Auditorium is a fascinating free Flash game that turns interactive music arrangement into a series of puzzles. The center of the game is what the creators call “flow” – a visual stream of particles that can be directed to audio “containers” to create sound. The user places circles with icons signifying direction in the stream to redirect the particles where desired. As the stream hits the containers, it produces musical patterns. The results aren’t entirely open-ended – that is, there is a fairly fun puzzle game here, in that you can only “clear” a level by directing the flow of particles through all the objects. But the creators do claim that:

Auditorium is about the process of discovery and play. There are no right or wrong answers; there are many ways to solve every puzzle. To get started, fill up the first audio level.

playauditorium.com

Big news from the homebrew Nintendo DS scene: OpenSoundControl is now supported, thanks to a community contribution from Tim Wood. That means you can drag your stylus around and send high-resolution data straight to software running on your computer. From the DSMI site:

OSC is an emerging standard for exchanging music control signals that is much more flexible and modern than MIDI. For example, OSC can directly communicate via network, so the PC-side DSMI server is not required.

fishuyo also made a nice demo with a Kaoss pad and sliders of the new OSC capabilities. It comes with a pd patch that is a nice little synth. Check out the demo’s source code! OSC is really easy to add to your application. And it’s the future! So, get libdsmi v3.0 now!

Add this to controller apps for the iPhone/iPod touch, and it’s easy to turn your mobile device into an additional controller. (Think an easy-to-add X/Y pad, for instance, that you can plop on that blank space on your keyboard.)

Full details:

http://dsmi.tobw.net/

I got lots of requests in our holiday guide survey for tutorials on Pd and tutorials on OSC, so – be sure you’re going to get a Pd + OSC tutorial!

For the record, this opens up OSC to as many as 84+ million units of hardware. (and that’s before you decide you want to get the new model just for the color red)

Sorry, had to quote the Coulton anthem for Portal, “Still Alive.”

Processing 1.0 has finished final release status. Why that matters, on Create Digital Motion:

Processing: Revolutionary Creative Coding Tool Now 1.0, No Longer Beta

In my mind, it’s certainly one of the most unusual betas in creative software history. Why this is important for music:

• Recent versions of Processing include the very stable and wonderful Minim audio library
• Processing makes an excellent tool for creating unusual graphical front ends for music, with tools like Reaktor, Pd, Max, SuperCollider, ChucK, Ableton Live and many others handling sound (more on that in a story tomorrow)
• Updates make Processing far more predictable and flexible across platforms, particularly when using new versions of Mac OS, Windows, and Java
• Better, more stable OpenGL rendering makes your software look fantastic, and this is a lot of the change that’s happened in recent builds

But it’s better to show that rather than talk about it. Stay tuned. Look at me: still talking when there’s science to do!

Ableton forum members are abuzz on this latest hack for Ableton Live: a specialized plug-in now enables a “bus group” that routes audio to a MIDI track for effects. Now, of course, group folders are a feature present in some competing DAWs, but it’s still nice to see it working in Ableton Live. (And if this is something you’ve wanted to do, I think you’ll probably spot it immediately – whereas, likewise, if it’s not your response is likely to be, “huh”?)

There’s already a free Windows plug-in download. It looks like someone will have to do a Mac plug-in for this to work on the Mac. Thoughts?

gbsr writes:

Basically, it’s a way to get an infinite (or at least until your CPU gives up) [number of] submix track folders, with the ability to show/hide the folders. Take a VST instrument that only has a MIDI input and an audio throughput and rack it up. Send the audio to the midi. Voila.

You can read the whole thread on the Ableton forum:

solved: submix group folders. :)

Let us know if you try this out or have other tips. (And if you do this already in another host, by all means, enjoy your bragging rights.)

It’s nearly the holiday season, and as CDM has just completed its fourth birthday, I want to give all of us a present. The idea: a holiday guide that’s a bit different.

• The first CDM treeware. We’ll have PDF and print-on demand versions. And part of the reason we’re doing this:
• Something you can share. CDM certainly has its share of (sometimes frighteningly) advanced readers. But we believe in what we’re doing enough to share it with people with less experience. So we’ll include content you can share with nieces, cousins, strangers on the street. And, of course, it’ll be Creative Commons-licensed.
• Gifts of knowledge as well as objects. You’ve seen the countless lists of “stuff to buy” in other holiday guides. But we believe in DIY tech, and that knowledge can be priceless. So we’ll include information from the best of CDM in 2008 and special guides for the occasion.
• Designed by you. This time, we want to know what you would want to receive, what you would give to newcomers, and what you would want to read. So we need your help – fill out the survey below and this will really be a grassroots effort by the CDM community.

It’s a really tough economy out there. But that’s all the more reason to invest in things that really matter, to look for value, and to look for things that can be shared freely with one another. So, in my mind, I could think of no better time to do this. Give the survey a go.

If you complete the survey, you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive another gift: a free copy of the new, cross-platform T-RackS 3 mastering and mixing suite donated by IK Multimedia. (We’ll have one other opportunity to put your name in the hat later this week, too.)

Fill out the survey below or head straight to:
http://cdm.holiday08.sgizmo.com

And watch for the guide by the beginning of December.

Advertisers: We need your support to help bring this guide to CDM readers free of charge. If you’ve got a message you’d like to get out and want to support our community, do get in touch. (We have some creative possibilities to offer, too.) Use the contact form or email ads (at) createdigitalmusic (dot) com.