Introducing a new electronic instrument at NAMM – The Slaperoo
The Slaperoo is a new electronic music instrument, introduced at the 2012 NAMM Show.
The Wind Speaker
In this film Espen Sommer Eide / Phonophani plays his new instrument the ‘Wind Speaker’. The instrument was designed and constructed by Eide in collaboration with the design studio Voy.
More here:
voyoslo.com/2012/01/the-wind-speaker-2/
Teenage Engineering OpLab Preview
The Oplab Musical Experimental Board allows you to interconnect virtually any electronic musical instruments. And finally it’s just plug and play. No more hassle with one box for MIDI and another for CV or a third for USB. Oplab has it all in one place. Just connect your cables, set the appropriate scenario and experience a perfect sync. You could use a mouse to bend pitch, or use an old hard drive as a scratch pad. You can even turn your own body into a musical instrument (great if you are in the business of interpretive dance or you’re a stripogram) by wearing the TS-1 sneaker. A sensor attached to the show will trigger when you stomp your foot to the ground, and could trigger a kick drum or any other sample.
For all of these nifty little ideas, check out the OpLab page on Teenage Engineering’s website.
Review of the Sketch Synth 3D v 1.0.4
Steelberry Clones got our hands on the newly released Sketch Synth 3D for a review (version 1.0.4). To best describe Sketch Synth 3D you can say that it is both a synth and a control interface that lets you shape and scalp your soundscapes in 3D. You can use it straight out of the box; but sketch synth also offers you the ability to extend and control your other synths in 3D using Midi output and OSC input & output. We made a short test run of the app on an iPad 2 featured in the video below:
Sketch Synth 3D has a quite different and “rough” UI that may take some time to get used to, but once you have gotten used to it, it is fairly easy to jump from different performance and editing modes. The sounds coming from the Sketch Synth 3D are quite intriguing and easy to manipulate. In one sense from a music creation perspective this app is somewhat what you could expect from an updated KORG Kaossilator. To draw sounds in 3D you can use a touchpad, accelerometers and automated envelopes. This gives you control over the shapes that your sounds take on. However, although beautiful and innovative we still feel that the app has some more steps to take before it is a viable alternative – especially seeing that the sketch pad tends to have glitches in the animation, we lack a sense of real flow in the animations. What is nice though is the ability to load samples and effectively manipulate otherwise fairly dry sounding sounds and take you music making to the next level – adding ambient feels to it. You can either use Sketch Synth’s sound engine to apply effects to samples (including wav files of your own), or you can use it to output OSC or MIDI to your existing synths.
Experimental Ambient Samples
Experimental Ambient Samples – Drums and Synth Loops, Ambient Sound FX Samples.
Bluezone Corporation is proud to present ‘Experimental Ambient Samples’ from AV Production. With this sample pack you have access to a collection of 225 twisted grooves, glitched synth loops, surprising sound effects and distorted drum samples. As all sample packs at Bluezone, this percussive and melodic sound library is available for digital download and does not require additional costs.
This download is an exploration of a new dimension of ambient music with atmospheric vibes, disturbing FX elements, evolving rythmical sequences with modern audio treatment. All the loops are presented at 100 bpm. ‘Experimental Ambient Samples’ includes 123 loops and 102 one shot samples in WAV format. This pack is loaded with low fi drums, twisted short and long sound FXs and many more elements really usefull for Film Score, Game Audio, Dubstep, Grime, Ebm, Drum and Bass, Industrial and Breakbeat. This cutting edge collection can be used License Free in any music production. If you want a new artistic vision, add this fine sound selection to your favorite sequencer.
Suitable for styles such as: Ambient, Chillout, Soundtrack, Game & TV series, Downtempo, Hip Hop, Urban, Breaks, House, Deep House, Lounge and Experimental.
Experimental Ambient Samples Contents:
• Percussion Loops
• Drum Loops
• Textures / Sound Effects
• Synth Loops
• Drum Samples
Technical Specifications:
• 186 MB Data / 229 Files
• Formats : WAV
• Recorded at 100 bpm
• Instant Download
• Requires Winzip or similar utility to unpack
• Suitable for use in all major sequencers
• Royalty-Free with no extra cost
• Ready to use in commercial production
http://www.bluezone-corporation.com/catalogue/details/90/6/products/experimen…
Experimental – Tessel, Kinetic Sound Installation
A kinetic sound installation investigating the perception of sound and space. Tessel is constituted of a suspended and articulated topography of 4 x 2 m, subdivided into forty triangles. Twelve of them are fitted with motors and eight are equipped with audio transducers, which transform the surface into a dynamic sonic space. A dialogue between space and sound is created through this sculptural “choreography”. Our perception is altered, as the surface slowly modifies its shape.
From Tinguely’s poetic machines to Alexander Calder’s mobiles or Buckminster Fuller’s synergetics, Tessel combines influences that question the link between geometry, movement and chaos, thus continuing the quest for beauty in the synesthetic perception of sound and spatial phenomenons. Its name is derived from “tessellation”, a term applied to the geometric subdivision of a surface into plane figures, also known as “tiling”. It also describes a software technique that allows calculation of renderings through the subdivision of surfaces into polygons. The term has its origin in the Latin word “tessella”, describing the square tiles used to make mosaics.
Tessel is a collaboration between French composer and artist David Letellier, and LAb[au], Belgian electronic arts studio. Tessel is a co-production of the galleries MediaRuimte (Brussels) and Roger Tator (Lyon), realised with the financial support of Arcadi, Dicream and the Commission des Arts Numériques de la Communauté Française de Belgique.
More info: http://www.davidletellier.net/works.html#tessel and
http://lab-au.com/
{cacophony} – sound installation
This sound installation depicts the possible problems of the flow of information. It tries to reflect the human misaudition, the lapse of information and the social problems which derive from these. The design is clear and it has a transparent structure. Using analog technology and ignoring complicated ones are all used to strenghten the expressiveness of installation.
After turning on the wlakman the tape starts to move. Each walkman plays the sound, which is on the tape, in a different point. However, the sound is the same the constants are chaotic. The reading points are not the same distance from each other. Some walkmans are louder while others are quieter so the consonants are not homogeneous. If you bend closer to the walkmans you can easily notice where they are in the course of replay.
Mogees – Gesture recognition with contact-microphones
In this video we show how it is possible to perform gesture recognition just with contact microphones and transform every surface into an interactive board.
Through gesture recognition techniques we detect different kind of fingers-touch and associate them with different sounds.
In the video we used two different audio synthesis techniques:
1- physic modelling, which consists in generating the sound by simulating physical laws;
2- concatenative synthesis (audio mosaicing), in which the sound of the contact microphone is associated with its closest frame present in a sound database.
The system can recognise both fingers-touches and objects that emit a sound, such as the coin shown in the video.
More details: www.brunozamborlin.com/mogees
Electronic music – 2012 Atomic New Year
http://youtu.be/4u8JL22hsD4
A short improvisation featuring HP and BK sine wave generators, prepared ambient recording, ring modulators, tape echo and a dash of reverb.
SmackTop is back! – Using your laptop as a MIDI
Imagine your laptop as a MIDI drum kit. SmackTop is an open-source application for Mac laptops which translates physical motion into MIDI messages. Through real-time analysis of the built-in accelerometer’s output, SmackTop is able to classify four different ‘smacks’. Now you can control your favorite DAW by simply tapping your computer. Slap samples, ping notes and hit record – SmackTop is the MIDI controller you already own.
Try it yourself, free:
DATAMASKIN
