More Music with Plants and other things

Well, we where discussing music with plants yesterday and I came across the following on Create Digital:

you can see more at theNK workshop Myspace page 

The basic technology here is the theremin coupled with Pd (which is another form of MaxMSP.

 

Peter Mc

MIDIfilter software

 Dear Composers
the software that I showed on Monday that filters out MIDI notes has been put up on the Box.net widget. It should run on Windows but you will need Max Runtime (which you download and use for free). Open Runtime first then open the MIDIfilter.mxf file into Runtime.

The way it works is that you take MIDI from software that is playing/generating MIDI and then filter the notes and send it to some software to make the sound and/or record the filtered MIDI information.

Note also that I have included a transpose function the transposes with different settings for each MIDI channel. I often find it useful to transpose one instrument in Nodal up or down an octave.

Anyway have fun and let me know re bugs etc.

Multi-touch controller

This is a fantastic use of technology – it may be of interest to some of you. Related technologies include:

JazzMutant’s Lemur

reacTable

Microsoft’s Surface

More comments:

Multi-touch control I think will become very important for computer music for a number of reasons;

1) it enables simultanious control (obviously)

2) it enables relational, as opposed to parametric control (as slider or knob gives parametric control whereas moving one finger in relation to another to resize a photo is relative).

3) it enables software t be used as a social space (realtime control by more than one person).

4) 3 above encourages software design as an environment or object with properties that we can interact with (just like acoustic instruments) as opposed to the ‘computer as machine” metaphor where it is controlled by settings (knobs, dials, levers buttons etc). We perceive the world by interacting with it and our perceptual system has evolved through this interaction. Therefore it seems to me that computer music that will be most strong or interesting to us will best be created using means of generation and control that are similar to those of the interactive physical world.

What is particularly interesting about Randy Jones’ ingenious design is that he is able to include pressure sensitivity. This is an important form of control in sound making. The design sacrifices visual feedback at the control surface but this may not be a big issue because tactile response is often a dominant sense in music making. The next stage is to provide Haptic feedback . Mobile phones and gaming technology provide for this at a low level and there is scope developments here. 

Peter Mc