Max5 Patch - Manipulating Wave Forms With AKAI LPD8

This is a Max5 patch that I've made in class to use with my Akai LPD8 midi controller. I have two identical patches running side by side each with two different wave form reading. The first is an extract from one of my own compositions; a short ambient piece making the most of electronic effects over a piano section. The second wave form is a continuous fast drum loop. I use two of the eight pads on my LPD8 to switch each sample on or off, I am then using the ctlin knobs what happens with the waveforms; 1 scrolls through the wave form, the 2nd second scrolls so we can loop a smaller section, the 3rd controls the speed at which we play back from 1 to 15 to give the effect of a higher pitch and the 4th knob -1 to -15 to give us lower pitches. As there is 8 pads the first row controls the drum sample patch and the second row controls the ambient extract. Playing these two pieces together and manipulating smaller sections at different speeds and times creates a whole new original piece of music.



To Download the patch and samples used Click Here

Hide and Seek

I was on youtube earlier watching videos of a singer/songwriter that I am really into named Imogen Heap, when I stumbled across this video of her playing her song "Hide and Seek" live. The song itself is a very minimal effort relying heavily on vocals and lyrical content.The vocals on the studio edition are rather manipulated in an electronic way, the way she captures this essence in the live performance below, I found very intriguing. As opposed to using a simple vocoder effect, she uses her keyboard to electronically produce her own almost vocoder sounding harmonies. To put it simpler, she sings into the microphone and plays the underlying harmonic melody on keyboard but as opposed to having a piano sound, it manipulates the audio input from the microphone. From roughly 4 minutes onwards we can hear that she produces a loop of the harmony she had just sang to sing over.

I'd quite like to experiment in making a simple patch in max5 to produce an electronically manipulated version of whatever audio signal is being input into a microphone, enabling us to play piano chords to manipulate the vocal harmony to a different melody and also then experiment with having a record and stop button so we can save a section as we go and be able to trigger the saved sample later in the same track.

“Musique Concrete”

I think if I saw this video about 5 years ago it would have totally blew my mind to see skateboards used to make music. It would have been the thought of my two favourite things at the time colliding as one massive unstoppable force much like the massive robot thing from power rangers.
Anyway....

"Musique Concrete" is a project from Simon Morris, an American new media artist from New York (previous works include a fire place that composes music with light sensors and a rocking chair that can reach different notes in a scale from... rocking the chair) .
His goal for this project was too "examine technology and its role as a socially engaged art practice". Basically he wanted to turn the art of skateboarding into the art of composition!

http://www.therealsimon.com/images/spread.jpg (photo of under the board and what was used)

Underneath the skateboard is attached, a midi controlled interface which using wireless, transmits data to a laptop.Physical actions are detected using three sensors connected to the interface. The actions of the skateboard i.e. turns, acceleration and vibration are processed using flex sensors, a photoresistor and piezo sensor. Midi data is then transferred to the used software programme to allow the skateboard to control and modify real time sound.

http://www.therealsimon.com/videos/day2.mp4> (video of rolling of the wheels)

http://www.therealsimon.com/videos/3rdrail/1b.mp4 (Video demo of turning with the board)

Are the possibilities really endless of what can be used as a midi controller, I'm really starting to think so!

The Guitar is dead!

Well not quite. But imagine if you could play the guitar without having a real guitar by your side. The ultimate portable guitar!
While looking through websites I found a guy named Shu Uesugi who has designed a new arduino based "air guitar interface" using a nintendo wii nunchuck and a golf glove with added flex sensors.
Shu used arduino hardware.
Shu has designed a code in arduino which is then sent out to the hardware device that contains the oaths to the flex sensors, wii controller and to the sample library of guitar sounds (jfugue).
The wii nunchuck is used for its motion sensor, when it is motion down or up it is as if you are strumming the guitar, when the nunchuck button is pushed in it is as if you are picking notes, the two other buttons on the wii remote allow you to shift up an octave and to get distorted guitar sounds. The flex sensors on the golf glove is then used to hit the different notes as if it were a fretboard.
The design has its flaws and you obviously need to be connected to the computer to change your samples depending on what scale etc. you are wanting to be in. The idea however is genius, surely this will at somepoint take of in the games industry to take over the guitar hero style guitar playing and at one point or another could really change the way we think of building and playing real musical instruments.

Air Guitar from Shu Uesugi on Vimeo.

Gaming with music

Looking through random game pages on the internet, I found this interview with Neil D. Voss, the composer of Tetrisphere for the Nintendo64 and Racing gears for the gameboy advanced. These may not be highly acclaimed as pivotal games but his composition work on Tetrisphere earned him the best soundtrack award from "nintendo power".

This isn't too techy as such but writing music for video games is something that really interests me, and writing music for older consoles (although the N64 isn't too old it is still only 64 bit) a very interesting area. The interview itself is a good insight into a games composers view on writing for such a console.

http://uk.ign64.ign.com/articles/060/060225p1.html

First Posting

Ok, so i've had my first performance technology class and have left baffled,confused,excited and inspired with the workings of maxmsp. This is something i'm definitely going to have to get my hands dirty with and start working on as soon as possible!
In the mean time I was doing the usual youtube surfing looking for new ways to enjoy my ableton live software when i came accros this video of somone using their ipad as an ableton controller... who'd have known that the ipad would actually be useful for something!



the drum machine touch pad at around 1:30 is awesome!
If apple or any other competing company spend more time and money utilising ipad technology with this sort of musical integration, things are going to get very exciting!