SSD is a Q&A site encompassing all the wonderful disciplines of sound design: film, game, art and installations, sound effects, new media, software, programming (Max/MSP; Pd, etc.), Arduino and micro-controllers, gear, feedback, recording, techniques and tips… as long as it involves sound design it is welcome here!

Ostraka (myself) with Graham O’Brien on drums will be performing using the GMS. Terr the Om (Nathan Brende) will also be performing his distinct breed of electronic music, melding the output from his circuit bent toys with looping and real-time arranging in Ableton Live. Thirdly, Dialsystem consisting of brothers, Graham and Casey O’Brien will likely mesmerize listeners with their ethereal mix of bass, drums, and electronics. Music starts at 9:00pm.

I’m in the process of booking the upcoming events, so if you are a performer of experimental music and would like to get involved, please send your name, artist name, contact information, links to a biography, and links to audio examples to emm [ at ] audiocookbook [ dot ] org.

Cope has received a lot of criticism regarding his work, including statements that his music lacks soul because it was written by a computer. But was it really written by a computer? I think a better term is generated. Cope wrote the software, so I would argue that the music generated by the software was ultimately written by the software developer. In this case Cope himself. In other instances I might argue that the music was created by the user of the software tool, rather than the developer of the software. It comes down to who is at the controls. What decisions are being made, and by whom, or perhaps what?

Since I’ve developed and am currently using software to perform and record generative music, I am curious about your opinions. You may have heard pieces on this site generated by the GMS. Perhaps you listened to the excerpts in the article. What do you think? Does music generated by computers lack soul? Does it diminish the human, communicative qualities contained in the work? Or, are we using computers simply as tools? Perhaps, as computers and software evolve we might begin to collaborate artistically with them rather than just use them slavishly. Based on Cope’s work and others, I believe that we are closer than we think to this becoming a reality.

I realize that I am running the risk of turning AudioCookbook into AudioSlateBook with all my tablet articles of late. However, I just have to say that based on the video from this article the Notion Ink Adam is pretty amazing. Notion Ink, based in Hyderabad, India, have designed the device with a 10″ transflective LCD that only uses 200 milliwatts allowing for up to 24 hours of battery life, or more than 10 hours of HD video playback. Another cool feature is a backside trackpad, apparently a first on any device. I like this idea for control when you don’t want to obscure the screen. I find it exciting that new technology is starting to respond to humans in more human ways, like Google’s voice to text in Android OS, and multitouch and accelerometers for gestural input on mobile devices.

Another impressive development are new details regarding Notion Ink’s Adam Tablet. Reportedly the Android device will output 1080p video via an HDMI output, has a 10.1″ capacitive touchscreen capable of recognizing six simultaneous points of contact, and supports Flash.

Love or hate the iPad, it has certainly stirred up the pot. Most of these devices were under development long before Apple’s announcement, so what we’re seeing is not necessarily a “jump on the bandwagon” effect, but more of a “hey look, over here, we’re already working on that!” reaction.

The alleged fear of litigation over Apple’s supposed multi-touch patents has seemed to evaporate as more and more devices are announced. And let’s not forget Jazzmutant’s beloved Lemur. Take a look at Peter Kirn’s article What’s Next For Lemur for a lively discussion about the controller, it’s future, and competitive products.

Grainy
This instrument is a granular synthesis pad machine created in Kontakt using devious scripting to firing thousands of tiny ‘blips’ at your ears at random. The frequency of the effect can be controlled using the mod-wheel and the custom interface has additional controls for release-time, choral layer volume and distortion. The whole effect created a texture that can go from sonar-ping blippy to the Russian red army chorus to a desert wind howling in the night.

Wooden Frog
A Kontakt instrument created from the humble little wooden percussion frog. A wide selection of sounds were recorded at different velocity levels, with alternate sounds triggered in round-robin fashion, for a very expressive instrument (over 40 samples), going all the way from the frog’s natural range to a pitched-down bass thud.

The Kontakt script has knobs for tuning the sounds, and the mod-wheel brings in an impulse reverb. The reverb is based on an impulse made by my very own acoustic-space modeling program, and is not available anywhere else.

Here’s what Glyn has made freely available for AudioCookbook readers. To extract the RAR files linked below use the password “audiocookbook”.

http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/mellovtronika_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar
http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/cheesekeys_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar
http://www.prokits.co.uk/user_folder/audiocookbook/glassworld_kontakt_prokits.co.uk.rar

The previous lack of multitouch support on the N1 led to speculation about Apple patents and possible litigation against American companies including it on their handheld devices, but Google no longer seems worried about it.

It will be interesting to see the reactions to this, but in the meantime I’m feeling pretty glib about my decision to buy the Nexus One.

Of course this doesn’t change the potential of the device for multitouch control or music apps, however, it might attract more customers, and as a result, more developers to the platform.

Furthermore, I have been researching a variety developing stories about multitouch tablet devices to compete with the iPad. MSI is releasing a tablet running Android OS later this year. And Google has released concept photos of a tablet running Chrome OS, that is reported will support multitouch capabilities.

So, for many of us who were disappointed by Apple’s iPad announcement last week, there are a variety of competing and more open devices on the horizon that could very well satisfy some of what we’re dreaming of for open, multitouch, interactive, music devices.

Finding this effect was really an accident, because I had been using this particular effect chain on my master track in this set for a while, but hadn’t stumbled across the settings that produced this sound until last night. Placing the filter before doing the the down-sampling is the key. It does not work the other way around.

Here’s a couple of minutes to illustrate how to apply the effect. I was making real-time adjustments to the frequency of the low pass filter, and the amount of down-sampling. Toward the end I upped the reverb to give it some tail.

Speak & Spell Like Vowel Simulation

1) Apple seems to be enforcing a ridiculous patent on multitouch with plenty of prior art examples (Lemur, etc.). Google should straighten their backs and just put multitouch into Android. Multitouch belongs there, like it does on normal computers, playing piano, making love, etc. This is slowing down the pace of development and hurting the industry. A corporation shouldn’t be able to patent “multitouch” (whether it’s for mobile devices or not) anymore than it should be able to patent fingers. Multitouch is a human sensory capability. We have built-in multitouch. Are human beings inherently violating Apple’s patent? I wouldn’t be surprised. I am a mobile device after all.

2) As Peter mentions in his article, it’s a closed device. No running existing applications like Ableton Live, or MaxMSP unless stripped down versions are developed for it and sold on iTunes. I might have been interested in this if it was a multitouch device that I could use in the same way I use a laptop with the same tools available now. Imagine being able to move ten sliders in your DAW right in the interface; no external device required.

I might change my mind, but presently I see the iPad as a very pretty, but bulky iPod Touch / Kindle great for Facebook, movies, and e-books, but not something that’s likely to become a significant platform for music or sound design. I’m still waiting for the iLap. Perhaps, once the iPad is cracked and people start putting Android on it, things might get interesting. No one has registered android4ipad.org yet, but it’ll be amusing to see that happen down the road.

UPDATE: Apple claims these types of alterations to be a criminal offense. Checkout the Free Software Foundation view of the iPad – iPad is iBad for Freedom.

The recording was made on a fostex FR2LE with a canon digital camera for visuals. The single hits would be cool for super fizzy percussion, don’t you think? Sampled at 24/96 on a fostex fr2le in stereo, 12 inches above the pan.

Tom

High quality download here:
Superheated oil and water – dance of the blobs

YOUTUBE link – Superheated Water & Oil – Dance of the Blobs