Two MUSICGEN AI generated releases in via Liquid Sky Berlin.
First up:
AI sessions #01 - brainFKK noise - entirely created by AI by Gehirn Bernstein featuring MusicGen & Dr Walker
"all sounds you hear were generated with and by MUSICGEN
an AI freeware
arranged and mixed in ableton live
100% of the income of this release - well.... its not a "real" release - more a kind of test what is possible - goes into the Liquid Sky reforestation project.
so lets go & plant some trees!"
2nd:
#AI techno #01 - created with artificial intelligence by djungle fAIver
"Fresh from the digital womb of MUSICGEN, an AI that spins "text-to-music", comes this experimental release.
We kicked off with our hopes tuned to minimal, questioning if this machine intelligence could vibe with our underground ethos.
But, damn, the bot surprised us, spitting out raw, pulsating bad ass underground beats that made our speakers throb and clip.
On track 02 & 05 we cheated : on track 02 we added a drumloop in the background as the AI generated loops didn t have much high freqs.
On track 05 we sprinkled in a touch of 303, just to spice up the synthetic stew. The rest, though? 100% AI machine-crafted. Pure digital grungey dirty noisey artificial intelligence techno, birthed from MUSICGEN's binary brain.
We were only using Ableton for arrangements and mixdown and some FX like eqs and compressors.
Sure, the AI's BY FAR not perfect - but the ride's only just begun.
We did not correct rendering errors from the AI. Some of the generated loops are really WAY out of timing.
100% of the income from this release goes into the Liquid Sky reforestation. credits released June 16, 2023"
"Axon 2 is a drum synth driven by artificial intelligence. (Well, 'intelligence' might be a strong word. Artificial something-or-other.) An experimental instrument, Axon uses a modified artificial neural network as a sequencer, and features seven FM-based percussion voices, that are really a single 18-operator FM voice.
If that sounds weird, you ain't seen nothing yet. It is surprisingly intuitive once you get the knack of it, and is capable of all-new, complex rhythms that repeat in surprising ways. It often gets referenced as a "random sequence generator," but there is nothing random in Axon; it is entirely determinative.
The sequencer features seven "neurons" that trigger a voice and send a pulse when they have received a predetermined number of pulses. You can wire the output of any neuron to the input of any other (with built-in loop detection to prevent runaway feedback), and in this manner pre-program the artificial neural network without having to go through a "learning" phase.
The seven individual drum voices, each triggered by its attendant neuron, are 2-operator FM voices in a configuration to best make percussion sounds, with additional FM and AM busses that all voices send to and receive from. Each voice has a HPF, distortion circuit, and white noise generator to provide a full range of percussion-oriented voicing individually, while interacting with each other in new and unique ways.
Features
• Artificial Neural Network sequencer features seven neurons, and is easily programmed to create strange new repeating rhythms.
• Seven FM percussion voices that also buss together to create a single monolithic complex percussion synthesizer.
• Full mixer with pan, level, mute, and solo on each voice.
• Built-in stereo delay with X/Y pad control over feedback and filter frequency, for live playability.
• MIDI in and out, for driving Axon from DAW and hardware sequencers, or driving your drum rack or other samples from Axon.
• Internal transport for non-synchronized playback.
• Resizable vector-based user interface.
• Drawn reciprocation dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.
• XML-based cross-platform, human-readable preset system, with copy/paste, for easy transferring of your own presets and third-party offerings."
"I let an Artificial Intelligence play my DIY Analog Synthesizers. The outcome is most astonishing!
I used MuseNet from @OpenAI to compose all songs in this video. The song titles were also made up by an AI. See links below if you want to try it out yourself.
"Axon 2 is a drum synth driven by artificial intelligence. (Well, "intelligence" might be a strong word. Artificial something-or-other.) An experimental instrument, Axon uses a modified artificial neural network as a sequencer, and features seven FM-based percussion voices, that are really a single 18-operator FM voice.
If that sounds weird, you ain't seen nothing yet. It is surprisingly intuitive once you get the knack of it, and is capable of all-new, complex rhythms that repeat in surprising ways. It often gets referenced as a "random sequence generator," but there is nothing random in Axon; it is entirely determinative.
The sequencer features seven "neurons" that trigger a voice and send a pulse when they have received a predetermined number of pulses. You can wire the output of any neuron to the input of any other (with built-in loop detection to prevent runaway feedback), and in this manner pre-program the artificial neural network without having to go through a "learning" phase.
The seven individual drum voices, each triggered by its attendant neuron, are 2-operator FM voices in a configuration to best make percussion sounds, with additional FM and AM busses that all voices send to and receive from. Each voice has a HPF, distortion circuit, and white noise generator to provide a full range of percussion-oriented voicing individually, while interacting with each other in new and unique ways.
Features
• Artificial Neural Network sequencer features seven neurons, and is easily programmed to create strange new repeating rhythms.
• Seven FM percussion voices that also buss together to create a single monolithic complex percussion synthesizer.
• Full mixer with pan, level, mute, and solo on each voice.
• Built-in stereo delay with X/Y pad control over feedback and filter frequency, for live playability.
• MIDI input, including Bluetooth MIDI, for driving Axon from DAW and hardware sequencers, and Virtual MIDI Output (standalone only) for driving other software with the Axon sequencer.
• Inter-App Audio, including transport synchronization, in standalone mode.
• Internal transport for non-synchronized playback.
• Resizable vector-based user interface.
• Drawn reciprocation dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.
• XML-based cross-platform, human-readable preset system, with copy/paste, for easy transferring of your own presets and third-party offerings.
Please Note: This application will work fine on an iPad Mini, but the user interface may be difficult to use due to the size."
"Kauldron is our warmest sounding, punchiest synth yet! A completely new modeling technology, combined with carefully designed features help you create aggressive synth sounds full of rich analog textures with the fewest knob tweaks. The result is a pure, head-on tone that requires little or no FX or post-production to sound big.
Kauldron pushes every available iOS technology to the max: it is not only fully universal (you can run it natively on your iPad and iPhone), but also an Audio Unit plugin. In fact, it is one of the first fullscreen AUv3 plugins for iOS: with iOS 11 and a compatible DAW, you can enjoy all the great Kauldron features on a nice, big spread.
Kauldron debuts the next generation of our Artificial Intelligence preset creation system, SPAWN². Completely reimagining the groundbreaking SPAWN algorithms in our hugely popular Magellan, the new SPAWN² gives you unprecedented control over generating presets. In the expert mode, you can accomplish anything from subtle ‘variations on a theme’ to bold new sounds. In the basic mode, where Kauldron does all the thinking, you get preset after usable preset with just a touch. This is not simple randomization: it is the power of machine learning put to benevolent use!
Kauldron is designed with modulation and fine dynamic control in mind. The two fully-featured LFOs and the mod envelope combine with a wide variety of MIDI learnable controls to manipulate multiple parameters. Everything is easily set up in a clearly laid out ‘mod matrix.’ The dual XY-pads can be used for controlling modulation or a wide range of synth parameters. MIDI aftertouch can be routed via the matrix for even greater control over expression and tonality.
Powerful arp with both live & program modes; comprehensive MIDI features with effortless MIDI learn; over 900 presets; recording, sharing, IAA, Audiobus 3, Ableton Link — these are just some of the features brewing inside Yonac’s Kauldron.
Selected Specs
SYNTH
• 3 analog modeling oscillators w/ multiple waveforms & true PWM
• FM via Osc 2
• Maximizer module with drift, spread & voice count for huge, stereophonic all-synth sounds
• New vAnalog filter design w/ ‘dirt’ overload for even warmer, harmonically complex tones
• Dedicated filter ADSR envelope
• Filter tracking, contour & more
• Pink/white noise generator
• Osc. phase reset & sync
• Retro & modern glide algorithms
• Virtual VCA envelope with 2 attack types
• Poly/mono operation
• Legato mode for buttery smooth passages
• Extensive modulation options via the ‘mod matrix’
• 2 LFOs w/ BPM sync, keytracking, trigger mode & more
• Assignable mod envelope
• 23 mod targets
• 11 mod controllers, including aftertouch, velocity & keytracking
• 2 XY-Pads for controlling mod targets or synth parameters
• Arpeggiator with live & program modes, 11 algorithms, gate, swing, note value, octaving & more
• Stereo mod effect with chorus & flanger modes
• BPM-syncable stereo delay
• Studio quality reverb w/ 7 room types, damping, time & mix
• 900+ presets in a wide variety of styles & sounds
SPAWN²
• Automatic preset generation via artificial intelligence
• Generate infinite new, usable presets at the touch of a button
• Expert mode lets specify Variation & Autonomy for each major synth module
• 3 unique A.I. algorithms
• Auto arp programming in any listed scale
PRO FEATURES
• AUv3 - use as Audio Unit plugin on iPad & iPhone
• Fullscreen AU mode in compatible DAWs & iOS versions
• Extensive MIDI: MIDI learn, aftertouch, MIDI CC map save/share, KB mapping, program changes & more
• Inter-App Audio
• Audiobus 3
• Ableton Link
00:00 Intro
00:26 Part I. Outer Space
05:15 Part II. Mother Earth
08:52 Part III. Artificial Intelligence
10:53 Part IV. The Divine
LFO Store and a well-known sound designer Otto K. Schwarz have prepared something very special and outstanding for you. We have created the unique sounds for the latest Waldorf’s synthsizers line - one of the most complex in terms of sound synthesis architecture. This soundset stands out from everything that has been done before, making the most of the Walforf’s sound processors possibilities and versatile types and methods of synthesis.
Each prepared preset may be modulated using the modwheel, and some of them are modulated by other parameters like velocity or aftertouch. Moving wavetable synthesis combined with unique granulation and resonance technologies, the use of the Kernel method and live-recorded samples. These sounds will be useful for ambient music, cinematic and official soundtracks, as well as modern electronica and EDM.
The soundset will open the doors to 4 specific dimensions: endless expanses of the outer space; beauty of Planet Earth’s nature environment; latest achievements in the field of artificial intelligence; as well as sounds of the spiritual world and aspirations to the Divine. Get ready for ethereal harmonies that will change the palette of your personal sound!
Product Details:
52 high-quality multi-layered presets: 31 Pads, 10 ARPs, 10 Leads, 6 Plucks and 1 Atmosphere. 50Mb of .wav files (samples) for presets.
100% Royalty-Free.
Requirements:
We strongly advise you to install the latest software update for your hardware synthesizer. These presets were created using 2.8 version of April, 2022. The soundset is made on Iridium, however is fully compatible with Waldorf Quantum."
"A gem from the Artificial Intelligence 2 compilation. I loved this tune ever since I first heard it on MTV back in the 90ies. I ran into it again when I purchased the Artificial Intelligence 1&2 compilations and was ecstatic to have found it again. I never thought I would come even close to recreating it.
Gear:
* Nord Lead 2X
* Korg Wavestate
* Korg M1 (VST)
* KP3 Editor for triggering the samples
* touchAble Pro app for controlling Ableton
* Acid Machine 2 for the TB-303 sequence"
"G-Sonique Psytrance AI Voices - VST / AU plug-in instrument for Win & Mac - psytrance intro voices Available here: https://www.g-sonique.com/shop.html
Psytrance music is characterized by exciting and elaborate intros, outros, intermezzos, breakouts. Nothing gets a crowd crazy more than an professional built-up graduating from chill intermezzo to a dance passage with atomic bomb energy.
And it is in these passages often interesting thematic voices /vocalsare used. However, it seems boring to people if they hear the same message 1000 times from Timothy Leary, McKenna or from the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. People want to hear something new, different. That's why the Psytrance A.I. Voices - VST / AU plug-in instrument for Win and Mac was created. AI voices instrument is full of robotic, synthetic psytrance themed psychedelic voices and slogans. The sounds are created by artificial intelligence, then resampled and resynthesized with various futuristic sound design methods. They sound excellent in a wide range of octaves. You will find every voice in different sound variations from classic AIs, to robotic, mystical, crystal-glass-sounding ethereal beings, matrix entities and witches, created deep in the mind of artificial intelligence.
These notes can be used in intros/interludes as well as together with beats.
Listen to the demo. Spice up your production with unexpected sounds - people remember the spoken word best because it is closest to our DNA.
Very well usable in genres such as: psytrance, hitech, darkpsy, full-on psytrance, progressive, darkprog, tech trance, psycore, experimental, neurofunk, psybient, but also techno, minimal and others.
"Artificial Intelligence has finally made its way into synthesizers! The Jupiter-Xm has an AI based I-Arpeggiator that creates whole songs while you play.
It also has a polyphonic five part multitimbral synthesizer engine which can emulate the sounds of many classic Roland analog and digital synthesizers as well as electric pianos and drum machines. The synth engines include the SH-101, Juno 106 and Jupiter 8, as far as drum machines go all of the classics are covered from the CR-78 to TR-808 and TR-909.
Note Artisan Electronics has a Neurorack module system (4:52 here), however it does not appear to be AI based. There is also this user labeled Eurorack system with "brainwaves/EEG signals as source of modulation (the Neuro portion of it)", but again no AI (there is also soundmachines' BI1brainterface (no AI). (Update: there was also the Hartmann Neuron and Jomox Neuronium, both based on neuronal networks.) As for AI applied to synthesis in general, you can find posts mentioning artificial intelligence here. I believe the earliest reference would be John Chowning in 1964: "Following military service in a Navy band and university studies at Wittenberg University, Chowning, aided by Max Mathews of Bell Telephone Laboratories and David Poole of Stanford, set up a computer music program using the computer system of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1964."
Description for the above video:
"The Neurorack is the first ever AI-based real-time synthesizer, which comes in many formats and more specifically in the Eurorack format. The current prototype relies on the Jetson Nano. The goal of this project is to design the next generation of music instrument, providing a new tool for musician while enhancing the musician's creativity. It proposes a novel approach to think and compose music. We deeply think that AI can be used to achieve this quest. The Eurorack hardware and software have been developed by our team, with equal contributions from Ninon Devis, Philippe Esling and Martin Vert."
Motivations
Deep learning models have provided extremely successful methods in most application fields, by enabling unprecedented accuracy in various tasks, including audio generation. However, the consistently overlooked downside of deep models is their massive complexity and tremendous computation cost. In the context of music creation and composition, model reduction becomes eminently important to provide these systems to users in real-time settings and on dedicated lightweight embedded hardware, which are particularly pervasive in the audio generation domain. Hence, in order to design a stand alone and real time instrument, we first need to craft an extremely lightweight model in terms of computation and memory footprint. To make this task even more easier, we relied on the Nvidia Jetson Nano which is a nanocomputer containing 128-core GPUs (graphical unit processors) and 4 CPUs. The compression problem is the core of the PhD topic of Ninon Devis and a full description can be found here.
Targets of our instrument
We designed our instrument so that it follows several aspects that we found crucial:
Musical: the generative model we choose is particularly interesting as it produces sounds that are impossible to synthesize without using samples.
Controllable: the interface was relevantly chosen, being handy and easy to manipulate.
Real-time: the hardware behaves as traditional instrument and is as reactive.
Stand alone: it is playable without any computer.
Model Description
We set our sights on the generation of impacts as they are very complex sounds to reproduce and almost impossible to tweak. Our model allows to generate a large variety of impacts, and enables the possibility to play, craft and merge them. The sound is generated from the distribution of 7 descriptors that can be adjusted (Loudness - Percussivity - Noisiness - Tone-like - Richness - Brightness - Pitch).
Interface
One of the biggest advantage of our module is that it can interact with other synthesizer. Following the classical conventions of modular synthesizers, our instrument can be controlled using CVs (control voltages) or gates. The main gate triggers the generation of the chosen impact. Then it is possible to modify the amount of Richness and Noisiness with two of the CVs. A second impact can be chosen to be "merge" with the main impact: we will call this operation the interpolation between two impacts. Their amounts of descriptors are melt to give an hybrid impact. The "degree of merging" is controlled by the third CV, whereas the second gate triggers the interpolation.
We have joined with the world-renowned keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater to produce a groundbreaking app that simply blows away!
Imagine a 6-directional drum machine/rhythm sequencer where only your imagination is the limit. Every sequence can be totally chaotic, random, or strict and controlled. Hexatone is capable of producing constantly changing, insanely addictive rhythms. You only choose the best and then export them to Intua Beatmaker / desktop DAW via the built-in Wi-Fi server. "
Available on iTunes here:
Update:
JR Hexatone has been released!
YouTube via JCRUDESS "This is the first Jordan Rudess official app for the iphone and ipod touch. Imagine a 6-directional drum machine/rhythm sequencer where only your imagination is the limit. Every sequence can be totally chaotic, random, or strict and controlled. Hexatone is capable of producing constantly changing, insanely addictive rhythms."
Introducing Hexatone
YouTube via rlainhart
"Jordan Rudess introduces JR Hexatone Pro for the iPhone, a next-generation 6-directional loop generation tool that uses artificial intelligence and advanced randomization algorithms to produce constantly changing sonic structures. The app is capable of creating many type of drum loops, melodic sequences or rhythm patterns, thanks to its ability to load custom user samples and modify them in realtime. Users can also engage built-in Stutter or Chorus effects and control them with the iPhone's accelerometer."
Basic Hexatone Programming
YouTube via rlainhart "Jordan Rudess demonstrates some basic techniques for programming Hexatone, a next-generation 6-directional loop generation tool that uses artificial intelligence and advanced randomization algorithms to produce constantly changing sonic structures."
"Experimental Artificial Intelligence music session. I use Refraktions IOS App in MIDI Mode to control hardware synthesizers: Moog Mother 32, Dreadbox Erebus, Novation Circuit. The musical sequence is completely generated by the Artificial Intelligence Refraktions IOS App.
Other gear: ROLI Lightpad Block, Ipad Air 2, Focusrite Scarlett 18i8, JBL LSR305, AKAI MPD 232."
via Christian: "Hi Matrix! Christian from Stockholm here. I'm working with the ABSOLUT MACHINES project that ABSOLUT VODKA is doing in collaboration with MIT Graduates Dan Paluska/Jeff Lieberman and Swedish studio Teenage Engineering. You might have heard of it already, but now we've got new images of the machines, new info and the New York gallery has opened.
Paluska/Lieberman have made a large-scale multi-instrumental installation that is quite spectacular. It is called ABSOLUT QUARTET and will be shown at a guerilla gallery on 186 Orchard Street in Manhattan, NYC during until the end of April.
Teenage Engineering’s machine is a robotic choir with an advanced speach synthesis function in the back end. ABSOLUT CHOIR is shown at Restaurant Publik in Stockholm until the end of April.
Both machines are really amazing and all about exploring artificial creativity and what happens when technology meet art, design and music. Online users from around the world can interact with the machines and create music with them at http://www.absolutmachines.com."
The press release: "A TRULY PIONEERING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT FROM ABSOLUT Interactive ins tallations let online visitors create mu sic with intelligent machines ABSOLUT is presenting a project that explores what happens when cutting-edge technology meets the creativity of art, music and design. To emphasize its deep commitment to the subject, ABSOLUT turned to some of the greatest technology visionary teams of our time, and asked them to create the ABSOLUT MACHINES. The result is two artificially creative and highly interactive music-making machines, as visually stunning as they are technologically pioneering.
The ABSOLUT MACHINES are shown in New York and Stockholm - and online user from around the world can interact with the machines at absolutmachines.com. This project marks the first collaboration between premium vodka brand ABSOLUT and cutting-edge visionaries from the world of technology. The ABSOLUT MACHINES are designed by Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, both with a background from MIT in Boston, and Teenage Engineering, a Swedish studio in the fields of media, art and technology. “Technology is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives and is a key driver for contemporary culture. With the ABSOLUT MACHINES, we explore how technology merges with creativity, and we are thrilled to have such fantastic visionaries with us on this journey”, says Ulrika Lövdahl, responsible for trend communications at V&S Absolut Spirits.
The ABSOLUT MACHINES will be launched globally in early February 2008. Users from around the world will be able to interact with the machines over the Internet. The input from online users will be processed by the machines, which will respond with a unique musical composition – co-created by man and machine. The machines will immediately perform the songs, and their performances will be live-streamed to a global audience at absolutmachines.com.
For the ABSOLUT MACHINES, Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman have created the “ABSOLUT QUARTET”, an automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine, which does not look like anything you have ever seen before. It is a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. The main timbre is a marimba played by balls shot from a robotic cannon. Other components include a series of wineglasses played by little robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments. “ABSOLUT has collaborated with great artists such as Andy Warhol, Tom Ford and Louise Bourgeois. ABSOLUT has the tradition of the past masters as well as the vision to do something new.
Of course we were excited when they asked us if we wanted to be part of a project exploring artificial creativity”, says Dan Paluska.
Teenage Engineering has constructed the “ABSOLUT CHOIR”, a multi-channel robotic choir, made up by 22 singing characters of various shapes and sizes. It is an architectural installation with an advanced framework of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence software at the back end."
Update: a video on the project Absolut Machines Intro< YouTube via GustavoZilles
And examples of how the results may sound made by users:
"Moogfest 2014 Announces Daytime Presenters Including Futurists, Musicians, Scientists, Authors, Filmmakers, and Pioneers of Electronic Music Instrument Design
Phase 1 tickets start at $199 for 5-Day General Admission, and $499 for 5-Day VIP Admission while supplies last through December 19 when Phase 2 GA tickets go up to $299. All prices exclusive of applicable fees.
ASHEVILLE, NC – November 14, 2013 – Moogfest is a five-day festival dedicated to the synthesis of technology, art and music. Since its inception in 2004, Moogfest has been a magnet for artists, engineers, and enthusiasts of Bob Moog. With an experimental lineup of daytime conference programming featuring cultural, artistic and technological luminaries and punctuated by a diverse line up of landmark nightly performances, Moogfest honors the creativity and inventiveness of Dr. Robert Moog and pays tribute to the legacy of the analog synthesizer. This is no ordinary festival.
Two tone generators have been programmed to match the pitch of the other. Intervention using various components prevents one from ever quite reaching the other. Shadow falling on the photocells in the middle of the piece will allow the dance of the two pitches to be heard though sometimes they exceed the limit of human hearing in their ascents.
Burlap Series 2006
Burlap is a continuing series of work inspired by Peter Vogel and Marc Nimoy that explores the blurring of the electronic circuit and traditional two-dimensional art forms. Small interactive, physically programmed musical computers have been embedded, woven into a skin of burlap, creating an electronic music composition in the form of a reactive textile. Gallery guests interact with the pieces by casting shadows over embedded sensors. CMOS 4000 series ICs are configured into circuits which produce tones, sequencers, and dynamically behaving oscillators that respond to shadows cast by guests. Each composition explores themes of cyclical and chaotic structures, iterative sequence generation, and dynamical feedback systems. The visual form of the Burlap pieces takes its cues from traditional circuit design and is the result of a dialog between the functions of the different parts of the circuits and the nature of the signals shuttled from one part of the circuit to the next. Weaving the circuits into a canvas of burlap juxtaposes natural construction materials with electronic technologies, and thus presents a challenge to the notion of the circuit as something that is cold, calculated, and non-human. The Burlap itself is used as a semiotically rich signifier indicating, amongst other themes, the historical origins of computing in mechanized weaving, pre-industrial age textiles, and a return to reliance upon renewable natural resources."
AANN (Artificial Analog Neural Network) - Phillip Stearns
"http://www.art-rash.com/pixelform
This is a short documentation clip of AANN from the 2008 Juried Exhibition at the Torrance Art Museum (City of Torrance, LA, CA, USA).
AANN is an interactive, handmade electronic sculpture that responds to changes in ambient light and sound. The sculpture itself is 45 interconnected, electronic neurons that are actively responding to environmental stimuli in a display of light and sound. Constructing the sculpture in such a way that function and form are keenly interconnected, borrows from the sculptural, musical electronics works of Peter Vogel. Great care was taken in the design of the electronics to accurately mimic biological neural behavior. The resulting form of the piece was influenced in part by layering models used in neural computing, and by Fibonacci based branching found in natural systems. AANN explores the notion of interactivity with electronics by making physical the abstract processes being used by modern computer scientists to solve complex problems in pattern recognition.
The science of robotics seeks to study, mimic and recreate life through the creation of automatons which are ultimately are designed to complete tasks that serve our desires. Here with the creation of AANN, the desire is to explore the possibility of making a thinking thing, one that is allowed to have its own desires. However, in the end what AANN becomes is a sign of the industrial military complex, signifying not only the possibility of the pursuit of such idealistic techno-fetishistic dreams of machine intelligence, but also their very negation through the terminal exploitation of the very life which it seeks to replicate (and eventually replace).
Questions which arose during the course of researching and developing the work branched outwards from the decade old debate about machine intelligence and its potential impacts on society and environment. What is interactivity? What are the preconditions necessary for such interactivity? Does intelligence play a role or is interactivity a generic feature of reality. What is it to think? Is it possible for a machine to think as we do? If it is not yet possible to understand what it is to think and how we humans do it, what is it that drives us to make machines think? Are we too lazy to think for ourselves? How much does structure factor into the functioning of a network both biological and artificial? What are the implications of accepting a networked model of understanding? What is the total impact of technology on society and on the biosphere which supports it? Is it possible for a technological work to affect enough positive change to offset the potential social and environmental damage wrought in its history of development and application? Can technology exist without economies of scale, and if not, can those economies of scale be maintained in an ecologically sustainable manner?"
"I just received an email letting me know that Allen Strange passed away yesterday in Seattle. What a deep loss on so many fronts."
You might remember that Allen Strange recently had to cancel a performance in the Seattle area due to illness. If you do not know who Allen Strange is and his impact to the world of synthesizers, read this short bio (source of image and excerpt below) and then take a look at these previous posts; be sure to check out all the links to more info. He was a pioneer of electronic music and wrote a number of books on the subject. This is a sad day.
The following is a brief excerpt of his accomplishments: "He received two grants from the San Jose State University Foundation (1969 and 1974) for research into electronic music and in 1970 became professor of music and director of the electronic music studios at the university. In 1973 he attended Chowning's music seminar at Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Center. Strange is one of the leading authorities on analogue electronic music; his Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls (1972) is now a classic text. He also wrote Programming and Meta-Programming the Electro-Organism (1974), the operations manual for the Buchla Music Easel and has documented the 200 Series synthesizers made by Buchla. He co-founded two performance groups, Biome (1967--72), in order to make use of the EMS Synthi, and, with Buchla in 1974, the Electronic Weasel Ensemble. He was president of the International Computer Music Association (1993--8) and has appeared as a guest artist-lecturer throughout the world. With his wife, Patricia, they have recently published The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques."
Update via Robin in the comments: "From the Family of Allen Strange.
Just wanted to thank you all for your kind words. Allen will always be remembered as a loving father, husband and musician. There will be a memorial reception at the Bainbridge Island Music Guild on March 1st at 4 pm. Directions and information can be found at http://www.islandmusic.org/. We are also planning a life celebration for Allen in the Bay Area of California in the next few months, I will be sure to post that info when it gets planned."
Update via the comments: "The Family of Allen Strange is having a memorial celebration in San Jose on September 13. For more information please see: http://www.allenstrange.com/ and if you plan on attending please RSVP at http://allenstrange.blogspot.com/
"After nine years of research and over three years of development, we at Eisenberg are very proud to present EINKLANG, our first software synthesizer. At the moment, we are working on its completion so EINKLANG will be available in stores in early December.
Discover what makes EINKLANG so special and pre-order here at a discount of up to 66% of the retail price: http://www.indiegogo.com/einklang
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EINKLANG (Ein•klang [ˈaɪ̯nklaŋ] noun. German word for unison, equilibrium, a sound)
EINKLANG introduces an all-new paradigm in music production. While existing synthesizers are controlled by many complicated, technical knobs, EINKLANG can be controlled by a few, powerful musical parameters. One of EINKLANG’s key features is the triangle morphing field, which allows users to morph between three different instruments with great ease. With the turn of one knob, a piano, a violin and timpani become a timpianolin. EINKLANG allows the user to focus exclusively on the creative aspects of making music, without being distracted by the complex technical processes.
Instead of synthesizing sounds like traditional synthesizers according to a set of technical parameters (i.e. amplitudes, frequencies, spectra…), EINKLANG re-synthesizes sounds using instrument models. These instrument models can not only be tweaked directly in their musical parameters (i.e. loudness, pitch, timbre…) but also be morphed from one sound to another.
The instrument models are based on Artificial Intelligence Studio Technology (AIST), an award winning, patent-pending technology that allows synthesizers to understand the structures of sounds, and remembers specific nuances of different instruments. So the musician can concentrate on musical aspects, while the synthesizer does all of the underlying technical processing.
