Happy Place is the most beautiful processing project I have ever seen.
Until I saw Substrate.
Masami Teraoka's Art Theatre is totally gorgeous, terrifying and hilarious. The work references well known paintings (Botticelli's Venus) or styles (Medieval Tryptichs) and incorporates modern body horror/splatter/S&M characters.
If you can decipher Gieskes.nl, does it mean you can understand it? He has the craziest blog software in the world, either that or he spends a lot of time assembling posts made up of gifs of individual letters.
Judging from the
music instruments he invents, maybe he does just sit around making posts of individual pictures of letters.
Yikes!
Processing 1.0 (BETA) is a. errr....
Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an open-source alternative to commercial software tools in the same domain.Yeah.
It looks purty, too.
Arboretum Systems has released a new version of HyperEngine-AV as freeware which is a pretty awesome thing.
I just downloaded it, and am checking it out. I'm more interested in audio tracks than the video side, but if I like it I'll post more.
From bastwood.com, a little bit about the sound in a song that was a demon face. Well, Richard's anyway.
No really, Sound on Sound has an article called BEAT THE SYSTEM which supposedly tells you how to build your own electronic drum kit.
The catch? They only tell you what items you need, but not really how to actually put them together.
iCompositions, a site by GarageBand enthusiasts for enthusiast, has released a new page iCompositions Tools, which tracks all of the various things people and companies have made to go with Garageband. I would recommend specifically the Software and iCompositions Tools - Audio Units pages as very useful resources.
I've been using protools LE and the two digis a bit more, so I've been snooping around for an online ProTools Community.
I found one. Does anyone know of another one? Let me know, thanks.
I am enjoying listening to music (for robots)
Me am so happy, am I not man?
G from Yow* Digital Media Software is some sort of DJ application that I'll download and try someday.
Microsoft has a disagreeably facetious type glossary on their typography website, which is actually pretty funny.
Actually, Microsoft's Typography website in general is pretty good, so if you're interested in typeface design, you should check it out.
I have lots of friends into [ xerox art ].
DAM1ER, John, this one's for you.
If you're stupid cool like some people I know, you can go to Beowulf on Steorarume and have a nice read through of the Beowulf Semi-Diplomatic Edition (strictly habibi--little of this so-called moderne englisc allowed, except some notes).
If you're a grade-a lame-o (negative) like myself who can barely comprehend something simple like Middle English, you'll have to read the Bilingual Edition.
Extra treat: check out the mp3s of Ben Slade reading Beowulf Old English. It's really cool. You can almost understand it when it's read, sort of. If you also speak german & finnish, maybe.
So. What are you're thoughts on Niw Englisc as a possible common tongue for the New World Order?
I wrote this to apple, using their feedback page:
First of all, great job. I'm not just saying that to butter y'all up. Garage band is a great product at a great price. It is truly what I've been wanting for a long time, a simple easy to use replacement for the venerable cassette 4-track.
But you knew that. I have a few suggestions, from a prosumer user (Ed market, light (as in short educational projects) ProTools, FinalCut and ACID use ):
1) There needs to be a way to import ACID loops. I know they're not as good as Apple loops, but there's a million of em, and a lot of us own them already. I spent a good bit of time trying to get acid loops into GB today, and when it works at all it's a pain... I own over 5 GB of Acid Libraries, and they are very useful. If I can't use them in GB, I'll cry. No, not really. But I'll probably be really disappointed. =)
To sum up: Either add support for a drag/convert for Acid Loops in GB, or add a batch convert function to the Soundtrack Loop Utility where you can take a selection/folder/disk of Acid wavs and convert them to Apple Loops in the Garage band folder.
2) What about making a loop in GarageBand? I just made a stupid four measure piano arpeggio in a track, and then tried to drag it down to the loop browser, assuming that it would prompt me to name and catalogue the loop, so I could use it later. I was totally surprised when it didn't, and figured there must be another way. There doesn't seem to be. I even tried saving it as a GB file and opening it with the SLU, but that didn't work either. I should be able to select a region in a track and choose "convert to loop" and have it be saved in my loop library, preferably in a special folder where "myLoops" are saved.
3) The Soundtrack Loop Utility (shouldn't you rename that to Apple Loop utility?) needs an update. First, it needs to be able to open user made loops created in GarageBand (see #2 above). Secondly, it needs a batch convert function for Acid loops (see #1 above). Third, the browser for when you open sound files needs to tell you a few more things: bit-depth, length, # of beats if available, and have a preview function so you can ear the sound you're thinking of opening. Fourth, it should always be able to save a sound as an Apple Loop (for example, if you open an Acid file)
4) Speaking of Soundtrack, I noticed that Gb and ST store their loops in separate locations--this is fine. But unless I missed something, they can't tap into each others loops which is sort of lame. I suggest adding the ability to both to look in multiple places for their loop library, so that users can maximize their loop library while saving disk space (it looked like there might be a bit of overlap between the two libs).
5) By the way, what about Audio Units? There are a number of decent AU instuments available (some are free!), and some are installed on my machine. It seems like you have your own special virual instrument for making the Software Instrument tracks, and it's very nice, but I'd like to use Zebra and Airysynth too. Audio Units are maybe your most exciting technology (to me, anyway), and I don't understand why you wouldn't take advantage of them... especially when you do take advantage of the AU effects (which is nice). I won't bother to ask you for VST support, since I don't care about it, but other people might as well. Again, this is about maximizing both your users software assets and GarageBand's usefulness.
It turns out that you can use AU instruments in GarageBand, it's just a little bit hidden. Thanks to balconycollapsee
, here's the steps to use AU instruments:
6) Integration, file this suggestion under "and I'd also like a pony:" I think this may already be possible (albeit kludgy), but it would be nice to be able to use GB with other applications, specifically Reason, in my case. It woul be awesome if GB was Rewire-able, and I guess there's other standards too. Bt Rewire is the one I care about.
Via die puny humans (what else?), I came across the The ROZZ-TOX Manifesto, written by Gary Panter circa 1980
Law: If you want better media, go make it.Yes sir.
Note to self: update the mp3 page =\
The (or is that "da") hip hop crib has a Reason Support Group that looks intriguing.
I haven't posted in a month?
Berklee School of Music has decided to join the fun of giving things away with Berklee Shares: free music lessons.
Hey wait, don't go to the next entry yet! They have DJ lessons, like this one on crabs for turntable djs, which is hilarious if you've ever taken a music lesson before--mainly the way the teacher exhorts you to "work each individual finger, one finger at a time, slowly and then build up speed."
It's good advice, of course, but it's funny because the teacher is so straight-sounding--he doesn't once say hype, dope or live, or talk about beats at all.
Hey DAM13R! Are you checking this out?
Did I ever tell you about my Photogallery at the LightRoom Photo Community?
Have a look see!
It's a given that no matter how many strange things you've seen, you haven't seen them all. Innocent web surfing led me to a page about Yu-Mex, or Mexican music in 1950s Yugoslavia. Yeah, that's right. Apparently it was all the rage.
Of course, it all gets back to Stalin and Tito. Apparently after the famous breakup, Yugoslavia needed a new source of popular culture, and they chose Mexico:
it was far away, the chances of Mexican tanks appearing on Yugoslav borders were slight and, best of all, in Mexican films they always talked about revolution in the highest terms. How could an average moviegoer know that it was not the Yugoslav revolution?Of course, it's easy to laugh at things like this.Emilio Fernández's Un Día de vida (1950) became so immensely popular that the old people in the former republics of Yugoslavia even today regard it as surely one of the most well known films in the world ever made although in truth it is probably unknown in every other country, even Mexican web pages don't mention it much. The Mexican influence spread to all of the popular culture: fake Mexican bands were forming and their records still can be found at the flea markets nowadays.
Mainly because they're really funny.
Did I mention that there's a bunch of mp3s on the site?
Take a look art this Digital Conductor MIDI Conducting Device. It's pretty neat.
An email conversation with a friend instigated a quick and lazy websearch for information on how to make musical instruments, and I found one on doing it with trash.
If you know me personally, you know this page pleased me for obvious reasons.
There's a very geeky article over at seneschal.net covering the audio arcitecture of Mac OS X.
If you were curious, now's the time to click.
Airy has released a 303-like toy, called AU303.
Wheee. It's fun. It is sort of a toy, but I guess it might be interesting to see how far it can be pushed. If you download it, and you have no idea what to do next, follow the install instructions and then download Rax to play around with it (Rax is a free Audio Unit host).
Have Fun!
No, not really.
But I just noticed that part of Final Cut 4 is an app/feature (I'm not sure which) called Soundtrack.
A heavily edited feature list:
Sounds like Acid to me. It even looks like Acid, sort of.
- Combine and arrange audio loops and sound effects to create original, royalty-free music soundtracks.
- Create music using a starter library with several thousand royalty-free instrument loops and sound effects.
- Combine and match loops of different tempos and musical keys in real-time — Soundtrack does it for you automatically, so you don't need to have a background in music.
- Import AIFF, WAV, and ACID format audio files, and get access to hundreds of third-party, multi-genre, royalty-free loop CDs.
I hope Apple realizes what they have and considers releasing it standalone (perhaps sans-video features) in the $99-250 price range.
As predicted, I have lost all interest in Squeak/Smalltalk. Now I'm all about Cycling '74's Max/MSP, now for OS X. It does pretty much what I thought I wanted smalltalk for, and as a bonus I can join Ms. Pinky's Interdimensional Wrecked System later, if I want to.
I haven't posted in awhile, just not in the mood. I am totally psyched up about os x and live music performance, even f it is more to the electronica end.
Don't care? look at Pete.Yandell.com's OS X Audio Links and start playing. I just downloaded a few pieces of freeware and now I have a functinoing synthesizer on my mac, sort of.
Well, kind of.
It's really cool, trust me.
When downmf does their next cd, I would like to suggest that it be titled Research and Destroy:
Actually, I'm just testing image uploading so I can start photoblogging.
Run!
If you like making music...or just noise, I guess...and you like doing it with a computer, it may be time to listen to Reason. Generally, that's a debate tactic, but in this case, I'm actually suggesting that you go to a website and listen to the crazy sounds put out by this software, called Reason.
So the AMG All Music Guide gave downmf's latest album 4 and one half stars, on a scale of one to five stars.
Neat.
My favorite part reads (in part):
...Peter Hanley and Janna Sendra make for a potent rhythm section.
You're god-damned right we do.
Antares has released this r33t and l33t new thing called kantos 1.0 audio controlled synthesizer.
You feed it an audio signal and it reacts by spinning audio synthesis around your input, and you can choose whether or not to mix in the original signal or not.
The page linked has some interesting examples...I suggest em to any electronica wannabes like myself, just to make you want this thing more.