Part of the beauty of the iPhone from its launch date was the notion of a Mac you could fit in the palm of your hand. That makes it ironic that, for so many developers, mobile platforms in general have turned into a way to fragment software, to make it run fewer places instead of more. There’s something to be said for designing to a specific mobile device, but on the other hand, how many developers would want to restrict where their creations run? And particularly in music, isn’t the appeal of mobile creation the ability to have your tools work in more places? Maybe targeting just one gadget is the right choice for a given tool, but it shouldn’t be the only choice.

On the iPhone, the application Thump has plenty in common with a range of mobile music making tools. It’s simple but fun, a groove box with sequencing, subtractive synths, drums, and a set of basic effects, plus the ability to load your own samples and export songs.

Thump also demonstrates how simplifying sonic capabilities can produce musically-beautiful results, by focusing on the essentials and creating something with personality. Here’s a track by its creator showing off its sounds:
thump soundreel by mazbox

Well worth checking out the app on your platform of choice:
http://www.mrkbrz.com/thump/

What might not be immediately apparent is that under the hood, Thump makes use of the open source environment openFrameworks. As a result, the same code runs on iPhone, Mac, and Windows, as well as Linux. (It’s not distributed for Linux, but it could be. Hint, hint.) Creator Marek Bereza gives back, too – he ported the openFrameworks audio library to the iPhone, where it’s available to anyone.

Updated Marek notes in comments just what this means. The video below is, essentially, the same app. In place of the iPod screen, he has used a massive lattice of physical controls. A separate installation at the same show used a large touchscreen and simplified interface. And this really demonstrates what cross-platform means. Guy Kawasaki in the 80s mocked “ports” as a cheap wine. The idea is not to simply dump your code on a different platform and hope for the best – in fact, in this case, the changes from one platform to another were radical. The key is maximizing what’s essential, what really is not specific to a single device.

Physical Sequencer from Marek Bereza on Vimeo.

Creative Applications has a detailed write-up of the installation with more documentation.

If you’re interested in creating your own projects, oF has an elegant syntax based on Processing, but adapted to C/C++ coding paradigms and libraries.

jumping beans & .tape. from la bisogno on Vimeo.

What might a jar full of Mexican jumping beans sound like if composing their own ambient music? Scott Worley points us to a musical experiment by his labelmate Daniel Romero aka .tape, on netlabel yo.yo.pang!.
.tape programmed a sound environment in the free multimedia patching environment Pd (Pure Data). Contact microphones listen for the beans to jump, then use Pd’s onset detection (an analysis for transients) to trigger the sounds. Daniel reports the technique is “easy, but wholly effective.”

I’ll say – the music winds up being quite lovely, and rather than having a boring software-based random event generator, there’s something mesmerizing about watching the beans. You can download a free MP3/OGG file of the track, as well (and it sounds as though more projects may be coming):

pet-o-matic [asociación cultural la bisogno]

Descripción original en Español:

empezamos esta serie con la picante unión entre el músico Daniel Romero (aka .tape. ) y Pancho, Emiliano y Marcos, tres frijoles saltarines mexicanos

Sonidos y programación por .tape. secuenciación en directo por los 3 frijoles saltarines mexicanos micrófono de contacto + un “onset detection” en pd para disparar los sonidos. fácil pero rotundamente efectivo.

In other Pd news, the creators of the RjDj interactive/generative iPhone music app, which employs Pd patches, will be holding another sprint. This one will be located in London October 2-4.

The PowerMate from Griffin is an affordable, very compact USB knob with glowing blue LED feedback and push-and-turn functionality (so it’s a button, too). But using just one knob may not be all that useful for control. We’ve already seen Robert Hodgin VJing with four PowerMates, but our friends Bill Van Loo and Joshua Schnable have come up with a novel solution. Using Schnable’s custom software built in Pure Data (Pd), they’ve not only mapped the PowerMate to MIDI, but using switches and the push function allow you to control four or eight channels at once using just the one knob.

At the end of last week, they offered a first look at the solution, with a basic demo in Ableton Live (though any MIDI-capable software will work), and downloadable Pd patch and manual to get you started. The patch is open source-licensed.

announcing CTRL4 + CTRL8: MIDI Control for Griffin PowerMate + PureData

Of course, if you’d rather use OSC or create an instrument right in Pd, you can do that, too, with this as a template. But if you want to get up and running with your PowerMate – even if you’ve never used Pd – this should be quite accessible.

Check it out in action in the video below. More documentation is coming.

The manual itself is written from the Mac perspective, but with any MIDI loopback tool on Windows, it should work, too – and I believe some people are even using the PowerMate on Linux. If anyone wants to share how you’re using this on another platform or with another setup, that’d be great, in a noisepages post/blog or anywhere you like – just let us know. (Documentation, suffice to say, is a huge part of going open source.)

This might be worth trying with similar hardware like the (discontinued but still available) Logitech NuLOOQ Navigator, as well. (The NuLOOQ is more expensive list, but looks like prices are as low as $30, and it adds additional controls like a ring on the top.)

Griffin PowerMate

Logitech NuLOOQ Navigator

FIRST LOOK: Joshua Schnable’s CTRL8 Powermate/PD control software from chromedecay on Vimeo.

Editing drum patterns in RjDj/Pd from Frank Barknecht on Vimeo.

If making your own musical tools seems like a lot of work, you’re not wrong. The beauty of making your own stuff is all about making your own reusable modules that help you build musical solutions more quickly. Finding those useful modules can also help people new to programming or patching.

In Pure Data, the free and open source cousin of Max/MSP, one form of these reusable modules is called the “abstraction.” It’s an object that you can stick into your creations to help build what you need without a lot of fuss.

Translation: even if you’ve never patched before, you can start making fun drum pattern makers quickly using all-free software. The folks at RjDj, who have been creating mobile interactive toys for the iPhone and iPod touch (see our interview, recent story) have also been building a library of useful abstractions. Because that library is also free and open source and built for Pd, it works with your Mac, Windows, or Linux machine.

Here’s a great starter tutorial, useful for even newcomers:
Editing Drum Patterns in RjDj

For more Pd learning (see additional tips in comments):
Be a Music Geek Ninja with Electronic Music Programming in Pd: New Book

If you create stuff with this, be sure to share with us! And it’s brand new, but feel free to come join our Pd group on the in-alpha/beta Noisepages:
Pd Group

I wish I could be in London in July, but since I can’t, hopefully some readers of this site can make it to the upcoming Music Hackday, which features RjDj and lots of other online music projects (Soundcloud, Last.fm, the music API for The Echo Nest, 7digital, more):
http://musichackday.org/

Digital technology has the power to transmit information more efficiently, to make the invisible visible, and to express new things. It can also be pushed so far to the limits of actually transmitting information to be meaningless. It can push well beyond what we can even perceive in a useful way. What’s bizarre and wonderful about Johannes Kreidler’s work is that he’s not afraid of pushing toward that boundary. The results may have only a shred of remaining meaning, or be intentionally, comically meaningless. But he’s nothing if not inventive.

Compression Sound Art (2009) [“Comments on Music – Musical Zip-Files … Time is relative!”

The video above, politically speaking, is Not Safe For Anything – where else can you bring up Hitler and Britney Spears and condoms? But the only visually tantalizing information is the brief view of a condom speaker membrane and a chest with pasties.

The creations range from:

An oven pipe imported in 1972 from Alaska to New Zealand, vibrated at 574 cycles per second using a gasoline motor. Then, in 2003, this recording was manipulated and filtered on an old atari computer using hacked software.

…to:

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, played 22,000 times in one second (audible only to bats).

The controversial nods and humor aside, I think this really does say something about time and data. I could tell you, but I’d need a microsecond. Let’s just avoid any mention of datamosh.

Johannes Kreidler does know how to encode information in useful, accessible ways, too, however. He’s done just that with a terrific book on Pd (Pure Data), the open source, visual programming environment in which he created works like the one above. Can’t dance to it? You can do other things with Pd, too. You can dance to it? Then, by all means, go for it:

Be a Music Geek Ninja with Electronic Music Programming in Pd: New Book

Previous Kreidler sightings:

A song made from 70,2000 samples

The stock market declines, as a song