luanna is a beautiful new application out of Tokyo-based visual/sound collective Phontwerp_. Amidst a wave of audiovisual iPad toys, luanna is notable for its elegance, connecting swirling flurries of particles with gestures for manipulation. I imagine I’m not alone when I say I have various sample manipulation patches lying around, many in Pd, lacking visualization, and wonder what I might use in place of a knob or fader to manipulate them. In the case of luanna, these developers find one way of “touching” the sound.

As the developers put it:

luanna is an audio-visual application designed for the iPad
that allows you to create and control music through the manipulation of moving images.

The luanna app has been designed to be visually simple and intuitive, whilst retaining a set of rich and comprehensive functions. Through hand gestures you can touch, tap and manipulate the image, as if you were touching the sound. The image changes dynamically with your hand movements, engaging you with the iPad’s environment.

The interface is multi-modal, with gestures activating different modes. This allows you to select samples, play in reverse, swap different playback options, mute, and add a rhythm track or crashing noises. It’s sort of half-instrument, half-generative.

Phontwerp_ themselves are an interesting shop, descibed as a “unit” that will “create tangible/intangible products all related to sound.” Cleverly naming each as chord symbols, ∆7, -7, add9, and +5 handle sound art, merch, music performance / composition / sound design, and code, respectively. That nexus of four dimensions sounds a familiar one for our age.

Sadly, this particular creation is one of a growing number of applications that skips over the first-generation iPad and its lower-powered processor and less-ample RAM. Given Apple can make some hefty apps run on that hardware, though, I hope that if independent developers find success supporting the later models, they back-port some of their apps.

See the tutorial for more (including a reminder that Apple’s multitasking gestures are a no-no).

US$16.99 on the App Store. (Interested to see the higher price, as price points have been low for this sort of app – but I wonder if going higher will eventually be a trend, given that some of the audiovisual stuff we love has a more limited audience!)

Readers request Audio Copy and sample import right away. I think sample import, at least, could easily justify a higher price, by making this a more flexible tool.

Find it on our own directory, CDM Apps:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/luanna

http://phontwerp.jp/luanna/

Very similar in its approach is the wonderful Thicket, well worth considering:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/thicket

See our recent, extensive profile of that application’s development:
Thicket for iOS Thickens; Artists Describe the Growth of an Audiovisual Playground

See also, in a similar vein, Julien Bayle’s recent release US$4.99 Digital Collisions:

http://julienbayle.net/2012/04/07/digital-collisions-1-1-new-features/

http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/digital-collisions-hd

Tenori-On and iPad apps, hardware designs and visual creations: set against the beautifully-generative mind of Japanese/New York artist Yayoi Kusama, the flurries of dots and circles and patterns in musical interfaces take on a richer meaning. This video, from a workshop hosted at the Tate Modern alongside an exhibition of Kusama’s work, needs little introduction. Instead, the dizzying cuts of geometric abstraction, the array of visual ideas for musical interface begin to take on the same personality of her expansive creations. The galaxies produced out of the minds of musicians somehow overlap with this iconic artist. I hadn’t really made the connection before, even as a fan of her work, but with this workshop, the sympathetic vibrations – intentional or not – become clear. Description:

Sonic Kusama:
Workshop exploring connections between the work of Yayoi Kusama and creation and representation of new music & sound art through visual audio interfaces.
Presented by Simon Little and Kelvin Brown with Chase Lane.
Audio track by Capstone Music
Video production by Territory Studio

If you’re in London, Infinite Kusama is on view now at the Tate Modern.

Today, I’m in London doing a hands-on workshop on visual metaphors for music, and covering various topics filed under “synesthesia” at Music Tech Fest. It seems appropriate, with the subject matter on the brain, to revisit the topic of visuals and music in a series of posts.

When you make hardware, with knobs and faders, you’re constrained by physical space – the amount of room on a circuit board, the radius of a knob cap, the size of your fingers. But before you get there, the first step is to sketch an idea. Imagine if you could do that with a marker and paper and ink.

SketchSynth is the latest attempt at a drawable set of controls, letting you turn an illustration on paper into something you can actually use to make music. It’s not the first – this dream of being able to make things come alive with nothing more than a magical pen is an old one – but the execution looks superb. There are two basic approaches to the idea: one is to use some sort of conductive ink to turn the drawing itself into a sensor, and the other is to point a camera at the drawing and calculate where a user makes contact with the drawing. SketchSynth opts for the computer vision approach, by way of OpenFrameworks and the old standby of free and open source vision, OpenCV. (Kyle McDonald’s ofxCV does the heavy lifting.)

Conventional vision fits the task well: faders and knobs respond as expected, even though they’re only ink on paper. While it’s a drawn interface, and could look like anything, the behavioral metaphors all come from hardware: there are sliders, momentary buttons, and pots. Place the tool in “edit” mode, and the computer analyzes what you’re drawing; in “play” mode, the camera tracks your finger as you manipulate what you’ve drawn. The project goes one step further than many that have come before, by overlaying a projection calibrated with your drawing for interactive visual feedback as well as sonic. Sound in this case is provided by Pd, but OpenSoundControl (OSC) messages let you connect to other musical (or visual) tools. See more in the making-of vid, at bottom.

Creator Billy Keyes is working with the right mentor, too, completing this as research for Golan Levin, who has long explored the relationship of drawing and musical gesture. His Sonic Wire Sculptor was a seminal creation in connecting drawings to sound, using a tablet to produce three-dimensional “wire” structures and corresponding sound synthesis. His Messe di Voce performance piece neatly reversed the relationship, using the voice as the input to animate drawings and illustrations. More of Levin’s work at flong.com. See also: composer Xenakis’ UPIC, which lives on today as IanniX, a tool getting a lot of development attention.

Keyes’ project, already getting lots of blog buzz, is notable for its practicality and immediacy; it seems a tool many others might use and build upon rather than a single piece of art.

It’s lovely to see projects, particularly academic projects, come to some form of completion and clarity. Speaking of completion and clarity, at some point a proper survey of drawn musical interfaces seems a must, but that will have to come another day. Where can I get a nice full English breakfast?

I’m late to the party, but hat tip in particular to Creative Applications

Project Page at golancourses.net; Linux source is promised soon

I’ve covered a number of these sorts of projects over recent years.

Paper, Drawing as Musical Controller: A Round-Up (including a number of paper examples)

Drawing Sound: Crazy Touch Interface Sound Experiments with Usine, PC (using only a screen – and thus producing a very different experience of drawing

Imaginary Instruments: Marker and Paper as Controller (this 2009 project is almost a direct analog to SketchSynth, minus the projection)

iPhones, Pencils: Hand-Drawn Music Interactions, Tokyo Subway Mobile Jam (this one isn’t quite the same as the others, using pencil and paper to design an interface for a screen – but it’s nice to recall that you can do that, as well)

Pen and Paper as Graphical, Digital Music Score (from earlier this year, a more open-ended design)

Video: Sonic Wire Sculptor, 2003:

For all you hear about the primacy of visual culture, you might not expect a Web service exclusively focused on sound to be a big hit. SoundCloud, however, has seen meteoric growth, hitting 10 million users in January. Its interface, however, hasn’t quite grown and matured at the same pace. We’ve seen a lovely-looking new HTML5-based player embed, but the main site hasn’t gotten the same refresh – until now.

Yesterday evening, SoundCloud provided press and some members of the public with a first view of the new site. The facelift is organized around even greater focus on SoundCloud’s signature waveform view, with a greater emphasis on sharing and real-time updating, as well as more easily managing profiles.

In short, everything is a lot cleaner – a whole lot cleaner – and more focused on actually listening to and sharing music.

What’s new:

• The Waveform is bigger and more prominent – and stripped of hated comment clutter – with a new navigational interface.
• Profiles are redesigned for easier navigation.
• “Reposts” now add to sharing mechanisms for tracks and sets.
• Real-time updates show activity right away. (This seems to me a bit reminiscent of the direction taken by listening services like Spotify.)
• Continuous playback. I’ve long used Chrome (and now Firefox) extension ex.fm for this feature, which even allows you to move between sites; it’s nice to see SoundCloud allow you to keep sounds playing in the background as you navigate, though.
• Sets put collections of sounds into a single Waveform, in place of a playlist. This could be a solution for creating legal mixes for DJs and curators – or mixes of your own music – without running afoul of copyright restrictions by posting conventional DJ mixes. (That said, of course, you don’t get to actually mix and cross-fade. Now that’d be interesting.)
• Streamlined navigation, with keyboard shortcuts, master volume control, and other features.
• Improved search algorithm (a frequent source of complaints from readers to whom I’ve spoken), plus auto-complete/search suggestion.

So, when will you get all of this? SoundCloud says the roll-out will take “months,” though they haven’t given a solid timeframe. Initially, “tens of thousands” of beta invites will be available; you can request one now via a dedicated minisite for the redesign. That’s a tiny fraction of the total user base, so we’ll see how easy it is to get into the queue; I’ll work on getting CDM in so we can at least report back. A public beta will come later this year, with a “full switchover” for everyone expected by the end of the year.

I’ve gotten feedback from CDM readers about what they want out of SoundCloud, and initially, it doesn’t appear the redesign addresses all those concerns. It certainly looks prettier and more usable, and for public sharing, SoundCloud has been terrific. But readers have also requested easier ways to sell their music than are currently available. I’ve also heard from users – and found in my own experience – that private sharing and collaboration is relatively limited. (Chris Randall notes via Facebook that he prefers Dropbox for this purpose, particularly since they’ve added a player that works with private tracks.) We’ll see if any of these functional areas is addressed as SoundCloud rolls out new functionality, or if it becomes available via their API.

SoundCloud, for their part, does promise “new features,” and says that you’ll continue to have access to “existing features in the current version, such as upload and record.” I think it’s safe to say this brief preview doesn’t cover everything SoundCloud is developing in 2012.

My guess is, with so many cloud tools evolving, users will use a combination of tools to get their work done, collaborate, and share their music. Naturally, we’ll follow that closely to see if we can provide some useful information about how to get the most out of these tools.

What do you think of this first look at the new SoundCloud? And how do you use it? Let us know in comments.

More info / beta signup:
next.soundcloud.com

It starts as just another toy to play around with in a few minutes of distraction in your Web browser – as if the Web were short on distraction. But then, something amazing can happen. Like a musical Turing Test, you start to get a feeling for what’s happening on the other side. Someone’s stream of colored dots starts to jam with your stream of colored dots. You get a little rhythm, a little interplay going. And instead of being a barrier, the fact that you’re looking at simple animations and made-up names and playing a pretty little tune with complete strangers starts to feel oddly special. The absence of normal interpersonal cues makes you focus on communicating with someone, completely anonymously, using music alone.

Dinah Moe’s “Plink” is the latest glimpse of what Web browser music might be, and why it might be different than (and a compliment to) other music creation technology. You can now create private rooms to blow off steam with a faraway friend, or find new players online. It’s all powered with the Web Audio API, the browser-native, JavaScript-based tools championed by Mozilla. That means you’ll need a recent Chrome or Firefox (Chrome only at the moment; this is a Chrome Experiment), and mobile browsers won’t be able to keep up. But still, give it a try – I think you may be pleasantly surprised. (Actually, do it right now, as you’ll probably be doing it with other CDM readers. I expect greater things!)

http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink/

Thanks to Robin Hunicke, who worked with multiplayer design and play at That Game Company’s Journey on PS3 and now on the browser MMO Glitch. I think her friends were more musical than most, because the place came alive after she linked from Facebook.

The browser is becoming a laboratory, a place to quickly try out ideas for music interaction, and for the code and structure that describe music in a language all their own. As in Plink, it can also benefit from being defined by the network and collaboration.

Dinah Moe’s experiments go in other directions, as well. In Tonecraft, inspired by the 3D construction metaphor of Minecraft, three-dimensional blocks become an alternative sequencer.

http://labs.dinahmoe.com/ToneCraft/

There are many reasons not to use Web tools. The Web Audio API still isn’t universal, and native options (like Google’s Native Client) have their own compatibility issues, stability concerns, and – because of security – they don’t do all the things a desktop application will. Desktop music tools are still more numerous, more powerful, and easier to use, so if you’re a reader out there finishing a thesis project, you might look elsewhere. (Actually, you’re probably in trouble, anyway, by any nation’s academic calendar, given it’s the First of May, but I digress.)

But think instead of this as another canvas, and the essential building blocks of interface design, code, and networking as shared across browsers and desktop apps. Somehow, in the light of the Internet, its new connectedness, and its new, more lightweight, more portable code and design options, software is changing. That transformation could happen everywhere.

If you need something to help you meditate on that and wait for a revelation to occur to you, I highly recommend watching a soothing stream of dots and some pleasing music as you jam with your mouse.

Of course, in the end, like a digital mirror, it might inspire you to go out to the park with a couple of glockenspiels and jam the old-fashioned way. But maybe that’s another reason to make software.

(Here’s a video, in case you’re not near a browser that supports the app!)

More, plus reflections on adaptive music:
http://labs.dinahmoe.com/

How do you visualize the invisible? How do expose a process with multiple parameters in a way that’s straightforward and musically intuitive? Can messing about with granular sound feel like touching that sound – something untouchable?

Music’s ephemeral, unseeable quality, and the ways we approach sound in computer music in similarly abstract ways, are part of the pleasure of making noise. But working out how to then design around that can be equally satisfying. That’s why it’s wonderful to see work like the upcoming Borderlands for iPad and desktop. It solves a problem familiar to computer users – designing an interface for a granular playback instrument – but does so in a way that’s uncommonly clear. And with free code and research sharing, it could help inspire other projects, too.

Its creator also reminds, us, though, that the impetus for all of this can be the quest for beautiful sound.

Creator Chris Carlson is publishing source code and a presentation for the NIME [New Interfaces for Musical Expression] conference. But this isn’t just an academic problem or a fun design exercise: he also uses this tool in performance, so the design is informed by those needs. (I’m especially attuned to this particular problem, as I was recently mucking about with a Pd patch of mine that did similar things, working out how to perform with it and what the interface should look like. I know I’m not alone, either.)

The basic function of the app: load up a selection of audio clips, and the software distributes them graphically in the interface. Next:

A “grain cloud” may be added to the screen under the current mouse position with the press of a key. This cloud has an internal timing system that triggers individual grain voices in sequence. The user has control over the number of grain voices in a cloud, the overlap of these grains, the duration, the pitch, the window/envelope, and the extent of random motion in the XY plane. By selecting a cloud and moving it over a rectangle, the sound contained in the rectangle will be sampled at the relative position of each grain voice as it is triggered. By moving the cloud in along the dimension of the rectangle that is orthogonal to the time dimension, the amplitude of the resulting grain bursts changes.

You can see how Chris is imagining this conceptually in a sketch he shares on his site:

An extended demo shows in greater detail how this all works:

Chris is a second-year Master’s student at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics [CCRMA] in California. The iPad version is coming soon, but you can get started with the Linux and Mac versions right away, and even join a SoundCloud group to share what you’re making. You’ll find all the details, and links to source code, on the CCRMA site. (And if someone feels like building this on Windows, you can save Chris the trouble.)

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~carlsonc/256a/Borderlands/index.html

I also love this Max Mathews quote Chris shares as inspiration:

Max Mathews, in a lecture delivered at Stanford in the fall of 2010
“Any sound that the human ear can hear can be made by a sequence of digits. And that’s a true theorem. Most of the sounds that you make, shall we say randomly are either uninteresting, or horrible, or downright dangerous to your hearing. There’s an awful lot to be learned on how to make sounds that are beautiful.”

Beyond the technology, beyond this design I admire, anything that sends you on the path to making beautiful sound seems to be a worthy exercise. It’s a challenge you can face every day and never grow tired.

http://modulationindex.com/ [Chris' site, with more information]

Thanks to Ingmar Koch (Dr. Walker) for the tip!

Imagine working with sound design by painting with spectra, then applying those spectra to instruments you can play in real-time, and you’ve got the basic notion of iZotope Iris. The dream of combining graphics tools, a la Photoshop, with sonic ones has been in the minds of creative computer users for some time. Iris is a major landmark, though: instead of just being an editing tool, it turns sonic selection into something you can use in a synth. It lets you do your creative sound editing, but then play those sounds live, transforming the technique into an instrument.

In fact, Iris looks like just what I dreamed of having back in the 90s when I first played with U&I Software’s graphic sound manipulation tool MetaSynth. (Developer Eric Wenger, alongside his former colleague Kai Krause, was an advocate of novel graphical interfaces in place of the run-of-the-mill, cut-and-paste UI. MetaSynth remains an amazing tool, and since Iris can import sounds, using the two together could be mind-blowing.) Since MetaSynth, we’ve seen other efforts, like selection tools in Adobe’s own Soundbooth. iZotope bested those efforts with the most powerful graphical editing tool I’ve seen yet, in their RX product. Now, at last, you can use those same tools to create new sounds, not just restore old ones, and then jam with the results.

Here’s what you get:

• Extra spectra from a graphical view of the sound, using familiar graphical selection tools (even a handy Magic Wand)
• Layer spectra together
• Play the sounds from a MIDI controller
• Use standard synth tools: tuning, amplitude envelope, LFO, modulation.
• Send effects: distortion (tube, clipping, scream, etc.), chorus, delay, reverb.
• Multimode filters.
• Import your own sounds, or use one from a 4 GB library of sounds – either as the basis of your own sound designs, or using an existing preset. (iZotope promises recordings of insects, animals, machines, vintage synthesizers, musical instruments and so on. Of course, nice as those are, some of the fun will be using this tool as an excuse to go out field recording.)
• Key mapping, so you can set up a performance multi with various presets – ideal for live performance and experimentation.

For more high-quality sound libraries with accompanying preset content that uses them, iZotope will sell you add-on libraries beyond the 4 GB already in the tool, entitled Glass and Wood, at US$49 and US$29, respectively. (I’ll let you figure out what sound content those cover.)

In fact, the only thing missing here, really, is the ability to manipulate the spectral stuff itself live. The selection is mainly still an editing process, but once you do have your spectra selected, everything else is playable in real-time.

Iris available now. It’ll eventually cost US$249, or $299 with the Glass and Wood libraries bundled, but for now, those are reduced to $149 and $199 until May 4.

This video provides the best explanation of how the interface works:

And here are some of the sounds you might make:

I’m excited to begin working with this one; it looks like something really unique, entirely distinct from the various work-alike instruments out there. You could almost make a whole album with this one tool … and a lot of (very enjoyable) time. More on working with Iris hands-on soon.

A demo is available – including ten days unlimited use, followed by a demo mode.

Iris runs standalone, or as a VST, AU (on Mac), or RTAS on Mac/Windows.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/iris/

Through the eyes of satellites, roving Google trucks, aerial imagery, and more, we have plenty of eyes on our planet. But what does it sound like here on Earth?

In a Web application and accompanying art installation, the world turns as it echoes sounds recorded around the world on Creative Commons-licensed site Freesound.org. It’s stunning to hear our world’s acoustic diversity – in some strange way, even more than seeing it, in that sounds can instantly give you a sense of place and time. You can load a version on your browser or on the iPad; then, from the world’s cities, listen as sounds mix automatically from one locale to another in an ambient sound score.

Browser Version (animates a bit slow for me, but works)
iPad World Sound Mix app [free | iTunes]
(via Hermann Helmholtz – great tip!)

The basic notion is something we see repeated regularly, even with this visualization; this is a fantasy those of us who work in sound routinely entertain. But it’s doubly worth mentioning, in that it’s an excuse to mention the lovely Japanese label/artist/laboratory 43d.

43d engages sound through a variety of tools. In the 43d laboratory, the spinning Earth interface finds its way into an installation (video below), iPad app, and browser app, as workshops send participants into the field to listen to their environment and gather more sounds. Such exercises have an added bonus for us electronic musicians, of course, as collected sounds can easily become the raw materials of music in any genre through the wonderful alchemy of our machines.

http://labs.43d.jp/

The installation and sound mix project:

“World Sound Mix for BankART LIFE3″ is a sound visual installation, generating new soundscape around the world. This work continues mixing the sounds at selected two points somewhere in the world from the database of huge quantities of environment sounds and generating new soundscape.

For this exhibition, we set up a magic box that resonates mixed soundscape in Sapporo and somewhere in the world. During the exhibition, a globe in the box keeps turning and resonating sounds in real time.

About sounds data:
World Sound Mix is based on a sound database from Freesound project, its sounds have been recorded and gathered by sound hunters around the world. The use of sound data is under the CreativeCommons Sampling+ 1.0 License. By the username and “freesound sound ID” shown on the globe, listener can refer to original content.

http://www.43d.jp/wsm2011/

Freesound.org, a terrific source of sounds:

http://www.freesound.org/

But what I especially like about all of this is that the environmental sounds don’t have to exist in a vacuum. 43d is also an ambient music label, the work of artist Junichi Oguro:

A sound artist who widens the realm of music. Born in Sapporo in 1974.
He started to compose music since his childhood, and received a grand prize at a national contest. In 2006 he visited Berlin for making music in various fields from commercial music for TV spots to sound space design in various areas of Europe. He also showcases sound art pieces in the realm of the contemporary art. He manages an ambient label “43d” which was established for creating leading edge sounds.

The just-released “Unfield” is breathtaking, turning effortlessly from rough-shod digital glitches to icy-sweet ballads and intimate, gorgeous vocals by Malloy Nagasawa. It combines custom software and control with more conventional recording techniques:

http://www.43d.jp/releases/

Have a listen:

Hope to hear more from this whole project.
43d.jpg

Designing a piece of gear, an interface, is a musical exercise much as is sketching a written score. It’s particularly apparent in the simple but descriptive “x0x” grid of the step sequencer on the Roland TR-808. Graphic designer Rob Ricketts has made some beautiful, arresting posters that simply provide those patterns. Apologies if you’ve seen these already, but several people sent them into me and I saw them making the rounds, and they’re worth spotting. Now, next: a monome poster? Or what visualization might next be clearest?

Program Your 808 (4 poster series, 2011)

A series of informative posters detailing how some of the most notable drum sequences were programmed using the Roland TR-808 Drum Machine. Each sequence has been analyzed and represented as to allow users to re-programme each sequence, key for key.

http://www.robricketts.co.uk/808.html

(I’ve given up on anything with corners; it may upset readers, but I’m only playing spheres from now on. Practicing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” But I’m curious what new designs, new patterns, and new visualizations we may see next.)

FRACT is a curious combination of music studio and puzzle game, merging elements of games like Myst with the sorts of synths and pattern editors you’d expect somewhere like Ableton Live. You have to make sounds and melodies to solve puzzles; by the end of the game, say the creators, you’re even producing original music. The work of a small student team out of Montreal, FRACT looks like it has all the makings of an underground indie hit – at least for music nerds.

As the creators describe it:

FRACT is a first person adventure game for Windows & Mac much in the vein of the Myst titles, but with an electro twist. Gameplay boils down to three core activities: Explore, Rebuild, Create. The player is let loose into an abstract world built on sound and structures inspired by electronic music. It’s left to the player to explore the environment to find clues to resurrect and revive the long-forgotten machinery of this musical world, in order to unlock its inner workings. Drawing inspiration from Myst, Rez and Tron, the game is also influenced by graphic design, data visualization, electronic music and analog culture.

The hub of the game is a virtual studio, collecting patterns and timbres. It’s right now in prototype phase, but it already looks visually stunning, an alien, digital world in which more-conventional step-sequencer views seem to emerge from futuristic landscapes. And you can spot Pd in the background (the free and open source patching tool, Pure Data). Update: the developers confirm that they’re working with the embeddable Pd library, libpd. That enables synths with sounds like phase modulation and classic virtual analog sounds, all modulating and generating sounds in-game.

The developers have also published plenty of sound samples so you can experience the musical side of this. Via SoundCloud:

While never released, one place some similar ideas has shown up is a prototype game inspired by Deadmau5. As in this title, two-dimensional editing screens and synth parameters are mapped to a first-person, three-dimensional environment. However, FRACT appears to take this concept much further, expanding upon the world, building more instruments, and actually turning those interactions into gameplay elements. The video of the Deadmau5 project – apparently done in-house for fun and not endorsed by the mouse-headed artist:

That title was the work of a game house called Floaty Hybrid; music blog Synthtopia got the scoop on this in August:
http://www.floathybrid.com
Mau5Bot Sequencer Lets You Make Music In A 3D World [Synthtopia]

We’ll be watching this one develop, certainly; good luck to the team!
http://fractgame.com/