I am just now completing a certificate in graphic design at the online school Sessions.edu, and although I have come to like the Adobe Creative suite tool (and mainly inDesign), I would rather be relying only on open source tools. Why? Well, there are many factors that steer my decision toward that.

If you want to read more about open source and creativity, I invite you to read FLOSS+Art which is a solid explanation of the relationship between open source and creativity/art. From the description:

“FLOSS+Art critically reflects on the growing relationship between Free Software ideology, open content and digital art. It provides a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.”

This book has been a strong inspiration for me to embrace open source in all my creative projects.

Using open source instead of a licensed software is quite empowering and freeing. Even though I paid for Adobe Creative suite, I still don’t feel that I own the software, which influences the way I create and express myself. Even worse, when I used to download pirated software, my creativity would be hindered by a feeling of guilt. All that lead me towards using only open source tools and their advantages:

+ Free software – meaning you don’t pay for it (you still can donate what you want!)
+ The code is open, if you want your tools to do something different you are welcome to change it.
+ Solid community of users and developers to contact when in need
+ You can upgrade your software as many times you want (without paying more!)
+ Peace of mind for any copyright infringement or licenses / legal trouble with the tools you are using

There is a quality and peace of mind when using open source software that is hard to explain. It is often depicted as ‘If you can’t open it, you don’t own it’ – which is not to be taken literally but which gives an understanding of the technology we use. This freedom is priceless; hence for me creativity and open source is a perfect match.

If you are to become a professional Graphic Designer, you still need to be familiar with the industry default tools, the Adobe suite. But once you’re working on your own projects, personal ones or for clients, you can use the tools that fit your needs. Of course it’s not the tools that makes the designer, only your skill and creativity.

I’ll list here all the tools that I’ve been working with in the last few months, for school projects and professional contracts. I’ll restrain the list to simply graphic design at the moment and might expand it further into web design in a future post.

Photoshop replacement with GIMP

One thing I like about this open source program is that they don’t try to do everything. For example nowadays with Photoshop you can actually do pretty much all your design and illustration in there. But why is that? I personally prefer tools that do one thing, and one thing well. I guess that was the idea behind all the tools of the Adobe creative suite but the goal got lost in translation and now every tool tries to do everything.

GIMP is a great example of a tool that does what it does, and well! It’s a really solid image retouching and photo editing software. It’s a mature open source project with a huge community of users and developers. It’s intelligently built and can be extended with Scheme or Python script!

Illustrator replacement with Inkscape and MyPaint

I’ve been using Inkscape more and more lately and I have to say that I’m in love again! With the focus on keyboard shortcuts and simple tool navigation, Inkscape became second nature quite easily. It’s powerful and fast as well as quite flexible. It has a lot of the basic function of illustrator, but isn’t overloaded with bells and whistles.

One thing that Illustrator tries to do but fails at, is to be a painting software. With its brushes and the pressure sensitive drawing, it almost works, but I really can’t paint with illustrator. On the open source side of the world, the gap is well covered by MyPaint.

MyPaint is simple, elegant and to the point. It’s optimized for tablets, and uses a minimum of control to change color (with a palette), change brushes and move your canvas around. It’s the only tool that gives me the real feeling of drawing, and with the different paint brushes. You can easily create your own palette and your own brushes, or hack any brushes that came pre-installed.

InDesign replacement with Scribus

InDesign is a hard one to replace, maybe because I really enjoy working with it, or maybe because I haven’t played enough in the open source world to have completely let go. The main, mature page layout tool available now is Scribus, you will find a similar interface as InDesign and it doesn’t take long to get the basic commands. It’s a solid page layout software, to design a poster or a whole book. Since I haven’t designed any books with Scribus yet I can’t tell how good or bad it is, but having used it few time I can see that it’s a viable software.

I am also really interested in the development of CSS for designing books and print. Coming from a web design background it seems to make a lot more sense to code your style in CSS. You can read a really interesting experiment here on A List Apart.

Other useful tools

Gpick, a quite powerful color picker which will also help you create color scheme and even try out the palette. You can download Gpick here.

Another color management tool with Agave.

For font management in Linux: font-manager and fontforge.

Image batch processor Phatch.

I enjoy being able to measure what is on my screen and I can do that easily with ScreenRuler. It takes a few steps to install, but it’s worth the time investment.

Sometimes you need to write without Facebook, email and Skype disturbing you every second. In order to do that, I love to use PyRoom, a really simple distraction free writing tool.

One thing with open source is it’s maturing all the time, the community is growing and it’s the counter current of the huge software companies that are mainly preoccupied with profit. The difference between using open source software and paid software has quite an effect my creativity and I invite you to try it out, and observe how it feels!

The revolution of the OP-1 is not a technical one, but a conceptual one. There was nothing new invented here. But never before has so much been packed into one synth: drum machine, step sequencer, effect processor 4-track tape recorder and mastering tool, without mentioning the FM radio receiver and the g-force. All this in a portable, battery-powered (16 hours of life!), beautifully designed machine.

What’s interesting about this tool is that it presents you with 8 synth engines that have only a limited amount of effects and settings, instead of giving you complete control over all the building blocks like other virtual analogue synths (VCO, VCF, VCA…). It might sound constraining at first, but I found it sparked my creativity to a new degree. As an example, when playing a classical non-digital instrument, you generally have no settings at all – you tune your instrument and that’s as far as you can go. While most synthesizers can be programmed and re-programmed indefinitely, the limited sound structure of the OP-1 is quite refreshing and actually helps my creativity.

The OP-1 takes you from just playing around to almost post-production. You can choose from a few synths, add some effects or pass the synth through some step sequencers. Once you’re ready, you can start recording on one of the 4-tracks you have. You can cut, copy, past, change the speed, and remix what you’ve played infinitely. Then you can add some drums to it. From these sampled sounds, you can cut in notes and again add effects, or feed them through the step sequencer and record them onto the 4-track tape. When you have all that in place you can record what you have on your tape onto vinyl – where you can master your track. This is where you can add your fade in/out of your track and more effects, with even some compressor filter to add humph to your sound. Once that it’s all perfect you can simply plug your device into your computer and retrieve your completed track in high quality audio without any noise. I really like that final touch where the track is brand spanking clean.

The OP-1 is quite intuitive and it was exciting to play around to find all of its secrets before reading the manual (almost like a video game!). There are only 2 or 3 functions that were harder to find (the radio and the g-force modulation) so for me the instrument was indeed intuitive! The graphical relation makes it easy to find and remember all the settings, all the knobs are color coded and represent setting on the small screen. Compared to, let’s say, the microKORG XL (as an example of another battery-powered programmable synth), it’s day and night. With the synth engine of the microKORG XL, even if you can pretty much create any sounds, the sense of infinite possibility actually reduced my creativity. I spent most of my time trying to craft the perfect sounds, which in the end never happens. Somehow, the simplicity of the OP-1 is really its charm.

On the downside of the instrument, there is some electronic noise when you connect your device to a sound system or to your headphones. It’s not a major problem, but when working with a lot of silence and low volume music, it does get in the way. But this is only if you play live, since you can master your track directly on the OP-1 which saves it as a .wav file that you can retrieve trough USB disk mode. Leaving you with a perfectly polished audio track (yum).

The OP-1 has brought a lot of food for creativity, and the enjoyment I have with the device resembles the enjoyment of a video game. It puts the ‘play’ back in playing music. I can bring it everywhere and polish a track on the go, or simply find free space on the 4-track to scratch some new ideas about the next track. And if I am not ready to play but still have an idea, I can simply whistle the tune so I can continue later.

My second greatest discovery for the Kindle world was to learn how to disable my screensaver!! I was so annoyed that the Kindle would revert to a screensaver, when holding a page is probably less energy consuming than loading the screensaver! In a few keystrokes, you can disable it and leave the Kindle screen at the latest page that you’re reading. I’m testing the battery longevity right now, so I am not 100% sure that it won’t drain the battery in 1 day, but with the e-paper technology I would assume that the battery level should stay the same. EDIT: 2 days later and the battery doesn’t seems to drain any faster!!

Now here is the big secret :

Home screen:
(enter)
;debugOn (enter)
~disableScreensaver (enter)
;debugOff (enter)

And voila! You won’t get any visual feedback about it but you can then leave your Kindle on and see what happens.

There are other hacks from the ;debugOn list, you can list them with the ~help or simply try these (play at your own risk, I only used the ScreenSaver personally):

~changeLocale, ~disableIndexing, ~disableScreensaver, ~dumpIndexStats, ~exec, ~help, ~indexStatus, ~meminfo, ~reloadContentRoster, ~resumeScreensaver, ~startIndexing, ~stopindexing, ~usbNetwork

These have been the 2 major improvements that have happened in my Kindle relationship, but there were also some other neat little tricks.
Here is an excerpt from http://www.geoplanit.co.uk/2010/09/kindle-3-some-hidden-features.html

Games
shift + alt + m = play Minesweeper (from homescreen)
GoMoku: press G from Minesweeper

Hot Keys at any time
alt + shift + G = screenshot (plug your Kindle in via the USB and navigate to the folder ‘documents’ screenshots are GIF and named something like “screen_shot-******.gif”)
alt + G = screen refresh
alt + home = Kindle Store
alt + top row of letters on keyboard = numbers 1-0

Menu
Press menu to check the time
Press menu on homescreen to see available memory
To change the primary dictionary by going to settings then menu

Power Switch
Standby (uses minimal power is my understanding) Quick switch of the power slide.
To turn off kindle 3 (i.e switch off the screen as well) by pressing and holding the power slide for 7 seconds
To reset the kindle by pressing and holding the power slide for 15 seconds (restart is also in settings then menu)

Hot Keys Whilst Reading
alt + B = add and remove bookmarks
shift + Sym = Turn text to speech on and off
set cursor down the page to start text to speech from there
right arrow on nav controller = skip to next chapter
left arrow on nav controller = skip to previous chapter

Music Controls
alt + space = turn music on and off
alt + f = skip to next track

Kindle 3 Image Viewer
Kindle has an image viewer. Who knows why it’s hidden (other than maybe its not very good), but still it’s there and simple to set up. I’m assuming a Windows-based PC for these instructions, but it probably is similar for a Mac and others…
Plug your Kindle 3 into the computer with the USB.
Open the Kindle drive that is now in your displayed with your removable drives, in the root (i.e. not in another folder) create a folder called “pictures” within that folder you can create a number of other folders (think of them as collections), then add your images/pictures to this (or these) folders. I’ve only tried Jpegs and they work fine.
Once finished safely unplug the kindle and then press “alt” and “z” on the homescreen, this will refresh the screen and add your new folders.
Click on the folder/collection and Image Viewer should launch.

Image Viewer Functions
Page forward and back to see different images
f = full-screen
q = zoom in
w= zoom out
e = reset zoom
c = actual size
r = rotate
nav controller = pan

You can also root your device in many ways. At the moment, I don’t feel the need to go there (the screensaver was really the main annoyance) but you can read about it here:

You will need:
• MIDI controller that works with your computer
• Processing on mac, windows or linux.
• your sound setup with processing
• the midiBus library
• Beads audio library
• controlP5 library

The beauty of programming your own synth is that you can see the underbelly of the creation of such an instrument. You can understand better the MIDI signal, the synthesis of sound and music in general. I will keep the code fairly simple so that you can experiment to create your own synth and sounds. We will be using Beads audio, Processing and a keyboard MIDI controller of your choice. I will be demonstrating with a KORG nanokey since it’s my favorite tool to experiment with new soft synth. As long as you have a MIDI device it should work well. In future posts, we will look at how to use OSC and Arduino.

So we will separate the code into 3 steps: the MIDI integration, the audio creation and the creation of knobs that control the volume and overall pitch.

MIDI in processing

The first part we will create is the MIDI connection to Processing. To do that we will be using the MidiBus, a Processing MIDI library. It should be quite straight forward if your MIDI controller is recognized by your system.

import themidibus.*;
MidiBus myBus; // The MidiBus

void setup()
{
  // Code for the midi controler
  MidiBus.list(); // List all available Midi devices on STDOUT. This will show each device's index and name.
  myBus = new MidiBus(this, 1, ""); // Create a new MidiBus with no input device - you will have to change the input here
}

Running that code will create an output list of all your MIDI devices that processing can communicate with. It should look something like this:

Available MIDI Devices:
----------Input----------
[0] "Juli [hw:0,0]"
[1] "nanoKEY [hw:3,0]"
[2] "Real Time Sequencer"
----------Output----------
[0] "Juli [hw:0,0]"
[1] "nanoKEY [hw:3,0]"
[2] "Real Time Sequencer"
[3] "Java Sound Synthesizer"

From there you can see where is your device and change the code accordingly: myBus = new MidiBus(this, 1, “”); where you can replace the 1 with your device number.

BEADS AUDIO TO CREATE OUR SYNTH

Now that our MIDI controller is connected to Processing we can start creating a synth. You can refer back to the older post about mO and plO on this site, or you can simply take the code below:

import beads.*;
Gain g;

AudioContext ac;
WavePlayer wp;

void setup()
{
// Code for the synth
  ac = new AudioContext();
  wp = new WavePlayer(ac, 0, Buffer.SINE);
  g = new Gain(ac, 1, 0);
  g.addInput(wp);
  ac.out.addInput(g);
  ac.start();
}

void noteOn(int channel, int pitch, int velocity) {
  // Receive a noteOn from your midi device
wp.setFrequency(6.875 *(pow(2.0,((3.0+(pitch))/12.0))));
  // The calculation of the midi note to frequency is 6.875 * 2 exp ((3+note)/12)
  // I added one knob value in order to go trough all the note in the scale,
  // if your midi controller has a octave up and down that knob is not needed

}

void noteOff(int channel, int pitch, int velocity) {
  // Receive a noteOff - or releasing the note from your midi device
   wp.setFrequency(0);
}

Now we come to a very interesting piece of code, where you have to calculate the wavelength from a MIDI note. Your MIDI controller will send a message to your Processing with a note, from 0 to as far as your controller goes with 60 being your middle C. The problem comes when you have to translate the note into hz, the measurement of your frequency. Every note refers to a different frequency and the distance between these frequencies aren’t on a regular pattern.

I won’t go into detail on how to calculate it, and will simply give you the formula :

frequency = 6.875 X (2 exp(3 + midi note) / 12)

Which would be translated in Processing by:

wp.setFrequency(6.875 *(pow(2.0,((3.0+(pitch))/12.0))));

Now if everything went well you should be able to connect the 2 pieces of codes and have a MIDI controlled soft synth. You can see how the MIDI signal is sent and modifies the waveplayer value, which is not in the draw loop, but in it’s own function. That is an important point where you want to only process the MIDI signal when it happens (and not every time you loop through the draw). So far so good, wasn’t it simple?

Now, what is a synth without knobs and some graphical feedback! Lets add some knobs and the wave pattern. You can copy the whole code from here which include the MIDI, the synth and the control:

import controlP5.*;
ControlP5 controlP5;

import themidibus.*;
import beads.*;
Gain g;

AudioContext ac;
WavePlayer wp;

MidiBus myBus; // The MidiBus

Knob volume;
Knob level;

void setup() {
  size(400,400);
  background(0);
  smooth();

  //Code for the Knobs
  controlP5 = new ControlP5(this);
  volume = controlP5.addKnob("volume",0,0.8,0,40,30,120);
  level = controlP5.addKnob("level",0,2,0,230,70,80);

  // Code for the synth
  ac = new AudioContext();
  wp = new WavePlayer(ac, 0, Buffer.SINE);
  g = new Gain(ac, 1, 0);
  g.addInput(wp);
  ac.out.addInput(g);
  ac.start();

  // Code for the midi controler
  MidiBus.list(); // List all available Midi devices on STDOUT. This will show each device's index and name.
  myBus = new MidiBus(this, 1, ""); // Create a new MidiBus with no input device - you will have to change the input here
}

color fore = color(92, 169, 250);
color back = color(0,0,0);

void draw()
{
  loadPixels();
  //set the background
  Arrays.fill(pixels, back);
  //scan across the pixels
  for(int i = 0; i < width; i++) {
    //for each pixel work out where in the current audio buffer we are
    int buffIndex = i * ac.getBufferSize() / width;
    //then work out the pixel height of the audio data at that point
    int vOffset = (int)((1 + ac.out.getValue(0, buffIndex)) * height / 2);
    //draw into Processing's convenient 1-D array of pixels
    pixels[vOffset * height + i] = fore;
  }
  updatePixels();
}

void noteOn(int channel, int pitch, int velocity) {
  // Receive a noteOn from your midi device
  wp.setFrequency(6.875 *(pow(2.0,((3.0+(pitch*level.value()))/12.0))));
  // The calculation of the midi note to frequency is 6.875 * 2 exp ((3+note)/12)
  // I added one knob value in order to go trough all the note in the scale,
  // if your midi controller has a octave up and down that knob is not needed
}

void noteOff(int channel, int pitch, int velocity) {
  // Receive a noteOff - or releasing the note from your midi device
   wp.setFrequency(0);
}

void volume(float theValue) {
  g.setGain(theValue);   // the volume knob on the left
}

So at first we load the controlP5 library that we will use for the creation of the knob. We initiate the knob in the void setup and we then use the knob value in 2 places. We first use the right knob value in the frequency of the note, so when we trigger a note on our keyboard the value is divided by the knob value, in order to change the range of the frequency. This will change the octave in which you are playing.

The knob on the left is for the volume and you can read at the end of the code void volume(float theValue) a block of code that is triggered only when the volume knob change value. We could have inserted it in our main draw loop but it’s more memory efficient to have it on its own function.

The last detail is in the draw loop, where we simply add the wave shape for eye candy!

So now you have a functional soft synth controlled with your MIDI keyboard. From here, you can pretty much create any sounds – your imagination and coding skills are your only limits!

We will be adding some Arduino and knob action on the next synth so say tuned!! You can also download the complete code here: mOd

So I started to learn to program audio (i.e. enter codes to make sounds), in order to understand the mechanics of sound. I experimented with Pure Data, SuperCollider and Processing, but the task hasn’t been really simple. Many of the books written about programming, from LoadBang: Programming electronic music using Pure Data to The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music, weren’t meant for a newbie like me.

I recently started reading Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys and Techniques and although the title was a bit uncharming, it has been quite a good resource with a really basic introduction to synthesized music. In the last 3 weeks I started programming with the Beads library in Processing and that helped me learn about the basics of audio synthesis. Instead of reading about it, I could play with the basic elements of synthesis and hear the result. I am only at the first step but I wanted to share my process of learning to program electronic music.

My first experiment was with plo, which was a bit too advanced for my skill set. Since then, I have updated from the first version so it plays a little better, but I need to sharpen my skills before having something functional and enjoyable. In the meantime I’ve started experimenting with simple sine wave and that inspired me to go back to Processing and Beads in order to build myself a simple tool.

mO came out of that tinkering. It’s simply 3 oscillators that you can tune and detune and select from square, sine and triangle in order to listen to the effect of the tuning and detuning of the sounds. It’s an interesting effect that is one of the foundations of sound sythesis. When 2 waves are detuned with less than 20hz, it creates a third sound. When the waves are detuned more than that, you can hear the 2 waves starting to separate. With the 3 waves and selection of types of wave you can experiment with these sounds tuning and detuning. It’s interesting to observe the effect of the waves and their tuning and detuning. You can play around and find where 2 sine waves will sound like one, and you can hear the phenomena happen at different HZ separations, where the sound becomes one again.

mO is also a simple example on how to interface Beads and controlP5. The 3 first knobs are for the volumes of the 3 waves, and the 3 other knobs are for the HZ of each wave. You can also select what type of wave you want to use, between the sine, square and saw.

Beads audio can be created by making chains. You can read more about it here, and for my own use I had to create some sort of visual representation of the chains.

For examples the chain of ugen used in mO would look like this:

Which might be a tad too complex if you just started to code with Beads. Here is a really simple program to get the first step into coding your audio. So get Processing, install Beads and start making noise!!

import Beads.*;

AudioContext ac;
WavePlayer wp;
Gain g;

void setup()
{
ac = new AudioContext();
wp = new WavePlayer(ac, 440.f,Buffer.SINE);
g – new Gain(ac,1,0.1);

g.addInput(wp);
ac.outaddIput(g);
ac.start();
}

This is a simple visual representation of the chain that was created with the code previously entered. Also make sure to go through the Beads documentation and examples, which will teach you all the basics that you need to know! Next step into the creation of a soft synth is to control it. Soon, I’ll post about how to include MIDI into your sketch so that you can use a MIDI controller to play with your synth. So stay tuned and happy hacking!

You can’t really win or lose (if you die you get re-spawned indefinitely) and you don’t have a points system. Yet this has been one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played. I feel like I’ll play the game for the rest of my life! But try to explain that to other gamers – let alone non-gamers!!

So what makes Minecraft so darn addictive ?

Is it its generative reality? Or its reminiscence of Wolfenstein 3d and Tron graphics (in particular the shape of the clouds (yeah the original tron – and yes kids, people who saw the original Tron are still playing video games))? Is it because you can’t really win or lose? Or is it because it reaches both casual gamers and hardcore gamers in one platform?

“It seems like Minecraft has redefined what a game could be offering”

YOUR OWN GENERATIVE WORLD

One of the major points is that Minecraft gives you the feeling that you are actually building something. Similar to what SimCity introduced many years ago, but without the tension that you have to maintain it. You can let it sit forever and nothing bad will happen to it, no citizen leaving your city nor Godzilla coming in. You can even forget all about your world and come back to re-discover it again. That sense of building a reality creates a feeling of attachment to the creation. The world I created so far is sitting at home and I don’t want to create another world at this point; my own creation keeps me attached to the game itself. I even backup my world to be safe! What makes it even more interesting is the uniqueness of the worlds. All worlds are different and as soon as you start mining one world, it becomes yours!

The creative aspect is also a major part of the game. You have to decide what you are doing. You can simply build a sand castle and hang out, or use your creative skill to build towers, castles or houses, and endless cave systems. Of course it’s all digital creativity, but I’m fond of computer art – the creative aspect of Minecraft does satisfy part of that craving.

That generative aspect is also quite intriguing while exploring Minecraft. You might find cave formations that host underground water systems, or lava and minerals which create a natural beauty that is exciting to discover! The mountain formation is also quite unique, and the fact that the world is 8x bigger than the earth makes the exploration everlasting.

CASUAL MEETS HARDCORE

On a second level of addiction is that you have the casual gamer experience (you can play few minutes everyday if you want) combined with the more involved type of gaming (you can travel through your world for hours without seeing the same scenery).

You can keep it really simple (with pickaxes, building towers and rock castles) or raise the complexity level a notch with buttons, boats, armor and many other tools. You define your own involvement in the game, which is quite particular. With most other games, you have to play by the rules – the game defines how involved you have to be and you choose the game you want to play if you have a lot of time or not. With Minecraft, it’s the other way around: you can log into your world, kill some monsters, cook some steak and log out. Or you can take a few weeks to build castles and explore infinite mines!

This simplicity/complexity is also quite pleasing – at the moment I haven’t looked at all the wikis and documentation (I really enjoy discovering new tools by myself) so the most complex item I can build is a compass – and I like it! I see that you can create buttons, switches, carts, rails, TNT and all that. Since I haven’t discovered it, I am quite happy with my level of technology and nothing in the game is forcing me to go past that level.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD

As if it wasn’t addictive enough, you can put your world online, by either creating your own server (which is quite easy) or hosting a server. Again you define your rules, who you invite, and whether it’s public or private. For myself, I used my server only to be able to play in my world from anywhere in, well, the external world!

I feel Minecraft is a new way of looking at games and I hope that it will develop and evolve nicely, or at least inspire other games in that direction! That casual/hardcore, simple/complex balance is really important in the game industry – when too often games aren’t flexible enough

Creativity has taken center stage in my life during the last 2 years. What brought about that change is in part a conscious decision, sprouting from my own commitment to stay at Yasodhara Ashram for 2 years, and in part the natural evolution in my yoga practice. The whole transformation has been a natural healing process that took me from a misconception about the artistic life to the reality of a passionate creative life, which in turn brought even more healing! For me yoga is art and art is yoga

“Creative life is wonderful.” ~ Swami Radha

Where does creativity come from?

I had the false belief that suffering and emotional instability were the perfect vehicles for inspiration and creativity, where the artist and their creation are enslaved by the power of emotional turmoil and negativity. This interpretation might have come from popular beliefs about artists, but it was also fed by my own experience of living in Montreal among a few artists. My late uncle, who had one of the most creative minds I’ve met, saw his last days coming, alone, without having his art recognized. As well, one of my best friends who couldn’t spend one hour without creating art, ended his life prematurely in the quest to seek recognition and love from people close to him.

My strong desires to evolve and to create forced me to re-evaluate those beliefs and redefine my vision of creativity and art. Taking into account that emotional tension can feed creativity, I researched what else in me could nourish it. I realized that art is a personal representation of reality and that in order to see reality clearly, I need to make space for it. In order to see the beautiful sky, I need to move the emotional clouds of my mind.

Perceiving clearly is one step, but I discovered that in order to express that reality (my own reality) I needed to take another step into healing and self-acceptance.

What is the relationship between healing and creativity?

Healing helped me become more creative and creating more helped me heal further. For me, healing is part of yoga – it takes place when disconnected parts of myself start merging or coming into union with each other. That is what was needed for me to find my own creative spark. One of these unions happened with my drawing practice, which seemed simple at first but had quite a big repercussion in my life.

I’ve always drawn but never on a regular basis. I had 2 different styles of drawing: doodling and ‘serious’ drawing, where I would try to represent real objects from nature as well as portraits. Doodling was fun and relaxing and the other type of drawing was harder but still enjoyable.

About a year and a half ago, somehow I came to integrate these two, by doodling reality and a new personal style emerged for me. The first drawing I made in this style was a fox, the messenger between the spirit world and the human world.

At first it seemed quite a simple idea but the more I moved into that style, the more I learned about myself. Often when drawing, my intuitive self or my heart would invite me to draw some more, but my mind would get in the way and stop me from moving forward. As an example, while drawing a flower I was invited to draw a bird that drinks from that flower. At once my mind said, ‘No, the flower is beautiful, you might spoil it all with a bird.’ I realized that this hesitation is not how I want to make art nor how I want to live my life! You can see the result now, how the two elements of the drawing nourish each other – how I can feed myself the nectar of my heart to draw on even more creativity.

The idea of listening to that intuition is a concept that I know mentally, but the fact that I can practice it during creative drawing really helps me understand how to do it and what voice to listen to.

What are the tools to merge yogic life and creative life?

The first steps in merging yogic life and creative life can seem challenging. As a yogi, self-expression can be seen as something that can feed the ego of self-importance and support this sense of feeling better (or worse) than everyone else. For artists, changing their way of living and thinking could seem like a possible hindrance to their creative flow. Because the subtle connection the artist has with her inspiration can be quite fragile, there is a fear of losing that connection.

Yoga and art can benefit from each other, if the integration is done consciously and gently. Here are a few techniques and ideas that have helped me in that process.

Clear mind

Even though a confused mind could be a great canvas for creativity, I prefer to let go of any tension or worry that happened during the day. Reflecting on the day, mind mapping or chanting mantra is normally quite efficient to clear up my mind for creativity and yoga.

Surrender

It’s hard to start something new if I think I have to be good right at the start. I need to let go of expectations and follow what happens. If I feel judgmental, I remind myself that I don’t do that anymore. It might seem simple, but the mere fact of repeating the sentence “I don’t do that anymore” helps me let go of old habits.

Allow yourself to doodle and tinker

I wouldn’t be able to draw big pieces if I couldn’t doodle in a smaller booklet. It seems really important to allow both. Setting up some time to doodle and experiment seems as important as setting up time to create bigger pieces.

Feel more, think less

The mind likes to be in control. In yogic life as well as creative life there is a need to let go of the mind’s supremacy. Yet I do invite the mind to come and help me reflect on my creative process and yogic life in order to clarify where I would like to go next. I cannot really subdue my mind so I learn to live with it. Sometimes I give more space to my mind, and sometimes I ask my mind to take a break so that I can draw or meditate in peace.

There are a lot of yogic practices as well as creative techniques. It’s good to pick one and start experimenting with it! I also believe that it’s more important to be consistent in any practice than to push myself and overdo it. For myself, I need a few creative outlets and practices to keep me engaged – a bit of hatha, a bit of chanting, a bit of writing, a bit of drawing, music, digital art, etc. all together to fill my day with enjoyment.

Creativity and yoga have helped me bring quality, inspiration and passion into my life, and I hope that everyone can discover their own creative potential. I myself am now embarking on the greatest creative journey there is – to raise my own child. I hope that my love for art and yoga will fill our lives and inspire me to raise our child into a creative life.

All the knobs are not functional ~ as of yet – Feel free to play with the code – it’s a really simple example of how to match the interface to a music control. The grid pattern is not what really entices my imagination but I thought it was a nice first step in the creation of a digital instrument. EDIT: There is a new more functional version here hosted on OpenProcessing.

Finally after 2 years of talk and desires and excitement the OP-1 has been shipped to me. I even signed up for the beta tester about a year ago but never touched the device itself!

It’s getting more and more exciting now that they even send the OP-1 Manual 064b, which I have posted here for your viewing pleasure (in case you want to have all the details how these little machine works). EDIT: Just a note that this PDF is a work in progress and not to be distributed!

A few of its features:

Synthesizers

• Multiple Synthesizer Engines with exchangable Architecture.
• 8 dedicated instant sound select keys

Sound Engines

• Dr Wave – Raw 8-bit yupe sound engine
• FM – Easy to tweak FM synthesis engine
• Pulse – Square wave type engine
• String – Physical modeling with a twist
• Digital – Raw digital type of engine
• Phase – Phase distortion engine
• Cluster – Multiple Wave Cluster
• Feature additions of Engines will be available with software upgrades

Sample Engines

• Dedicated instant Synth Sampler with 6 seconds sampling time for each slot.
• Dedicated instant Drum Sampler with 12 seconds sampling time for each slot.
• Instant sampling with built-in Microphone or Line in

Envelopes

• Classic ADSR type of envelope
• Dynamic Envelope for Drum sounds.
• Future additions of Envelopes will be available with software upgrades

Effects

• Multiple Effects with exchangable Architecture.
• Delay – Classic delay type
• Phone – Hacked phone effect
• Punch – Adds punch to your sound
• Grid – Grid based echo
• Spring – Spring reverb type
• Future additions of Effects will be available with software upgrades

Tape Feature

• 4 individual tracks with instant Solo
• Instant variable Tape Speed
• 6 minutes recording time in Normal tape speed.
• Up to 24 minutes recording time in Low tape speed
• Loop function with movable region
• Tape tricks for Break Tape, Bits and Reverse.
• Memo 1 & 2 for instant memorizing Effects / EQ / Pan or Levels / Tape Speed
• Reverse Recording
• Classic Tape editing Features Lift / Split and Drop
• Lift tape recordings back into Sampler for endless sound design.

Motion Sensor

• 3 Axis Motion sensor (G-Force)
• Assignable to any synth, envelope, effect parameter or to pitch.

Built-in FM radio

• Sample direct from any radiostation
• Record direct to tape

Since it’s on Java OpenGL, I wasn’t able to tap into the power of the quad core, but I was still able to have fun. It’s a nice addition to my studio, with my older machine now dedicated to audio stuff and downloads. I also finally discovered the joy of connecting my microKORG XL to the KP3 and it really nice and fun ~ the soundtrack that you hear in the background is from that combination!

Anyhow, if this is the tinkering part, I am looking forward to creating bigger pieces! All the video work has been done on open source software, from Kdenlive to GIMP and Inkscape, all running on Puredyne of course. Enjoy the video!