▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌ BURNING PIPES @ Selector Festival ’11
(- HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED -) !
▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌ BURNING PIPES – The Pneumatic Orchestra
Kinetic audiovisual installation for burn
displayed during burn Selector Festival 2011
Movement of the cans is controlled by 9 independent servos connected to the Arduino board while the sound is purely analogue – air pumped by 9 ordinary mattress pumps blows into the “whistles” at the top of plexiglass pipes. Tone is modulated by the current position of the can.
Encountered the Ululatron before?
Here is some background info on it that I found in a forum:
The principle behind building it is very simple, although it can be time consuming. It is based around getting 555-based LED flasher circuits to trigger key hits on the keyboard. A 555 flasher circuit is very simple to build (see the Tiny Tremolo thread for an example – although that one is CMOS, which we don’t need for this project). I can post the specific layout of the circuit I used later. I experimented with some parts to get the most play out of the pots I was using, but it’s a pretty standard LED flasher.
1. Open up the keyboard you want to use. Inside you will find a long strip of contacts where the keys, when struck, make a connection that in turn makes the keyboard make a sound. Get rid of the keys and the rubber pads–you won’t need them. On the contact strip you will find that each key makes contact between two points (these will either be small copper pads or squiggles). Use a knife or something to scrape off the coating on the contact points to expose the copper underneath. Now, do some experimenting by touching a piece of wire in between various contact points. In my keyboard (and you can see this reflected in the design) the contact points were divided up into six groups. Each group of six connected to a common contact point. It looked something like this:
C C# D D# E F F# G G# etc.
——————————
1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 etc.
If you see what I mean. Each keyboard will be slightly different, but in every one you will find that a group of notes connect to a common. You can also figure this out simply by following where the copper traces go. Figure out how many groups of notes your keyboard has – this will be how many timer circuits you will need to build. My keyboard had 6 groups on a 32 key keyboard – 5 groups of 6 notes with two notes left over on their own circuit.2. This is the tedious part: Solder a wire to every contact point on the keyboard contact strip. For the common nodes you only have to solder one wire to one of them–this will be the pole connection on your rotary switch.
3. Build the timer circuits. Make sure to connect two LEDs to each circuit – one will drive the photoresistor in a DIY vactrol and one will be a rate indicator.
4. Build the vactrols. All this is is a photoresistor (LDR) that a blinking LED shines on. You will need to encolse the pair in a light-tight package. Don’t use electrical or duct tape – these come unsticky and your vactrol will pull apart. You could do duct tape covered in hot glue, or one brilliant solution I saw was modelling clay (the kind that doesn’t dry out)
5. Get as many single pole rotary switches as you need (one for each group of notes). Solder each of the wires coming from the individual key connections to a throw point on the switch. Solder the common node wire from the keyboard to one side of the photoresistor. Solder the center pole of the rotary switch to the other side of it. Now, you see that the blinking LED will connect or break the connection between the common node and the note wire by raising or lowering the resistance of the photoresistor (you need to use pretty high value photoresistors – mine were 500M Ohms at complete dark, which I think is pretty standard and more than enough to completely resist the small charge that signals the keyboard keys. Repeat the proces for all the groups of keys your keyboard has.
That’s it. Now the pots on your timer circuits will control the rate at which the vactrols signal the key hits. You use the rotary switch to dial in the notes you want. You’ll probably want to label where each note is on the rotary switch on your enclosure.
Disclaimer: There are some weird keyboard designs out there. I can say that if you have a Yamaha PSS-50 this project is easy as pie. I have seen some weird configurations inside keyboards though. I do think, however, that they pretty much all work on the same principle. Some keyboards will be better than others for this particular mod.
Exploring chaotic sound synthesis
Double Pendulum Music is an autonomous installation, nonlinearity and chaos are explored sonically (chaotic sound synthesis) and visually (chaotic motion). Establishing itself somewhere between generative composition and kinetic sculpture, the chaotic motion of a double pendulum is used as a source of uncertainty to create chaotic harmonic and rhythmic auditory events in real-time. The natural laws at work create complex aural and visual behaviour from simple interactions. As a result, the events heard and seen are never the same twice, making Double Pendulum Music a celebration of unpredictability and sensitivity.
Sound synthesis realised in the SuperCollider programming language. Recorded at Modes sound exhibition, Truman Brewery London, 5th June 2011
For more info: theblackplume.com
Time stretching experiment: Dial-up sound 700% slower
This would fit very well in a horror movie, hehe
You know how when you slow a Justin Bieber song down by 800%, you get a neat ambient track? Well if you do this kind of thing with the most horrible sound in the world OH MY GOD I CAN NEVER SLEEP AGAIN
This was made with a program named PaulStretch, which can make this sort of thing from any sound files. I edited the final product a bit to remove long silences and some white noise length, and to try to even the volume out a bit. It can be downloaded here: http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/
You can now download it on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/bujold/dial-up
Exploring relationships between sketches and sounds
Illusio is an open source digital musical instrument that allows the control of real-time recorded loops through collaborative and ludic performances based on relationships between sketches and sounds. Developed in Processing and Openframeworks, it mixes multitouch technologies with the interaction metaphor of guitar pedals.
The project is also open source and the code, that may allow the instrument to be ported to others plataforms like Android, iPad and cardboard boxes (yes! using this http://sethsandler.com/multitouch/mtmini/), will be released soon.
This is possible due to the independence of the gui module (developed in processing) and the looper module (developed in openframeworks).
for the communication between both, it was used OSC protocol.Some pictures can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeraman/sets/72157626935130739/
AudioGL Pre Beta Demonstration – Tech Demo
Some more details on the AudioGL project.
This video features a patching demonstration, and an entire track written with one monophonic oscillator.
Tracks are available at audiogl.bandcamp.com
AudioGL, a project teased in videos first in April and then again last week, is a new concept in designing a user interface for real-time music creation. Visuals and sound alike are generative, with the rotating, 3D-wireframe graphics and symbolic icons representing a kind of score for live synthesized music. The tracks in the video may sound like they’ve been pre-synthesized, polished, and sampled from elsewhere, but according to the creator, they’re all produced in the graphical interface you see
New open source digital musical instrument
Illusio is an open source digital musical instrument that allows the control of real-time recorded loops through collaborative and ludic performances based on relationships between sketches and sounds.
Developed in Processing and Openframeworks, it mixes multitouch technologies with the interaction metaphor of guitar pedals.
Concept and development by Jeraman, finalized in 2011.
Footage by Kamilla de Souza.
Developed with the support of Rumos Itaú Cultural Arte Cibernética 2009.
For further informations, check this site (only in portuguese):
jeraman.info/illusio
Chronicle of a Summer of Invention
Sonic wizard Jeff Blenkinsopp and guitarist Alan McSeveney have been collaborating on the software/hardware system that is going to create the sound of Kino Live for the upcoming psychedelic experience.
Almost everything is impossible in chromatic tuning
Starting with a (Just) second interval (A and B chord) and moving around to the different As and Bs in Pythagorean tuning to show that this sound engine is richer than it appears. Almost everything is impossible in normal chromatic tuning. You can’t produce any real intervals other than the octave with it, and you can’t produce these mirages of chords that aren’t actually being played like this.
Cymbal at 1,000 frames per second
Pretty amazing stuff 
www.fluke.com/vibrations
Explore the world of vibration at 1,000 frames per second.
Like what you see? Check out our See the Unseen compilation at http://youtu.be/W4s2UwKm7dc.
Directed by Propadata Films. Filmed on a Phantom HD Gold camera.
Vibration. See the unseen.
DATAMASKIN
