YouTube SuperCollider Overview

A one minute overview of using SuperCollider posted on YouTube. The YouTube page is here.

Percussa AudioCubes

I've been interested in alternative controllers like the AudioCubes so I was interested to hear that they are coming up with a beta version of an SDK written as a C-based library and designed to integrated with the C++ JUCE framework. No, I don't know what that is, either, but it sounds good...

Today's SuperCollider Links

I continue to be a fan of the open source computer music language SuperCollider which can produce some amazing sounds. I confess to being somewhat of a preset tweaker myself, though many neurons ago, I did spend a lot of time trying to create my own instrument patches in SC as well as CSound. I still seek out SC documentation and examples on the web. Here are a few from the latest round-up:

• Tour of the Unit Generators
• Nick Collins' course on Computational Music 1 and Computational Music 2
• Guide to downloading and installing the latest SC 3 Build in OS X
• The original but deprecated audiosynth page from SC 2
• The Sourceforge Page with links and resources to the eList, Wiki, nightly builds

MuO musical objects for Squeak

I briefly caught the SmallTalk bug in the early 90's when I was interested in algorithmic composition. These days, music programmers like Stéphane Rollandin are writing for the open source version called Squeak.

Stéphane is porting his MIDI/Csound GeoMaestro environment to Squeak as MuO, and it looks pretty interesting.

Synaesthesia and SuperCollider

Here's a SuperCollider-oriented blog that contains some good stuff:

Synaesthesia and the Affect of Programming in SuperCollider
Forming a relationship with [SuperCollider] code in order to realise the body as an immersive environment.

A few plug-ins I'm trying out this week

Here are a few of the plug-ins I'm trying out this week (in Logic, my DAW) and why:

	Pianoteq 2.3 I already can make really nice piano sounds with the Logic 8 EXS24-based sampler presets (Bosendorfer, Steinway, Yamaha) but this is a physically-modeled piano, not a sample-derived player, so it has a low footprint (at the expense of CPU cycles) and presumably, greater sonic flexibility. I'm hoping to get some unusual sounds that depart from what you might expect a piano to sound like.
	Automat1 1.01 I don't use subtractive synthesis all that much, but this one is freeware so I usually pick up a couple of things like this and see if I can make any good sounds quickly.
	Automaton This is by Audio Damage, and I'm a big fan of their plug-ins. This might evolve into some interesting things if feed the right source input sounds.
	Nodal This might be overly complicated, but it looks like an interesting user interface which may or may not generate interesting music.

SoundHack Delay Trio plug-ins

Tom Erbe, the developer of SoundHack, today released a new version of the freeware SoundHack Delay Trio plug-ins.

All three are derived from a hermite interpolated delay line with variable modulation, and a feedback loop with DC blocking and saturation. Pitch shifting is achieved with a dual head crossfading delay (ala Eltro Tempophon/Dennis Gabor/Pierre Schaeffer phonogene) and is decidedly low-fi. The saturating feedback also allows them to be great drone and noise generators.

The three plugins are +delay, which presents all classic delay effects; +pitchdelay, which is essentially the same plugin with controls oriented toward pitch shifting; and finally +bubbler, which is a granular delay in which grains are pulled from the delay line with randomized start time, delay time and pitch shift.

Version 6.05 can be considered the first real release. Windows users should uninstall previous versions. Windows is for VST and RTAS, Mac is for VST, RTAS and AU, all are freeware.

Windows - http://music.ucsd.edu/~tre/soft/SDT605.zip
Mac - http://music.ucsd.edu/~tre/soft/SDT605.dmg
Manual - http://music.ucsd.edu/~tre/soft/SDT605Manual.pdf