MATRIXSYNTH: Monday, February 27, 2006

Admin Note: Updating Flickr Posts

Update: I haven't seen any new posts in Bloglines, so maybe this won't be bad at all. I wonder if there is a point where updates just don't show up anymore. So if you don't see them, this might be why.

No title link. If you are subscribled to my RSS feed with any of the popular readers, you might notice a bunch of Flickr posts being updated. I'm going through each and updating them with "Shot by xxxxx" where xxxxx is the name of the author on Flickr. I just finished February and will work through the rest of the archives over time. Right now I need a little break. It's amazing how many synth shots have come in via Flickr since I started this blog. Anywho... Apologies for the noise - beleive me, this isn't much fun for me either. Just ignore them or enjoy them all over again. : ) I'm also commenting in Flickr to let people know I am posting and linking to their shots. If you are one of them, please know that this is not me attempting to spam you. I originally did not comment for that reason, but then realized I should be letting people know when I link to them and post one of their shots. I'd want to know.

miniMusic BeatPad driving a Voyager and 909

Update2: Moogulator put up a post on this. The funny thing is that I completely missed the irony in the shot - a mighty knob ladden Voyager being driven by a tiny pda. Too funny. Thanks Moogulator!

Update: I should note that everything in the samples is being triggered by BeatPad - I am not using the 909 sequencer. Also you can sync to BeatPad, so I could have the 909 running its own sequence, synced to BeatPad and have BeatPad sequencing another synth though the 909 via the 909 MIDI through.

I just posted about the miniMusic MixPad. That post actually came about when I was setting up this post. I was playing around with BeatPad driving a Minimoog Voyager and a Roland TR-909 and I thought I'd put up a couple of samples and a link to miniMusic. When I checked out their site I found the new software. That aside... Title link takes you to a couple of samples and shots. Note that these samples are a bit long, daft and don't fully showcase what BeatPad is capable of. I was just dinking around. BeatPad has a super intuitive UI. There is one page for your main lead and one for your drum machine (pictured above - click the shot to see the individual parts). You can mute and solo different sounds on the drum grid and you can mute either the entire lead or drum section. In the lead section you can mute notes, adjust the length of the pattern , gate time, velocity, transposition and tie notes all on the fly. It's a blast to tweak things live. There are four things I wish it had - support for driving multiple lead sequences driving different MIDI channels at the same time (basically multi-track live sequencing), the ability to sequence MIDI CC independent of notes for things like filter, resonance and other modulations, the ability to save sequences, and the ability to flip back to saved or "sanp-shot" sequences. To clarify when you edit one of the 64 sequences available, the edits remain when you close out, so in that sense they are saved, but once you edit one there is no way to go back. I beleive you are supposed to just use a new track, but when you have multiple tracks previosly saved it can be painful remembering each track. Hmm... Add a fifth item - the ability to name your sequences for saving. Regardless BeatPad is pretty amazing - there is just something super intuitive in using a stylus to control your sequences. Believe it or not, it beats the pants off of a bulky knob box. I'm still in disbelief that a Pocket PC MIDI device/cable for external sequencing has not yet hit the market.

What's up with that?

miniMusic MixPad and More

I previously posted about updates to MiniMusic's Beatpad. Well it looks like they have more software coming including MixPad, a full featured MIDI file player/recorder/editor. Title link takes you to the miniMusic site.

"MixPad is a full featured MIDI file player/recorder/editor. It will let you take any raw MIDI file with you on your Palm and play on any connected MIDI hardware. MixPad differs from any other Palm MIDI file applications with powerful graphic support for simple viewing and quick editing.

Ideal for real performance situations, MixPad uses the Palm hardware buttons for playback control, allows you to lock songs to prevent unintended changes, and gives you a powerful real-time mixer interface to control channel volumes, panning, and solos and mutes for every track during playback. The main display gives smooth scrolling of all MIDI data (including velocities and controller data in the lower window) and full zooming functionality. We are also building in a full range piano controller to play along with the current file or to add a new track to an existing file, and some slider controllers as well that can be assigned to any MIDI controller value (pitch bend, volume, vibrato, etc.).

We expect to release a Lite version of MixPad that works only as a player/viewer, and a full Pro version with complete recording and editing features enabled.
Available soon for $19.95 (Player) and $39.95 (Pro)"

Zebranalogic - Analog from Peru

Trip. Title link takes you to Zebranalogic, makers of effects, a modulator, oscillators, and a soon to be synthesizer. They are based out of Lima, Peru. I dig the clear cases. I hope they do this with the synth. If they do, I'll have to buy one for that reason alone. Samples on line. This one via the great GetLoFi.

Korg Delta - New Flickr Shots

New shots by cigplanet.

Nice Rack - New Flickr Shot

Shot by mikest.

Sekiden - New Flickr Set

Title link takes you to more. Roland SH-101 and Juno-60 in the set. Shot by "x is for people."

Animusic MIDImotion

Title link takes you to the Animusic website. They created proprietary software they call MIDImotion that "plays" 3D animation with MIDI sequences. Each instrument has a different 3D animation. When you play a piece of music, the animation plays in sync. Unfortunately at this point they have not released MIDImotion for others, but they are considering it. Check out the video samples online to get an idea of what it is.

"Animusic uses proprietary motion generation software called MIDImotionTM, to drive animation parameters within commercial packages." "But no matter what commercial software we use, the animation is always calculated procedurally with MIDImotion. This software is not currently available commercially, although it is likely that we will release a software product at some point in the future (many people have encouraged us to do so). Details will be posted here.

Without MIDImotion, animating instruments using traditional "keyframing" techniques would be prohibitively time-consuming and inaccurate. By combining motion generated by approximately 12 algorithms (each with 10 to 50 parameters), the instrument animation is automatically generated with sub-frame accuracy. If the music is changed, the animation is regenerated effortlessly.

Moogulator on MySpace

Title link takes you to Moogulator's MySpace site. Pretty cool. Moogulator runs a number of sites including Sequencer.de and the Machinesound.de blog amongst others. When I think of the top synth sites out there and especially in Germany, I think of Moogulator and Sequencer.de.