IRCAM's ContinuuCon introduction to EaganMatrix

Published on Aug 4, 2018 Christophe Duquesne

"Introduction to the Eagan Matrix, the sound engine of the Continuum, at IRCAM's ContinuuCon on April 27th 2018"

New Haken ContinuuMini & Evaton µCVC Unveiled at IRCAM - Coming to SUPERBOOTH18

"Evaton Technologies shows uCVC at unveiling of Haken ContinuuMini at IRCAM

Evaton Technologies’ Russ Hoffman [left] was on hand at ContinuuCon Paris this weekend, at IRCAM, to demonstrate the µCVC Eurorack module in conjunction with the release of the new, more affordable, more portable version of Haken Audio Continuum, called the 'ContinuuMini'.

CLICK FOR MORE »

Inventor and Berkeley's Director of CNMAT, David Wessel, Has Passed Away

David Wessel, Berkley's director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, has passed away.  There will be an open house on Friday, October 17, from 1PM - 6PM for those that want to pay their respects. You can find details here.  People are also leaving their condolences on his Facebook Page here.

For those not familiar with David Wessel, there is a great interview with him on the Cycling 74 website from 1999 here.  From that interview:

"David Wessel is Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley where he directs the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Wessel worked at IRCAM between 1979 and 1988; his activities there included starting the department where Miller Puckette first began working on Max on a Macintosh. Since Wessel’s arrival in Berkeley over ten years ago, CNMAT has been actively involved in teaching Max/MSP as well as developing freely available Max-based software projects. In this 1999 interview with Gregory Taylor, Wessel talks about his musical background, his relationship with French composer and IRCAM founder Pierre Boulez, the origins of Max, and some perspectives on his current work."

Pictured and in the video below is David with his relatively new SLABS instrument and controller.  The instrument has been mentioned here on MATRIXSYNTH.  In 2011 he showed the instrument with the Eigenharp and Roger Linn's Linnstrument prototype at an event in San Francisco.


Uploaded on Jan 15, 2009 DavidLWessel

"Musical Demonstration of SLABS instrument with David Wessel on SLABS and Nils Bultmann on viola"

IRCAM ISPW (Ircam Signal Processing Workstation)

YouTube Published on Apr 17, 2012 by jbfairlight

via jbrairlight in the comments of 1996 MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) Synthesizer
IRCAM stands for the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique and is located in Paris. See the IRCAM label below for more including Buchla. Some posts that stand out include a Q&A on the Acxel II Resynthesizer and the Sogitec 4X and Spaceware on the PDP-1.

You'll spot a Fairlight and Synclavier in the above video as well.

Googlish translation of the YouTube description (original in French below):

CLICK FOR MORE »

1996 MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) Synthesizer

KEYS 5/1996 Max 3.0, MARS (IRIS) Realtime Sampling + Interview

KEYS 5/1996 Max 3.0, MARS (IRIS) Realtime Sampling + Interview from Jochen Bohnes on Vimeo.

"Die Klänge sind von der Begleit-CD des Magazin KEYS vom Mai 1996. Sie sind ausschliesslich mit der MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) erzeugt worden. Ich habe einige Bilder und Texte der MARS hinzugefügt." Googlish: "The sounds are from the accompanying CD-KEYS magazine of May 1996. They have been exclusively with the MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) is generated. I've added some pictures and texts of the MARS." Update vi Jochen in the comments: "... more about MARS: bohnes.de/mars.html (Translation soon)" Googlish here. Update via elgauchoandres in the comments: "If Giuseppe (Peppino) di Giugno was involved I guess that was a very unique piece. For those who doesn't known di Giugno he developed the 4X system for the IRCAM with Hal Halles (of the Halles synth fame) I wonder if the MARS was a mini 4X? references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_di_Giugno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogitec_4X http://mustudio.fr/?p=75 http://m.matrixsynth.com/2010/04/mr-braska-visits-mustudio.html [Jochen Bohnes is also a well-known personality, see the about page at bohnes.de.] " Update via jbfairlight in the comments [new post here with Googlish translation]: "For me the MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) system looks like a ISPW (Ircam Signal Processing Workstation) and less powerful ;) Look this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaCR-hYwyw and also It should also read the "ISPW" category (in french) : http://mustudio.fr/?cat=31"

BuchlaCelloScore

YouTube Uploaded by deb7680 on Dec 29, 2011

"A short video made ​​on a score with score editing Notion 3 which aims to play with the timbres cellos Bank IRCAM Solo Instruments and those of Buchla 200e of the mix, overlap them all .
A piece that is expected to be changed.

Une courte vidéo sur un score fait avec l'éditeur de partitions Notion 3 qui a pour objectif de jouer avec les timbres de violoncelles de la banque Ircam Solo Instruments et ceux d'un Buchla 200e, de les mélanger, de les faire se chevaucher ensemble.
Une pièce qui est appelée à être modifiée."

Update:

BuchlaEsquisses

Uploaded by deb7680 on Dec 29, 2011

"Esquisses a different version, this time with a part designed for the Buchla 200e, to test its integration into a score with many instruments and different musical timbres.
For now, just testing on the twelve-tone techniques.

Une version différente d'Esquisses, avec cette fois-ci une partie destinée au Buchla 200e, pour tester son intégration dans une partition avec de nombreux instruments et des timbres musicaux différents.
Pour l'instant, ce n'est qu'un test sur les techniques du dodécaphonisme/sérialisme."

MO : Modular Musical Objects

YouTube Uploaded by Ircam75 on May 5, 2011

"Interfaces modulaires pour la musique numérique.
"Interlude" est un projet de recherche qui explore de nouveaux moyens d'expression musicale à l'aide d'interfaces gestuelles. L'un des principaux enjeux du projet est de renouveler les manières d'interpréter et de jouer les musiques électroniques et informatiques.
Une partie du projet se concentre sur la conception d'objets modulaires "à terminer" et "à composer" laissant une possibilité d'adoption large aux utilisateurs. Ces objets sont des interfaces tangibles qui capturent un large éventail de gestes et d'actions. Les interfaces peuvent être assemblées en réseaux d'objets connectés sans fil afin d'en modifier l'usage.
L'édition 2011 du concours international Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument, qui récompense la conception de nouveaux instruments, a décerné son premier prix au consortium du projet Interlude coordonné par l'Ircam (équipe Interactions musicales temps réel, IMTR).

Projet Interlude : Ircam, Grame, Da Fact, Voxler, nodesign.net, Atelier des Feuillantines.

Un film de Simon Bouisson.
Avec la participation de Frédéric Bevilacqua, Julien Bloit, Jean-Louis Frechin, Fabrice Guédy, Uros Petrevski, Nicolas Rasamimanana, Norbert Schnell.
© 2010 | http://www.ircam.fr"

Googlish:
"Interface modules for digital music.
"Interlude" is a research project that explores new ways of musical expression with gestural interfaces. One of the main issues of the project is to renew the ways of interpreting and playing electronic music and computer.
Part of the project focuses on the design of modular objects "to finish" and "call" leaving a possibility of wide adoption for users. These objects are tangible interfaces that capture a wide range of gestures and actions. Interfaces can be assembled into networks of objects connected wirelessly to change the use.
The 2011 edition of the international contest Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument, which rewards the development of new instruments, has awarded its first prize to the project consortium coordinated by IRCAM Interlude (Time Musical Interactions Team Real IMTR).

Project Interlude: IRCAM, Grame, Da Fact, Voxler, nodesign.net, Feuillantines Workshop.

A film by Simon Bouisson.
With the participation of Frederic Bevilacqua, Bloit Julien, Jean-Louis Frechin Fabrice Guédy, Uros Petrevski, Nicolas Rasamimanana, Norbert Schnell.
© 2010 | http://www.ircam.fr"

Q&A on the Acxel II Resynthesizer and the Sogitec 4X

The Sogitex 4X is mentioned in the Q&A below. You can find more info on the Sogitex here. The following is some info from that site: "The Sogitec 4X digital synthesizer at IRCAM during the 1980's, was the direct result of Luciano Berio's demand that live electronic sound ought to consist of at least a 1000 sinewave oscillators (1), in order to be interesting for the composer and the audience alike. It was the last huge hardware, that IRCAM instigated before it turned to the ISPW and subsequently to software solutions in the shape of jMax and Max/MSP. The 4X's eight internal custom-built processors were capable of altogether 200 MIPS (2), which being the equivalent of 1000 sinewaves, 500 filters or 450 second order filters (3). Each processor contained a data-memory, an address-memory, a microprogram-memory and a function-memory. For calculations it used 24 bit fixed point units consisting of a multiplier, a arithmetic and logic unit. It also had 256 internal (programmable) clocks and a large dual buffer for recording and playing. The algorithms were cross developed on DEC en Sun mainframes in Fortran and C. (4&5)."

Q&A on the Acxell II via an anonymous reader:
Q: If i understand well,its posible to acxelize a complex sound source from a pre recorded wav with the soundbuilder then use this resynthezized model in acxelink mode again to be able to control that sound it real time via an external audio input (1 or more?)( each one )

CLICK FOR MORE »

Where are they now? IRCAM’s Buchla

Barry Threw dropped by this prior post on the IRCAM Buchla. He actually found it.

"Last week I was down in San Deigo working on some ongoing projects with Keith McMillen (of the BEAM Foundation) and Miller Puckette (of Max and pd fame), and ran into this gem, the Buchla 100 from Ircam, in a spare bedroom."

You can see and read more about it on his blog.

Udpate: see the comments of this post for more info as well. I removed the references to 100 from this post so there is no confusion.

Barry Schrader, Morton Subotnick and John Payne - CalArts studio B-304

"The following flickr stream was from CalArts studio B-304 taken in the fall of 1976 featuring Barry Schrader, Morton Subotnick and John Payne and a whole lotta Buchla 500. John as you may remember came up a couple of months ago on Matrixsynth in the posting regarding Mort's use of the 300 at Ircam [link]. He went on in later years to become the Assistant Dean of the CIA School of Music and founder of it's Music Tech department. Photo b_304.2 has a good view of the entire studio, save the three other JBL's which are out of frame (it was a quad studio - there was one in each corner)."

b_304.1 pictured.
"Barry Schrader, Morton Subotnick and John Payne stand in front of the Buchla 500 in CalArts' sudio B-304 in the fall of 1976."

via Peter Grenader. 


Posts featuring Barry Schrader
Posts featuring Morton Subotnic
Posts featuring John Payne

Update: As always check the comments for more info.

via Peter:

"There are two more 500's that I know off - at Evergreen and another somewhere in Europe (pardon the senior moment, i don't remember where exactly). This is not to say there aren't others...I'm just not aware of any. The one in the photo here was the first - the development system Don constructed while on staff at CalArts. I do know the 500 was adondoned quickly and resurfaced as the 300 series which included direct routing of computer control the various modules (259 VCO and 292C Gate for example) -and- the digital VCOs."

"the box screwed into the side of the main cabinet is a speaker selector which i f i remember correctly wasn't on line. Another bit of trivia - this was taken about the time of Mort's Game Room project that Gary Chang, Jill Frazer, Darrell Johansen, Sue Harvey and I worked on. The room next to 304 (other side of the wall which is shown behind the Buchla) was 305. It had a large 100 system (three cabinets) and for the Game Room we cut a hole in the base of that wall to run audio cables out from the tape machines to play quad audio snippets into the game area. This also took signals directly from the game board in 305 where signals were decoded and sent to the various controllers (audio, film, Buchla-controlled OCR light dimmers, etc.).

Against the other wall - opposite the one behind the 500 - was studi oB-303, which was pretty much a duplicate of this one sans the computer control - so it was a 200 studio, not a 500 studio. It also had the huge JBL monitors which were hung form the ceiling on metal brackets made by Chas Smith (which are still in place today). There's a photo of 303 at Barry's Schrader's website: link

Most people preferred working in 303, mainly because the 258's were easier to get to. On the 500 system they were all on the top row, which was a pain for most. The upside - studio time was easy to book in 304 for this reason I spent a lot of the early mornings here - tarting usually at 4AM and going until classes began around 9."

via an anonymous comment:
"Evergreen has/had an early 300 its computer is non functional. There were 3 500s from what i understand, 1 went to Norway, 1 to a campus studio in NY and the 3rd was of course at CalArts..

the Norway one was moved around a lot as it was purchased by 2 or 3 studios/organizations and because of its fragile nature it didnt survive.. it was apparently parted out after it became nonfunctional.

The CalARTs system was also disassembled and parts were sold to various buyers around the US in the famouse 90's sale ..nobody is too sure what happened to the digial components..

the 3rd that was in NY was sold to a collector in the 90's, tho it should be noted that that system was returned to Buchla for upgrading/overhaul in the late 70's and was reassembled with 300 series components, so it is more of a 300 now then 500... I don't believe it has been tested or turned on in over a decade.

another note, there were 2 versions of the 300.. the early system used tech from the 500 (the gating matrix for example - which controlled early versions of the 281 and 292B gates - the remote function on later 281s and 292Cs was never implemented) the later 300s were more of a self contained system ( with 200 modules for processing ) which eventually became the Touché and the 400."

IRCAM Video

Video via qoob. Features Max/MSP.

LE CYBERSONGOSSE

I recently saw this on sequencer.de. I wasn't sure if I put up a post on this before, however I was pretty sure I saw it on Music Thing and/or CDM. Sure enough I did. I sent an email to Tom and Peter and Peter was kind enough to reply with links to the posts. Here are the links to the posts on Music Thing and CDM.

Peter Kirn also sent the following:

"Check out these links for some amazing photos:
modeles
pedagogie.html

What I can't find -- and you'd probably need someone who has connections to IMEB for this -- is what happened to the public software release that was supposed to happen. There's nothing on the site, and the documentation of the project appears to be abandonware. (Hopefully that's just the site itself.) That'd be nice, as they redeveloped the software in Max/MSP."

If you know anything, please comment.

Update via Peter Grenader in the comments:

"If I'm not mistaken, this is a big midi controller designed to control patch parameters within software synthesis progrmas such as Csound and MaxP. This is what was explained to be a year or so.

Also, I believe Max was developed by Cycling 74, not the IMEB. Barry Vercoe I know developed Csound with IRCAM."

Update via the comments: "Actually, Max was developed by Opcode, who later added MSP. Then Cycling '74 bought it in 1999, and have been developing it ever since. What the post was actually saying is that the IMEB developed their own program using Max/MSP, not Max/MSP itself."

Update via Peter Kirn in the comments:

"Some historical corrections:

Csound was developed by Barry Vercoe while he was at MIT, not IRCAM. Csound is in turn indebted to Max Mathews' Music4 (and variants), as developed at Bell Labs from the late 50s through the 60s. Csound has grown a lot since its original version, however, through contributions by Dr. Vercoe and many others.

Max was not originally developed by Opcode; Max and the audio environment Max/FTS were the creation of Miller Puckette while he was at IRCAM (and I think IRCAM still holds some of the copyrights to that version of Max and its descendents). Max/MSP as we now know it did result from the Opcode variant of Max, that's true, though it has had an ongoing, bi-directional relationship with Max/FTS and later Pure Data, as developed by Miller Puckette, and has evolved through contributions of many people. Max Mathews is the namesake for the software Max, but supposedly specifically for an archaic reason having to do with scheduling (as well as, I'm sure, his admiration for Max Mathews' contributions to digital synthesis).

Back to the original question, I think people are right in that this is a hardware controller for a Max/MSP-based software patch. The modularity, having previously been in hardware, is now apparently in the software. The patch is promised to have been publicly released in the PDF docs for the instrument. So it's out there somewhere -- I just don't know where!"

Update: also see The Gmebaphone Concept and the Cybernéphone Instrument

Spaceware on the PDP-1

flickr by the earthling. The caption reads, "Spacewar was the first video game... ever. Yes, I played it on this restored PDP-1." I wonder if it produced sound and if so, how. If you have any idea if the PDP-1 could produce sound, please comment.

via unrest.

Update via solipsisnation in the comments:
"Well, PDP systems were digital, and their CPUs were waaaay too slow for anything resembling real-time sound.

That said, the PDP series was used for electronic music composition, and while I was going to mention Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" (AKA "the neat FM-y noises from Radiohead's 'Idiotique'"), that appears to have been made on an IBM: link

Here's a timeline that mentions PDP-series computers, though: link

Of interest are these paragraphs:

"In 1968, Barry Vercoe working at Princeton developed a very fast version of MUSIC IV B, entitled MUSIC 360 [9] [12] for the new generation IBM 360 mainframes. In 1973 at MIT, Vercoe developed a compact version of MUSIC called MUSIC 11 [3]. It was written in PDP-11 assembler code for the PDP-11 computer. This was the first digital music synthesis program for mini-computers with a keyboard and teletypewriter VDU (Visual Display Unit).

John Chowning and James Moorer at the University of Stanford, California wrote another version of MUSIC called MUSIC 10 [13] for the PDP-10 in 1975. Further improvements to MUSIC 10 were implemented both at Stanford and IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. The IRCAM implementation allowed input of short external samples through the use of Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converters. The input could be analyzed digitally providing data for modifications and re-synthesis, in combination with internally generated sounds."

So, the PDP-1 was probably too primitive, but systems with a similar architecture could be used to synthesize audio in a very slow and painstaking way-- no realtime sound, for sure. These were the days before microprocessors, and even KHz CPUs were still in the future. "