I Presented a Paper and a Piece at ICMC2008

I presented today at the 2008 International Computer Music Conference. The topic of my paper was "Emulation and Authenticity: Chiptune in the Early Twenty-first Century". It is quite a general paper, aimed at a general audience (ie. people that may or may not have heard of chipmusic before).

I also had a piece in this year's ICMC2008 - "Eleven Point Six Milliseconds", which is also known as "The Emphasis on Small Things" from my Automaton EP.

Images of Queen's University

Images of Belfast

ICMC2008 Highlights

Just my personal picks - a number of presentations that i enjoyed. Of particular interest and inspiration was the keynote presentation by Trevor Wishart.

Highlights Day 1 -
Autonomous Development of Singing-like Intonations By Interacting Babbling Robots (Miranda);
The Cyclotron: A Tool for Playing with Time (Trueman);

Highlights Day 2 -
An Overview of Networked Music (Kim-Boyle);
Playing the Network (Caceres / Renaud);

Highlights Day 3 -
Do Mobile Phones Dream of Electric Orchestras? (Wang / Essl / Penttinen);
Composing and Computers: A Hopeful Traveller's Report (Wishart)

Highlights Day 4 -
Investigating Artistic Potential of the Dream Interface: The Aural Painting (Bukvic / Gracanin / Quek)
Textural Composition: Implementation of an Intermediary Aesthetic (Hagan)

Highlights Day 5 -
The Enigma of Vitruvian Resonating Vases and the Relevance of the Concept for Today (Godman)
What Is An Event? The Event Schema, Circumstances, Metaphor And Gist (Kendal)

Justin Phelps: Milkcrate 24: Blank Page

Justin has made a fantastic solo milkcrate session using only a blank A4 piece of paper as source material. The music is delicate and finely-tuned, and is reminiscent of lonely, cold winter nights.


Get it here: http://milkcrate.com.au/sessions-details-024.html

DMGMITE-01: The Australian Chipmusic Compilation

A collection of tracks from some of the chippest blokes from Down Under. Enjoy!

Track listing:
01. The LOLstralians - Advance LOLstralia, 'n That
02. Raptorface - Scarlet
03. little-scale - Antarctica
04. Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families - Trains (Part I, Part II & Reprise)
05. Astro Zombies - Sky Lord (Part 2)
06. Derris-Kharlan - Veracity
07. Dot.AY - Qrist
08. Jacko - Training Blues

Download it here!

Pictures from Science Week

Dynasty (Part 2) YouTube Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktSNzfO-lMo

Sega Master System YM2413 FM and NES.

Reformat The Planet: Watch It Now

If you have even a slight interest in chip music, you will want to go and watch 'Reformat The Planet', which is online for this week only. It really is very good.

MIDI Soft / USB FTDI Hard with Arduino

For the Toriton upgrade, I decided to use a USB connection to the host computer, mainly because
this allows for both the Arduino and the lasers to be powered via the one connection as well as sending data.

In terms of software and protocol, though I am using MIDI (in terms of what the Arduino is sending to Max/MSP). Then, the serial object is connected to a midiout object to simulate a MIDI hardware interface. It works well in this situation (it has been running for three days without any issues).

If I had the time I probably would have made my own protocol and remade the entire Max/MSP patch, but as always... there's never enough time.

Belfast / Staufen / Dallas

I am leaving for a little trip to Belfast, Staufen and Dallas in less than a week. I will be gone for around fourteen days.

How To Read A Keypad with Arduino

For the recent upgrade to the Toriton, I used a digital method and an Arduino board to ‘scan’ the twelve-button keypad (0-9, *, #). Previously, I had used a set of resistors acting as an array of interconnected voltage dividers, all going to a single analog input to read. Of course, this ‘analog method’ of reading the keypad is annoying to build, use and program, but it is a situation where I just didn’t know any better at the time, and used the resources and skills available to me back then.

The idea of the digital scanning of a keypad is very simple. The keypad in question has twelve buttons, set up in four rows of three (like a phone keypad, for example). Each button has two connection points – one point goes to a row pin, and one point goes to a column pin. Therefore, seven pins are connected between the keypad and the Arduino – four for the rows and three for the columns. When a button is pushed, it connects the two points – a column pin and a row pin.

By setting a row pin ‘high’ (in this case, to 5V as opposed to ground which would be considered ‘low’), and reading the digital state of the columns, and then repeating this process for the four rows, it is possible to see which button on the keypad is pressed at a given point in time.

The hardware setup is very simple – only the keypad and three resistors are required. Connect Arduino digital i/o pins 2 to 8 to the keypad. Pins 2 – 5 are for rows 1 – 4 respectively and pins 6 – 8 are for columns 1 – 3 respectively.

Toriton Version 1.5

My Toriton water surface instrument has received a much needed upgrade.

Many thanks to Matthias Tomczak for his help with this.

The new version will be part of the Science Week exhibit at the South Australian Museum.

I'm in the Museum for Science Week!

I am taking part in the upcoming science week exhibition at the South Australian Museum. I will be speaking there on Saturday afternoon and I will be at the Electronic Music Unit / Elder School Conservatorium Exhibit for parts of next week.

Martin Victory Speaks at Forum

Martin Victory spoke at the postgraduate forum yesterday. His presentation was about network sonification - in other words, using the web as a source for music making, and not as a medium for transmission - networked music in the true sense of the term.

This was an excellent presentation and a highlight of the postgraduate forum for me this year. I look forward to seeing and hearing the end results of the project.

I have always felt at home with the concepts and practical outcomes involved with sonification, and I see a number of overarching concepts that link this work with some of my work.

Sega Mega Drive Sample Pack

Overview
I have created a set of samples that have been recorded directly from a PAL Australian Sega Mega Drive 1. I have created all of the sounds myself on the hardware (as in, these are not sounds or samples recorded from games or demo programs).


Samples
The samples cover the eight algorithms of the YM2612 sound chip, with three sounds per algorithm and three pitched notes in different octaves per sound. Three pitched notes per sound, three sounds per algorithm and eight algorithms in total make for a collection of seventy-two samples.

The naming convention of the samples is as follows:
md_X_YYY_oct_Z

Where:
X = the algorithm used to generate the sample
YYY = the sound number
Z = the octave number


Audio Format
The audio is presented as 16 bit, 44.1KHz mono .wav files. The audio has been normalised and trimmed, but not compressed nor equalised in any fashion.


Download
The sample set can be downloaded here:
http://milkcrate.com.au/_other/downloads/sample_sets/little-scale_mega_drive_sample_set.zip


License
This Sega Mega Drive Sample Set by Sebastian Tomczak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Sega Genesis / Mega Drive MIDI Sequencing Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtKRUM9IUM4

"The sound chip of the Sega Genesis is being controlled via MIDI in real time from Ableton Live. "

15 Seconds of Fame Catalogue (Hard Copy)

I recently received a hard copy of the 15 Seconds of Fame Catalogue. I'm very happy with it.

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

I found this blog quite interesting: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Dorkbot ADL Meeting #2

"The second Dorkbot meeting is upon us! So get your electronic thinking caps out, your coffee cups ready, and come along for some strange inspiration of the electric kind.

Feel free to share your ideas and projects and meet other locals that are doing strange things with electricity, or simply sit back and listen to the presentations and get inspired."

Date:	Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Time:	7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:	EMU, Schulz Building, Level 5, University of Adelaide

little-scale: dynasty [2008]

"Dynasty combines the minimal with the progressive"

track listing
01. Dynasty, part 1 [5:34]
02. Dynasty, part 2 [7:26]

purchase from http://little-scale.milkcrate.com.au/

© 2008 sebastian tomczak

X|K's "Meet Me At Midnight": Granular Impressionistic Chip Music

Finally, after years of wanting and searching I have finally come across the full version of the track "Meet Me At Midnight" by X|K.

X|K's MIDINes is what got me me into chip music to begin with, and X|K's very short snippet of "Meet Me At Midnight" is what made me buy a MIDINes.

It's an amazing track, and if I had to describe it I would call it "granular impressionism".

genM Sound Editor and Tuning the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive

Today I have been working on tuning the Sega Genesis. I tuned it by ear, because the values given in the data sheet are not correct at all.

I have also made a small application called the genM Sound Editor that allows direct control of almost all synthesis parameters of the Genesis / Megadrive's YM2612 via MIDI CC messages. It features a 16-preset bank function, where instrument settings can be saved. Bank files can then be written to hard disk. The current preset per voice can also be loaded via sending MIDI CC messages to the application, allowing for a distinction between sequencing MIDI data and controlling instrument settings.

Here is a screen shot of the application:

I'm in Popular Science Magazine!

There is a small section about the Toriton in the current issue (August 2008) of Popular Science Magazine.