Max For Live Sneak Peak from max4live on Vimeo.

Suddenly, I have an image of American Ableton hackers patching on their MacBook over Thanksgiving turkey.

After a long, long wait, a public beta of Max for Live is available. The software incorporates the full version of Max/MSP/Jitter – complete with visual output, video processing, and 3D capabilities – with the Live host. Max patches operate with all their usual capabilities as devices inside Live. User interface elements are available to give Max patches conventional Ableton device interfaces, and there are even pre-built elements for useful functions like frequency displays and MIDI patterns. Via the Live API, Max for Live patches are also able to control most elements of the Live interface.

Because of Max’s networking capabilities, Max for Live devices can also be used to route OpenSoundControl data into Live. That isn’t necessarily with the same ease as you might route MIDI, and there’s still no native support in the Live interface, but it is a step forward.

Our friend Michael at max4live.info has been busy documenting the new software. His overview video is at top, and for OSC coverage, see his tutorial [part 1 | part 2].

Updated: Pricing has now been announced.
Max for Live is not included with Live 8 or even (perhaps surprisingly) Live Suite. It will be a US$299 / EUR249 download, available separately, on top of the cost of Live 8 or Live Suite 8. If you already own Max, you’ll have a set of crossgrades available:
1. You own Live. You can add Max for Live for US$99.
2. You don’t own Live, and want just Live. You can get that and Max for Live for US$449.
3. You don’t own Live, and want the whole Suite. Suite plus Max for Live crossgrade, US$699.

Total cost:
Max owners without Live: US$449-699
Live owners without Max: US$299 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8
Max + Live owners: US$99 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8

I think this could arguably be worth the investment, but given the discontinuation of support for developing VST, RTAS, and AU plug-ins in Max – a feature that was formerly free – I expect some resistance. Also, as previously announced, there is no known Max for Live “runtime,” meaning Max patch developers don’t really have a distribution outlet for work made in Max for Live, other than other Max for Live users.

Sign up for the public beta on Ableton’s site, and you’ll be able to grab the downloads (details below). You must be an Ableton Live 8 owner, though you don’t need to own Max 5:
http://www.ableton.com/maxforlive/beta

At the bottom of the page, you’ll have a direct link to download Live 8.1 (the official current build of Live is 8.0.9 otherwise), and a link to Cycling’s site to download Max. (Note: the Max link worked this morning, then promptly disappeared, so it’s possible they’re uploading an updated build is now back up.)

There are full instructions there. I was able to simply click a button and become a beta tester; hopefully you have the same experience. You’ll need to install two pieces of software, both Ableton Live 8.1 on the Live side and Max 5.1.

For the Python-based Live API, and the MIDI and OSC interfaces based on it, this should also come as good news. Live 8.1 should theoretically represent a more stable, feature-complete, fully documented version of the Live API under the hood in Live. That means even without Max for Live, it may be possible to, say, route an OSC input into Live as easily as a MIDI control surface.

If you’d like to join in with other people working on hacking Ableton Live and ask questions, try out our Noisepages group, which should now be functioning properly with a forum, wire, and networking features. More to come with this, with Max for Live, with OSC, with other tools, with… yeah, I’m glad I own a coffee maker.

http://noisepages.com/groups/ableton-hackers

As computer music practice – part composition, part instrumental play – spreads, the idea of software interface as performance tool is becoming second nature. Putting those opposable thumbs and sensitive fingertips to work, multitouch controllers are growing in number, variety, and sophistication. Berlin-based artist Marco Kuhn shows off his beautiful creation, the PlayBox multitouch hardware, and its first app, PlayLive. That first software focuses on Ableton Live performance, but Live could be just the beginning – Marco has worked with Pd in the past and promises other apps to come. He’s interested in selling this device in the future, and he shares with us the tools he used to create this work for those of you doing development along similar lines.

The Project:

“Play Box” is is a User Interface for Natural User Interaction.
? allows multi-touch and object recognition (TUIO marker)
? hovering is also possible
? 22 ” TFT display , 1680 x 1050 pixel
? robust
? plug`n play

“Play Live” is a dedicated multitouch controller surface for Ableton Live.

- GUI Elements support multi-touch interaction
- easy to setup , just load the “Play” Control Surface
- you need no controller assignment
- you can control 32 tracks and 127 scenes, that are 4064 clips
- track controls are mute, solo, record, send1, send2, pan, level
- scene feedback name and state
- clip feedback color, name and state
- Transport control
- 2 Returns
- Master
- support bidirectional communication
- display track level meter, name

The whole app is coded in python.
- use Python Ableton Live API
- and libavg www.libavg.de for the GUI and Trackingengine
- PyPortMidi receive/send Midi Messages

“Play Live” Future plans:
- FX View per Track
- subpage for abstract clip controlling

I tested it with my mac book pro, “Play Live” and “Ableton Live” is running at the same machine. It should work on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X). That Project started with my Diploma Thesis in Applied Computer Science 1 year ago.

Everything is coded and built by myself. The GUI – elements has been designed by Gösta Wellmer.

In this work, I created a GUI-Controller Library which allow me to Develop very rapidly Multitouch Interfaces for other Audio Environments.
More Apps coming soon ;-)

I [plan] to sell the” Play Box” and Apps like “Play Live” if anyone is interested.
The price is yet not specified.

That`s not my first multitouch Interface. 2 Years ago I created forfour – http://forfour.hi-pi.de/
- used PD, Processing, Reactivision and OGRE.
But the “Play Box” is another level;-)

For more on the project:
www.hi-pi.de/play

I hope to have video to share soon – and yeah, it’s time to plan another visit to Berlin.

The “space bassoon” Eigenharp seems to have landed from another planet. Today, I’ve got good news: it’s bringing alien gifts with it. By next year, both the software and the high-performance protocol the instrument uses will be open source. Taken together with other advancements in the open source community and with protocols like OSC, that could mean we’re at the vanguard of a golden age for more open, more intelligent, more expressive digital instruments.

Genuinely new music controllers made available commercially don’t come along very often. So this week’s news of a strange but wonderful-looking instrument shaped like a bassoon with customizable key controls turned many heads. With high-resolution, high-frequency data and reliance on the computer for everything from sound generation to mapping the keys to different tunings, the computer connection matters. Eigenharp’s chairman, John Lambert, sets the record straight for CDM on the software, the way it talks to your computer and other gear, and how open the tools and protocol will be.

I’ll be talking more with John next week, but I want to bring you this news now. Part of blogging means that you don’t hold back – you share that first reaction and then learn more. I’m pleased to say I was dead wrong on the Eigenharp. What looked on the spec sheet like MIDI-only communication and proprietary software turns out to be just the opposite. Sometimes, being wrong is great. Here are all the details:

What protocol do the instruments use?

The instruments talk to their base station by a dedicated, high speed, differential, transformer-coupled, error-correcting digital protocol designed (and tested) for use in noisy stage environments by ourselves. The wire used is a 4 core, standard star quad mic cable and can be up to 40M long. The base station then talks to the control software running on the host PC (Mac at the moment) via a dedicated protocol over USB2. In the host system, the native protocol used between agents (our software components) is a network protocol called Eigentalk. This can run over Ethernet wires (with slightly increased latencies due to some smart jitter buffering we do). We will be making this public and freely available (when we open-source our main software) in Febuary next year. There is an open API, to be published at the same time, for our equivalent of AU’s or VST’s, hosted in our software, EigenD. This is rather richer than the AU and VST API’s, for reasons connected with the expressiveness and configure-ability (is that a word?) of our system. A couple of interesting AU vendors are looking at producing native EigenD instruments at the moment, and I think there will be many more in time. We try to avoid MIDI wherever possible as it has so many serious performance limitations.

Had you considered OSC?

We did have a look at OSC but there are a bunch of things that our protocol does that OSC didn’t (not least of which, for example, is clock syncronisation for jitter removal, utterly vital over ethernet for live performance) so we decided to grow our own and release it. Absolutely no reason whatsoever that we can’t interoperate fuly with it though, I suspect that an OSC EigenD Agent will probably come quite soon after the open source release.

Ed.: Actually, with OSC (OpenSoundControl) moving increasingly toward broader input and assimilating other standards, I can easily imagine that a future implementation of OSC could begin to implement these features. More on both protocols in the coming months. -PK

Is it possible to use this as a controller for MIDI hardware? MIDI software?

Yes, EigenD has in and out MIDI gateway programs. The incoming [MIDI] is mainly used for pedalboards at the moment (to control scale, key, tempo, etc.), although there is no reason you couldn’t use a midi keyboard to play notes. We’re using the MIDI out to do a wide variety of things, including playing MIDI sound modules, and controlling video DJ software and lighting systems. There is a huge reduction in effective bandwidth when ‘downsampling’ to MIDI, but for a lot of things it still works very well. And of course, the AU and VST standards (which we fully support) are a kind of MIDI interface.

Is it possible to access its native protocol for custom software / Max-Pd patches and the like?

Well, we’re open sourcing the whole thing early next year, and I think there’ll be a lot of work done to glue all sorts of external stuff in then. Max/MSP has attracted a lot of interest in this area. The whole of EigenD is kind of built for this really. We’re an Open Source company: my main personal desktop is Linux and I have a strong personal commitment to open standards. I offer a number of ‘programming bounties’ for Linux improvements on my personal website at http://johnhenrylambert.com.

Tell us more about open-sourcing the software. What tools did you use to build the software.

It’s written in a mixture of C++ and Python. It’s quite scary code, but very clean and pretty, with little ‘cruft’. I think the open source community are going to have fun with it. Its a big system too, 8 years of R&D in one huge release. I don’t think that there’s been anything quite like this open sourced before in the music world – it is a bit as if Logic or Ableton were GPL’d tomorrow.

Thanks, John! Stay tuned for more details, and let me know if you have specific questions for the creators.

Getting handy with the $60 KORG Nano Series controllers and Ableton Live keeps getting more sophisticated. I did a "quick hack" using the text-based MIDI Remote Scripts with the nano as an example, and provided a download. Next, Raymond Weitekamp modified those scripts and added a monome for a full-blown Live performance. But now James Waterworth aka Myralfur takes the whole idea to the next level, with a fully custom set of scripts with control of additional channels, more control over tracks, and most importantly, interactive scene triggers.

I’ve built a custom python script for the nanoKontrol based on the hacked python scripts for the Axiom controller decompyled from live 7. It adds the ability to switch up to controlling channels 9-16 by changing midi channel (or changing up to scene 2 on the nanokontrol, which I had sending out on midi channel 2 instead of 1). It also has track on/off, solo/cue, panning, and also has the bottom row of buttons triggering clips on the relevant track, with forward and reverse skipping up and down scenes, and the loop button triggering the selected scene.

Best of all, you really don’t need to know – ahem – what you’re doing with scripting to make this work. Just follow the instructions below, and you’re ready to play – so you can get back to your set.

Now, James has polished off the script and fixed compatibility with Ableton Live 8, and this is ready for public testing. Give it a go and let us know what you think. I’ll work on a permanent home for all of this stuff, but for now, let’s just use comments for any issues. For some insane sounds, be sure to check out Myralfur’s music and DJ mixes on Soundcloud, too! He’s working on a rig that also incorporates a Sony PlayStation 3 controller.

nanoKONTROLMyr

A midi remote script for use with Ableton Live 8 and the Korg nanoKontrol.

Set-Up

1. Download and Unzip the file.

2. Move the nanoKONTROLMyr folder to the MidiRemoteScript folder within your Ableton Live application folder.

3. Open your Korg nano series editor and load the presets within the NanoKontrol Presets folder, over-writing your previous settings.

4. Select nanoKONTROLMyr as a control surface in the midi pane of the preferences window.

Mappings

Banks

Bank 1 controls tracks 1 – 8

Bank 2 controls tracks 9 – 16

Bank 3 maps the encoders to the selected device and provides functions for moving tracks and devices.

Bank 4 is free for mapping to whatever you like, sending on midi channel 4.

Global

The Ninth Slider is Always mapped to Master Volume, regardless of bank or midi channel.

The Ninth Encoder is Always mapped to Cue Volume, regardless of bank or midi channel.

Transport

Transport functions only work when receiving midi cc numbers on channel 16.

Different functions are called when in session view and arranger view for some of the buttons. The Loop button acts as a Shift to allow more functions to be called with the other transport buttons.

Loop = Shift

Play = Play (Scene Launch when Shift held)

Stop = Stop (Stop All Clips when Shift held)

Record = Record (Overdub On/Off when Shift held)

Session Specific

Rewind = Scene Up (Scene Up by 5 when Shift held)

Forward = Scene Down (Scene Down by 5 when Shift held)

Arranger Specific

Rewind = Cue Position Left

Forward = Cue Position Right

Encoders

The Encoders map to the Pans of the tracks. When sent on different midi channel numbers they map to different tracks. Channel 1 maps to tracks 1 – 8 and Channel 2 maps to 9 – 16 etc.

When sent on midi channel 16 they map to the selected device. This works in conjunction with the pads and buttons sending on channel 16 which provide functions for moving track and controlling devices.

Sliders

The Sliders map to the Volumes of the tracks. The tracks they are mapped to changes with the midi channel they are sent on. Channel 1 maps to tracks 1 – 8 and Channel 2 maps to 9 – 16 etc.

There is as yet no function for when they are sent on channel 16.

Top Row of Buttons

The buttons on the top row turn Tracks On/Off. The Ninth Button on the row acts as a Shift and when this is held the other buttons Record Arm the tracks. They function the same as the sliders and encoders in that they map to tracks depending on the midi channel.

However, when sent on midi channel 16 the buttons select and view tracks 1 – 8 mapping the encoders above to the first device in that track.

Bottom Row of Bottons/Pads

The buttons, or pads, on the bottom row Trigger Clips. The Ninth Button on the row acts as a Shift and when this is held the other buttons Stop the relevant clips. They function the same as the sliders, encoders and top row of buttons in that they map to tracks depending on the midi channel.

However, when sent on midi channel 16 the buttons provide various functions for controlling devices.

Button 10 = Track Left

Button 11 = Track Right

Button 12 = Device Left

Button 13 = Device Right

Button 14 = Bank 1

Button 15 = Bank 2

Button 16 = Device On/Off

Button 17 = Clip View/Device View

Download:

nanoKONTROLMyr.zip

TUIO is a simple but powerful emerging protocol for multitouch control for live music and visuals, as used on the powerful live tangible synth reacTable. Apparently no one told Apple, however. While the App Store rubber-stamps useless toys like fake cigarette lighter flames, they bizarrely rejected a powerful application by a leading digital artist that would enable standardized TUIO control – for free. (More back story below; see an example in action above.)

As a blogger, my reaction is usually to whine and pontificate, for better or worse. The engineering approach would be to find some hack away the problem. That’s what Andrew Turley did with the TUIO protocol. So, Apple won’t allow an app that does the trick? Why not go back to what developers did before the SDK, and just use the iPhone browser?

As Andrew explains it:

After reading the story I started thinking about seeing how far one could push Safari as an application platform, using web apps to get around Apple’s tight control of the app store. Since you would be connecting to another computer anyway to use an OSC application, why not just have the app be a web app running on a web server somewhere on the local network? The web server can then take care of things like sending out OSC messages or playing music or doing whatever it is people want to do.

To that end I created a little system that implements the TUIO protocol. You use an iPhone to run a web app, which in turn talks to the web server, which in turn sends OSC messages.

Details:

touchy feely [Pillowsopher Blog]

Needless to say, there are some downsides: you have to run the Python server, you’re more limited in input and control than you would be in a real app, and you’re stuck inside the Safari browser, which could be a bit inconvenient. So I’m not backing down from my original complaint – I don’t see Apple doing anyone a service by blocking this kind of app, and the only rational explanation seems to be that the folks doing the review process don’t understand what the app is.

Most importantly, I do know that all our griping was sent to Apple, so I’m hopeful the App Store will reconsider the decision once they get it.

But I love solutions, too, and this can be one for many applications.

It also illustrates an important point: the browser on mobile devices (Apple and otherwise) could be a powerful outlet. It doesn’t always make sense to build an entire application; there will be various cases in which a little browser tool will do a job. Need a quick remote control for a live performance / art installation / club lighting rig? You might try the easy solution with the browser first.

Thanks for the great hack, Andy, and I’m curious to hear if anyone uses or extends this.

Previously:

Apple Rejects Free iPhone Tool For Artists Because of “Minimal User Functionality”

Ever feel like you’ve found the seam dividing past and future?

The past: restrictive UI frameworks requiring pages and pages of code to produce dated-look 2D displays. Proprietary software with rigid interfaces. Input bottlenecked through the x and y coordinates of a single mouse pointer.

The future: UIs whipped together graphically or with a few lines of code. 3D mixed with 2D. Open-source, friendly frameworks. Creating your own interface or drawing upon a community of creative software makers. Input that uses multitouch for gestures, collaborative input, manipulation of 2D and 3D space, and … well, just a lot more fun.

There’s no need to wait around for the future. Creative software inventors are building it for themselves. Here are two of the most promising multitouch interface projects I’ve seen in my inbox.

In no time at all, you’ll be painting a cow! (Okay, more on that in a moment…)

Make Max Multitouch

Max Multitouch Framework by composer Mathieu Chamagne makes turning your Max patch into a multitouch interface a breeze. When I first reviewed the Lemur, I was frustrated by the hardware-style abstraction between your software and the interface. Why was I having to go through Max patches painstakingly assigning Lemur controls to Max controls – why not just make the Max controls appear on the multitouch screen? Well, that’s exactly what you get with MMF. Using a set of Max abstractions, all you have to do is build your Presentation Mode style UI and add in the MMF ingredients – it automagically becomes touchable on a variety of displays.

It’s not hard to imagine how great this could be for musicians, especially those who have already been building original sonic creations in Max/MSP. Best of all, you don’t need an expensive, non-portable table with a projector inside, either – commodity hardware works just fine right now.

Requirements :

- cycling’74 Max5 (version 5.0.6 required)
- any multitouch interface that sends TUIO messages.

MMF has been tested and works fine with : Stantum SMK-15.4 multitouch screen, HP XT2 tablet pc (windows7 + W2TUIO), Demand Evolution + home made multitouch screen + Reactivision / Tbeta , …

MMF (Max Multitouch Framework) @ Mathieu Chamagne’s Site

Hmmm… apps that send (cough) TUIO, eh? Ah, yes, but that’s why you need companies like Apple to tell you what qualifies as useful in an iPhone app. You see, without Apple’s app review team and their superior wisdom, I might wrongfully assume this sort of app would be something I’d want. Now I know better – thanks! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Back to the on-topic discussion, this does demonstrate a real advantage of Max: it has its UI absolutely nailed, and the open-source alternative Pd is woefully behind. It also demonstrates that the beauty of Presentation Mode is, by abstracting the UI from the underlying guts, you can consider alternative interfaces. We should see that in Max for Live, as well.

Pd is fantastic in other ways, but if there’s anyone out there who fancies writing a lightweight new front-end, it could use it – perhaps in Python. Which brings us to the next item.

pymt demo reel from Thomas Hansen on Vimeo.

PyMT: Juicy Multitouch, Just a Few Lines o’ Code

PyMT is a glimpse of what future development could look like. While Microsoft putzes around with their Windows-only Surface, PyMT makes multitouch platform agnostic, open, and easy. That frees up artists to dream up creative new ways of applying this interface to expressive musical and visual creations (among others). Instead of reinventing the wheel as far as plumbing, you can focus on the reason for using devices in the first place – your art.

PyMT is profoundly portable, using Python and OpenGL to deliver windowing and multimedia features across platforms. Documentation and code are both under heavy development, but there are already some friendly-looking resources. This is almost enough to shake me from my loyalty to Java, though, in fairness, you can do some of the same things with Java and other tools. What’s most important is that there are libraries that are providing standards, like TUIO, and implementations in cross-platform languages that can be easily developed.

There’s good reason to be bullish on the future of this tech. And if you want to see it happen, don’t wait – you can get involved in the project directly.

PyMT at Google Code

PyMT Project Page

Want to interact with your computer musically using physical objects and other fancy-schmancy, science-fiction-y interfaces? Don’t want to rely on Microsoft or wait until 2019? You’re in luck. It’s like Christmas for DIYers and interactive futurists.

Enter LusidOSC, a set of protocols, libraries, and useful code, and Trackmate, a clever and cheap-to-build system for tangible interfaces. Together, you’ve just got a bunch of tools to help you start playing with blocks — erm, experiencing new spatial interfaces.

• LusidOSC, the library maps “spatial input devices” – really, any tangible devices or sensors in the real world – to applications, like live music or live visuals. It uses the network-savvy OpenSoundControl protocol. The library is available now for Processing, with Java, Python, Flash, and C++ in the works.
• LusidOSC, the apps/code: a set of Processing utilities to get you started includes a basic example app, command launcher, playlist mixer, and a MIDI sequencer. You can build on these for your own Processing apps.
• Your own input device: Tags? Sensors? Markers? Regions? Fingertips? If it’s in physical space, you can map it via LusidOSC. Or, if you want a place to start, try:
• Trackmate: A project of MIT’s Tangible Media Group, Trackmate lets you affix tags to any objects you want and use them as an interface.

LusidOSC is just the protocol; it’s physical applications like Trackmate that get really interesting. In these economically-challenged times, Trackmate gives you tangible interfaces for next to nothing. All you need is a computer (Mac, Windows, or Linux), and a camera (even a webcam will do). Print out randomly-generated tags in the free and open source software, stick them on stuff you want to use, and go to town.

You can make your own Trackmate surfaces out of hardwood or plexiglass for as little as $40 in parts. There’s even a Processing-based simulator app so you can experiment without the physical objects. (Good for troubleshooting on the bus or plane, I imagine.)

Trackmate is just one project, though; LusidOSC promises to support other interface ideas, too.

LusidOSC at Sourceforge, the work of “many research institutions and companies.” (Which, I wonder?)
Trackmate at Sourceforge, a project of the MIT Media Lab Tangible Media Group

Alternatives: TUIO, the protocol used in the Bjork-endorsed Reactable project marches forward, as well. And as both projects are open source, there could be some cross-pollination. I hear a revised TUIO is coming, and in the meantime, LusidOSC acts as a gateway to TUIO.

“Sure, the OLPC project is supposed to do wonderful things for children of the world, but what has it done for me, lately?” Well, if you fancy yourself one of the Earth’s children, the OLPC organization has assembled 8.5 gigabytes of sample content that’s free and Creative Commons-licensed — free to acquire, and free to use.

Jacob Joaquin, who runs the terrific thumbuki blog and the Csound Blog and is part ofthe team developing Csound for the OLPC’s XO laptop, shares the news via Dr. Richard Boulanger at Berklee. (See the press release as a zipped .doc.)

Plenty of people contributed top-notch sound: the Berklee College of Music, Csound developers around the world, electronica celebrity BT (himself a former Berklee and Boulanger student, among other alums), M-Audio and Digidesign, and the Open Path Music Group.

They’re donated under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so you can “freely create, compose, mix, remix, share, distribute and redistribute these samples and use them for any purpose as long as you clearly attribute the source.” That means anyone, anywhere can make use of this library — no OLPC required.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Sound_samples

Csound, OLPC Style

Whether you like the OLPC laptop itself or not, there’s plenty going on with the project. There’s the immediate impact of the hardware and software, yes — and plenty of opportunity to praise or criticize its utility there (perhaps the mark of a good, ambitious project). But there’s also the secondary impact. The OLPC has captured imaginations in terms of what future computers might be, and what they might mean to more of the population of the planet. More importantly, perhaps, it’s building a family of open source, Linux-based (and cross platform technology-based) tools, which could ultimately outlive the hardware platform. I have my own doubts about the OLPC itself, but the ideas for open sound making are about more than just that hardware. (For instance, just testing Processing, Arduino and Java on this kind of mobile platform can improve that software.)

The sample library is only part of the story; software tools is another part. Powered by Csound, the OLPC team wants to put sound synthesis and music production in the hands of kids — we’re talking serious digital synthesis here, not just GarageBand-style looping. That goal could ultimately go well beyond just the OLPC.

Csound is a free and open source development tool for sound design, synthesis, and signal processing, with a lineage that goes back to original developer Barry Vercoe and in turn descended from the first digital synthesis tools created by Max Mathews. It is the audio/music development system for the OLPC project, with integration with Python (though I’ve heard we should also see additional Java development).

Those geeky details aside, you’ll see in many of the reviews of the OLPC writers mentioning unusual and fun music toys. Those journalists are stumbling upon some of the projects below, and the process is just getting started.

Jacob had shared some brief looks at what he’s working on on his OLPC, but here’s the full overview from Dr. Boulanger, because there’s quite a lot happening:

Over these past two months the CsoundXO Developers – especially John ffitch, Victor Lazzarini, Andres Cabrera, Jacob Joaquin, Cesare Marilungo, and Greg Thompson have really pushed out some new and important tools and activities for the XO.  Links to some of these are below.

A most important result of this development initiative is the fact that John and Victor got the CsoundXO subset of Csound5 to be FULLY SYNCHRONIZED  and TOTALLY COMPATIBLE with the current release of Public Csound (and automated the process so that they will ALWAYS be in sync!) and Andres has a CsoundXO manual that is fully synchronized as well!!!!!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Csound
+ Links to the Csound Activities, the new RPM!, the developer tools
(by Victor), and the toots.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Csndsugui
+ Victor Lazzarini’s AMAZING new GUI TOOLKIT for Csound Activity
Development on the XO
+ Victor has developed a wonderful small collection of tutorial
activities with sliders and buttons controlling CsoundXO
- waves – a simple additive synth
- synth – a subtractive synth with USB keyboard control
- playfiles – an 8 track remixer with record capability
- GMplayer – an iterface and instrument for loading and playing any GM file with Csound – using the Avid/M-Audio donated Sample Set

http://www.thumbuki.com/20080317/step-and-funny-talk-for-the-olpc.html
+ Jacob Joaquin’s new Activities developed with Victor’s Toolkit and
his blog and tutorials about the process.

* coming soon (within the next two weeks) by Greg Thompson

- CsoundEditor/Launcher – with virtual MIDI piano keyboard and CsoundXO manual integrations
+ including ALL the Boulanger Tutorials – TOOTS, Csound Book Chapter
1, Mastering Csound, Scanned Synthesis
+ including thousands of instruments and models from The Csound
Catalog plus dozens of compositions and MIDI instruments,

- CsoundRemixer – for jamming with the OLPCsound Sample Archive (and adding Csound FX instruments)

- GMPlayAlong – for playing general MIDI files with Csound and visualizing the tracks on the ascii keyboard, virtual piano keyboard and pianoroll

- PlayAlong Keyboard – for playing Csound Instruments from a USB and/or Virtual Keyboard: GMplayer, Sampler, SynthExplorer (all sorts of synths)

* coming soon (within the next two weeks) by Cesare Marilungo

- Image2Sound – for the sonification of pictures and drawings from the Journal and other OLPC Activities using his new image opcode collection.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:CSound – some thoughts on Csound for press and others

Here are the links to the XO Bundled Sound Activities (including especially the Csound Masterpiece by Jean Piché and Company
- TamTam Mini, TamTam Jam, TamTam Edit, and the SynthLab)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tamtam – all Csound – AMAZING – INTUITIVE – POWERFUL – and for Children!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pippy (Some Csound)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Memorize (Some Csound)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure (Making the Csound connection now)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Record  (capturing audio for Csound and Photos for Image2Csound conversion – thanks to Cesare Marilungo’s new
Opcodes!)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Draw (paint program which with Image2Csound and Cesare’s opcodes – can now be transformed to audio.)

Take the modular, patchable sound-making capabilities of Reaktor and (at the other end of the scale) Reason, and combine it with a graphical, zoomable, nodal interface with patch cords showing actual signal, as on the reacTable interactive table interface, and you should get something like Mod271. (Pronounced “mode.”)

The software is in pre-pre-alpha phase, but it’s freely downloadable for Windows users if you’re adventurous, and the developer promises more progress and other operating systems soon.

Features:

• ASIO/MIDI support, VSTi version coming
  
• Everything is full audio-rate, meaning you can mix and match MIDI and DSP
  
• Powerful nodes: “every node can be automated with unlimited control points and automation takes place right in the 3D environment.” … “nodes can influence any amount of other nodes or switched into a singular state.”, with radial and linear modes for the nodes
  
• Interface is 3D hardware-accelerated, and the signals even (optionally) draw at audio rate for realistic previews
  
• sample-accurate envelopes and motion, “meaning you can make an oscillator out of an envelope.”
  
• 25 node types and growing
  
• Make your own nodes with Python

Crazy stuff! It’ll be interesting to see how this one develops. And I hope the Reaktor developers are paying close attention; there’s a lot here that could inspire a future Reaktor version.

Full description, lots of background, and that bleeding-edge super-pre-alpha-at-your-own-risk:

Mod271 @NuDSP

Thanks to Ronnie of rekkerd.org for the tip!