as an excuse to play with Csound anew). He tells us:

PS…. The Pd Rennaissance is also very very wonderful – the new book, the new code, the new possibilities…. all extremely exciting. After reading your blog on bit ago, I ordered the book and am very inspired by this initiative as well. So…. all cool and extremely important.

I couldn’t agree more.

So, once again, the timeline for the Revolution:

Coming soon (in a month)

Csound Touch – all of Csound on the iPad! Run any opcode, run any orchestra, run any composition. Run the entire Csound Book, Csound Catalog, Csound Manual. It all works and it’s all there!

and the a few weeks after that….

More Csound Apps such as:

csSpectral – Realtime vocoding, convolution, and spectral processing.

csFuzz – a rack of guitar effects.

csVoice – a vocal synthesizer, harmonizer, processor.

csGen – algorithmic, probabilistic, and generative composition systems.

csModel – a collection of Physical and Physically Inspired Models.

csClassics – a collection of synths based on the classic techniques – FM/AM/RM/WaveShaping/Granular/Additive/Etc.

The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be at:
http://boulangerlabs.com

You can find csGrain on our exclusive, multi-platform Apps section:
csGrain @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

An, as always, don’t miss the central repository for all things Csound:
http://www.csounds.com/

We’ll have an interview with Dr. Boulanger later this week, so if you’ve got questions for him, ask away!

Speaking of making the ephemeral tangible, as artist Andrew Spitz tells us, “it’s a fun process to map something that is so fleeting as a sound to a physical object.”

That’s what he does in a new collaboration with Andrew Nip of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design in Denmark. It’s a simple process – and that’s a good thing, as it means anyone with access to a laser cutter can get in on the fun. Using software written in the open source, design-friendly coding language Processing, your voice message becomes a waveform, and then that waveform becomes a series of discs in paper, which, strung together, produce a three-dimensional sculptural object.

The results are quite elegant; I suddenly want to string these around my flat. From the project description:

Paper Note creates a tangible waveform from laser cut disks of paper. The user records a message, a sound or loads up music, and the system analyses the sound to map each moment to a corresponding slice.

This project was made with Andrew Nip at CIID. We programmed it using Processing. Each Paper Note is made up of around 450 stacked disks of paper. The louder the volume at a specific moment, the bigger the disk. Our algorithm samples the right amount of information from the recording to scale the physical waveform to the size of around 14cm.

Paper Note ~ A Tangible Paper Waveform {+ generative}

By the way, Andrew Spitz has over a dozen terrific videos on this sort of physical computing and sound and vision projects on his Vimeo account:
https://vimeo.com/soundplusdesign

Turning music and sound into three-dimensional worlds often yields something that fields like a trip through space. But this feels like a real trip. Through pulsing, glowing starfields, “Versum”‘s audiovisual movements are brain-bendingly transformative. Artist Tarik Barri has created an integrated world of sound and image that makes the interface and the compositional realms seamless. It seems as though this really is a musical universe, through whose harmonies of the spheres you can fly like. Boldly going, indeed.

Ingredients: Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing, Java, SuperCollider, GLSL [the 3D shading language], and … some serious skill and time, I imagine.

The work has been in development for some years (not surprisingly, given the results). But it surfaced again as we brought up the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator hardware as a practical controller for 3D. See Create Digital Motion:
Look at Me, I’m Flying: SpaceNavigator Hardware + Blender

Tarik’s work resurfaced after a presentation in the UK. Reader janklug writes:

I’m just back from the M4_u Max/MSP/Jitter conference in Leicester (was great, btw), where Tarik Barri presented his project ‘Versum’, both as an installation and as a performance.
The user (and in case of the performance, Tarik) navigates through this incredible 3D-space-sequencer-universum with the help of a SpaceNavigator; glowing objects floating in this space produce sound, and as you approach them, they even give this nice doppler effect…
It was totally amazing to be able to float between pulsing rhythm-planet-objects and shiny drone-beams; navigation was easy and natural. Tarik uses a combination of Processing and Max/MSP; don’t know which one the SpaceNavigator is connected to.
Having tried this, I immediately ordered one; I think it also could be a great interface for M4L…

More information:
http://tarikbarri.nl/projects/versum
PDF documentation [2009]

Significantly, it’s really the act of flying that controls the music. That remains interactive, but it’s the movement through the three-dimensional space that determines what you hear. As the artist explains:

This virtual world is seen and heard from the viewpoint of a moving virtual camera with virtual microphones attached. This camera, controlled in realtime by means of a joystick (or any other kind of controller) moves through space, similar to how first person shooter games work. Within this space, I place objects that can be both seen and heard, and like in reality, the closer the camera is to them, the louder you hear them. So when the camera moves past several visual objects, you simultaneously hear several sounds fading in and out. Consequently, the way the camera travels past them actually causes melodies and compositional structures to be seen and heard.

The visual position of each object coincides with the panning of its sound: objects to the right of the camera will also be heard on the right, and those behind the camera will be heard from behind in case a surround speaker setup is used. This principle also applies to the Z-axis, meaning that sounds can be heard coming from above and below if the speaker setup supports it.

That’s the essential question, to me, when looking at 3D environments for music. What about the dimensionality will interact with the music? Is it something spatial, or will there be other sorts of interactions? (New Zealander-turned-Berliner Julian Oliver worked extensively with game engines, for instance. One solution for him was modifying the “gun” in those games to be an implement for doing things in the space, turning swords into plowshares after a fact by making the gun produce music rather than kill virtual entities.)

So, now you’ve seen some of the technical demonstration. But Tarik uses his work as an environment in which to make audiovisual performances. Here’s what some actual live playing looks like, in a beautiful, meditative piece called “Eleven”:

In fact, the biggest challenge to me of a piece this awesome is that you want an immersive environment, not just the small, rectangular screens that are often all festivals and venues can afford.

Holodeck, anyone?

More:

Add this to the Internet of Things: imagine data recording scratching and scratch performances.

Technologists Jamie Wilkinson, Michael Auger, and Kyle McDonald propose a new way of storing scratch moves as data. They’re not just working in traditional ways, either: they’re hacking turntables and optical mice and cameras, and imagine not only recording performances, but having machines recreate scratching. (Robots!) And they want your help. Kyle writes:

i’m going to be leading a group at art hack day ( brooklyn, january 26th-28th www.arthackday.net/ ) about scratch markup
language, a tool for recording performances from turntablists.

this describes the general idea and who we’re
looking for. we need everyone from web designers/developers, to
hardware hackers, coders and musicians. if you’re interested, or know someone who is interested, contact me or join the google group groups.google.com/group/arthackday/

(We cover the awesomeness that is Graffiti Markup Language on Motion, which goes further to explaining why this sort of data storage can be powerful and enabling.)

All is described – rather bizarrely – in an image. (Can we have plain text, please? It is, at least, a pretty picture!)

LA-based bang Fol Chen (Asthmatic Kitty records) wanted to go beyond the computer as the playback and manipulation device for their music. So they worked with collaborators to invent a solution. In a new video, sounds, and an interview, we can share some of how this came into being.

Built with the monome creators (Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain) and LA research and experimentation center Machine Project, the Tetrafol is a custom, pyramidal sound device. The object warps Fol Chen’s music using gestural manipulation of playback, but can also use your own samples. And with open-source circuit and firmware, the project could be an opportunity to learn or to build your own creation.

Description:

The Tetrafol is a hand-held tangible electronic sound toy. Circuits enclosed by a wooden tetrahedron detect orientation and motion-gestures to modify the playback of a collection of Fol Chen’s micro-compositions, allowing the user to explore sound through physical manipulation.

The battery-powered device has its own internal speaker but can additionally be hooked up to a headphone or amplifier.

The circuit and firmware are based on open-source hardware and is itself published as open-source, allowing anyone interested to learn about its deepest inner-workings.

Here’s a sample of the project, via the Tetrafol-created Fol Chen track “So Good”:
Fol Chen – So Good by WeGetPress

Built by hand in a limited run of 100, the device sells for US$110 direct from Machine Project. We spoke to monome’s Brian Crabtree about the project – and a new, comically-inclined video shows off the project.

Stems from the track “Back on Kent” come preloaded:
Fol Chen, “Back on Kent” by asthmatickitty

CDM: How did this collaboration come about? How did you work together?

brian: kelli and i have a loving and working relationship with machineproject, a phenomenal organization founded by our good friend mark allen. we’re always amazed at the fantastical variety of projects that are born there. a few inspiring works of recent include a cash machine designed for a children’s museum and a workshop on lockpicking. so when mark approached us on behalf of his good friend adam goldman and adam’s band fol chen regarding a possible collaboration we were all ears. the goal was to design and produce some sort of synthesizer-sampler-effect-instrument-toy-object to accompany the release of their new album. that was about a year ago and we’re happy to see it finalized and soon in playful hands.

in the early stages there was much whittling of ideas (too expensive, too complicated, etc). we arrived at some sort of gestural sample player and a demo video was ready to show the proof of concept (we live on opposite coasts so there was much back and forth through internets and mails) the basic build used a waveshield (by adafruit) and an arduino and some very hacky code i modified.

fol chen provided the sound set. kelli and i proposed a series of enclosures– diamonds, stars, ice cream cones, d20. the tetrahedron ended up being the most beautifully minimal, and incidentally the most cost effective. our friend jason voytilla laser cut a prototype from thin birch ply and we sent the “finished” sample to california where it underwent a series of intense focus groups – thanks to the rigorous machineproject laboratories. after more back and forth, and basic design changes here and there we were in agreement. we used our very reliable production chain that we depend on for monome releases… it was nice really helpful to have that all in place and sped up the process considerably.

the tetrafol accompanies the release of some exciting new fol chen tracks, and there will be a release party of sorts in early december at machineproject. should be very interesting, as the current installation is a 30 foot deep window sill of sorts.

What went into the design? The construction of the thing?

the final circuit board is an arduino, [Lady Ada - Limor Fried] waveshield, and accelerometer smashed together and made very small. i really just put existing technologies together– i can’t take a lot of credit here.

the industrial design was more fun. we didn’t want to use plastic so we experimented with felt and wood. coming up with a size, shape, and feel were the main goals- to create something that was pleasant to hold and sturdy enough to be tossed in the air.

What’s the basic notion of the instrument?

it plays sound loops, or “micro-compositions” written by fol chen. when you pick up and tilt the device it modifies playback: in one axis it changes the playback speed, in the other it triggers a variable-speed stutter (playback position jump). sounds are changed by a shaking motion. given the response is immediate, it comes alive very quickly.

i’d also hesitate to endorse it as an Instrument, though it’s very playable. it’s a bit like a responsive buddha box.

Any other documentation?

i posted the firmware/hardware source on github. there is a no “build your own” guide as you’d be much better off just looking at the waveshield documentation (which is very good.)

this was a fun collaborative side project– and it makes me even more curious to see how musicians continue to create tangible objects to accompany their releases.

More information:
folchen.com

Tetrafol @ GitHub (firmware + hardware, under a GPL v3 license)

First revealed last month, PreenFM is an open source hardware synth. As the name implies, it’s an FM synth, with some very serious specs: up to six-operator FM synthesis with some nine algorithms, up to 4-voice polyphony (depending on algorithm), glide, selectable LFOs, modulation matrix, and preset banks with SysEx support. It’s all usable via a display and MIDI support.

It’s also fully open source hardware; whereas early efforts often had commercial restrictions attached, PreenFM is free for use under the GPLv3 and Creative Commons. And it’s got a unique platform under the hood: the open source LeafLabs 32-bit development platform gives this some serious horsepower. It’s very much in contrast to the ultra-inexpensive 8-bit brain of our own MeeBlip synth; think of the MeeBlip as an exercise in what you can do with a little two-stroke engine versus the V8 muscle in this. (The creator says the MeeBlip helped inspire his creation – yes, synths are multiplying!)

You may have glimpsed the PreenFM making the rounds online, but I got creator Xavier Hosxe to tell us more of the gory details and share some sounds.

CDM: So this is all based on the Leaf platform?

Xavier: Yes it’s built around a LeafLab board.
I coded a first version on the Maple [development board]; then when they announced their “Maple Mini,” I realized it was going to be very easy to plug it into a PCB.
I’m not directly connected to [LeafLabs]; I participated in the forum and learnt many things from the team.

They are very friendly and helpful.

What was it like working with the Leaf?

The LeafLabs boards uses an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller.

It’s a 32-bit chip runing at 72Mhz that can do 32-bit multiplication in 1 clock cycle, has 128Kb of flash [memory] and 20Kb of RAM. That seems very few but it’s not, PreenFM software uses 92Kb for the moment.

LeafLabs provide a Linux/gcc toolchain that allows to develop in your IDE of choice… Eclipse in my case, which is very confortable.

They also provide a strong bootloader and some libraries that worked perferfeclty for my needs : Usart (Midi), I2C (EEPROM), LiquidCrystal (LCD).

What will you get in the PreenFM kit?

All you need to build yourself a complete synth: PCB, screws, resistors, ICs, audio/midi jack, box, 20×4 LCD, encoders, knobs, buttons… even an USB cable [for power].

You’ll also get a Maple Mini board with PreenFM soft preloaded. The Maple Mini is easily updatable, and you can experiment lots of different things with it.

PreenFM C++ source code is available on GitHub. It’s easy to read and modifiable. If you want to see your name to welcome you on the boot screen, go ahead

To build the kit, you only need a soldering iron and some solder.

There will be 2 differences with the photos you can see on the site: the final PCB will be blue (I should receive them next week). [Ed.: See the photo in blue at top; the orange one is included here for variety! -PK]

Xavier also sends along some welcome news:

Here is a sound I can get with my soon-to-be-released StepSequencer feature in PreenFM.

This is a single voice of a simple 3-oscillator voice. 1 very slow LFO + 2 * step sequencer routed to the modulation indices.

PreenFMStepSeq by cdm

Here’s a sound sample:
PreenFM 1 by cdm

http://www.preenfm.net

In a marvel of DIY engineering, one intrepid user of the tracker-made-modern music making environment Renoise has reconstructed the basic elements of the Ableton Live interface. With quantized clip launching on channels and even a crossfader, it’s unmistakably a copy of what Ableton does. I don’t think you’d dump your install of Ableton for this; the whole reason you’d want a feature like this is really if you prefer other elements of Renoise that are different from Live. But as a proof-of-concept, it’s pretty extraordinary. (Ableton users, the ball’s in your court: someone want to make a tracker in Max for Live?)

mxb has more information on the Renoise forum:
Cells! Preview

We love the bleeding edge, but as mxb notes, “this is still at a very early beta stage; if anyone has any suggestions or feature requests, [they should] make them in the thread on Renoise forums.”

All of this is possible because of Renoise’s powerful scripting environment.

The Cells! video above is a bit primitive – mxb says it’s a result of poor screen capture software, which is also responsible for sync disappearing – but you get the idea. mxb has also built a four-oscillator synth called ReSynth, and previously-mentioned sample import.

http://tools.renoise.com/users/mxb [all of mxb's creations]
http://tools.renoise.com/tools/resynth

Compare the complex model of what a computer can use to control sound and musical pattern in real-time to the visualization. You see knobs, you see faders that resemble mixers, you see grids, you see – bizarrely – representations of old piano rolls. The accumulated ephemera of old hardware, while useful, can be quickly overwhelmed by a complex musical creation, or visually can fail to show the musical ideas that form a larger piece. You can employ notation, derived originally from instructions for plainsong chant and scrawled for individual musicians – and quickly discover how inadequate it is for the language of sound shaping in the computer.

Or, you can enter a wild, three-dimensional world of exploded geometries, navigated with hand gestures.

Welcome to the sci fi-made-real universe of Portland-based Christian Bannister’s subcycle. Combining sophisticated, beautiful visualizations, elegant mode shifts that move from timbre to musical pattern, and two-dimensional and three-dimensional interactions, it’s a complete visualization and interface for live re-composition. A hand gesture can step from one musical section to another, or copy a pattern. Some familiar idioms are here: the grid of notes, a la piano roll, and the light-up array of buttons of the monome. But other ideas are exploded into spatial geometry, so that you can fly through a sound or make a sweeping rectangle or circle represent a filter.

Ingredients, coupling free and open source software with familiar, musician-friendly tools:

• Two projectors
• A monome
• Processing, the elegant and artist-savvy free software for visual code
• Ableton Live and Cycling ’74′s Max for Live, acting as the interactive glue with the sound world
• Drumaxx, Image-Line’s tasty physical-modeled drum synth
• Native Instruments Battery, the sampled drum engine
• Eclipse, the free IDE, for Java coding in this case
• Community Core Vision and reacTIVision (based on our previous info, at least), free and open source community-based projects for making the interfaces you see in movies happen in real life.

Another terrific video, which gets into generating a pattern:

Now, I could say more, but perhaps it’s best to watch the videos. Normally, when you see a demo video with 10 or 11 minutes on the timeline, you might tune out. Here, I predict you’ll be too busy trying to get your jaw off the floor to skip ahead in the timeline.

At the same time, to me this kind of visualization of music opens a very, very wide door to new audiovisual exploration. Christian’s eye-popping work is the result of countless decisions – which visualization to use, which sound to use, which interaction to devise, which combination of interfaces, of instruments – and, most importantly, what kind of music. Any one of those decisions represents a branch that could lead elsewhere. If I’m right – and I dearly hope I am – we’re seeing the first future echoes of a vast, expanding audiovisual universe yet unseen.

Previously:
Subcycle: Multitouch Sound Crunching with Gestures, 3D Waveforms

And lots more info on the blog for the project:
http://www.subcycle.org/

With great power comes great learning curves – or maybe not. Csound for Live, just announced this weekend and shipping on Tuesday, brings one of the great sound design tools into the Ableton Live environment. You can use it without any actual knowledge of Csound, without a single line of code — or, for those with the skills, it could transform how you use Csound.

For anyone who thinks music creation software has to be disposable, you’ve never seen Csound. With a lineage going literally to the dawn of digital synthesis and Max Mathews, Csound has managed to stay compatible without being dated, host to a continuous stream of composition and sonic imagination that has kept it at the bleeding edge of what computers can do with audio.

Csound for Live does two things. First, it makes Csound run in real-time in ways that are more performative and, well, “live” than ever before, inside the Live environment. Second, its release marks a kind of “greatest hits” of Csound, pulling some of the platform’s best creators into building new and updated work that’s more usable.

If you’re not a Csound user, you just dial up their work and see what your music can do. If you are, of course, you can go deeper. And if you’re somewhere in between, you can dabble first before modifying, hacking, or making your own code. And that means for everybody, you get:

• Spectral processors
• Phase vocoders
• Granular processors
• Physical models
• Classic instruments

More description:

It looks great. It works great. It sounds… beyond great.

CsoundForLive is a collection of over 120 real time audio-plugins that brings the complexity and sound quality of Csound to the fingertips of ANY Ableton Live user – without ANY prior Csound knowledge.

Capitalizing on the design power of Max For Live, what once took pages of text in Csound can now be accomplished in a few clicks of your mouse.

Move a slider on your APC40 and deconstruct your audio through professional quality granular synthesis…

Touch a square of your Launchpad and warp pitch and time with real time FFT processing…

Press letters on your keyboard and create sonically intricate melodies through wave terrain synthesis…

And Dr. Richard Boulanger, unofficial Jedi Master of the Csound movement, instigator of this project, and Berklee School of Music sound and music wizard, posts a bit more:

With my former student, and now partner, Colman O’Reilly, I have been working around the clock for months to collect, adapt, create, wrap, and simplify a huge collection of Csound instruments and make them all work simultaneously and interchangeably in Ableton Live. In this guise, I am able to “hot-swap” the most complex Csound instruments in and out of an arrangement or composition – on the fly. This is something Csound could never do (and still can’t!), but CsoundForLive can, and it makes a huge difference in the playability and the usability of Csound.

Two weeks ago, I played a solo concert in Hanover Germany, at the first International Csound Conference. There, all of my compositions, from 20 years ago to 20 minutes ago, were performed in real-time using CsoundForLive. Tonight, at the Cycling ’74 Expo in Brooklyn, NY, I will be demonstrating the program; and next week, I will be releasing this huge collection (on Tuesday, October 17th, at 12:01am).

A huge part of the complete collection is FREE, and I hope it will make the creative difference in your (and your student’s) lives that it is making in mine. This is a serious game changer for Csound. Check it out. Dr. B.

If you’re at Expo ’74, do say hello to Dr. B for us (and I think you’ll get some nice surprises with this project).

I’ve got a copy in for testing, so stay tuned. And I’ll be doing some follow-ups with Dr. Boulanger and company.

The only bad news here, of course, is that both a supported version of Ableton Live and Max for Live are required to be able to run Csound in this way. In fact, sounds like we have a nice four-horse race going. Max 6 overhauls how multiple patches work (on top of Max for Live), SuperCollider has its own possibilities for multiple real-time patch loading, someone suggested in comments using pd~ inside Pd to manage multiple Pd creations (something fairly new even to most experienced Pd users), and now we have Csound in Live.

But overall, Csound for Live looks like a no-brainer for Max for Live owners, no question, and an exciting taste of the ongoing convergence of cutting-edge creative sound and code with live music making for everybody. As I hinted at in the Max 6 post, I think it’s suddenly a Renaissance for all these platforms.

http://www.csoundforlive.com/

Silly geeky footnote: With pd~ for Max, I know it’s possible to run Pd for Max. And via another external, Pd can also run Csound. So we could theoretically run Csound in Pd in Max in Live. But let’s not get carried away.

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