What if a workstation arrangement keyboard were designed for DJs and synth rockers instead of, uh, whoever normally buys workstation arranger keyboards? Casio has taken the wraps off their new keyboards, and they appear to be affordable, all-in-one electronic beasts. Oh, except one of them has an organ. And an arpeggiator and step sequencer. So you can certainly step-sequence your drawbar organ, if you like.

There are also some retro-Casio CZ sounds, numbering in the thousands, loaded into these machines, so it seems Casio hasn’t forgotten why we loved them in the 80s.

And we hear the announcement via some charmingly-awkward headlines. They seem not so much lost in translation as something that makes me wonder what the original intent was:
A Groove Synthesizer with Many of the Cool Sounds and Features a DJ Uses in a Club

A Performance Synthesizer Specially Designed for Creating Sounds and Expressive Playing

That’ll otherwise be known as the XW-G1 and the XW-P1, respectively. I’m not sure which name is worse, so I’ll proceed.

I think all of this calls for celebration. Calvin Harris was echoing through my mind as I thought about CZ PCM waveforms:

Here’s what’s actually in these things.

A Groove Synthesizer with Many of the Cool Features a DJ Uses in a Club basically combines:

• A step sequencer with 100 pattern banks and 16 trigger buttons, and the ability to sequence multiple patterns together into bigger patterns
• A 100-phrase phrase sequencer
• Assignable keys (I think; here I get lost in translation)
• Solo synth (monophonic Virtual Analog) and PCM presets you can dial up
• Arpeggiator
• Sample looper with 19 seconds storage, overdubbing, and the ability to load samples as user PCM waveforms
• 61 full-size keys
• A “designated rubber holding space” – read, a mat that you can use to sit other gear on your keyboard

There’s 128KB of memory, but there’s also an SD slot, though it appears you can only use the SD to play SMF files.

You get a surprising amount of I/O: aside from USB, MIDI in and combined MIDI out/thru, you get a mic in, a line in, and a minijack line in. And the whole thing weighs just 5.4 kg (under 12 lbs).

The solo synth is truly monophonic. The routing appears to start with either a PCM or a Synth (hopefully Virtual Analog) pair of oscillators, or a hybrid (1 VA + 1 PCM), then route through filter and amp as expected.

There’s also a noise block, though, so you could presumably program some percussion sounds. And you can route an external input through the filter and amp envelope, via a pitch shifter, which is a bit more out of the ordinary.

There’s also a reverb, chorus, master EQ, and DSP block, though the DSP and chorus and Solo Synth all appear to use the same DSP.

80s jokes aside, in other words, this is not in any way an 80s synth.

A Performance Synthesizer Specially Designed for Creating Sounds and Expressive Playing is more or less the same synth, but with:

• “Hex Layer” for up to six-part combo “ensemble” sounds
• 50 drawbar organ presets
• 2,158 PCM waves, including presets from the CZ series (though I’m not sure if some of those CZ sounds aren’t also on the DJ model)

In fact, the Phrase Sequencer, Step Sequencer, and Arp are all in the “performance” synth, too, along with all the same I/O; it only lacks that loop recorder.

So, DJ version: 10 user wave slots and a looper.

Performance version: More presets overall, with the same synth presets, but “Hex Layers” for ensemble combos and some drawbar organ sets.

In other words, unless you really want to play a lot of organ or I learn it lacks those CZ PCM waveforms, you’d get the “DJ” version.

We know these are shipping in March and April, and that’s about it. I obviously need to pay the Casio booth a visit and find out if they’ll say anything about price, and get a look at these crazy-looking control layouts.

This NAMM, more than is even typical for NAMM, seems to fold back in time. I’m not sure if it’s 1978, 1988, or 1996. Or, at times, I think I may be at Macworld in the iPhone section.

I just wouldn’t write this keyboard off yet, as it might be some fun. It’s biggest challenge is going up against more-focused offerings from KORG that focus on pattern, looping, and other features. I’ll check it out.

Now, I’m just going to be very, very careful talking to US TSA airport security and Customs, because I don’t want to wind up in a “designated rubber holding space” on my way out of here Saturday.

Official PR announcement

Nod to Synthtopia, whom I’m fairly sure aren’t sleeping

I’m saddened to learn of the death of Richard Lainhart, the New York-based composer and artist who has been inseparable from the experimental electronic scene for many years. I knew Richard to be a gentle and imaginative soul, an inventive technologist, someone capable of dreaming up endless soundscapes and auditory worlds. He was also a great contributor to the CDM community, including playing one of the early installments of Handmade Music at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn. (Photo above; full video at bottom.)

I think it’s fitting to illustrate Richard with a terrific self-portrait on Polaroid, one that illustrates his sense of humor and artistic adventurousness:

Richard’s wife Caroline posted a note with the news, which most of us found via Facebook:

Richard Lainhart February 14, 1953 – December 30, 2011

Dear friends of Richard,
It is with a heavy heart that I that I must tell you Richard Lainhart, composer, musician, technologist, filmmaker, and digital artisan died Friday, December 30, 2011.

On December 17, Richard complained of pains in his side and was admitted to the hospital for tests which showed an intestinal cancer. He was operated on on December 21. After the surgery (which showed the cancer had not spread), there were infectious complications which took his life on December 30.

He struggled valiantly to overcome his infection, but it was not to be. We are all in shock and cannot grasp the idea of his not making music, talking music, teaching, posting and playing.

Caroline Meyers
Richard Lainhart’s wife

Richard leaves behind a massive body of work and digital footprints; I’ve selected some of those below, including music, a wonderful set of images working with digital manipulation and Polaroids via Flickr, and his series on creative sound design tutorials.

Playing Messiaen:

Audiovisual work:

Richard’s most recent album, via Bandcamp:

Most recent SoundCloud contributions, including the winds after Tropical Storm Irene (that sound certainly is part of my sonic memory of 2011)

Sounds of my World – Post-Irene Winds 8-28-11 by rlainhart

200e-Continuum Percussive Study 2 by rlainhart

Sounds of my world – Rainforest V, New York Electronic Art Festival, 7-30-11 by rlainhart

I adore his photographic work:

A bio:

Richard Lainhart is an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker – a digital artisan who works with sonic and visual data. Since childhood, he’s been interested in natural processes such as waves, flames and clouds, in harmonics and harmony, and in creative interactions with machines, using them as compositional methods to present sounds and images that are as beautiful as he can make them.

Lainhart studied composition and electronic music with Joel Chadabe at the State University of New York at Albany. He has composed music for film, television, CD-ROMs, interactive applications, and the Web. His compositions have been performed in the US, England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Recordings of his music have appeared on the Periodic Music, Vacant Lot, XI Records, Airglow Music, Tobira Records, and ExOvo labels. As an active performer, Lainhart has appeared in public approximately 2000 times. Besides performing his own work, he has worked and performed with John Cage, David Tudor, Steve Reich, Phill Niblock, David Berhman, and Jordan Rudess, among many others. He has composed over 100 electronic and acoustic works. In 2008, he was commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation to contribute a work to New York Soundscape.

Lainhart’s animations and short films have been shown at festivals in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Korea, and online at ResFest, The New Venue, The Bitscreen, and Streaming Cinema 2.0. His film “A Haiku Setting” won awards in several categories at the 2002 International Festival of Cinema and Technology in Toronto. In 2009, he was awarded a Film & Media grant by the New York State Council on the Arts for “No Other Time”, full-length intermedia performance designed for a large reverberant space, combining live analog electronics with four-channel playback, and high-definition computer-animated film projection.

quotes

“Lainhart crafts sounds in a tonal, musical fashion – sustained tones, drones, melodic fragments – and electronically manipulates them into beautiful tapestries of sound.” (Waterfront Week)

[His] “music reflects the spirit of possibility that once defined electronic music, bringing with it a sense of past, present and future that transcends time, technology and cultural assumptions. The spell- binding music seemed to evoke feelings that can’t quite be named, and suggest music I might rather imagine for myself in silence than trust most composers to compose.” (The Village Voice).

“He’s evolved a singular vision as a composer, performer and engineer of darkly seductive minimalism.” (Peter Marsh, BBC)

And here is Richard’s performance for us at Handmade Music on the Buchla 200e synth and Continuum Fingerboard, from 2007:

http://www.otownmedia.com
http://www.vimeo.com/rlainhart
http://www.youtube.com/rlainhart
http://richardlainhart.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/rlainhart
http://twitter.com/rlainhart
http://www.facebook.com/rlainhart
http://www.downloadplatform.com/richard_lainhart

Max 6 in Public Beta; For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet

Just because a music tool fills your screen with tools and options doesn’t necessarily make it easier to realize your ideas. From the beginning, the appeal of Max – as with other tools that let you roll your own musical tools from a set of pre-built building blocks – has been the blank canvas.

Max 6 would appear to aim to make the gap between your ideas and those tools still narrower, and to make the results more sonically-pleasing. The reveal: it could also change how you work with patches in performance and production. I was surprised when early teasers failed to impress some users, perhaps owing to scant information. Now, Max 6 is available in public beta, and the details are far clearer. Even if Max 5 was the biggest user interface overhaul in many years, Max 6 appears to be the biggest leap in actual functionality.

It’s what I’d describe as a kitchen-sink approach, adding to every aspect of the tool, so there’s almost certain to be some things here you won’t use. What could appeal to new users, though, are I think two major changes.

More visual patching feedback and discoverability. First, building upon what we saw in Max 5, Max’s approach is to provide as much visual information as possible about what you’re doing. It’s probably the polar opposite of what we saw earlier this week in something like the live-coding environment Overtone: Max’s UI is actively involved with you as you patch. There are visual tools for finding the objects you want, then visual feedback to tell you what those objects do, plus an always-visible reference bar and rewritten help. This more-active UI should make Max more accessible to people who like this sort of visual reference as they work. No approach will appeal to everyone – some people will find all that UI a bit more than they like – but Max’s developers appear to be exploiting as much as they can with interactive visual patching.

Multiple patches at once. New objects for filters and data, a 64-bit audio engine, and low-level programming are all well and good. But the change that may more profoundly impact users and workflow is be the way Max 6 handles multiple patches. Max – and by extension Pd – have in the past made each patch operate independently. Sound may stop when you open a patch, and there’s no easy or fully reliable way to use multiple patches at once. (Compare, for example, SuperCollider, which uses a server/client model that lacks this limitation.) That changes with Max 6: you can now operate multiple patches at the same time, mix them together with independent volume, mute, and solo controls, and open and close them without interrupting your audio flow. (At least one reader notes via Twitter that you can open more than one patch at once – I’d just say this makes it better, with more reliable sound and essential mixing capabilities.) Update: since I mentioned Pd, Seppo notes that the pd~ object provides similar functionality in regards to multiple patches and multi-core operation. This has been an ongoing discussion in the libpd group, so I think we’ll revisit that separately!

One upshot of this change: some users have turned to Ableton Live just to host multiple patches. For users whose live performance set involves Ableton, that’s a good thing. But it could be overkill if all you want to do is bring up a few nifty patches and play with them. Now, I think we’ll start to see more people onstage with only Max again. (Check back in a few months to see if I’m right.)

Here’s an overview of what’s new:

• Discoverability: A “wheel” makes the mysterious functions of different objects immediately visible; Object Explorer makes them easier to find, and new help and reference sidebar keep documentation close at hand.

• 64-bit audio engine

• Open multiple patches, solo and mute them, open and close them without stopping audio, mix audio between them with independent volume, and take advantage of multiple processors with multiple patches.

• Low level building blocks: You don’t get new synth objects, but you could build them yourself. New low-level data-crunching goodness work with MSP audio, Jitter Matrix, and OpenGL textures

• More JavaScript: An overhauled JavaScript engine makes JS scripting faster and more flexible, and there’s a proper text editor with syntax highlighting (though, of course, you may still prefer your own).

• New visuals: Vector graphics and “HTML5 Canvas-like” UI scripting (though to me it’s a shame this isn’t just the HTML5 Canvas). There are also massively-expanded Jitter powers, but those are best left to our sister site Create Digital Motion.

• Filters: New filter-visualizing tools for audio filter construction and manipulation.

• Dictionary data type and associated objects let you describe information in a more structured way (all kinds of potential here from control to composition)

• Projects now let you organize data, media, and scripts in the manner more associated with conventional development environments

• What about Ableton? No news on that front, but I expect more soon. Max for Live users will at the very least get the advantages above, since Max for Live is really Max inside Live.

Looking over all that Max does, I have to say, I’m really amazed. I wonder if computer musicians ever pause to consider how fortunate we are. Even if this isn’t the tool for you, its availability – compounded by the availability of a range of other tools – is itself worth reflection.

Max is a program that shouldn’t exist, doing a number of things it shouldn’t do, for a user base that shouldn’t exist, doing things they shouldn’t be doing.

It doesn’t make sense that you could maintain a commercial project for this kind of audience, that you’d wind up with something this mature and powerful that had a continuous lineage stretching back to the 1980s. It doesn’t make sense that musicians would embrace such a tool and produce invention. The only explanation is sheer love.

Then, even as Max reaches new heights, some of the alternatives you have for making your own music tools are simultaneously growing by leaps and bounds. They provide very different approaches to music making (compare Overtone and SuperCollider, or Pd and libpd, or AudioMulch, or new Web audio tools). There really aren’t many fields that have this kind of choice, free and commercial, in their medium. In science and engineering, there’s private and public funding, producing some amazing tools but nothing with this kind of meeting of power and accesibility. There’s just something about music.

The fact that Cycling ‘74 can maintain a business model – just as open source projects maintain volunteer contributions – is a testament to sheer passion and love for music, and a commitment to perpetually re-imagining how that music is made from an atomic level up. There was a wonderful piece on C creator and UNIX co-creator Dennis Ritchie, whom I remembered yesterday, that observed that what he did was to do what others said couldn’t be done. From Max itself to what people make with it, I think that fits nicely.

So, have a look at the public beta, and let us know what you think. The release of Max 6 has caused more people to ask what this means for Pd and other tools, or even whether to patch things from scratch at all, but I’ll leave that question to a bit later. (I do have my own opinion about which tool fits which circumstance and user, but that’s best left to a separate discussion.) For now, you can try Max yourself and see what the fuss is about. If it doesn’t fit your means of music-making, know that you have a wide array of other options – pre-built to low-level code to old-fashioned tape-and-mic approaches, and everything in between. Go out and listen and see what you discover.

http://cycling74.com/downloads/max-6-public-beta/

With soft synths a dime a dozen, how do you set yourself apart? Defying conventions is a pretty good start, and a team of developers who built the Mixxx open source DJ tool are doing just that.

SodaSynth from Oscillicious is a soft synth with a different approach. With no effects and, surprisingly, no filters, SodaSynth is all about the oscillators. But apart from its ready-to-layer sound, the developers are also making their software run in new places: aside from a VST, there’s a version for HP’s defunct TouchPad and, more interestingly, the first major soft synth we’ve seen yet for Google Chrome’s Native Client. We’ve got some details on the latter that will appeal to you hardcore Web browser / coder geeks out there.

First, the sound: with no filters and no effects, SodaSynth’s developers say they’ve made a synth that’s easy to layer. You get five waveforms, up to 32 oscillators per note, and full 8 note polyphony. (Per-note oscillators to me is where things get interesting.) The controls are pretty stunningly simple, but with five “classic” waveforms and some unique morphing settings.

Also, for those new to synthesis – and for some of those more unusual parameter names new to all of us – they’ve added extensive in-line online support, in a nice touch. (More in the gallery/sounds below.)

I’m in. Mac and Windows VST, and should run fine on Linux machines with Windows VST support. US$23.

SodaSynth VST

Here’s what it sounds like:

SodaSynth VST Demo 1 by Oscillicious

And there’s an HP Touchpad version, which you’ll find for $3 in the HP App Catalog. Notable in that it may soon join our Doomed Tablet Instruments Hall of Fame. (Our friend Francis Preve had an instrument out for the Newton. Really.) Seriously, if anyone has a TouchPad, send us video, ‘kay?

But more practically…

You can run SodaSynth right in Google’s Chrome Browser. We’ve seen plenty of synths and even full-blown workstations employing Adobe’s Flash. And there have been some projects built in JavaScript for Mozilla’s Audio Data API, previously called the Web Audio API (which I liked better as a moniker). Tons of examples via the Chromium site; Chrome and now an experimental Safari build have added support:

Web Audio API Samples

Soda Synth uses a third avenue, one which I’ve heard lots of people talk about but no one actually try. Google’s Native Client allows you to run native code right in the browser – not this JavaScript kids today love so much, but good, old fashioned, C/C++.

What does that mean for synths? Think low-latency live audio that out-performs other solutions, at least for now. SodaSynth isn’t just the first NC synth in the Chrome Web Store; according to the developers, it’s the first Native Client app, period. (Answer to the question “who cares whether you use native code ever again?” is, of course, “audio people.” I’m sure JavaScript advocates will be happy to chime in here, but even if JavaScript matches C/C++ performance, the ability to run C DSP code natively will continue to have advantages down the road.)

It’s free, so add it to Chrome now, and you get a synth you can jam with – there’s even a 4-bar live looper so you could produce actual sound snippets with the thing. I’m curious to hear your experience.

SodaSynth, free for Chrome Web Store

Developing in Native – Why it Matters, What it’s Like

I’m all about getting the nitty-gritty details – yes, including not only why this is exciting, but what the development process is like, warts and all.

Developer Albert writes:

Why is this news? It’s native compiled C++ code running our synthesizer in a browser at full speed, for the first time. While there’s some other pro-audio web apps like AudioTool, nothing can really get the latency low and run efficiently without native code. We think this might be a peek into a future where we there’s real pro-audio web apps.

I asked Albert specifically what challenges, if any, they’d encountered. Albert tells CDM that NaCl (get it?) still has some rough edges and needs further testing, and significantly isn’t enabled by default for some users. He did qualify that by noting NaCl’s developers have been generally helpful.

The Pepper Audio API that NaCl implements is pretty similar to SDL and performance seems to be good. The three big advantages of using NaCl over Adobe Flash for this sort of thing are raw performance, being able to directly set the audio latency, and that most audio apps are already written in C/C++, so they’re easier to port. Being able to just upload your binary to “deploy” it instead of building Windows/Mac/Linux versions is a huge time saver too.

Currently, I’m only hosting binaries for x86 and x86_64 because the Native Client doesn’t actually work on ChromeOS yet. One of the main
NaCl developers mentions this [2], though perhaps that’s been miscommunicated by Chrome’s marketing team, because I too thought it
was supposed to work.

The next milestone for the Native Client team is to implement “Portable Native Client”, or PNaCl [1], which will mean that NaCl apps will get distributed as “LLVM bitcode” instead of compiled architecture-dependent binaries. In other words, you will compile your application once, and it should run on x86, x86_64, and ARM. I think Google is waiting for this before pushing NaCl into ChromeOS.

“Early days” seems to be the key phrase here, but I’m eager to see Google put some resources behind this and turn this into a solid solution, especially on their nascent Chrome OS. (Too bad, as I was looking forward to seeing someone fire this up on a ChromeBook.)

For further reading, via Albert:

[1] The gory details about the proposed PNaCl plan
[2] Chrome/NaCl engineer at Google saying it doesn’t work in ChromeOS

More Images + Sounds

A song without and with effects, using Renoise:

SodaSynth VST Demo 2 (Dry – No Effects) by Oscillicious

SodaSynth VST Demo 2 (Wet – With Effects) by Oscillicious

The VST version:

Image of the ill-fated HP tablet version:

http://www.oscillicious.com/

Roland’s GR-55 guitar synth is one powerful accessory for guitarists – maybe a little too powerful. With its various modeling, effects, and synthesis powers hidden in layers of menus, navigating all those sonic capabilities can be a chore. Enter one user from the GR-55′s dedicated community of guitar synthesists. Marc Benigni used TouchOSC control software for the iPad and set up a template that makes all of that functionality touchable, direct, and accessible.

But wait — there’s more! There’s also a dedicated, free and open source editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. (There’s even a fresh Lion build for Mac users.) So, score one for the Roland user community stepping in and doing more than the actual manufacturer (and I haven’t yet seen any maker do a Linux version, or, for that matter, release their editor as open source). Thanks to Marty Cutler for the tip!

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “it’s open source software. Probably looks totally ugly and primitive.”

Nope. Looks damned slick, actually:

And all this means you’ve got a powerful editor without the need for an iPad.
http://grfloorboard.sourceforge.net/
Project information

If you’ve got an iPad…

Marc writes and describes that project:

I recently developed a TouchOSC layout that serves as a patch editor for Roland’s GR-55. The GR-55 is an impressive guitar synth and guitar preamp, but it’s UI leaves *much* to be desired, and Roland has stated that they will not be releasing a PC-based editor for it. With this layout, an OSC interface, and of course a copy of TouchOSC, the user can easily and intuitively edit patches, or modify GR-55 settings in real-time during performance.

Details concerning development can be found in this thread on the VGuitar forums, with photos of the interface on more recent pages:
http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3205.msg30263#msg30263

The mind still boggles at all those controls, but now it looks far more usable. You can bet that iPad apps may soon be a trend for manufacturers, too, though sometimes – freed from any commercial aspirations – what the users come up with works pretty well on its own. I’m eager to try some layouts out for both iOS and Android touch devices; just because it’s fun as a developer, I’m toying a bit with the latter.

Of course, this tool is a great head start on iOS:
http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

Perhaps channeling ancient cults of Pythagoras, the producer duo Kompal, based in Austria, have not only made an insane noise machine powered by light, but also ask you to hunt for triangles. Yes, the shape. Instead of a remix contest or photo contest or “like our Facebook page” business, they want you to take pictures of polygons.

First, about that sound-and-light-and-noise thing that will scare your friends. It is “a unique soundmachine controlled by light, containing controllable flashlights
as well as an optical filter, loudspeakers, an audio output and a hall effect drive. And last but not least the red “turbo button”.”

It isn’t entirely unique, in that it recalls designs like Bleep Labs’ Thinamagoop and the classic STEIM cracklebox, among others, but it is a lot bigger and more frightening. (I know at least one person trying to carry something like this through 9/11 security in NYC yesterday, and am curious how that went.)

The good news: you can win this:

Win the Kompalisator!
The Kompal producers Bernhard Belej and Jodok Dietrich have started a
galactic photo contest themed “Kompalisiere your world”. Those who
would like to join the contest should keep their eyes wide open and be
after any kind of triangle. Take a picture, upload it on Kompal fb or
www.kompal.eu and hope for plenty of user ratings. The pictures could
also be sent via mail to meinewelt@kompal.eu. A jury will choose the
winner of the fantastic “Kompalisator” out of the ten pictures
that got the most likes on September 30.

For more information about Kompal, their music and live shows visit
www.kompal.eu
YOUTUBE: http://youtu.be/AknizoL7zZY
Photos: http://gallery.me.com/bernhard.be#100144
“KOMPALISATOR”: http://kompal.eu/kompalisator.php
http://kompal.eu/kompalisator-postcards.pdf

Their music is actually rather lovely, not the mayhem of this particular box – think dreamy and slick, if thoroughly technological, sparkling and then adding in amiable beats and bass.

And full of triangles. A nicely-built, silly video, and some tracks:

Latest tracks by Kompal

I took a look at Omnisphere 1.5, the synth so big it’ll make your head hurt, for Keyboard in a story out now (and readable now). As I begin the story:

Seeing its six DVDs of sound content, you might be tempted to duct-tape a key down and let Omnisphere finish your film scoring gig. While the director would probably love the results, you’d be missing out on the real fun.

In other words, what I discovered in that review was that Omnisphere, particularly with additions in the new 1.5 update, is a powerful creative sound design tool, not just a preset machine. The highlights:

• Granular section, pictured, made nicer with the ability to combine with glide and intelligent parameter control design
• Harmonia, which allows you to control each harmonic component of a sound independently using individual oscillator and synth controls
Waveshaper, which can not only add bit-crush-style effects, but work its magic on each element, polyphonically
• Individual independent arpeggiator, plus MIDI file drag-and-drop
• An Orb for exploring sonic capabilities – we’ve seen these sort of X/Y controllers before, but here you can even dynamically assign parameters in realtime, and add features like inertia and gesture recording
• iPad control via a really wonderful controller app

Being able to navigate multiple sonic parameters in real-time with touch, and combining sound-bending, far-reaching sonic tools like Harmonia and the granular features means you can really take sounds far from their original source – and sync them to tempo, if you like, with those MIDI and arp features. I need to pick up the whole tool again after the review and see what new sounds I can make; if there are any other users who wish to share, I’d love to hear what you’re making, as the possibility is really deep.

And yes, they now have done a dubstep bass tutorial, so everybody playing at home should take a shot.

Read the full, detailed review at Keyboard Magazine:

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 1.5 [Review by me for Keyboard]

How does it all work? Here are some relevant videos:

Didier Dambrin, FL Studio’s original creator, has a new synth entitled Harmor that looks like one to watch. There’s a beautiful crop of new synthesizers this season that could have you yearning for a winter spent with long nights somewhere deep in the Northern Hemisphere, producing new music – see also, to name just one, Cakewalk’s Z3TA+ 2. (Both Harmor and Z3TA+ 2 are Windows-only, so time to boot up the PC or, Mac users, update that Boot Camp partition.) VSTi and native FL Studio support; US$149 but on sale this month for $99.

For some reason, releasing any synth right now involves demonstrating that the kids can make their wobble bass and dubstep with it, but I trust synthesists out there to do other things, too.

Introducing Harmor

Okay, I kind of buried the lead, but I wanted to give the synth its due.

Don’t want to boot into Boot Camp to run FL Studio?

This beta might interest you:
FL Studio for Mac Beta-Testers Wanted [Image Line forum]

Yes, you see that right: it’s FL Studio, aka Fruity Loops, running on the Mac platform. Synthtopia wonders if Hell froze over, but not so fast. Image-Line said they’d never build a Mac version of FL Studio. And they haven’t. The magic here is possible through Codeweavers Crossover, a commercial proprietary technology built on the open source tool WINE. Codeweavers already offers a standalone product that lets you run a variety of Windows (and Linux) software on the Mac, based on the same tech that lets you run Windows software on Linux. Here, Image-Line reports that there’s some additional customization and testing and tweaking that lets this run without further intervention on your part. (WINE can work beautifully, but there are various compatibility wrinkles with specific software – Image-Line and Crossovers have evidently worked specifically on making FL Studio function properly.)

WINE, the underlying technology, is an emulator but not in the sense of a virtual machine, which is how most Windows compatibility tools are implemented. It’s actually a re-implementation of Windows APIs. See WINE myths for more. That means that, once fully tested, FL Studio can run as well on the Mac as on Windows. What you won’t get is Mac-native APIs, meaning the resulting software won’t behave terribly like a typical Mac program. But FL Studio, like much music software, tends to behave in its own way, anyway, so I don’t actually believe that’s a huge deal. Updated: I realize I should say that compatibility issues or unpredictable behavior can be a big deal; I’ll be interested to see if the Mac experience can replicate the Windows experience or you’ll want to still reboot.

If you want to give this a try – and help ensure the quality of the release – beta testers are wanted. See the forum link above.

You might imagine sound in space, or dream up gestures that traverse unexplored sonic territory. But actually building it is another matter. Kinect – following a long line of computer vision applications and spatial sensors – lets movement and gestures produce sound. The challenge of such instruments has long been that learning to play them is tough without tactile feedback. Thereminists learn their instrument through a the extremely-precise sensing of their instrument and sonic feedback.

In AHNE (Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment), sonic feedback is essential, but so, too, is feel. Haptic vibration lets you know as you approach sounds — essential, as they’re invisible. The work of Finland-based DJ/VJ Matti Niinimäki, aka MÅNSTERI (“Mons-te-ri”), the project is part of research undertaken at SOPI Research Group at Media Lab Helsinki. Like some sort of sound sorcerer, the user is entirely dependent on movement, feel, and sound as they move unseen sound sources through space. (More technical details below.)

It’s labeled, as always, “proof of concept.” The creator promises more videos to come; we’ll be watching as this evolves, as it looks terribly promising.

Below, “Tension” is a fair bit simpler, in which users walk through a space and control synth parameters. (“You are the knob,” one might say, though I don’t suggest shouting that at someone you don’t know. They could take it the wrong way.)

More descriptions:

AHNE

This is a demonstration video of AHNE – Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment.

It is an audio-haptic user interface that allows the user to locate and manipulate sound objects in 3d space with the help of audio-haptic feedback.

The user is tracked with a Kinect sensor using the OpenNI framework and OSCeleton (github.com/​Sensebloom/​OSCeleton).

The user wears a glove that is embedded with sensors and a small vibration motor for the haptic feedback.

This is just the first proof-of-concept demo. More videos coming soon.

HEI Project 2011
SOPI Research Group
sopi.media.taik.fi/

Aalto University School of Art and Design

AHNE – Sound and Physical Interaction

Tension

A brief video showing Tension. An interactive spatial sound installation for multiple users.

A person enters the space and a generative sound is assigned to that person. The sound pans around in the 6-channel speaker system following the user in the space.

Up to 5 users can use the installation at the same time. Each person modifies the other sounds based on the distance to the other users. The closer you are to other people the more the tension in the sound increases.

Tension – Sound and Physical Interaction

Side note: watching these two videos makes me want to consult with someone on non-verbal expression, posture, and stage presence. That criticism is mounted at myself – I could use it. Perhaps we need an all-physical, unplugged music event for laptopists, controllerists, and electronic musicians. And I can at least say I’ve had some experience in this, working in the dance program at my undergraduate alma mater, Sarah Lawrence. Anyone game? (Sounds like something we could do while CDM is in Berlin in the fall.)

For their part, the Finnish research facility is working with dancers, along with Nokia Research Center. (Sadly, I can’t find documentation.) But I think interesting things happen when us non-dancers learn movement technique, too.

As they did with the monotron synthesizer, Korg has quietly released schematics for its the analog drum synthesis portion of its monotribe synth and step-sequencing rhythm machine. You just see the bits that make the drum sounds, but that’s the interesting and modifiable part.

In order to grab the download, you’ll need to fill out a form with your name and address, saying you acknowledge you’re voiding the warranty and that you won’t turn around and sue Korg. That address doesn’t get used for anything, though, so long as you uncheck the “newsletter” box. Once you do, you get a high-res PDF (low-res image above) with the schematics, marked public. (Liability I know is an important issue. You never know; you might swallow the drum circuits and then sue Korg for feeling ill afterwards. Or something. Ask a lawyer.)

As for the design itself, it’s a notably simple design by Hiroaki Nishijima, an elegantly-minimal set of analog circuits for producing sound. As such, it should be ripe for modification. In fact, the first thing I’d be inclined to do is, rather than void a monotribe’s warranty, simply breadboard this circuit, which would make for exceedingly easy variations on the same basic layout. You might even wind up with something else. (One nice touch in the design: look at how the noise source is cleverly – and necessarily – linked to hat and snare sounds.)

Mods have also worked with MIDI – a port is hidden on the board – but apparently with sometimes-disappointing timing results. More promising is the thought of new drum sounds, and even some breadboarded drum circuits outside the monotribe itself.

And that’s what I think is admirable about Korg’s approach: in the earlier days of sound and music electronics, publishing these kinds of schematics was the norm. As opposed to today’s litigious age, it was more or less assumed that straightforward ideas would be copied and modified. Korg hasn’t said they’re encouraging that kind of behavior, but by releasing the schematics, they at least acknowledge that they’re unafraid of that potential scenario. The point is, you wouldn’t come up with a cloned monotribe – you’d simply learn something about analog drum synthesis, then move on to something that’d be quite different. Korg remains the company with the wherewithal to produce the thing en masse, anyway. It’s not open source hardware, mind, so there’s a gray area as far as your ability to use the circuit, but that shouldn’t stop you from wiring this up and learning from it.

Ultimately, my guess is we’ll hear some new drum sounds out of this, and that’s exciting.

Find the schematics at:
http://www.korg.com/monotribeschematics

More on modifying monotribe:

An extensive, extensive post on MIDI modifications – how to do it, physically and electronically, as well as some of the limitations (which in turn partly explain why this didn’t ship with MIDI):
Monotribe, MIDI and me [Game Boy musician nitro2k01's blog]

Video from above:

And one post on drum mods (I expect there are others, if you wish to share in comments):
MONOTRIBE drum mod and peek inside

In the interest of fairness, Chris Randall posted what I thought was a thought-provoking review of the monotribe. Keeping in mind Chris was apparently a great fan of the simpler, cheaper, smaller monotron synth – and produced an album with it / see link at bottom – his review of the monotribe and its bare-bones analog drums was pretty brutal.

See his original thoughts:
Monotribe Mini-Review…

…followed by some criticism of the monotribe in, oddly enough, an iOS-themed story:
iGear…

Chris isn’t one to mince words or be especially diplomatic, but it’s worth reading what he has to say. He also predicts I’ll like … something just like this story. But it’s worth considering all sides of this little box. And despite what Chris says about my own perspective, I still believe for real modification, open source hardware is best – not that all hardware need be open source, but rather that for hardware you want people to modify, the open source license is a useful tool. I also think that it’s okay to just use gear and not always modify it; playing instruments is great, too, speaking even personally. That said, I still think Korg releasing schematics is a big deal, and I’m enjoying getting inside this particular design. And for the record, Chris still put some monotribe sounds into his music.

See also:
Electronic Sounds and Satisfying Limits: Chris Randall Talks About Making Capacitor, Resistor EPs