Bloop HTML5 Instrument inspired by Brian Eno’s Bloom from Bocoup on Vimeo.

HTML5 and Javascript Synthesizer from Corban Brook on Vimeo.

Pioneers like Max Mathews’ Bell Labs team taught the computer to hum, sing, and speak, before even the development of primitive graphical user interfaces. So it’s fitting that the standards that chart the Web’s future would again turn to the basics of electronic sound synthesis.

A group of intrepid hackers and Mozilla developers and community leaders are working to make an audio API a standard part of this generation of Web browsers. (Note: not some unspecified future browsers – they’re making it work right now.)

We’ve already seen some pretty amazing experiments with Flash and Java. This would go further, opening buffer-level access to new, faster, just-in-time compiled JavaScript engines. The upshot: you get to code your own synthesizers and real-time audio processing in a way that works right in any browser, on any platform. Standardize the API by which this works, and adding an FM synth to a page could be as easy as assembling a table or inserting a picture.

There’s no plug-in, and thanks to faster JavaScript engines, JavaScript can be the language. To the end user, you just get a Web page that automatically loads the audio goodness.

I’m in touch with the developers, and hope to have a full-blown Q&A session with them. On the agenda: what this is, what it means, how it works, how people can get involved, and how to get started with these early builds. I’m going to start out with some of my own thoughts, though, because I’ve found myself thinking about this a lot. I’ve been a slow convert to the gospel of the browser and JavaScript, but I’m beginning to “get” it, I think. (If I’m off-base or missing something, we’ll get to cover that, too.)

HTML5 3D FFT Visualization with CubicVR from Bocoup on Vimeo.

To understand why this is incredibly cool, though, I think it’s first necessary to understand how incredibly stupid, primitive, and backwards a Web browser is. (I just lost a bunch of Web developers. No offense – there’s a reason it’s that way – but follow with me.)

I’m serious. The Web concept was rooted in an age in which bandwidth and computing restrictions constrained online communication to text. But even as the Web was first catching on, computers themselves had rich multimedia capabilities far exceeding what the browser could do. Today, a lot of Web nuts talk about how the browser could replace desktop applications, or become an “operating system.” But the browser is another application running on your hardware, running on your operating system. The question you might well ask is, why is the browser so limited? Why can’t it do the things the rest of your computer can? The idea that having a tag that specified playing audio or video took until now is kind of silly if you think of it that way, right? (You might ask the inverse question of the “desktop” apps: you do know you’re connected to the Internet, right?)

The idea of the audio API would be to change that, and not only play back sound files, but open up real-time synthesis and processing in standard, accessible-everywhere ways. You can, as you see in the (working, real, not-mock-up) examples, do all kinds of powerful magic. You can visualize music as you play sound files, or perform on instruments right from the browser window.

It’s one thing to talk about some distant future. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait. The code is working right now. You can finish reading this post and then grab a nightly build of Firefox, write a few lines of JavaScript code, and build a synth in the browser.

“Because it’s there” is usually a good enough reason to start hacking. But to musicians, I think there are actual creative benefits, too.

Endless compatibility. The work the Mozilla crowd are doing is already free to download on Mac, Windows, and Linux, stripping platform barriers across desktops, laptops, and netbooks. We’ve heard a lot from certain Mac advocates in particular about how you can only have “first-class” applications if they’re built for a specific OS. That’s fine – depending on the application. But as an artist, at some point I also want some shared tools. If I want to collaborate with someone, they’re what’s first class to me. There’s nothing worse than saying “oh, uh, I guess you have a Mac and I have a PC, so we have to…” It’s creativity-killing. Having browser-based tools on par with the tools outside the browser means we can keep our idiosyncratic tools of choice, but also have a shared set of tools we can access without so much as running an installer, let alone worrying about an OS, processor, or version.

Connectivity and sharing. Being in the browser means instant access to a musical application from anywhere, and instant data for that application. Right now, part of the reason computer musicians have a stigma of staring at computer screens is because the user interfaces we design live on individual machines and are designed to be used only by one person at a time. The connectivity in the browser means it’s easier to build sharing and collaboration directly into a software idea.

Browsers could make your “desktop” apps cooler. One of the myths of browser-based applications I think is the idea that they’ll somehow replace other applications. On the contrary: they could make your existing applications smarter. Unrelated to this particular effort, our friend Andrew Turley built a proof-of-concept application that connects a Web browser as a controller to other apps over OSC. With a little refinement, a free local Web server combined with a browser-based controller app could connect all your traditional music apps to computers in the same room or across the world.

In-browser Synthesizer and Sequencer with Envelope and Filter control from Corban Brook on Vimeo.

The power to make noise – any noise – and a tinkerer’s sunrise. Noise often appeals to hackers (even non-technologist hackers) more than anything else, and that should give you hope. One interpretation of current technology trends runs with the idea that tinkering is in danger, or even on the decline. I think we should be wary of some of those trends; some are simply anti-intellectualism in disguise. I also think tinkering with sound has a bright future. So long as there is raw buffer access somewhere, it’s possible to build something that makes sounds on a level as high as “give me a middle C” or as low level as “I want to invent a new form of synthesis.”

This isn’t just for propellerhead types. With readable code, even those new to programming and sound have an opportunity to start toying with their own experiments. And unlike almost any other medium, sound is both immediate and always satisfying. That is, even if you make some sort of ugly splat, you may still have a good time. That quality makes it perfect for learning and experimentation, whether you’re young or old.

From Babel to common code languages. I’ll also go out on a limb and say there’s potential to get more tools speaking the same language. On the visual side, right now, you can directly copy code from Processing.js (where anyone can easily see it) to a Java-based desktop Processing (where you get higher performance, full-screen and multi-monitor display, hardware access, and the like), often without changing a line of code. The same could happen here. People are already porting Csound examples to this freshly-minted audio API.

Nihilogic’s HTML5 Audio-Data Visualizations from Bocoup on Vimeo.

Open standards, open 3D. By making a standard, too, we have a lingua franca both technologically and in how tools can run. If it were only audio, that’d already be useful. But this extends to other efforts, like the work on WebGL. And WebGL is a good indicator, too: by supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 in the browser, both the “native” or “desktop” app and the “browser” app can share code and capabilities. The same could begin to be true for audio.

Anyway, enough of my third-party sense of what this could mean. Here’s where to go learn more:

David Humphrey is a man you can thank for making this happen. Check out his blog, and read in particular:
Experiments with audio, part IX

May 12 in Boston, there’s a “future of Web audio” event introducing these ideas, if you’re in the area. I’ll see if we can’t get events elsewhere. (This would be ideal for another CDM online global hackday – more so than our previous topic.)

The big post to read:

Alistair MacDonald covers the thinking, the potential applications, the history, and what’s happening now:
Web Audio – All Aboard!

And see:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API

Alistair sums up why this important:

A web browser that allows for such fine granular control over video graphics using tools like Canvas and WebGL, yet provides no equivelent control over audio data, is a web browser that is very lopsided. In human terms, web browsers have always been very lopsided. They reflect a specialized facet of ‘the human requirement’. This is unfortunate as the web can potentially encompass a far more balanced and expressive set of features, encapsulating our humanity. Fortunately the modern movement towards a more human browser, appears to have gained significant velocity… in the right direction.

Or, if the Muppet Animal were writing this, I think that would go more like:

NOISE…. MAKE NOISE. LOUD NOISE. MAKE LOUD NOISE.

More HTML5 Goodness

On CDMotion, spectacular 3D graphics, even for the lazy, plus Processing.js resources.

And perhaps more generally useful – especially for working with the 1,000,000 iPads Apple has just sold – Chris Randall has a brilliant and detailed post on hacking the SoundCloud player so it works even when Flash isn’t installed.
Something Wicked This Way Comes…
Or, I should say, by “brilliant,” it points out just how screwed up that particular situation is. So, SoundCloud developers, go read that and report back, okay? (I’ll be in Berlin in three weeks. We can all get some coffees and put together a generic solution that works everywhere. How about that?)

Surprise! Plug-in developer Ohm Force, known for their plug-ins (like effects Ohm Boys and Frohmage), today tease an upcoming collaborative host. It looks like the sort of thing Apple could have done, but hasn’t. There’s a GarageBand-style MIDI and audio editing pane, plus semi-modular routing of plug-ins on a pretty, graphical surface that resembles the “cheese grater” perforated aluminum of a Mac tower, and pop-up window palettes that resemble those we’ve seen on the “flattened UI” of the iPad.

The real feature here, though, is collaborative editing in the “cloud”: sessions are uploaded to a server, which in turn keeps track of versioning. (Actually, it’s quite unclear how that works collaboratively – this means you can “undo” from one version to another, but I can’t tell whether collaborators can try different “forks,” or if it’s all one set of linear changes.) The changes are “real-time,” though usually the trick to allowing international collaboration over the Internet is to make things delayed enough that everyone stays in sync.

There’s also an accompanying Web community for connecting with collaborators. Everything else about the product, however – more features, pricing, and specifics of how it all fits together – is as yet unknown. Mac and Windows are both supported, though – something Apple would not have done, most likely.

It’s an interesting idea, one I think we’ll see more frequently as connected applications grow in popularity. Among other options, Ableton had promised something like this with Share and then fell off the radar. Image-Line had a collaborative tool called Collab for its FL Studio, then abandoned it. The most significant competition comes from tools like Indaba. Indaba’s edge: by being powered by Web tech, you can do all your editing right in the browser; serious users can then keep using their host of choice and just bounce out audio. But while Indaba has an offline editor, too, the addition of plug-ins in Ohm Studio is a big change.

I do wonder with all of this, though: are we consigned to collaboration existing only in proprietary, integrated app-website combinations? Isn’t the whole lesson of the Web about open standards and platform-agnostic communication? Having said that, what would a more open tool look like – and what do people really want to do? (For instance, I wonder how hard it’d be to build a system that allowed open chat and transport control, with standards-based versioning and sharing, using the open-source DAW Ardour? See the post I’m … about to write … for the OSC end of this.) On the other hand, is the kind of integration Ohm Studio is offering necessary to make it all work together? (That last question we should be able to answer once this is in our hands and ready to try.)

I don’t wish to pre-judge Ohm Studio – on the contrary, I think this is a provocative product teaser that immediately raises some of these fundamental questions. So bravo, Ohm, for starting that conversation; I can’t wait to see what you’ve cooked up. And anything that gets artists collaborating is potentially a very good thing.

In the meantime, readers, it seems the most important question falls to you. Do you even want to collaborate with other artists? What would an ideal system look like for doing so? What features would you want? How would you want to work? Is real-time important, or do you prefer some time to sit back and think about how elements combine? When you collaborate now, how do you go about it?

Updated: Your closest bet at the moment is NINJAM, which is integrated with Reaper – a host various folks are using already – or on its own. Using compressed audio streams and latency compensation, it allows the exchange of any audio, and it works on Windows and Mac. But it doesn’t exchange MIDI data. (The site refers vaguely to this happening some time in the future, but I’m unsure of their progress.) And it doesn’t have integration with the Web community, though as readers note, you may want to work with people you get to know a bit first, anyway. Thanks to “PooPoo the Korruptah!” for the tip. (Hmm, no way for me to say that and not sound silly.)

More importantly – anyone out there using it? Or is it just easier to send files back and forth?

http://ninjam.com/

What if you could record directly online from a Web browser – no additional software needed? It’s not a new idea, but online music community Indaba has an interesting new Java-based tool that gets one step closer. We took a first look at the tool last month, but it’s now publicly available at indabamusic.com today. Indaba shared with CDM some video walking us through the feature set, and the company founders also answered some of my questions. For the musicians in the audience, we’ll have some more hands-on time with this tool to see if it’s something you can use. (My guess is, it’s something you might use alongside your existing tool of choice.) For the developers and Java fans (or skeptics), I also want to dig a little deeper in the Java and JavaFX platforms behind the scenes.

What can you do when making music in a browser?

• Work online or offline.
• Record directly online and share immediately.
• Work across platforms, directly in the browser.
• Add real-time effects, mixing, and even multitrack automation for adjusting levels.

Indaba isn’t alone in some of these features, but the ability to have high-performance, non-destructive audio effects and to record directly into the program without the typical browser restraints is definitely a step forward from other solutions.

Pricing will include a relatively full-featured free plan, plus $5/mo and $25/mo tiers adding additional clips, online storage workspace, and real-time non-destructive effects. (Video sharing service Vimeo recently adjusted their free/Pro distinction, a subject Jaymis covered for Create Digital Motion yesterday.)

Here’s our own Q&A to get things rolling:

CDM: Obviously, we have readers who are very comfortable with some existing, non-browser-based tools. But I can see them having a place for a browser tool as a supplement. How might some of those kinds of people use Indaba, as you envision it?

Indaba: The Indaba console is fully integrated with our global community of musicians, so it’s much easier to share work and collaborate on mixes. Even if your readers currently use non-browser-based tools, the Indaba console enables them to work together seamlessly from any computer without having to transfer files from machine to machine. What’s more, because the Indaba console is web-based, it can capture inspiration that strikes when artists are on the road or otherwise away from their studios. For musicians who don’t currently use complex DAWs, the Indaba console can be even more – a turnkey solution for recording, editing, and mixing.

Why JavaFX? What specifically was possible with JavaFX versus, say, Flash – given that at least some basic DSP functions we have seen in Flash?

The real decision was to build a Java application. A signed Java app gives us the freedom we need to tap into client-side hardware (sound-card, hard drive etc) and the power we need to handle multiple non-destructive effects. Other client-side technologies simply can’t offer this level of access. JavaFX gave us the ability to develop a sexy interface that wouldn’t look/feel like the stereotypical java apps of yesteryear. Going forward, this will enable us to do some pretty amazing things.

Ed. – note, that generally answer leads to some follow-up, specific development questions I have regarding implementation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, so we can talk more about those details – feel free to pass along your own thoughts and I’ll see what I can learn.

CDM: It’s nice to see the Creative Commons license on the sample materials. Will there be ways for artists using Creative Commons to release their own clips / share their own loops?

Not in this release but shortly thereafter. For now there are hundreds of clips available to our members.

Will there be an API for other sites to hook into what Indaba users are doing / what they’re doing on the Java-FX-based editing platform?

It’s definitely something we’re planning on releasing at some point. At the moment, we have private APIs for corporate partners.

What are some likely workflows with the new tool? How does that differ from previous versions?

It cuts a tremendous amount of overhead out of the process and is a simple and quick way to capture your ideas in high quality. Previously you had to download tracks, record locally, bounce them out of your DAW and upload them to the site… Now you can pop open the Console, record in high quality and mix your song all within Indaba.

Stay tuned for more details. And, of course, Indaba does have some competition on the Web; it’ll be interesting to see how it all stacks up.

Indaba Music, a community and suite of online tools for musicians, announced today they’ve revamped their online recording and production tool using Java and JavaFX. The result: a platform-agnostic, online interface that allows you to record music “directly to the Internet.” And the band Weezer is excited enough about it that they’re giving their official endorsement.

Indaba, along with some others, already had an online music production tool. The new version expands on that idea, allowing you to record audio signal directly online, and beefing up tools for mixing, editing, and looping. Just like tools like GarageBand, a pre-built set of loops is ready for people to quickly mock up songs.

With some help from Sun’s JavaFX technology, the browser/desktop barrier isn’t as noticeable. You get a graphical-looking interface that works the same anywhere, plus the ability to drag audio files to and from your desktop.

indabamusic.com

javafx.com

Interestingly, Weezer’s endorsement focuses on the fact that they don’t know how to use other music software. I have to admit some skepticism here – a lot of musicians I think are savvy enough to get to use creative new music software, and a lot of the basic functions of the Indaba software itself are straight out of tools like ACID and GarageBand. Nor do you have to worry about any JavaFX tool blowing away your REAPER, Logic, Live, Pro Tools… well, you know.

On the other hand, while this is basically just an ACID-style audio production station in the browser, I’m curious about what new applications might take advantage of in-browser collaboration that don’t look like existing audio tools. Maybe we’ll have specialized tools for working out specific ideas or sharing snippets in-progress. And there’s no question that building some tools in the browser makes sharing more immediate.

I’ll be talking to the Indaba folks and the JavaFX team a little bit about the technology, and with Sun in particular I’ll be sure to ask about some of the future potential here for other tools. If you have questions, let me know.

That sounds like the usual collection of meaningless YouTube buzzwords, but yet again, in the spirit of the YouTube-fueled musical genius of Kutiman and, more recently, Tan Dun and Internet orchestras, the combination of user-contributed videos turns out to be magical. Perhaps “You” are a star, after all.

In Bb also gives You, the viewer, some powers over the remix. As the name implies, everything will blend, so you can start the videos as you wish, and control volume with the volume sliders. It’s part of the ongoing evidence that sometimes simple ideas can be deeply musical and effective.

Now, you weren’t expecting to get any more work done on this Friday afternoon / evening / Saturday morning (depending on where you live), were you?

Creator and producer Darren Solomon (Science for Girls) – like Kutiman before him – is someone with some real musical and producing chops, too, so well worth checking out his other project. (Electronic Musician recently did a write-up). Here’s what he has to say:

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

Participate! Create a video and send me the link! Here are some guidelines:

• -Sing or play an instrument, in Bb major. Simple, floating textures work best, with no tempo or groove. Leave lots of silence between phrases.
• -Record in a quiet environment, with as little background noise as possible.
• -Wait about 5-10 seconds to start playing.
• -Total length should be between 1-2 minutes.
• -Thick chords or low instruments don’t work very well.
• -Record at a low volume to match the other videos.
• -You can listen to this mix on headphones while you record.
• -After you upload to YouTube, play your video along with the other videos on this page to make sure the volume matches.

Update: Wow! This got bigger than I imagined! I greatly appreciate every submission, and I will watch everything, though I may not be able to reply to each. Also, I am being selective, in order to maintain the feel of the project. Many, many thanks to all who have submitted!

Thanks to for the tip, Mike Cohen!

http://www.inbflat.net/

For everyone who thought Twitter was just about “i m eating a ham sandwich lolz,” the desire to use connectivity to actually be connected continues to win out in unexpected ways. So far this month, we already saw the use of Max/MSP. Now, Twitter is showing up in the geeky, open source sound tool SuperCollider and in DJ sets in Traktor by Richie Hawtin.

Tweet a Sound, to the Max

First, some updates on Tweet a Sound, the sound design tool in Max that lets you share synth presets.

Creator Andrew Spitz has an updated story on adding a cleaned-up subpatch to Max/MSP. It uses the Ruby programming language to access the Twitter API. (You should be able to port to Pd, too – I have to look closer at this.) Correction: Ruby is implemented as JRuby, so it runs on the Java virtual machine – and there is a Java implementation for both Max (mxj) and Pd (pdj)

This means, if you’ve got a Mac or Windows copy of Max/MSP, you can now send Tweets from your patches. And that should open up still more possibilities when Max for Live becomes available, for Ableton fans.

How To Send A Tweet From Max/MSP { sound + tutorial }

Even if you’re skeptical about Twitter per se, if you’re interested in using Ruby and Max, this should be a good starting place for other APIs, too.

Friends of mine like Francis Preve have gone utterly nuts for this.

SuperCollider

SuperCollider is an elegant, free, cross-platform synthesis language that expresses sound and sequencers as code. Since, unlike Max, its language is text, no conversion is necessary: savvy SuperCollider sonic programmers are simply copying and pasting code directly into Twitter.

You can get a feel for something of what’s happening here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23supercollider

It’s an interesting exercise. As people have done with Processing for Twitter-coded graphics, the tiny 140-character limit means the challenge of trying to do more with less.

Unsatisfied with picking these up manually, SuperCollider Charles Céleste Hutchins has built his own bash script, connected to Yahoo Pipes, for fetching the resulting SC sound creations:

Twitter Supercollider App [les said, the better]

You’ll also see in the search, in addition to code there are lots of casual exchanges of tips and advice.

I’m not sure anything can cure me of my own sprawling code, but there’s something soothing about everyone else’s little code snippets appear.

Richie Hawtin + Traktor

Here’s the biggest twist yet: Native Instruments’ Traktor Pro is now Twitter-enabled. Richie Hawtin’s label Minus has developed a custom Twitter application that uploads song metadata, using the Internet broadcasting functions built into Traktor Pro. (I’d love to see this using OpenSoundControl, though I think in this case it doesn’t.)

What this doesn’t mean: no, Richie Hawtin is not tapping away on a cell phone while he plays, and if we see any of you Twittering onstage, we will call in the Dead Acts police.

What it does mean: you can keep track of track listings by tuning in on Richie’s Twitter feed. Updates happen every 30 seconds.

http://twitter.com/rhawtin

Now, generally, the mention of the words “Richie” and “Hawtin” seem to trigger some sort of irrational torrent of Internet hate in comments, so I’m hoping that doesn’t happen here. Personally, I think there’s some interesting potential to all of this – imagine if people who heard your live set could then go check out album versions of your songs the next day, and discover that some of you really are doing live PA stuff and not just straight DJing, too.

Also, Minus promises they’ll release the software to other Traktor users in the near future.

It’s something of a contrast with the Max users who may actually broadcast the patches and presets they’re using while playing, but that’s what makes all of this so intriguing.

Updated:

Via Twitter, Giles notes that Beatportal responds to the announcement:

How Twitter tracklist app will change everything [Beatportal]

I agree with many of the points here on some level, but author Christen Reutens at Beatportal seems to be getting a little carried away. Online radio playlists were also supposed to change “everything” – and then didn’t. For one thing, the ability to purchase played tracks, while something that still has potential, hasn’t yet taken off in a big way. For another, legal questions have come into play. In the case of radio stations, publishing playlists in the US can make a radio station into a “jukebox” and become subject to greater licensing fees. I’m not sure what licensing considerations the DJ playlist could prompt – in the best case scenario, it could mean payments for artists; in the worst case, it might turn venues off from allowing DJs to publish playlists.

Also, as far as mystique, this is an entirely opt-in service. And many of the changes Christen describes have already happened because of digital files and Internet communication – with or without Twitter playlists.

Of course, feel free to disagree.

I have a simpler view, I guess. Publishing playlists is a cool idea for those who want to do it. It’s likely to be used primarily by really big fans of certain DJs. The problem with Twitter is, that information could get stuck on Twitter. Smart DJs will use RSS to pull the information into their blog and give some of that context back. And as for DJs who have hidden behind producers’ tracks while creating a false sense of mystique – well, uh, some of us who are greater fans of live PA won’t be shedding any tears. Those who are intelligently warping tracks so they’re barely recognizable, requiring a Twitter feed to follow what’s going on, we salute you.

I’m not sure I’d want to be glued to a Twitter feed while in a club, with all the other Tweets happening, but it’s interesting. Perhaps more interesting than the features for fans is that Hawtin and company propose to get producers paid some royalties when their tracks get played, by using this feature for more accurate tracking – see James Holden on comments here.

And there’s nothing stopping the smart-a** music enthusiasts from going to sets without this feature, tapping away on their cell phone to prove they actually know what they’re hearing. We might even follow you.

But is There Another Way?

This is all very interesting, but I have to wonder if we should all take the next step and start thinking about open ways of connecting software. Of course, it makes sense to use Twitter for quick snippets and Twitter-style communication, because people are there. (Not to mention, I like the idea of freaking out your Twitter followers with unreadable code gibberish.) Likewise, it makes sense for software makers to do some of their own online integration, as Ableton has done with Share – a feature we’ll be examining in more depth.

But Twitter itself, while an interesting novelty, is not ideal, because of its data limits and the proprietary, crash-prone system behind it. Here are a couple of alternatives. XMPP is a standards-based protocol, built on XML, for bi-directional communication. For chat-style, real-time communication, XMPP – the basis of Jabber and Google Talk – makes much more sense. And there are existing, open source libraries out there with XMPP support, meaning it’s not tough to build upon. It’d be great to use XMPP to allow artists to communicate about what they’re doing in real-time.

For collaborating on shared projects, version control is a great way to go. Previously the domain of programmers, version control is catching on with all sorts of people, because it makes collaboration easier by tracking changes. Subversion remains the most popular way of doing this, even as Git gains some traction. And Sourceforge has beefed up its own functionality lately, while Sun’s Project Kenai is developing nicely, too.

See, previously:

Version Control and Sharing for Patching: Keep Those Max, Pd Patches in Order with Git

In other words, I hope this is all the tip of the iceberg. Ideas?

You probably think of social networking and messaging as being about text, about saying things like “Wow, this tuna salad sandwich I’m having for lunch is delicious!” But the next Tweet you get on Twitter could be a synthesis preset.

Say what?

Working in Max/MSP, Andrew Spitz has developed a tool called Tweet a Sound. It uses Twitter as a communications platform for “social sound design.” Instead of just saying, “Wow, I be makin’ phat basslines,” you can actually share the sound. Whip up a sound using typical FM synth parameters and Max/MSP’s sound engine, then click “send.” You’ll send a string of numbers to your Twitter account, confusing those friends not in the know. But other users will be able to grab and play with your sound.

Andrew even encourages synthesis n00bs to play without fear – grab those envelopes and mysterious-looking settings and see what comes out. So, I hope you synth geeks do share this with some friends new to synthesis, as I think they’ll have a great time.

Right now, Tweet a Sound is Mac-only; we just need someone to save a Windows standalone version. Someone has asked about a Pd port, but let’s put it this way: this is the tip of a very, very big iceberg of sharing. It’s something worth considering in anything you’re doing, not just with Twitter, but whether you can provide networked capabilities in whatever you’re happening to build.

Ableton, of course, recently added the Share functionality to Live. But with open APIs and basic networking protocols, there’s no reason you can’t explore other features. Why not build a drum machine that lets you collaborate with one of your friends on your IM list, or a sequencer that automatically posts ideas as you revise them? Just doing these things for the sake of it could be a waste of time, but on the other hand, these social features could turn Web 2.0 sites into places that actually inspire you to make and share music rather than distract you with mundane activities.

I love the idea; let us know if you have some fun with it.

Tweet A Sound { sound + software } [Andrew Spitz Blog]

Quick – you’ve got a music file that someone (a collaborator, a client, a friend) needs to hear. How do you send it to them?

It seems countless Web entrepreneurs have new ways for sharing media – there are online Flash-based music editing applications, social networks, elaborate MySpace and Facebook killers. We’ve been impressed with some, like the rich player and commenting and fans on Soundcloud or the ability to create artist/band pages that really work on Bandcamp. (The latter, I do really want to spend more time with.)

But sometimes, these services are overkill. This week, I had to get some revised sound scores to a choreographer so he could have them in a rehearsal. I didn’t want to share them with my network of friends or let people remix them in Flash – I just needed to get them to him in the easiest way possible.

That’s where drop.io is just absolutely gorgeous and lovable. Using something else? This is probably better.

1. There’s not even a login. Click a button, upload a file, done. You can add your email address and password if you need to be updated, but even that isn’t necessary.
2. You get an instant short URL – either automatically generated or customizable.
3. Drop any media you want – images, music, etc.
4. You get instant in-browser playing / viewing, and embeddable links and downloads.
5. Control: non-public if you like, expire whenever you want, let others add files.
6. It’s free for basic usage, and the free account isn’t crippled. You get 100MB of space per drop. Need more than that, and you can upgrade, but I think a lot of folks will be pleased with the free plan. Fortunately, the premium plan is powerful enough (branding, bigger drops) that premium users may be able to subsidize the occasional, casual user.
7. Integration: Firefox add-in, Twitter, etc.

In other words, this kicks YouSendIt’s sorry, badly-designed, clunky and non-functional a**.

drop.io
playlist.io, announced this week, allows easy, playable playlists, so ideal if you have a set of tracks – all with the same features of drop.io

It’s probably not how you want to share video or whole projects. But for a quick audio bounce of your current track, photos of the venue you’ll be gigging at, and the like, it’s about perfect. There’s a place for more complex tools that allow you to collaborate on, say, custom designs for music software or hardware or elaborate session sets. But that makes it even nicer to have a quick tool that solves a simple problem.

And speaking of “tools that get things done up against tight deadlines,” drop.io has added a whole new dimension:

Real-time functionality

The folks at drop.io (who work just over the river from me in DUMBO Brooklyn, that “other” Silicon Alley) have been hard at work on new real-time functionality.

What this means is, you can instantly add media, notes, and chat message, even via a mobile device, and everything is there instantly. So, someone calls on the phone and wants a file. It’s up there instantly, and you can even comment on it, make changes, and get it done.

Speaking as someone who is constantly missing deadlines, um, I mean regularly procrastinating things until the last minute, uh, erm …. uh, always overbooked and dealing with crises … uh, I mean, “moving at the speed of innovation,” this sounds like a lifesaver / problem solver.

There’s no question this is of use to music pros and the ilk. I know the people doing music and sound design for South Park have regularly emailed MP3 files in order to get them on the air on Comedy Central the same day. We’re a “just-in-time” — or, perhaps, “barely on time” crowd, the digital creatives.

I’ll be really curious to hear how you use this, and what other tools are out there you like. And because drop.io is a relatively simple tool, I’m equally interested to see what might be possible with their open API. Let us know what you think.

Updated: Via comments, Kyran notes that Dropbox is also a really strong option. What I like about Dropbox: desktop clients, sync capabilities, easy sharing of whole folders, revisions, and most of the chat features. What I like about Drop.io: stupidly-simple quick file uploading one file + url. Drop.io is to me sort of Twitter-style file uploading. Dropbox is also a really terrific solution. I could actually see using a little of both, which is why lightweight solutions are nice.

News may filter through Boing Boing, Slashdot, and Reddit – and certainly, this story already has. But oddly, I learned of this item when I happened to meet up with the blog item’s author in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has digital analysis he believes may prove that a track was recorded to a click track.

Paul Lamere is a developer at Echo Nest, a brainy think-tank of music geeks developing new ways of processing musical metadata in the cloud. Whereas services like Last.fm focus mainly on content and community, Echo Nest’s API wants to make the computers in the cloud smarter about how they listen to your music. We’ve had a look at their work twice before:

All Christmas Music, Boiled Down to Sixteen Droning Singles
Musical Brain API: An API for Music on the Web – And it Makes Pretty Pictures

The Remix API crunches data about rhythmic information at a number of levels. Since we first saw it, that API has led to an SDK (read: something you can program more directly), all assembled in Python. The Python-based SDK is now capable of creating the world’s most unlistenable mash-ups, among other things – some oddly compelling. On Friday, I got to listen to tunes with every other eighth note removed and Michael Jackson crossed with tunes – that is, until the programmers in the office started to complain because they were about to lose their mind. (Echo Nest uses a Sonos system to pipe music office-wide. I hope we can give you a preview of those clips soon.)

Remix SDK (currently Python)

But perhaps the most interesting thing this team has done so far is Paul’s work on plotting rhythmic analysis. Plots of tempo deviation, measured in beat durations, yield two interesting revelations:

In search of the click track [Music Machinery]

1. Much of the music you know has a lot of rhythmic variation. (Dizzy Miss Lizzie by the Beatles, anyone? No Ringo Starr jokes, please.)

2. A lot of the other music has disturbingly little rhythmic variation.

Yes, indeed, the use of click tracks (and, I suspect, metronomes, drum machines, quantized loops, and the whole lot) seems to be sucking some of the rhythmic spice out of music. You’ve already heard complaints about the “loudness wars” that have quantized out dynamic range. But, after decades of drum machines and digital tech, there’s surprisingly little complaint about quantized rhythmic values. Okay, perhaps I should scratch that – some people complain an awful lot. What we haven’t had until now is a visual representation of what’s going on.

Note/update: Just for the record, I’m not opposed to quantized beats. We’re very big fans of techno around here. The post Paul wrote begins, “Sometime in the last 10 or 20 years, rock drumming has changed.” Note, rock drumming. I think there are all sorts of rhythmic possibilities in different musical expressions.

I could go on, but I’m not having a very smart day. (The evening pot of coffee is on; I have high hopes.) Instead, I’m curious what people think of Paul’s methodology. This was just a programmer working along a line of thought with some experimental code, so I’m sure he doesn’t claim this to be an entirely scientific method. But that said, do you think his conclusions are correct? Is there more to be said about this subject?

For that matter, would there be a way to do more scientific work along these lines?

As for the engine that powered this: the Remix API and SDK from Echo Nest should be capable of quite a lot more, from gorgeous animated visualizations like the album art for Matmos we saw last year to unusual, new collaborative Web remix apps. The one catch is the analysis must be performed on their servers, so it’s not something you can apply without sending your content to the cloud – but you do get the metadata back, so I still think some sort of self-remixing applications might be possible, too. I’m eager to see a Java version of the SDK and not just Python, because that’d make it easier to add 3D elements or work with tools like Processing. Can I get an amen?

Well worth checking out Paul’s blog for lots of commentary on a variety of musical enthusiast topics:
Music Machinery

It’s the soul of YouTube. Or at least, YouTube soul, mashed together.

In case you haven’t already seen this making its rounds, an epic collection of instructional and jazzy video clips get mushed together into a colossal, remixed funk band. What’s lovely about this is that the results don’t sound like a mash up: they sound like these clips somehow sprang to life and joined a soul band, playing live. And then the Theremin arrives.

You watch one video. And then you find there are seven more. ThruYou is a complete YouTube video album, complete with glitched bits of interface artifacts around. And according to the creator, nothing here is faked; that is, “what you see is what you hear.”

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

thru-you.com
Watch the original Bernard Purdie Drum Shuffle and more goodies at http://www.youtube.com/user/kutiman

The creator of this is Kutiman, an Israeli funk musician and producer. How cool is he? This cool:

It turns out the Internet hasn’t totally sucked our Soul.