... some of my major instrument-developments, including programming projects (max/msp) and designs of physical controllers.
background
instrument-design on the one hand and developing/practicing playing-techniques on the other are complementary, in that one guides the other. it is this mutual influence that fuels developments. it is the source of results that very unlikely can be achieved, when this feedback-process is too loose. the more individual/personal the way of music-making is, the closer has to be the fit between the instrument and the playing. techno or pop does not even need a musical instrument, because the instrument is actually the mass media. music production (also of "indis") is an industrial process: mostly imitation and repetition. copy paste. for that you need cool tools, which you use until they are out/uncool.
the good thing about this industry is, that it is like a forest, where the knowledgeable instrument-maker has the chance to find a piece of wood for a stradivari. the piece of wood becomes a stradivari only in both, the hands of the instrument-maker and the hands of the instrumentalist. both of which could belong to one person.
see also: >ombOS-concept,
... my main performance-environment
ombOS (max/msp, simon2002-2011, current vers.2.1)
>manual_1.61, >manual_2.0, >ombOS_concept,
Problem: during life-performance with a wind-controler and synths it is not really feasible to change settings direclly on the hardware and survey several peaces of software.
Solution: integration of all aspects of synthesis, signal-routing and control in a single structure. In particular: realtime-control of two physical-modelling hardware-synths, a physical modelling soft-synth, two soundfont-based voice-generators, a cascaded preset-management, 12-chan-recording and other moduls and functions.
ombOS vers.2.1 includes all features, useful for my instrumental concept and has grown the most extensive max-msp-program i have seen. It is remarkable stable and does not exceed the CPU of a 2.8Ghz intel-based macbook pro. Since i operate the windcontroller at the same time the interface has to show all the essential states and should to be modifiable with minimum interactions.
aL00p (max/msp, simon2003-11, current vers. 1.1) manual>
audio-looper particularly for practicing purposes. You can use e.g. drum/baselines to play along with your own instrument, or to learn/transcribe a solo. You can change the tempo and pitch independently and easily set the loop-section of a loaded track, stop/start playback from your midi-instrument, even with an automatic offset and more features.
dmx_control >manual
is a standalone program to assign midi to connected lighting or other equipment and to manually/automatically control its behavior in real-time. It also allows to quickly change complex lighting-setups in a performance via presets.
There is a version called DMXer and which is a module of the ombOS system.
vl1proto (max/msp, Intel/PPC, simon2008-,
current vers. 0.3)
>manual
Problem: Programming a synth with physical modelling (Yamha VL1m) is complex, considering the thousands of interrelated parameters and a vage knowledge of what effect particular parameters and parameter-combinations have. Also, the original editor is getting more and more out of reach (MacOS classic) and there is no complete version for OSX. Finally, vl1proto attempts to test and studie new ways of (voice-) editing.
Target: First of all, all functions, message-exchange, and all data should be mirrored in a handy form. Second, a protocoller would be helpful to retrace and reconstruct programming-sessions. Third, it should allow to comment on certain protocol-entries and thereby generate a knowledge-bank. Forth, there should be mechanism to retrieve knowledge concerning particular parameters/-groups. Future: a full featured voice-editor, overlayed andextended by other programming-approaches (neural net, knowledge-retrievel,..). Research-project on describing and generating musical features.
Status: Targets1-3 is working well.
practiceTime
(since 2007, ongoing) suite of applications that aim at supporting music-students (and myself) in practicing timebased aspects of music, proividing dynamic visual feedback (project for Fa Wohlhart).
Metradar 1.1 >>manual
Metropendel 0.3
Strobo 0.2
applications related to this program-suite:
Skyline 0.9
ml00p, al00p
tiphop (practice keyboard-writing)
WAX developments hardware:
modifications to the yamaha wx5, e.g.:
WAX & WAX2 ergonomic interface studies
WAX3 one-handed instrument
WAX-vibra
Experimenting with a powered resonance-speaker built into the wax and feed it with the sound coming from the phones. Turnes out to significantly enrich the playing experience... >more
vl70_ctr
little program that runs on OSX PPC and controls a Yamaha synth vl70-m. It is a stripped down version of a program I use in performances, allowing to controle my synths from the powerbook and freeing me from using the buttons/displays on the synths.
vl70ctr reads voice-files from your harddisk to the vl70-m, which is nice if you want to use more than 6 custom voices. It allows to control volume, pan, reverb etc. and there's also a little recorder. Read the info-file for some help.
There are two .syx-files included (from preset) to demonstrate possible file-location and the behavior of the patch. Note that I use (13-part) .syx-files (=current voice) as opposed to (15-part) custom slot files. My way to do it is to edit voices in expert-editor (os9), transfer them with "sysex-librarian" and use them in vl70ctr (solved in vl70_ctrl). Worked nicely for me.
skyline vers 0.9 (2001-4)
mini-app: control two metronomes to create amazing sounds/rhythms
start audio
dac: audio prefs, select device/channel
six presets to choose from
help: this
left/right section represent voice1 and voice2:
un/mute
beats/min (drag up/down)
ratio between beat and a sub-beat
drawing pane: frequency profile for each voice
volume slider
panning slider
reverb time slider
high frequency rolloff slider
dry/wet ballance slider
zmoel around 1999, orig. written on PD
a little gimmic i wrote on the basis of a code-snippet
of j. zmoelnig (IEM pd-developer). This runs on OSX G4 POWERBOOKS and
uses the interference of the internal mic with the internal speakers,
to generate sounds that can be controlled by the two sliders. additionally
you can use your fingers, breath and voice (near the mic-location on
the powerbook) to seed sound-feedback.
in that zmoel demonstrates and celebrates the "eigen"-sound
of the powerbook, it is - in a way - the mother of powerbook-music.
be sure to set audiosetup to built-in audio (internal mic/speakers)!
