compusition

This weekend I added a few new goodies. There's a couple more Processing sketches and videos. Here's the sketches:

rotations

poi_bounce

When I'm experimenting with Processing I mess around with the code a lot and try various parameters and randomizations. These sketches don't capture all the interesting things I encounter during a coding session. So I decided to try generating some videos with the rotations sketch.

I've gotten into Processing lately. It's pretty sweet. I've been meaning to do more with generative graphics and animation and now I have a good tool to explore with.

Check out my first Processing app here → square_flower

(Ok maybe it's not my first, but it is the first one I thought cool enough to post here)

If you don't know what Processing is, it's an easy-to-use language focused on programming (potentially interactive) graphics and animation. Here's the official Processing site if you want to know more.

I haven't been very good about updating this site or my software so far this year. I am still doing lots of computer music stuff, though! I changed priorities back in December/January and started trying out lots of new software in order to expand my horizons, educate myself on what's out there, and get new ideas for my own software.

One result of this exploration was I switched over to Ableton Live as my primary environment for making music. Coming from Logic I wanted to continue using Logic's instruments, but I found this was a pain in the ass to accomplish and I had to spend a lot of time experimenting.

For posterity's sake, and because it's past time for me to put some actually interesting/useful content on this site again, I'm writing a series of articles about using Live and Logic together. Article #1, the Overview, can be found here with more to follow soon.

[Update: June 20, 2009] I've posted the second article, MIDI Routing.

I'm pretty much committed to Max/MSP as my platform of choice for patcher-style visual programming environments, but I realize there's people out there who are going to go with the free option instead of dishing out money for commercial software. From what I've heard in the blogosphere, Pd seems to be the typical choice.

Written for Camel Audio's Alchemy song competition.
More info.

January 28, 2009 - 8:18pm — Adam

I recently made a feature request to Sonic Charge to expose more control of their Synplant synthesizer to my MIDI controller. Specifically I wanted to plant a new random seed at the press of a button on my keyboard. Little did I know how quickly I could get this feature.

This is a follow up to my previous posting on the hunt for a good keyboard controller.

I checked out the Novation Remote 37SL, M-Audio Axiom 49, and Akai MPK49 in person.

I've needed a better compact MIDI controller for a long time, but keep blowing my hobby money on software (damn you Max for Live for turning me into an Ableton user... ). It's about time I got a decent input device. Right now I mostly use an M-Audio Oxygen 8, and it's a cheap piece of crap. Maybe "crap" is too harsh; it was inexpensive entry-level hardward and I got what I paid for. To it's credit, it has served me well for the past 7 years. Now I'm ready for more. My software tools are incredibly powerful, I don't want my input device holding me back.

There's a lot of options out there these days, so I'm doing research to make an informed decision. Since many computer musicians have to make this somewhat difficult decision too, I'm going to post my notes here. Just keep in mind my decision will ultimately be based on personal preference.

MIDI is one of the most common formats for computer music. It's incredibly useful. But there's one place it's seriously lacking support: on the world wide web. Wouldn't it be nice if Flash could serve as an interactive MIDI playback engine (potentially with MIDI I/O) right in your browser? It could... Adobe just needs a little prodding!

Want to help? Sign up for a bug tracker account on Adobe's site and vote for this issue: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-123 (there's a Vote link on the left side of the page). You only need to enter a name and email address to signup. It will only take a moment.

Tonight I threw together a little Max/MSP patch so I can control preset changes in the modular sequencing program Numerology (http://five12.com) with my monome. I think this will be a nice performance interface. It's designed for a monome 64/40h (http://monome.org/40h) but the technique could certainly be extended for one of the larger versions.

The basic idea is there are 8 racks in Numerology, each with 8 presets. The Monome's columns correspond to the racks and the rows to the presets.