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.

Labeled as ready for IDM or “Braindance” music, The Uncanny Sequencer could be something tasty for those tired of regular rhythms. The creation of Julien Bayle, The Uncanny Sequencer is a graphical, generative, multi-part sequencing Max for Live device built for Ableton Live. At its core, it creates polyrhythms and irregular rhythms by making the appearance of each beat probabilistic rather than determinate.

Thanks to Julien for sending this our way. (Matrixsynth and Synthtopia deserve credit for being faster.)

Features, as described by its creator:

• 8 channels (meaning 8 sequencers in one)
• from 1 to 32 steps in each channel (every number choosable)
• generates MIDI notes to any devices (inside or outside Ableton LIVE)
• based on probabilities
• unique sequences generation
• huge presets bank engine (including morphing between 2 presets)
• 10 pages documentation

€15,00, available for download.

http://designthemedia.com/products/file/13-the-uncanny-sequencer/

CDM regular Zaxx Davros sends word of a new, sprawling compilation to benefit Joplin, Missouri in the aftermath of that town’s devastating tornado. Charity compilations seem to be growing in number, but perhaps that in itself is worth mentioning. As social networks and (ahem) blogs spread, increasingly crowd-stimulated micro-donations drive charity. One-click giving is no substitute for getting involved in communities as a volunteer and getting out on the ground, but as a way of keeping charitable organizations funded and engaged, it shows promise. Some readers have pointed to criticism of some of those organizations, like the various entities of the Red Cross, for using funds as discretionary resources beyond the immediate disaster. In this case, the Recession Recordings charity goes directly to the affected area, the City of Joplin and the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri’s own fund. (That, in turn, may be a sign of a growing trend.)

At a time when musicians ponder the value of their own work, these sorts of compilations have a secondary function. They make the release more of a collective, communal act, and assume that the digital download not only has value, but a value that will be invested back into a communal need. Make of that what you will; we’ll watch to see how such efforts do over time.

As for the music itself, I’d describe it as a delightfully-chaotic, eclectic mix of work, often raunchy and low-fidelity, from experimental sounds to the occasional blip of a chip to music channeling ambient and folk music, noise and IDM. It seems an informal gathering of producers trying lots of different things, which has its own special charm.

This compilation gets sent out manually after a donation; my guess is someone will come up with a site that makes choosing charities easier. A Music Hackday job for someone, perhaps?

While I’m unable to cover every charity that comes across my desk, this one is doubly meaningful to me – my parents lived through and were involved in recovery efforts of the last supertornado outbreak on April 3, 1974; they worked in Brandenberg, Kentucky.

If you’re a CDM reader impacted by flooding or tornadoes in the US, or face the challenge of natural disasters elsewhere in the world – our hearts go out yet again to our friends in New Zealand today — we’d love to hear from you.

Listen below:

http://www.recessionrecordings.com/joplin-mo-charity-album/

NOISEPLUG from smider on Vimeo.

The art of making sound software and the art of making electronic music can be closely bound with one another. That means tools that embody a certain compositional idea. You can choose to use them or abuse them – or simply gain some insight into the sonic imaginations of the people who created them.

Italy-based musician and software designer Guido Smider writes to share his free (as-in-beer), Max/MSP-built sound tools for Intel Macs. Most impressive is the new 1.8 upgrade to his Noiseplug, a collaboration with Tobor Experiment / Giorgio Sancristoforo, known also under the software label Gleetchplug.

Tobor Experiment’s ambient works are quite beautiful and worth exploring on their own, spanning massive sound design projects in which environmental sounds and steel foundry field recordings get rewoven into slick, pulsing electronic music:
Sancristoforo / Works

audioscan MILANO – Noise transformed into ambient music from Giorgio Sancristoforo on Vimeo.

But Sancristoforo’s work may be better known in Gleetchlab software. Built in Max/MSP, that has included simulations of late 50s electroacoustic music studios and the underground hit Gleetchlab. Coupling various tools and patches, Gleetchlab makes some popular sound processing techniques from ambient, IDM, and glitch genres more accessible.

Noiseplug is in the same mold, and it might work a little too well. Filled with random sequencers and loopers, filters and EQ, reverbs, granular delays, and random frequency cutoffs, with an entire drum synth built in, it’s a bit like having an IDM producer in a box.

What’s nice about it, though, as Smider points out, is that it’s built for modular, real-time performance. “You can use samples, synthesis, and sound processing without saving presets to use noiseplug like a musical instrument,” he says.

Here’s a live performance from a couple of months ago, realized using the latest 1.8 version:

Add.Structure from smider on Vimeo.

Find all of Smider’s music tools, including the Gleetchplug collab:
smidernoise.com/software.html

Just seeing the tool isn’t the whole story. I’ve had a great time now exploring Guido Smider’s Vimeo archive, which includes some really terrific music for commercial and independent gigs, some in collaboration with Andro Smider.

Share from smider on Vimeo.

PIERREANCY from smider on Vimeo.

It’s great to see the command Smider has over his work, in being able to work with tools like Max to shape the sounds he wants, through to being able to share the software and the music with other people as a product.

And licensing aside, this is a lovely, clever compilation of tracks.

Interestingly, the physical object did sell out on eBay. When it comes to enthusiastic fans, it seems digital isn’t reducing the value of tangible objects – it may be doing just the opposite. (Adding still more irony, the tongue-and-cheek name for the album was “Coaster,” just what CDs have supposedly become.)

My label’s latest glitchy techno / IDM compilation is now a free digital download: SubvaritraxTM [Liz Revision Blog]

Product page / download links on fractalspin (warning: autoplays)

I quite like this album, released in the heady days of 2005 – there are some lovely, delicate tracks on there. The price is right, though, so grab it (registration required) and let us know what you think. If you torrent it, which you can under the CC license, feel free to post a link.

Description:

SUBVARITRAX™ is a new form of treatment for Sonic Mediocrity Overexposure (SMO). SUBVARITRAX™ works by providing a mix between emotionally-poignant-yet-sonically-dense IDM, and scientifically formulated, provocatively glitchy minimal techno. With contributions from Quench (Funckarma), Ochre, Tim Koch, edIT, Kero, Matthew Mercer and others, SUBVARITRAX™ is a new type of neurostimulant proven to help people with SMO as well as being an enjoyable listen in its own right. Ask your abstract electronic music specialist if SUBVARITRAX™ is right for you.

“Though one is struck initially by Subvaritrax’s distinctive pharmaceutical packaging, the comp’s presentation is trumped by the potency of the medication itself. Virtually a primer for current electronic music trends, the release collects what could be the best bits from imaginary comps by Merck, Neo Ouija, Spectral Sound, and M-Nus into an 80-minute, 17-track set. Such largesse is often wearying but [it] maintains interest by extending the stylistic range beyond a single genre…A terrific outing by the Chicago-based subVariant imprint, the ‘instrumental neuro-stimulant’ Subvaritrax more than makes good on its promise to treat Sonic Mediocrity Overexposure (SMO) with a therapeutically forward-thinking mix of melodic IDM and glitchy minimal techno.” -Ron Schepper, TEXTURA.

Love? Raves? Constructive criticism? You know where to write back.

Now, I’m going to spin this while I code. You can’t fire up Eclipse in silence.

XLR8RTV has a fantastic video interview with one of my favorite artists, Daedelus. The man is, as always, like pure musical joy. He talks about his musical influences, the early connections he made (including at USC, alma mater of a number of the CDM community), his approach to live performance, the virally-popular open source monome controller, and, yes, that pro-Obama song. (The original lyrics were catchier.)

The monome connection is an interesting case in music technology. Daedelus was the first artist to gig regularly with the device, possibly helping both him and the monome gain some buzz. It’s not just a gimmick, either, because he remains one of the most virtuosic, erm, monomists on the planet.

But technology aside, Daedelus is one of those guys who can charge up your faith in the future of live computer music. Enjoy!

(And Daedelus, if you’re out there, we’ll have to have you sit down with the CDM TV cameras next time I’m in LA. I promise … well, poorer production values. But maybe we can add some special effects in post or something that XLR8R was too tasteful to do. Like have you fly on your monome as though it’s a magic carpet.)

In other news, CDM’s own Liz “Quantazelle” McLean Knight is featured in a podcast look at the Chicago scene.

It came as no surprise to me that Delia Derbyshire, composer and BBC Radiophonic Workshop maestra, would have created incredibly forward-thinking music in the 60s. But when one track seemed to predict IDM and modern electronica, the story of Derbyshire’s vintage “dance” track spread over the Interwebs, and even aroused suspicion of fakery.

Delia Derbyshire Recordings Found, Including Ahead-of-its-Time Dance Track

David Butler of the University of Manchester was one of two archivists who started undertaking the work of assembling a library of Derbyshire’s ground-breaking work. He writes in CDM’s comments that this is no BBC special effect: the recordings are very much real. He also clears up some of the confusion about their discovery, and offers more on the tantalizing cut “NOAH’s dance.”

It’s worth reading the whole comment (remember, you can also subscribe to CDM’s comment feed):

Hi everybody – hope you don’t mind me chipping in but I just wanted to reassure you all and Captain Howdy in particular that the rhythm track heard on the PM show is definitely not a hoax, mistake or practical joke!

As gwenhwyfaer said, it wouldn’t be in our interests at all to put out a hoax – it wouldn’t do Delia’s legacy or reputation any favours and would ruin ours.

Captain Howdy is right though to point out that the quality of the recording is cleaner than the majority of the tapes in the archive – but it’s not alone in sounding that bright – there is another track in the archive – a 3 and a half minute pop instrumental called ‘Ron Grainer’s Bread’ that has a similar brightness and also makes use of a drum machine (and synthesizer) for that matter – we’re trying to work out what this piece was actually used for!  We do know that Delia worked on a Ron Grainer musical in the late 1960s so that’s a possibility but there’s still a lot of detective work to be done and cross-referencing with other archives.
We were stunned when we heard the rhythm track that you’ve all heard on the BBC site – I’m still knocked out by it!  The track in question is from a 10.5" reel that runs for just over 15 minutes – the only identification on the reel is a label that says ‘NOAH’s dance – basic rh."

This label was a great help to us – and many of the reels lack labels so we have much to do to confirm the identity of everything in the archive (and some reels may well remain mysteries).

In the case of the ‘Noah’s Dance’ track we have got some leads to follow up on – there was a BBC production that the Radiophonic Workshop contributed to that links in with the reel’s title (this is where we’ll need to cross-reference with the larger archive of the RW, which Mark Ayres has done outstanding work on).

But there’s another source too – as some of you will know – Peter Zinovieff’s EMS company put out a promotional LP in 1971 and one of the tracks listed on said LP is ‘Dance from Noah’, which – without jumping to conclusions – we’re assuming is likely to be the same thing – if anybody has a copy of that LP to hand then please do check and let me know as that’s next on our trail!

There are three reels in the archive which contain elements that form ‘Dance from Noah’ – and the reel mentioned above contains all the makeup elements so that you can hear them in isolation.

This is where the rhythm track really stands out – when you hear the whole piece in its finished form with the synthesized melody line and various effects, the rhythm is far less striking as it’s buried further down in the mix so on first listening it’s easy not to pick up on it.

But on the makeup tape, after the isolated melody line – and one or two false starts – there’s nearly nine minutes of the rhythm alone, with one interruption about halfway through – and hearing that track sustained for 9 minutes is when it really hits home.

Captain Howdy is right again to point out that this track sounds so different to Delia’s known output or that of her contemporaries at the time – but it’s also worth remembering that – not least following their collaboration as Unit Delta Plus – she did have access to Zinovieff’s fledgling synthesizer the VCS3 and other electronic textures – and much of what we know of her output is limited to a relatively small body of work – but she was active in all kinds of contexts throughout the 1960s and there are several pieces in the archive that expand our understanding of what is characteristically ‘Delian’.

This is where the PM piece unitentionally created some confusion – I thought they did a great job to fit everything they did into 5 minutes but inevitably some clarity was lost – and much of what I said was cut (I don’t blame them!) where I tried to explain a bit more about the archive and the extracts heard in the piece – quite a bit of what I said was edited and placed slightly out of context – so when I was discussing Delia’s amazing rhythmic precision and beat matching pre-synthesizers or multi-tracking software, we’re actually listening on the PM item to a piece that does use synthesizers!  These things happen I guess – I was really pleased that PM acknowledged Ron Grainer’s vital contribution to the Doctor Who theme but elsewhere a lot of the other coverage I’ve seen described Delia as ‘Dr Who composer’ which isn’t quite the full story as we know!  I know it’s word counts and sound bites so it would be naive not to expect these things to come in.

There are two things to clarify about the rhythm track up on the BBC site – the first relates to Delia’s voice saying ‘forget about this, this is for interest only’ – that bit of speech is from a different reel in the archive (one of the several reels relating to her music for the Tutankhamun’s Egypt series).

When the BBC asked for something from the archive to include in the PM item I put together three brief extracts in consultation with Mark Ayres.  I wanted to give them a range of elements to incorporate as they saw fit and a flavour of the different kind of things the archive contained – it was important to include something demonstrating Delia ‘at work’, so I offered them the extract from one of the Blue Veils makeup reels; then some of her freelance work for theatre (there’s quite a bit of this aspect of her work in the archive – and just to clarify, the archive generously [there's an understatement if ever there was one] donated to Manchester by Mark Ayres, in agreement with the Derbyshire estate, contains principally Delia’s freelance work – most of the pieces for BBC productions were assimilated into the larger archive of the Radiophonic Workshop) and then lastly the ‘Dance from Noah’ piece.

At this stage I had no idea what else they were going to include in the PM item and didn’t until I heard the piece on iplayer on Friday!  I knew they’d spoken to Paul Hartnoll (they interviewed me on Wednesday the day before the piece went out and already had the Hartnoll interview in the can by then) but didn’t know what else was going in there i.e. all those other Delia tracks and Delia talking about the DW theme tune.
It seemed important to me that Delia’s voice also be heard so when I put together the extracts for the BBC I added on the bit of her saying ‘forget about this’, which I thought was reflective of the way she might often self-deprecatingly play down her music or giggle with delight – there are moments on the archive reels where you can hear her doing this (especially on the Egypt masters where she introduces each cue) – but also relate to how her music was often unacknowledged in terms of her receiving a credit and she often was ‘forgotten’ off credit lists.  It wasn’t intended to imply that she was referring directly to the ‘Dance from Noah’ track!!  Again, this is due to elements being used out of context.

The second aspect that needs to be clarified about the rhtyhm track on the BBC website relates to the long high-pitched ‘ambient’ notes slowly fading out of the clip as the rhythm track fades in – these are from a different reel in the archive and are the vestigial remains of a 45 minute in-house presentation at the University about the archive after the initial digitisation had been completed (mainly to reassure the University about what we’d been working on and how their initial funding to help get the archive up and running had been spent!) – for this presentation several extended pieces from the archive were played in succession with slow segues between them, as one piece faded out another faded in – and it’s the remnants of that which you hear at the beginning of the PM extract.

Once those notes fade out on the extract heard on the PM item, you have the rhythm track on its own before it too fades out (as said earlier, there’s around 9 minutes of this on the makeup tape).
The reason for the fades in and out were purely to protect the integrity of the archive.  We were limited – for copyright reasons – as to what and how much we could offer to the BBC – we still need to identify all the pieces in the archive, including in what context they were broadcast/used and whether there are any outstanding copyright issues, so the extracts offered had to be fragments, makeup elements or freelance work.

Please rest assured, we’re not going to hoard these sounds away!!  We are bound though by an agreement with Mark and Delia’s estate that no commercial exploitation of the archive is done without discussing it with them and receiving their full approval (CD releases will almost certainly be produced by Mark in keeping with the releases of Radiophonic Workshop material that he has produced and overseen) and we cannot break that trust – the fades on the extracts released to the BBC were put in to make sampling difficult – which I know will sound harsh to many people (and is hypocritical of me given the amount of stuff I’ve sampled over the years!).

Long term I should stress again, we’re not going to lock these tapes away – we’re applying for funding to commission new pieces of music inspired by Delia, her life and work and so one of our plans is to be able to invite composers to come and work with the archive, so that it continues to live on and generate new music – but at this early stage we had to be careful and I hope people understand the reasons for that – in time though the archive will be open for people to come and listen to and read its contents.
So many apologies for the lengthy spiel, but I hope that explains things and reassures you all – there’s no hoax at work!  The rhythm track on its own, isolated from the rest of the piece, is quite remarkable and is a genuine part of Delia’s archive – as I say, the tape that it’s on has all the other elements of the final piece as well as several false starts on it – but when we heard that rhythm sequence we were amazed and I really wish I could release the unedited 9 minutes of it so that you can all listen to the whole thing and fully quell any concerns (I don’t blame Captain Howdy for being suspicious at all).

Please do email me if you have any further questions – I know just how important Delia’s music is to so many people and what an inspiration she continues to be – the response since the BBC piece last week has been overwhelming and I have a *lot* of emails to write in the next few days to people before I can go away on holiday next week – so replies might take a while but they should arrive eventually!
One or two people in the thread mentioned that the story of how the archive came to Manchester remained a mystery – it’s not been a mystery on our part – again, any mystery is a result of tight word counts in the media coverage.  There’s a brief piece about how we got the archive here:

http://www.centreforscreenstudies.manchester.ac.uk/delia.htm

The absolute priority had to be to make digital transfers of the reels – and this took a lot of time as it had to be worked around other teaching, admin and research duties.  We were helped massively by Louis Niebur – a US academic specialising in British electronic music – who spent the summer with us on the archive.  Given the age of the tapes and the condition they’d been stored in (they were passed on to Mark in cardboard boxes, one of which was a box of Kellog’s All Bran I seem to remember!), the vast majority played remarkably well – but a number were problematic with the splices coming apart as they were played on the Studer and requiring careful reconstruction.  One tape in particular was in such a fragile condition that we have still not done anything with it yet.  Another major problem was determining the correct playback speed on the Studer – several tapes spliced between 7.5 ips and 15 ips – so it was often not a case of a straightforward playback as we had to adjust the playback speed accordingly – but in some cases we couldn’t be 100% certain what that speed should be (often a helpful clue was a human voice introducing the next cue on a tape).

The vast majority of this was completed and the files bounced by the end of September 2007 – then the academic term started up again!  Over the next months I found it difficult to give the archive the extended time it needed alongside all my teaching and admin duties (plus finishing a contracted book!) – and it wasn’t until the academic year was over that I was able to give the archive some quality attention again – all of which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Radiophonic Workshop so the timing seemed right at last to make a formal announcement -hope that explains the time lapse gwenhwyfaer!

The archive ultimately should be available to anybody with a genuine interest in Delia’s work – it’s not just to be coveted by academics – Delia made music for everybody to listen to – one of the many beautiful qualities about her work is its combination of the experimental and the popular, drifting into and filling our homes (whether invited or not!) and, in the case of *that* theme, being the sound of so many peoples’ Saturdays for the best part of two decades – and so once the archive is fully catalogued and identified (or as fully identified as it can be!) it will be opened up.

Apologies again for the ramble and hope the above has clarified things a bit more.
All best wishes,
David

I hope we’ll keep in touch, David, on the development of the archive! Stay tuned to CDM for more, dear readers…

First up — one of my favorite tricks, which is building bass drum sounds in Operator. Not everyone loves Operator, but this is exactly why I like it for certain tasks: it’s a no-nonsense, quick way of building synths that drops nicely into a Drum Rack for quick DIY drum machines. And that pitch envelope and all-in-one time controls are especially handy.)

And for IDM lovers, here are some clever tricks for creating rhythmic variations using envelopes and follow actions. This one is especially worth a trip through the guide, even if you have different musical results in mind, because it’s an exceptional description of how follow actions work — one that’s actually better than the manual’s.

That gives you an idea of what Gustavo is working with, but be sure to check out the full guide for more details and step-by-step instructions, friendly even to beginners.

He even gives a shout out to the open-source 3D webcam MIDI controller for Windows we looked at last year.

Looking forward to more iProducer installments, Gustavo! And readers, now you know what to do with your evening / weekend / sick day you’re about to call in. Erm, if you’re not too busy building an arcade cabinet for Live first, that is.

iProducer: A Creativity Upgrade [Ableton Live tutorial on djvox]

(By the way, for digital crate-diggers: snooping around that Hong Kong site, you can buy downloads there internationally, though they wind up being a bit steep in US dollars.)

Ed.: Okay, this isn’t necessarily helping Live shake its reputation as just this — a wonderland for glitchers. You really can make stuff that isn’t glitchy in Live, and that new compressor and mix engine sound fantastic. But you still have to glitch it out every now and then. It’s good, clean (erm, digitally dirty) fun. 4-bit 4ever. -PK