This release consists of what I consider to be some of the best tracks that I made during the "30 Songs in 30 Days Challenge". It was actually a very exhausting exercise.
If you can't be bothered listening to my output from the challenge, then this release is for you! The cover art photo is of one of my many elephants (I have an elephant collection).
Tracklisting: 1. Mr Functional (Track #12) 2. Fashionable Alchemy (Track #04) 3. Monsoon (Pre-demo) (Track #28) 4. The Swarm (48 Hour Challenge) (Track #16) 5. Baden-Powell Through Jungles (Track #07) 6. First Aid (Track #22)
This is a follow on from a previous post, where I described a Max/MSP patch I had made in order to use visual effects as audio effects. Naturally, the same patch can be used the other way around - ie. an image can be loaded and turned into audio, after which audio effects are applied and then turned back into an image.
For example, in the following two sets of six images, the top left image is the original and the others have been affected using audio effects.
The fifth meeting of Dorkbot Adelaide was an interesting one, and included presentations by sound artist Tristan Louth-Robins (a Masters student at the Electronic Music Unit) and visual effects artist Dan Thompson (of Rising Sun Productions).
Tristan spoke about his work in the area of minimal sound composition and work, and included a discussion of field recordings, technology and nostalgia. More information about Tristan's work can be found here.
Dan spoke about the background and demonstrated his approach to creating a DIY camera motion control setup as well as his ongoing efforts in the field of real-time physical control via the 3D animation package Maya. More information about Dan's work can be found here.
Background I wanted to use visual effects such as blurs, colour transformations and pinches as audio effects instead of visual effects.
Overview I wrote a simple Max/MSP patch to help me out with this task. The idea is quite simple. The patch works in two phases. The first phase is to open up an audio file (of up to 8. 163 seconds in length). The patch then converts each individual audio sample into a pixel in an image of 600 by 600 pixels (this equals 360,000 samples), and saves off this image as an image file.
Each pixel represents the audio with a quality of up to 24 bits, spreading the information evenly over the three colour bands of red, green and blue like this:
COL: RED BIT: MSB 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 LSB
COL: GREEEN BIT: MSB 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 LSB
COL: BLUE BIT: MSB 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 LSB
This image file can then be manipulated in an image editing program such as Photoshop. I have done all of my editing using Graphic Converter. The edited image can then be opened in the Max/MSP, which reads each pixel and converts it back to an audio file.
Max Patch Download the patch here. Below are all of the screenshots of the Max/MSP patch.
Outcomes
Here are some resulting waveforms with their corresponding images. Naturally, the images have been compressed to be uploaded onto the web so there might be some artifacts not visible in the original, uncompressed versions.
Dorkbot Adelaide presents: PHYSICAL COMPUTING AND YOU: AN INTRODUCTION TO ARDUINO
Dorkbot Adelaide presents an introductory workshop to physical computing, which is the field of controlling and responding to the real world using computers. This exciting area allows anyone to easily add interactivity and complexity to a variety of digital projects.
In this hands-on, practical workshop, participants will learn about the basics of using the Arduino platform. Topics covered include an introduction to Arduino programming; digital and analog inputs and outputs; how to connect a variety of components to Arduino; and how to integrate the hardware into popular software packages.
The workshop will be held on Sunday, 28th June from 11am onwards at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide. The cost is $15 per person. No prior knowledge is required. As numbers are strictly limited, bookings are essential. To book, simply email seb.tomczak@gmail.com or phone Seb on 0430 213 700.
More information about the very popular Arduino hardware platform can be found here: http://arduino.cc/
Dorkbot Adelaide is upon us once again! Of course, you don't need to know anything about electronics or technology to come along.
Tristan Louth-Robins will present an exiting array of his sound art installations and works, whilst Daniel Thompson will blow us away with his contributions to openMoco in the form of physical interfaces for animation and video.
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
Here is my sixteenth song. It's called "The Swarm", written for a 48 hr challenge. There is a video for this track as well. You can read more and see the video here.
Here is my seventeenth song. It's called "Factory Funk", written using Nanoloop 2.3 and Ableton Live.
I love Gamelan music, but I'm not a 'specialist' on it by any means. However, I have to say that it is one of the most mesmerisingly beautiful types of music that I have heard. We have an ensemble here in Adelaide which plays from time to time, and I always make a point of going out and listening.
I would like to do a compilation of Gamelan music-inspired tracks, and I was wondering if anyone would like to join me.
Your track can be inspired by any type of Gamelan music, but the link between Gamelan music and your track must be obvious to outside parties. The track has to also be connected with chipmusic in some way, although it doesn't have to be "pure" chip music.
I am wanting to keep this compilation limited to about 6 tracks. So expect a quality filter.
The deadline would be two weeks from now, 1 June 2009.The thread for this compilation is here.
Chaos Amoeba has challenged me to a 48 hour challenge: "I challenge little-scale to make a piece of music that sounds like a swarm of insects."
I scratched my head and wondered how I would go about this, and what it means exactly - for example, would a swarm of insects be best represented by a given musical theme? Or would it be best to go for a strategy that somehow simulates the perception of hearing and being inside a swarm of insects.
I decided to go for a slightly more abstract path - sonifying the behaviour of a swarm.
There is a Max object called mxj Flies which visually simulates the behaviour of a swarm of flies. The data is output is a set of four values - index (ie. the individual fly), and x, y and z positions. Taking this data, I specifically built a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) object for Max, which outputs pseudo random noise.
LFSR's are used for the noise channel in obsolete sound chips to generate noise and distorted waveforms, such as the Sega Master System's SN76489, the Atari POKEY and the Atari 2600 amongst many others. The sounds that are generated by an LFSR were typically used for such tasks as bass lines, kick drums, snares, hi-hats and explosion sound effects.
Different consoles use LFSRs of different lengths and taps and can thus have a unique sound (the timbres produced by the Atari 2600 come to mind, for example). Even if a given LFSR is structurally a little different, it will possibly generate a significantly different sound - there are various versions of the SN76489, for example, and reportedly the main way in which they differ is through their noise channel, which is similar but not the same amongst some of the versions.
The nice thing about my LSFR object is it can mimick a number of LFSR structures. The object has six inlets and can take up to six arguments, allowing the user to create any LFSR with a length of up to 16 bits with 1, 2 or 3 taps. The taps can be at any bit position. The frequency of the one bit output, the gain, the position of the taps and the length can be set at any time by sending a corresponding message to a given inlet.
Here is a structural overview of my LFSR:
.REGISTER has length of L BITS <--------------------------------|----> .BIT#0 OUT |--> .TAP #1 -------------------^ |--> .TAP #2 ----------> OR -^ |--> .TAP #3 --> OR -^
• L is a number between 1 and 16 • TAP #1, #2 and #3 is a number between 1 and L • The register is updated as determined by the frequency
The data from each of the flies is used to control the synthesis process of each of the 40 LFSRs. The x co-ordinate controls the panning of the sound, the y co-ordinate controls the frequency and the z co-ordinate controls the volume of the sound - ie. when the flies move closer to the viewer, they appear louder.
The length of all of the LFSRs is controlled globally, and is set to 16. Each tap for each LFSR instance is generated at random when that instance is created. Finally, to add some tonal colour, each LFSR is run through a ring modulator that has a sine wave as a control signal, with a frequency between 100 and 700 Hz. This frequency is also randomly generated at the start of the patch.
Video of "The Swarm". Visual code by Topher Lafata Flies, visual algorithm by Jeff Cragg and Alex Vulliamy. :
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
Here is my thirteenth song. It's called "Mountains and Valleys", written using Nanoloop 2.3.
Here is my fourteenth song. It's called "Pixel Sonification #01 - "Mandala 11"", written using an image to music tool that I wrote specifically for the task of the 30 Day challenge.
Here is my fifteenth song. It's called "Pixel Sonification #02 - "Mandala 10"", written using an image to music tool that I wrote specifically for the task of the 30 Day challenge.
You can find out more about the program that was used to generate the music here.
The images "Mandala 10" and "Mandala 11" by the 8bitcollective.com user Campbell have been used as data sources for these two tracks.
You can also listen to these tracks via the rss feed.
I have made a Max external that produces pseudo-random noise using a simple feedback shift register. The object has six inlets and can take up to six arguments, allowing the user to create any LFSR with a length of up to 16 bits with 1, 2 or 3 taps. The taps can be at any bit position. The frequency of the one bit output, the gain, the position of the taps and the length can be set at any time by sending a corresponding message to a given inlet.
Download this object with source here. To install this object, copy the files to cycling '74/java/classes.
Years ago I made a little program for Max/MSP as part of my undergraduate degree that uses an image as a score and "plays" it pixel by pixel and feeds the data into a synthesis engine. It was fun to make and use, and I played it at the end of year performance that year. The patch was worth it because as a result a got a permanent exhibition at the (now deceased) Science and Technology Investigator Centre as well as a workshop presentation in Michael Yuen's Project 2 sonic art event.
Today I have revisited this idea with a "new" version of the patch. The images above are "Mandala 10" and "Mandala 11" by the 8bitcollective.com user Campbell. These images were used as data sources in two of my 30 Songs in 30 Days.
This version of Magic Pixie reads a picture in blocks of 4 x 4 pixels, starting in the top left hand corner of the image and working down and right in collumns. Each pixel is stripped down to its RGB components. These values are scaled and fed to Live as MIDI data. Each of the four collumns that are read at a given point in time represents a voice that has a Sega Master System sample loaded into an instance of the Simpler sampling plugin.
Below is the list of MIDI mappings in Live. Naturally, the data could have been used to control an actual Sega Master System, but I do not have one with me today unfortunately.
Dorkbot Adelaide is upon us once again! Of course, you don't need to know anything about electronics or technology to come along.
Tristan Louth-Robins will present an exiting array of his sound art installations and works, whilst Daniel Thompson will blow us away with his contributions to openMoco in the form of physical interfaces for animation and video.
I have needed some new music to get me going, to inspire me. I feel like I've been listening to the same music for too long, it's been stagnating my mind, my thoughts. I'm sure that the majority of the readers of this blog now this feeling as well.
Along came my salvation in the form of Carl Testa's 'Uncertainty' album, his debut recording as improvisation ensemble leader. This set of ten tracks features sparse instrumentation and improvisation that results in music at times delicate and at others brutal. In terms of orchestration, the highlight was the varied and deliberate use of percussion of various kinds.
The highlight of the album is surely the track "Pull" - quite inspirational to say the least.
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
Here is my tenth song. It's called "I Am Outside", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my eleventh song. It's called "The Inn", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my twelfth song. It's called "Mr Functional", written using Ableton Live as a sketch of a track for the Sinicore Sinistar Compilation.
You can also listen to these tracks via the rss feed.
Run - Music for the Long Distance Jogger is a compilation of 12 tracks by 12 artists at a speed of 145 BPM. The thing I love about this comp is that each track blends and is mixed well into the next track - cheers to nonfinite for making this flow so well, for organising the comp and for hosting the comp for now. My track on here is 'The Merchant', but the mix is slightly different than the one found on my release 'Error Repeat'.
I have a track on the Slow Down Compilation. The brief for this compilation was to make "slow and intelligent" chipmusic, and although I don't see the point of putting the term "intelligent" into such a brief I certainly do like the outcome.
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
I thought I might share the podcasts that I am currently subscribed to.
Sunday Night Safran: Comedian John Safran and Catholic Priest Father Bob Maguire present a blend of religion, politics, cultural issues and such from a range of different perspectives, always presented in a very humorous way. Great stuff.
Background Briefing: "Radio National's agenda-setting current affairs radio documentary program. It varies from week to week in style and content, sometimes doing straight investigative journalism, sometimes exploring important ideas or social issues in on-the-road documentary style. You will find profiles of politicians, analysis of behind-the-scenes issues that shape society, and sometimes an exploration of an idea – or perhaps a murder."
Big Ideas: "Brings you lectures, conversations, features and special series from Australia and around the world.
Every year Big Ideas broadcasts the Boyer Lectures – where the ABC invites a prominent Australian, or group of Australians to present the results of their thinking on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues in a series of six radio talks – and, via the BBC, the Reith Lectures."
Philosopher's Zone: "At its heart, philosophy is about asking simple, even silly, questions: the sort of questions you probably asked when you were a kid. What's it all about? Why is there something rather than nothing? Does time stretch infinitely backwards as well as infinitely forward? Sometimes, these simple questions have complex answers, and The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
But as well as looking at the world of philosophy, The Philosopher's Zone will also look at the world through philosophy. Today fundamental and perplexing issues - risk assessment, bio-technology, our relations with animals, relations between cultures, the question whether a society can be open, tolerant and, at the same time, secure and the Zone will look at what philosophical analysis can contribute to our understanding of these issues."
First Person: "First Person is our serialised reading of a published autobiography, broadcast every weekday. We aim to broadcast the best of current and classic personal narratives - including memoirs, travel writing, diaries and letters. We choose books for fine writing that communicates the author's individual life experience, and for their personal voice - the "I" or first person pronoun."
The two First Person serials that I would strongly recommend are "American Journeys" by Don Watson and "Dirt Cheap" by Elizabeth Wynhausen.
Well, I've been working on a way to do just this, although it's mainly experimental at the moment. Here are some waveform snapshots, recorded from an Atari 2600 that was being controlled via MIDI in real time. The waveform shape is chosen via MIDI as well.
Lauren and I went to see the production of Phantom of the Opera showing at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre last weekend. The whole event was amazing, and I would gladly recommend it. From the stage sets, which were multi-layered, to the music which was, as one expects, a mix of 80s prerecorded electronic drums, live synthesisers and a live ensemble, it was a well-polished, well-acted musical.
Cellist Kim worley and violinst Emily Tulloch are performing in the ensemble.
"little-scale, Australian Chipmusician/free hosting philantrophist/inventor/avant garde jam session curator/all out antithesis of procrastination has been making music on the Sega Master System, and has let CDKr host this short album of danceable ditties! The Wonder From Down Under used a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Sega Master System on these tracks, and the class just seeps through your stereo! Another future classic from the man!"
My aim with this release was to write popular chiptune. I hope that I succeeded.
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
Here is my fourth song. It's called "Fashionable Alchemy", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my fifth song. It's called "The Snail", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my sixth song. It's called "Islands 1", written for Sega Master System.
You can also listen to these tracks via the rss feed.
The Australian Chipmusic Directory (http://aussiechip.milkcrate.com.au/) has received an update. The major part of the update is that there are now options for contributing information - such as artists, releases and compilation tracks - making it easier than ever to add something.
It's perfect for hosting larger chipmusic tracks and albums. The idea is that you do not have to use an FTP program to upload your files if you have a milkcrate account, or use a service like Mediafire to host your next chipmusic album.
I've joined this challenge to write 30 pieces of chip music in 30 days.
"The idea of it is that in a timeframe of 30 days you are to write 30 songs. These songs can be a 10 second long melody and bassline or an epic, melodic 15 minute long piece. There is little chance of actually completing 30 masterpieces, but that isn’t the point. The point is to push your boundaries of what you would normally do."
Here is my first song. It's called "A New Dawn", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my second song. It's called "The Swindler", written for Sega Master System.
Here is my third song. It's called "Protection", written for Sega Master System.
You can also listen to these tracks via the rss feed.
This afternoon I've been working on a way of increasing the number of pitches that the Atari 2600 can play. The native pitch range of the device is actually really rather limited (for example - read up here: http://qotile.net/files/2600_music_guide.txt). For this setup, I'm using Atari 2600 hardware. It's MIDI controlled. The pitch range is now from around C1 to a G8, a massive and much more usable improvement.
Dear nitro2k01, For the 72HAC I am proposing to you two options. You may choose whichever you feel is best for you at this point in your life.
Option 1 - Write a "micro EP" with at least 10 tracks (each track is equal to one minute or less). - You may use as many as two Game Boys. - You must only use channel 3 in sample mode (kit). - You must only use drum kits that you make yourself specifically for this task, and release them afterward as well. However, you are not required to create all samples used for your kits - ie. you can use samples you have recorded before, or you can use creative commons etc samples if you like.
Option 2 - Develop the program "shitwave" further. - Add additional, controllable parameters for the end-user - what you add exactly is up to you. - Write a track that utilises shitwave in some way, or record a set of examples that best demonstrates the new features of shitwave. Either way, the minimum amount of audio at the end is 2 minutes and 37 seconds.
