Raspberry Pi Music Synthesis

Published on Mar 26, 2015 Pi Synth

"Two USB MIDI keyboards, one Raspberry Pi Model B+ (first generation), simultaneous Virtual Analog synth plus 2-layer sample replay synth."

Raspberry Pi Music Synthesis : multi-synth sequencing

Published on Mar 26, 2015

"A first-generation Raspberry Pi (Model B+ overclocked to 950MHz) runs a sequencing application which drives 8 simultaneous soft synths running on the Pi, and also renders the 2-oscilloscope waveform on screen via OpenGL ES.

6 of the synths are 2.5 oscillator Virtual Analog monosynths, the other 2 are 2-layer sample replay synths, each supporting 12 notes of polyphony. All percussion sounds were also sampled from the Pi Virtual Analog synth, so every sound - apart from the wonderful massed Caitlin Downie vocal 'Mmmh' and 'Aaah' - is derived from the same Raspberry Pi Virtual Analog codebase."

Joe McGinty's "Tubular Bells" Video Screening & Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary

"For those in NYC:

Tubular Bells is an 8 minute video, directed by Amy Hobby, edited by Tony Zajkowski, featuring female keyboardists playing Joe McGinty's arrangement of Tubular Bells, performed on the vintage keyboard instruments at Carousel Studios, Brooklyn, NY.

Featuring (in order of appearance):
Kaia Wong (Mixel Pixel), Kelly Rae Kerwin (Private Income), Natasha Bartolf, Joanna Choy (Spray Paint Star), Amy Merril (Mia Riddle)
Greta Gertler (Universal Thump), Supercute!, Anna Copacabanna, Rolyn Hu (True Primes), Sondra Sun-Odeon (Silver Summit), Michi Turner (Crash Diet Crew, Jacques Detergent), Katia Floreska (The Tall Pines), Natalie Weiss (Unicornicopia), Wendy Ip, Alice Cohen, Kelley Vaughn-Kauffman (Winston Troy), Yvette Perez (H.E.R., Birdbrain, Peter Zummo Group), The Hula Hoop Harlot, Melissa-Anne, Alix Brown (Golden Triangle), Leah Cary (Girl Crisis), Caitlin Jemeson (Queen Of Sibyls).

Instruments (in order of appearance):
Hammond M3 Organ, Fender Rhodes Stage Piano, 1914 Steinway Vertigrand Piano, RMI Keyboard Computer KC-2, Jenco Celeste, Baldwin Solid Body Electric Harpsichord, Mattel Magical Musical Thing, Bebot, Thingamagoop, Hohner Clavinet D6, Casio CZ-101, Wurlitzer Electric Piano Model 700, Conn Electric Band, ARP 2600, ARP Omni, Suzuki Omnichord, Roland Keytar/Yamaha TX802, Yamaha CS01, Vox Continental, Farfisa Combo Compact, Fender Starmaster, Buzzing Bee, Stylophone, 360 Systems Digital Keyboard, Hammond Synthesizer, Gibson Clavioline, Yamaha CP60, Moog Little Phatty, Moog MiniMoog, Mellotron, Maas-Rowe Vibrachime.

Also screening: Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary
View the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCabuis6t2w [first posted here]

At IndieScreen
289 Kent Avenue at S 2nd Street, Williamsburg
Advance tickets here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/130664"

Horsham Piazza Italia 2018

Published on Mar 30, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"We have been invited to take the Mad Music Machine to Horsham Piazza Italia - Caitlin is set up and ready to go!"

E352, Mother-32, Roland System-1m and MATHS

Published on Jan 8, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"We left the Mad Music Machine turned on over night (with the master volume turned down) - we were pleasantly surprised by the new sounds we heard when we turned it back on!

Here Caitlin plays a short intro but does not touch any controls once the simple 16 note sequence starts - it just Maths working it's magic with our oscillators (mainly the E352)"

Tubular Bells by the Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra

YouTube Uploaded by rastro2 on Mar 3, 2011

Originally posted on 3/04/2011 10:09:00 AM but the video was taken down. It's back!
"Filmed and Directed by Amy Hobby.
Edited by Tony Zajkowski.

Over 20 different NYC female keyboardists playing vintage keyboards at Joe McGinty's Carousel Studio in Brooklyn, NY.

Available on iTunes!

Featuring:
Kaia Wong (Mixel Pixel)
Kelly Rae Kerwin (Private Income)
Natasha Bartolf

CLICK FOR MORE »

A quick 'Industrial' jam with the Mother-32 & E352

Published on Dec 24, 2017 The Mad Music Machine

"Caitlin has a quick jam with the Mother-32 & E352"

Jamming with Theremins at Horsham AmeriCARna

Published on Sep 30, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"We took the Mad Music Machine to Horsham AmeriCARna and invited the public to interact with it via our Thermins.

Caitlin and her friend recorded some samples, setup some rhythms on Circadian Rhythms, and Jammed away on the Theremins to generate uScale quantized notes for the E352 and E370.

A Thermin controlled Disting produced the effects.

We had a great day with the public and are looking forward to coming back to Horsham AmeriCARna again!"

E352 Morph + Detune Mode with Quadruple Theremin Jam

Published on Nov 3, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"Here we test the latest E352 firmware which (among other things) adds a 'Morph + Detune' mode.

We detuned the 2nd output to be an octave higher than the first. One theremin modulated the E352 FM input, The second theremin modulated the 'Crush CV' on the Erica Synths Black Hole DPS2, theremins 3 & 4 were connected to the crossfade on the Morgasmatron to allow modulation between 'dry' and 'distorted' waveforms.

Caitlin then jammed using the Mother-32 sequencer and mixer to control the E352.

Other than the Mutant Bass Drum and Snare, all sounds in this video are from the E352"

Theremin & Disting triggered E352 & E370 Bongos and Chords

Published on Aug 22, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"Caitlin uses the Doepfer Theremin (via the Expert Sleepers Disting) to trigger the E352 and E370 to produce 'Bongo' sounds and Chords.

She ends with a little jam on the Roland System-1m.

The Moog Mother-32 & Hexinverter Mutant Drums help with the rhythms.

Bitwig Studio provides the sequencing via the Sixty Four Pixels Banana Split"

Raspberry Pi Wavetable Synth Complete

via the Raspberry PI Synthesizer blog:

"Time to call it a day and say yes, this thing is feature complete.

Feature set :

Single EG per note, 2 LFOs per polysynth
LFOs have sin, saw, square, tri and S/H modes
LFOs may optionally be synced to sequencer clock - the one feature not *quite* implemented yet
One LFO is always on, the other is ramped up by the Mod wheel

2 layers of wavetable trajectories ('oscillators') per note
Each wavetable trajectory consists of up to 8 wavetables, traversed in
- linear time
- quadratic time t*t
- inverse quadratic time 1-(1-t)*(1-t)
- exponential time - half-life a go-go
There isn't an EG to drive trajectory, just a dTrajectory/dt parameter. Trajectory resolution is always normalized to 1.0 irrespective of how many tables are in the trajectory, so a dTraj/dt of 0.5 will take 2s to pass through all the tables, unlss the linearity parameter is set to exponential, in which case the 0.5 is interpreted as a half-life, so after 0.5s you will be half way through the trajectory list, after 1s at 0.75 etc. Exponential is nice as you always have some movement going on, no matter how long you hold a note, but obviously you are getting asymptotic to 1.0 after a while.

The trajectory traversal may also be modified with both the LFO and MOD LFO, with programmable sensitivities. This gives really great slow movement for ever, even on non-exponential settings
Pitch of oscillators may be modified by both LFOs with programmable sensitivities - great slow movement plus crazy MOD wiggling
Oscillator B may be manually detuned / uptuned by +- 12 semitones, with exponential control for fine detune
Oscillators are MIP-map antialiased, the octaves generated by FFT / de-FFT, and there's a secret sauce trick that can be manually enabled to preserve the phase of certain harmonics whilst retaining my 'must have' / non-negotiable feature of a positive-moving zero transition at table location 0 for all octaves.

There is a back-end LPF, which is a truly brainless 1st order thing but it does go truly transparent at half Nyquist. This is just one filter per polysynth, effectively a very coarse tone control to tune out the psychotic edge of the more extreme waves and bring in some 'mellow', if mellow is what you fancy. This is nice on lush ensemble stringy sounds to push them more background but leave their tones prominent to reinforce a melody.

There are some 21 built-in wavetables - I need to count, there may be just 17 - there are more than 16, I broke the nice power of 2 limit because I had some I couldn't bear to leave out. These include 3 Caitlin vowels, sampled piano, brass, alto sax, viola, and also analytical waves like saw, sin, square, tri.

The Cray XMP / SIMD programming system is included, to support user construction of rich new wavetables from combinations of existing tables, be they built in or user-programmed.

Nice feature set, eh?

A first generation Raspberry Pi seems to be able to generate about 20 notes of polyphony from this synth, which is a lot of synthesis. So a completely reasonable thing is to create 4 PIANA Virtual Analog monosynths, 3 PIANATRON sampled synths and a pair of 4 note polyphonic PICYCLE wavetable synths, and let them go play.

Obviously on a Raspberry Pi 2 you can do all this and find a cure for the common cold in parallel using neat protein folding tricks. Or just fire up another dozen synths and go really crazy.

This thing sounds even cooler than I imagined, and to be honest I always expected it to sound cool. But it is BRILLIANT. Seriously.

Video to follow.

p.s fave trick to date - the Gordon Reid 'strings' trick with a Slightly Phase Distorted pair of different stacked sawtooths, one FMd by a 3Hz 0.08 semitone amplitude S/H LFO. Lush ..."

Double Disting Theremin Jam!

Published on Sep 6, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"This one's a bit experimental! We use the CV and gates of the Theremins to control E352 and E370 audio envelopes connected to the inputs of the Distings. The Theremin CVs also control the feedback to the B4 algorithm which is configured to output only the delayed signal.

We are planning to build another of these 'Double Disiting Theremin Instruments' to allow groups of children to jam together at our events.

Caitlin has had some great fun jamming with this and along the way has invented the 'crossed- theremin' technique :)"

---
Xymox's "A Day" meets Kraftwerk at 1:54.

Glenn playing PIANATRON on the Pi

Published on Feb 28, 2015 Pi Synth

"We had dozens of hideous technical issues last night, mainly around trying to convince those awful $5 MIDI / USB adapters to do the right thing. Plus the odd audio crackle due to the ridiculous amounts of audio interconnect plumbing down on the ground.

Eventually we gave up on the MIDI side and Glenn was forced to play my plastic, unweighted, cheap and cheerful Miditech 37, a mere 3 octaves, balanced on a stool at a difficult height, rather than his lovely weighted 61-key (or is it 88?) Nord on an optimal stand, with a CME XKey precariously perched atop an amp off to one side. Despite all those handicaps he did great.

Some 'Caitlin ooh' plus piano, some brassy stringy mix via the 2 keys on an old Korgis number (must look it up ... ) and a God Speed the Plough on piano layered with strings.

Nice."

4MS STS Peppa Pig tribute! - samples recorded at Horsham Piazza Italia 2018

Published on Apr 10, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"Last weekend we took the Mad Music Machine to Horsham Piazza Italia. We showed young children how we could sample their voices and gave them the microphone and told them to say anything they liked.

We had some interesting results from the many children (and adults) that took part!

Our favourite moment was when a family with 3 young children created a tune involving 'Peppa Pig' sounds - including of course, some 'oinks'.

Next time we do this we will ensure we can record their creations for them but here Caitlin is recreating their tune with the original voice samples, together with the beats as best as she can remember them.

For a bit of fun I have also added the Peppa Pig melody to the Mother-32 sequencer."

New England Synth Fest, Saturday, May 18 at SynthCube in Waltham, Mass

New England Synth Fest on Saturday, May 18 at SynthCube in Waltham, Mass. Lectures, exhibitors, petting zoo 10am-1pm (lectures from Richard Tarantino, Eric Crawley, and Jade Rose). Performances 1pm-5pm.

Performances from DannoTronic with visuals by Digital Awareness, Winterr, Wizard Peter, Mute City with visuals by Anagram, Nick Homenda with visuals by Caitlin, NoizCode with visuals by coolpic.biz, C. Chris Peters with visuals by Jame Coyne, and Guilt Factory. Performance schedule posted here.

Follow on Instagram and Linkedin for updates.

The Moog Synth Installation at Rough Trade NYC Hosts Sound Experiments Curated By Tom Tom Magazine with Kiran Gandhi (M.I.A.), Chloe Saavedra (Chaos Chaos) and More Thursday, March 20th

"RSVP To Tom Tom's Sound Experiments HERE.

In celebration of Bob Moog's spirit of innovation and creative experimentation, Moog has installed a Synthesizer Residency inside of Rough Trade NYC at 64 N 9th Street in Brooklyn for the month of March. The installation at Rough Trade is Moog's next step on the way to Moogfest, the innovative festival taking place in Asheville, NC April 23 - 27.

The installation is free and open to the public. This Thursday, March 20th, features sound experiments from Brooklyn-based artists curated by Tom Tom Magazine [8:00 – 11:00PM], including:

Kiran Gandhi :: MIA
Suzi Analogue :: Suzi Analogue
Léah Lazonick :: Léah Lazonick
FonLin Nyeu :: Dragons of Zynth
Sean Desiree :: Bells Roar
Jesse Gold
Shelley Burgon
Lola Johnson
Monika Heidemann :: HEIDEMANN
Lauren Camarata
Gabriela Jimeno :: Balancer
Chloe Saavedra :: Chaos Chaos
Caitlin Frame

For 25 days in March, Rough Trade NYC is housing the world's largest modern Moog installation as a mile-marker on the road to Moogfest, and Moog invites all artists in the area to stop by and utilize the space for experimentation and discovery. The residency serves as a physical manifestation of the intersection of music, art and technology, and it is meant to be used as an artist's resource. Although it is free to the public, this is no museum exhibit- visitors are encouraged to interact, engage and experiment with the analog electronics. All are welcome to craft sound as well as bring a recording device to sample the instruments.

All instruments in the installation were hand built in Asheville, NC at the Moog factory. Throughout the installation, Moog employees will be on hand at Rough Trade NYC to assist artist's with the gear.

Stephen Godfroy, Co-Owner of Rough Trade, says of the installation “With our shared love of musical experimentation and innovation, Moog are perfect bedfellows for us. Being able to create and host world-class experiences like this is precisely what Rough Trade NYC is all about; is precisely why New York can safely claim to have the most exciting record store on the planet.”

The installation includes a producers station, drone towers, 10 voice polyphonic analog synth, 6 voice Minimoog drum synth, and over 50 analog effects boxes.

Future sound experiments will take place throughout the duration of the installation, including appearances by Delicate Steve on March 25th presented by Luaka Bop; Dorit Chrysler and Rob Schwimmer on March 28th presented by The New York Theremin Society; Telecult Powers on March 29th presented by Ad Hoc; Gavin Russom on March 29th; and Anna Barie of These Are Powers on a date TBA.

One free ticket to Moogfest, the innovative festival taking place in Asheville NC April 23-27, will be given away every day of the installation.

The residency is open to the public from 11am-11pm daily through March 29th."

Sopranotron, Demo and Tutorial for iPad

Published on May 21, 2014 thesoundtestroom·273 videos

"Sopranotron from Omenie the team that brought us the excellent Mellotron M3000. This is simply superb."

iTunes: Sopranotron - Omenie Limited

"The first dedicated 'Virtual Soprano' instrument for iPad - add soaring operatic soprano tones to your recordings, or take a pitch-perfect Virtual Soprano on stage with you!

Here by popular demand is Omenie's M3000 HD 'English Soprano' library, provided as a standalone instrument. Caitlin Downie, gifted soprano and national treasure, has been painstakingly recorded and assembled into a huge vocal collection. 525 different samples, 15 different voices, with chromatic sampling over the M3000's 35-note range, and note stretching below and above the range to deliver 5 octaves in total.

3 distinct vowel vocalizations, 'soft' voices, 'forte' voices with huge projection and vibrato, staccato vowels and 3 different ensemble voices are provided. Two different playable instruments are available at the same time, one blended from a selection 3 of the 15 voices ('A/B/C'), the other a single voice ('D'). The 'D' voice may be assigned to programmable chord pads, or the two instruments may be played independently via class-compliant MIDI keyboards. 64 programmable 'Voicebanks' allow popular selections of voices to be saved and restored immediately for recording or performance.

Virtual MIDI on 2 separate channels and AudioBus support make Sopranotron a very flexible and powerful instument for adding vocal sparkle to recordings or live performances."

Qu-Bit Nebulae, InSight lander and the Martian Winds

Published on Jan 20, 2019 The Mad Music Machine

"We were excited to add a Qu-Bit Nebulae to the Mad Music Machine, especially as it is powered by a Raspberry Pi and the Mad Music Machine began it's life as a small network of Raspberry Pis.

Our last Raspberry Pi project used our Astro Pi code (which ran on the International Space Station) to make music, so we thought we should follow up with another space-based project for this video.

We downloaded the raw 'Martian Winds' sounds from the NASA website and loaded them onto the Qu-Bit Nebulae. The Nebulae has independent control of (playback) speed and pitch which allowed us to bring the 'wind' sounds up more into the audible range.

We created an 'industrial' rhythm by using a 'sample and hold' LFO within Bitwig (via our Expert Sleepers ES8) matched to our Make Noise Tempi clock. This modulation signal was used to 'Freeze' the output of the Nebulae.

We also created wavetables for our E352 by loading the downloaded 'Martian Winds' into the Synthesis Technology WaveEdit program. We sequenced the E352 with our Make Noise René 2 to create the "Touchdown Confirmed" bass line / melody.

We loaded the NASA commentary of the landing into our 4MS Stereo Triggered Sample which was sequenced and synchronised with the rest of the patch using our Tip Top Circadian Rhythms.

All sounds within the patch were generated from the InSight mission with the exception of the Hexinverter Kick, Snare and Clap.

We recorded the audio using Bitwig Studio with our Nektar Panorama P6 controlling the Mixer.

And finally, following previous feedback, Caitlin's voice was recorded using a RØDE Smartlav+ Lavalier Microphone.

We are aware the video focusing is not great in this video so that is the next thing we need to work on!"

E370 & E352 Jam

Published on Feb 25, 2018 The Mad Music Machine

"Caitlin's first full jam with the Synthesis Technology E370 & E352.

The E370 has oscillator one connected to the Roland System-1m which is being used as a filter. Oscillators 2 ,3 & 4 form chords outputted via the E370's onboard mixer.

The E352's 2 outputs are fed to the Mother-32's filer and envelope.

The Mother-32 (along with a Pico Seq) provide the sequencing. MATHS and the Quadra/Quad VCAs the envelopers.

We also use the Hexinverter drums triggered by the 4MS Rotating Clock divider."

Experimenting with the O'Tool Plus Oscilloscope Module

Published on Sep 21, 2017 The Mad Music Machine

"Caitlin has been learning about sound waves at school so we added an oscilloscope module to help her understand sound design.

Here we compare the triangle and sawtooth waves on the Mother-32 with the sine wave on the System-1m.

We then use the cutoff on the Mother-32 to approximate a sine wave."

Zlob Modular Foldiplier Audio Demonstration

video upload by Anthony Janas

"All sounds were processed through the Zlob Foldiplier.
Organized Sounds and video by
Anthony Janas
Collages by
Caitlin Minor

https://anthonyjanas.bandcamp.com/

Foldiplier is available as a pcb, kit, or fully built at
https://zlobmodular.com"

You can find an additional demo and details on Zlob Modular's Foldiplier here.