Silhoutte Eins Optical Synthesizer at Superbooth 2022

video upload by ound On Sound magazine

"Silhoutte Eins Optical Synthesizer at Superbooth 2022

Objects placed on the light table create the source audio waveforms in real time.

The user interface consists of an on-monitor plexiglas hardware controller which addresses 4 software pages. 20 potentiometers and 21 buttons give you quick access to the functions. All values are shown directly behind and around the controlling potentiometer or button.

SOS says ... this is not unlike Daphne Oram's famous Oramics machine reinterpreted for the 21st Century.

More info here. http://www.silhouette-synthesizer.de/"

See the Przygodda label for additional posts.

sonicPlanet - First Experiment with StarWaves

video uploads by sonicPlanet


video upload by Richard Devine

"StarWaves is an audiovisual sound architect, the embodiment of sound, space and visual design rolled into one. Presented by sonicPlanet www.sonicplanet.com, it is a move towards the next generation of sound design apps.

Available for OSX and iPad (Windows version later), minimum hardware requirements : for iOS an 2019 iPAD (8th gen or pro) or newer, for OSX a recent Mac (2019 i7 or M1)"

via the user manual on SonicPlanet:
StarWaves is an audiovisual scene architect, the embodiment of sound, space and visual design rolled into one.

StarWaves gives the sound designer the architect’s role by creating possibilities of dialogue between these multiple elements.

IN THE MAKING OF SONIC ARCHITECTURES
StarWaves can import the sonic material in its concrete form as recorded files. Then this digital data is being represented as 3D rigid physical forms in space. We name them “the platform blocks” distributed spatially, a structure which stems from the sonic material being imported. There can be 100s of them, reaching the granular levels of sonic material. The layout of the platforms can be designed with 3D tools like positioning, rotation; they can be stretched, bent, scattered along their physical dimensions in continuous transformations.

As Goethe wisely stated : the architecture itself is 'frozen music'. How do we interact with this architecture to create the sonic textures ?

We know that sound travels as waves in an environment. It originates from a source and travels towards a distance, then interacts with the surface material of the environmental objects, gets

SONICPLANETTM
reflected, refracted, and absorbed within all the physical reality of its nature, granting a flexible relation to spatiality.

Sound remains as a hidden existence until it reaches our body. StarWaves uses on its scene the transmitters which send particles and beams of light to the space ( reminiscent to particle behavior of light or sound ) They hit the platform blocks ( representing the sonic material ) get reflected and collide with further objects, travel in distance until they die.

The time they collide with these rigid bodies they trigger sonic events and start a flow of synthesis processes. It is this continuous kinematic interaction, this physical realm which composes the sonic being and applies continuous transformations on its texture.

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xx Calder Plays Theremin | Dorit Chrysler

video upload by The Museum of Modern Art

Calder Plays Theremin | Behind the Scenes
video upload by Moog Music Inc

"We invite you to take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Calder Plays Theremin," directed by filmmaker Michael Tyburski, featuring an original sound piece by composer and sound artist Dorit Chrysler.

In a new piece filmed at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, Berlin-based thereminist (and our dear friend) Dorit Chrysler brings a collection of electronic instruments together with sculptures on display in the museum’s 'Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start' exhibition for a novel experiment in sound and motion.

'Calder Plays Theremin' pays homage to both inventor Leon Theremin, whose eponymous invention has inspired generations of musicians and musical instrument creators, and sculptor Alexander Calder, who reimagined the art of sculpture as “an experiment in space and motion, upending centuries-old notions that sculpture should be static, grounded, and dense by making artworks that often move freely and interact with their surroundings,” according to MoMA. In this piece, Calder’s sculptures control the sound of each theremin, making for a truly unique and magical composition among these objects, personified as artists for the occasion. 'To hear a theremin trigger the Moog Model 15 synthesizer in the Sculpture Garden—priceless. The sound of a Calder mobile element rubbing against the antenna of a theremin producing microtonal sound in slight movement—breathtaking.' -composer and thereminist Dorit Chrysler

Visit moogmusic.com to read our complete interview with Dorit, where she shares what inspired her to develop the concept for this piece."

Update: Also see https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/671

Bela Mini Multichannel Expander

"Introducing the latest board in the Bela toolbox: the Bela Mini Multichannel Expander. This expansion board for the Bela Mini brings multichannel audio into your projects to open new frontiers in instrument design, interactivity and sound installations.

The multichannel expander connects to Bela Mini to give you a total of 8 channels of audio in, and 8 channels of audio out while still having all of Bela's high-performance connectivity including analog inputs, digital I/O and plug and play MIDI over USB. All of this in the tiny footprint of the Bela Mini.

Available now at: http://shop.bela.io/collections/bela-..."

And the press release:

Bela is thrilled to announce the debut of the Bela Mini Multichannel Expander, a new extension for our Bela Mini system that packs multichannel audio to an astonishingly small and powerful interactive package and at a very reasonable price.

The Bela Mini Multichannel Expander is an add-on for the Bela Mini system. It sits right on top of Bela Mini and expands audio I/O from two channels to a whopping eight audio I/O.

The Bela Mini Multichannel Expander gives you all the connectivity that creative digital makers need and love, like 16 digital I/O and 8 high-resolution analog inputs. And it’s still tiny - the fully assembled Bela Mini with Multichannel Expander is only 35 x 64 x 34mm, small enough to fit pretty much anywhere. The whole package comes in at just £160.

Imagine being able to capture and process sound from eight individual strings, and diffuse them through a surround sound system. Or being able to make interactive objects that are sonified from every direction, with a different sonic experience at each angle. Or building spatial sound installations that react to listeners, moving sound through multiple locations in response to presence or human interaction. Or field recording with a multi-directional microphone. Or sampling sound live, and being able to process and play it back over multichannel speakers. Or being able to build interactive ambisonic environments. These are just some of the possibilities with the new expander.

A huge amount of audio channels in combination with powerful interactive processing means that the Bela Mini Multichannel Expander can open up new frontiers in designing sound installations, musical instruments, interactive sonic objects, and more. Program it in a multitude of languages right in your browser using the Bela IDE, Bela’s powerful interface for learning and creating that comes loaded with the tools digital makers need, like a built-in oscilloscope, dozens of examples, and an interactive pin diagram.

The Bela Mini Multichannel Expander is available as:

An add-on for the Bela Mini system (includes 6 audio adapter cables) £60.

A starter kit (includes Bela Mini system, SD card, USB cable, and 8 audio adapter cables) £170, £160 introductory price until November 1.

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Sound Object #5 Techno jam

video upload by Molten Music Technology

"A quick bassline with filtering on the Sound Object #5 synthesizer to give an example of the sort of basic sounds it can do. Check out my full review for more details and sound demos."

See the Sound Object label below for more.

Update:

Sound Object #5 Synthesizer Review

video upload by

"Sound Object #5 is a Russian built analogue synthesizer with 2 VCOs, Polivoks style filter and lots of interesting modulation. In this video I give lots of sound examples, take you through the waveforms and what it could possibly do for you.

https://www.sound-objects.com

Index - 0:00
Intro - 0:12
First Impressions - 1:03
Oscillator basics - 6:58
Just the waveforms, no reverb - 10:39
Quick techno jam - 14:24
Getting into the details - 15:47
A bit more on the FM - 16:21
Envelope - 18:09
Modulator - 22:12
A bit more on the filter - 25:17
Sample & Hold - 26:15
A quick jam with delay and a bit of backing - 32:28
Ins and Outs - 33:37
Duophonicness - 34:21
Conclusions - 39:35
Outro - Duophonic, with some dodgy DFAMing - 44:30"

Understanding Granular Synthesis (Symbolic Sound Kyma GrainCloud & SampleCloud) | Simon Hutchinson

video upload by Simon Hutchinson

"Explaining granular synthesis and giving demonstrations with the Kyma GrainCloud and SampleCloud sound objects.

Granular synthesis is a synthesis technique where we can assemble new sounds from very short "grains" of sound. We can do this with wavetables or longer samples, breaking them down into these short grains before reconstituting them back together in unique ways. Because we can change all of these tiny parts that make up our new sounds, there are exciting opportunities for real time control and performance.

#Synthesis #GranularSynthesis #Kyma #SymbolicSoundKyma

0:00 Intro, Defining Granular Synthesis
0:30 Surf's Up
0:52 Example: Driving Game Tire Screech
1:25 Software & Hardware Choices
2:40 Kyma GrainCloud and SampleCloud
3:10 Talking through GrainCloud Parameters
4:07 Listening to the GrainCloud
5:22 Jitter
7:49 Changing the Waveform
9:25 SampleCloud
10:03 TimeIndex (Where Are You Getting Your Grains)
11:41 PanJitter with SampleCloud
12:22 Changing the Sample (Furby)
12:49 Change TimeIndex Algorithmically
14:33 Frequency Jittter in SampleCloud
15:52 Adding Reverb
16:35 Back to Maunal TimeIndex
16:56 Multiple Parameters and Interactivity
18:53 Closing Thoughts, So What?"

Expressive E Introduces Imagine - Physical Modeling Software Synth with Multidimensional Acoustic Tones

video upload by Expressive E

"Meet Imagine a playful world of unknown acoustic sounds

Imagine digs deep inside the body of real-life instruments, modifies, and combines their acoustic characteristics to create an imaginary acoustics landscape.
Thanks to a playful multidimensional approach, Imagine offers texture manipulations, mysterious unknown sound dimensions that still sound familiar.

multidimensional acoustic tones

Imagine digs deep inside the body of real life instruments, modifies and combines their acoustic characteristics to create an imaginary acoustics landscape.

Thanks to a playful multidimensional approach, Imagine offers texture manipulations, mysterious unknown sound dimensions that still sound familiar.
multi-stage envelope generators

For further expressive possibilities, Imagine contains MSEGs that pack a huge collection of modulations for your sounds.

intelligent modulation system

Behind the scenes, everything is optimized to provide you the best expressive experience possible: no dead zones; sensitivity curves and ranges are continuously scaled.

optimized macros

Significant optimization work has been carried out to allow you to modulate the sound of your instruments in real time, resulting in a unique expressive perspective."

🔥🔥🔥 special introductory price - 40%OFF - limited offer -⏳
https://bit.ly/3tyHNND

Update: the press release, just in, follows with additional details and some spectacular renders of a conceptual hardware version. Before you get to excited, Imagine is software only:

Expressive E and AAS Team Up on the Imagine Software Instrument: A Playful New World of Unknown Acoustic Sounds.

Imagine lets you easily play with a new variety of sounds—acoustic, organic, and alive from the resonant bodies of real-life instruments. 

Paris, France, September 9, 2021 — Expressive E’s new Imagine plug-in instrument captures the qualities of different real-life instrument bodies and modifies and combines their acoustic characteristics to create an imaginary acoustics landscape.

Thanks to a playful, multidimensional approach, Imagine allows you to have evolving textures, including several dimensions to explore for each preset. This unique approach produces mysterious, inspiring, unknown sound dimensions from familiar-sounding elements.

Imagine results from an exciting collaboration between Applied Acoustics Systems (AAS)—the foremost pioneer of acoustic physical modeling software instruments — who provides the sound engine — and Expressive E, a company grounded in the mission of improving the way musicians interact with sounds by creating a much more intuitive and powerful music-making experience.

“At the forefront of a new generation of controllers that provide multidimensional expression, Expressive E’s expertise proved to be a perfect match for our physical modeling technology,” says Marc-Pierre Verge, CEO of Applied Acoustics Systems. “They created a flexible and playful interface based around real-time manipulations that allow one to morph between layers of resonating objects. This inspired their sound design team to create a brilliant library of rich organic soundscapes to explore.” 

CLICK FOR MORE »

Sound Object #5 & Gek.Kon Hardware Desktop Synths

Sound Object #5 | The Synth Architecture | Basic Building Blocks

video upload by Tulpa Dusha

Sound Object # 5 :


"Synthesized soundscapes: from bass, lead, computer tunes till cinematic backgrounds. Press pause on the frizzed frame and set your SO#5 to recreate on your system."

You might recognize #5 from previous posts here. You'll find additional details there. Gek.Kon is new:

Tulpa Dusha - Introduction of Gek.Kon by Sound Objects
video upload by Tulpa Dusha

"Monophonic Digital Synthesiser

Gek.kon is a monophonic digital lo-fi synthesiser. Oscillator generates a waveform that contains digital artefacts, which we can smooth with a simple analogue filter. Smoothing the waveform brings new sounding, giving us a spectrum from lo-fi till vintage timbres."

Spectral Shiatsu Max For Live - touching your way through the spectrum

video upload by Sensel

"This unique Max for Live device relies on your touches and their pressure on the Morph to reveal the different frequencies of a sound from different times of a sound recording. Rather than using different buttons to create notes, each contact on the Sensel Morph reveals parts of a sound's frequency spectrum, playing short loops. These are some examples of different sounds and effects that can be achieved with this instrument." Tangible Frequencies with Spectral Shiatsu Max for Live: Overview and Tutorial
video upload by Sensel

"This unique instrument relies on your touches and their pressure on the Morph to reveal the different frequencies of a sound from different times of a sound recording.

0:00 Introduction to Spectral Shiatsu
0:18 How to use in Max for Live or Max
1:22 Example of playing with Spectral Shiatsu on a Morph
1:54 Using a mouse or trackpad instead of the Morph
2:02 More examples
3:04 Scaling/cropping frequencies of sound
3:25 Using image files
3:37 Knobs to adjust your sound
5:42 Using objects to interact

Download from https://morph.sensel.com/products/spe..."

Organizm - Novation Circuit Tracks Pack by LDM Designs

"Organizm follows on from the successful Cosmogonik and Dreddsteppa packs, LDM Design goes for another deep dive, this time bringing natural sounds, atmospheric textures and organic beats. It provides a great selection of resources which can add an organic, natural element to any production, and sound great with ambient, chillout, IDM, techno, tropical & psychedelic styles.

ORGANIZM CONTENTS
The exhaustive collection of 64 finely crafted patches includes metallic and glassy mallets, clear and ethnic flutes, organ-sounding keys, dynamic sentient leads, bulbous basses and atmospheric elemental textures. Many of the sounds have a wide range of variation, utilizing the macros to go from clean to noisy, organic to electronic, from short stabs to long trailing pads.

The high quality samples are built around a carefully recorded selection of hits from a traditional Jordanian frame drum. The selection includes a complete set of raw hits, using a variety of objects, such as palms, sticks, mallets and more. A number of the samples have also been layered and processed, to cut through the mix of any electronic production. Also included are synthesized and FM drum samples which also have a natural feel, and some atmospheric FX.

Within the pack are also 16 sessions / projects to demonstrate a variety of styles and versatile sounds.

The pack uses a consistent set of macro assignments for intuitive play, which mostly follow the suggested macros for the Circuit Tracks."

https://isotonikstudios.com/product/organizm/

MARS Musical Audio Research Station Iris Farfisa Bontempi - Ares Software

video by Museo del Synth Marchigiano

You can find an additional post from 2012 featuring the MARS Synthesizer here.

"In this video we demonstrate how the Ares software allows you to program the Mars card, Isa card inserted in the computer, connected via Scsi connector to the Ics816 audio output card.

The Musical Audio Research Station (MARS) is a programmable specialized digital machine for real-time audio applications which has been entirely developed by the Italian Bontempi-Farfisa research institute IRIS.
The MARS workstation is composed of:

• one or more sound boards, called NERGAL connected to one or more audio units;
• a PC running the graphical interactive development environment called ARES.

The first version of MARS, which has been presented at the ICMC92 was running on Atari computers.

The sound generation board is a full size standard IBM ISA card running at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.

The board may be divided into three main sections: DSP, control and mixer sections.

The DSP section contains two dedicated IRIS DSPs called X20 with their respective program and sample memories. These DSPs are memory mapped onto the microcontroller memory area.

The X20 is a fully programmable DSP. Its architecture is highly parallel and allows pipelined operations.

Its internal arithmetic is 2’s complement fixed point with a 16 x 16 bit multiplier and a 24 bit arithmetic and logic unit.

Each X20 has two blocks of internal data memory which may be addressed in parallel. It also contains a 512 x 64 bit words of external program memory, and may access to external sample memory. The sample memory is supported by SIMM modules with 4 up to 32 megabytes of DRAM.

Each X20 provides four audio input channels and four audio output channels. The audio signals are managed on 16 bits. The X20s may be used in parallel or in serie, by sending the four outputs of the first one to the four inputs of the second one.

The control section is managed by a proprietary real-time operating system, called RT20M, running on a MOTOROLA MC68302 microcontroller. The RT20M manages all the MARS objects described previously, and all their interactions with the DSP section, the mixer section and the external world. It also controls any communication through the three ports available on the board: MIDI, RS232, and a special parallel one for high speed connection to the PC’s ISA bus.

The mixer section controls a set of predefined audio mixing operations among boards and audio units.

Each board have one connector to/from the audio-unit, and four connectors (two inputs and two outputs) which allow multi-board links. This last feature allows to create a MARS boards network with a parallel, a serial or a mixed configuration using one or more audio units.

Two types of IRIS audio units are available for NERGAL: low-cost and professional.

The low-cost unit is a small external box (1/3U) with two monophonic input lines, four monophonic output lines, and one stereophonic headphone output.

The professional audio unit is a 2U standard rack module. It is modular and may pilot up to 8 input/output analog channels and 8 input/output digital channels. Each unit can be shared between two different NERGAL boards."

Anyma Phi: Playing using a MIDI guitar (MIDI pickup + audio input)

Aodyo Instruments

"You can play the Anyma Phi as a synth, using a MIDI controller, or as an audio effects unit, using the audio input. Or… you can do both at the same time!
Here, Jonathan uses a guitar equipped with a Fishman TriplePlay MIDI pickup that sends the MIDI data of his performance to the Anyma Phi, in addition to the guitar's own audio output.
Having both MIDI and audio allows you to augment your guitar sound with resonators and other physical models that are always kept in tune with your playing, opening a wide range of possibilities!

Anyma Phi is an affordable hybrid monophonic synthesizer that allows you to create new sound universes inspired from the real world, where objects collide, vibrate, and resonate.

Anyma Phi blends the classic ingredients of electronic music with physical modeling technology, allowing it to simulate acoustic sound sources, such as strings or reeds, as well as resonating structures, like wood, glass, or metal."

Anyma Phi: Preview of the patch librarian / advanced editor

Aodyo Instruments

"This is a preview video of the functionality of the patch librarian / advanced editor for Anyma Phi. This will be made available as a stretch goal if reached, see our Kickstarter page for details: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

Anyma Phi is an affordable hybrid monophonic synthesizer that allows you to create new sound universes inspired from the real world, where objects collide, vibrate, and resonate.

Anyma Phi blends the classic ingredients of electronic music with physical modeling technology, allowing it to simulate acoustic sound sources, such as strings or reeds, as well as resonating structures, like wood, glass, or metal."

Anyma Phi - Physical Modeling Synthesizer by Aodyo

Details via the Kickstarter campaign:

"An affordable hybrid monophonic synthesizer that allows you to create new sound universes inspired from the real world, where objects collide, vibrate, and resonate

Anyma Phi blends the classic ingredients of electronic music with physical modeling technology, allowing it to simulate acoustic sound sources, such as strings or reeds, as well as resonating structures, like wood, glass, or metal. Anyma Phi is compact enough to stand on your keyboard, or anywhere on your desk, and is compatible with any MIDI controller, such as keyboards, sequencers, or even wind controllers, including our own Sylphyo! [see posts here]

Whether you play live or record in the studio, design sounds or play presets, Anyma Phi will become an indispensable tool. It can even be used as a stand-alone effects processor, or as part of a guitar effects pedal setup.


The heart of the Anyma Phi is the matrix, which provides a quick and easy way to explore your sounds by following a physical metaphor, with four macros for each of the five stages of sound generation.

With its matrix, Anyma Phi offers a straightforward way to tweak, explore, and create sound universes. It also provides easy ways to make your sound react to your MIDI controllers with mapping shortcuts. But don't be fooled by the simplicity!

If you want to dive deeper, you can take control of the powerful semi-modular synth engine beyond the matrix, with oscillators covering a wide range of synthesis techniques, effects, and modulators.

By connecting those together, you can create any kind of sound, and control it any way you want.

Specs:

Hybrid monophonic synthesizer

Stereo audio output:
- Two 1/4” mono line jack outputs
- One 1/4” stereo headphone jack output

Stereo audio input:
one 1/4” stereo input

MIDI inputs and outputs via USB and DIN ports

Powerful digital semi-modular synthesizer engine

- Memory: 63 patches

- 3 oscillator slots

- 5 effect slots + 1 mono reverb

- 2 audio buses for mixing and effect assignation

- 8 modulator slots, including DAHDSR envelope generators, LFOs, curves, interpolators, slew limiters, etc.

- 24 mapping slots, each allowing to control any synth parameter (including another mapping) using a modulator or a controller input, with a sidechain input.

*Technical specifications subject to change in order to improve reliability, function, or design."

SOUNDMIT 2020 - LIVE STREAMING - DAY 1

SOUNDMIT

Check this post for updates throughout the day.

CLICK FOR MORE »

Finegear's The Dust Collector

Finegear

New maker and new synth w/ built-in reverb & light sensors (see the side panel below).

"The Dust Collector is the first of the Arkive_Effects_ series, aiming to honor and expand upon the history of experimentation in music, shaking some of the dust that has settled on the 1970’s.

It contains 2 VC LFOs, 2 tape saturations, a spring reverb, a delay and a phaser. However, this is not your average multi-effect box, as each module has been analysed and tweaked to support your creative process.

And experiment you can: insert an effect in the delay’s feedback loop, add modulation to the phaser (as well as to pretty much every effect), poke the three springy insides hiding behind the removable cover… You can even go further inside with several moddable features directly on the PCB.

With the Dust Collector, you’ll uncover unique sounds and new uses for effects you thought you knew: gritty, springy, phased magic dust that sticks to the tape and transforms your sound into a living, kicking and breathing organism – not necessarily pretty, but alive & authentic."

Removable Spring tank cover
Remove it to scratch, hit, rub, place various objects on the springs to feed the storm (and your music)!

You can find additional details at https://finegear.net

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Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Digital (and Back) by Oli Freke

New synth book coming from Oli Freke, who brought us the SYNTH EVOLUTION posters.

The book is currently available for pre-order here.

The book features:

• Over 500 hand-drawn illustrations of vintage synthesizers, drum-machines, samplers and pre-modern electric instruments.

• A reference book for every synthesizer, drum-machine and sampler manufactured between 1963 and 1995 with key stats, fascinatingly quirky facts and company profiles.

• Destined to be the new ‘bible’ of synthesizer information, following in the footsteps of the classic ‘KeyFax’ series by Julian Colbeck.

• Tells the story and impact of the synthesizer on all forms of modern music and culture with geek appeal for the music fan and synth fan alike.

From acid-house to prog-rock, there is no form of modern popular music that hasn’t been propelled forwards by the synthesizer. As a result they have long been objects of fascination, desire and reverence for keyboard players, music producers and fans of electronic music alike. Whether looking at an imposing modular system or posing with a DX7 on Top of the Pops, the synth has also always had an undeniable physical presence.

This book celebrates their impact on music and culture by providing a comprehensive and meticulously researched directory of every major synthesizer, drum machine and sampler made between 1963 and 1995. Each instrument is illustrated by hand, and shown alongside its vital statistics and some fascinatingly quirky facts. In tracing the evolution of the analogue synthesizer from its invention in the early 1960s to the digital revolution of the 1980s right up until the point that analogue circuits could be modelled using software in the mid-1990’s, the book tells the story of analogue to digital - and back again.

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Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds

Oscillatorial Binnage - Woktones (from 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds') ashford daisyak

Back in 2016, Daniel Wilson brought us Radionics Radio - An Album of Musical Radionic Thought Frequencies - Delawarr Multi-Oscillator (c.1962)

He now brings us Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds. For this release, he is part of a quartet exploring "acoustic analogies for classical electronic soundmaking techniques." It was recorded entirely acoustically. The "CD edition contains the small booklet - 'A Primer on Post-Electronic Technique'. It's just received a large feature in Electronic Sound magazine and a glowing review in The Wire, linking the post-apocalyptic technology we use with the limitations forced upon us by the pandemic."

Above is a teaser video with the following description followed by a BandCamp embed:

"From Oscillatorial Binnage's 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds' released February 2020 on the Sub Rosa label. An album of recordings made using electromagnetic force fields acting upon found/recycled objects in increasingly complex mechanical systems of cranks, pulleys, levers, tilts, jacks and gears.

Oscillatorial Binnage is a London-based electroacoustic improv quartet comprised of Fari Bradley, Toby Clarkson, Christopher J Weaver, and Daniel Wilson. Self-built instruments feature extensively, along with recycled objects, inharmonic and arbitrary microtonal tunings, and solar power.

Filmed here by Toby Clarkson using multiple cameras."

Radio From a Tree! Ether Adventures

Published on May 24, 2020 DECIMA1

"This video is not endorsed or sponsored by SOMA Laboratory.

From the SOMA Website about the ETHER V2:

ETHER is a kind of anti-radio. Instead of being tuned to a specific radio station, it receives all the interference and radiation that a traditional radio tries to eliminate in order to create a clean signal. It captures the radio waves “as is” from hertz to gigahertz because it doesn’t contain the tuned input circuit that filters out all frequencies except the narrow band of a specific station. This allows ETHER to perceive the invisible electromagnetic landscape that humans created unintentionally, making possible live electromagnetic field listening and recording.

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Synthberry Pi: Tutorial II - OSC Remote control

Published on Mar 7, 2020 Artis Lab

"SynthBerry Pi is the prototype of a standalone synthesizer based on the Raspberry Pi mini computer and the Pure Data development environment. The prototype is equipped with a control surface made up of eight potentiometers connected to the computer which allow to modify, in real time, the control parameters of the sound generation processes. Furthermore, by using the wireless connectivity of the mini computer, the Pure Data patches can be controlled by sending Open Sound Control (OSC) messages from devices such as tablets or smartphones.

For more information on SynthBerry Pi visit this link: https://www.artislab.it/it/synthberry...

The video shows the remote control of a Pure Data patch based on Open Sound Control messages over the wireless network. On the phone we have chosen to use an application called Control which provides graphic interfaces equipped with objects which, in response to user actions, send OSC messages through the wireless connection.

For this demo we used a Pd patch that is based on a subtractive synthesis system. The patch consists of a white noise generator and four fourth-order bandpass filters. The eight potentiometers of the control surface allow to control, for each filter, the center frequency and the quality factor (Q). The filters have been tuned to operate in different frequency regions from the lowest, the pair of potentiometers on the left, up to the highest on the right.

Two interfaces have been developed in Control to change the parameters of the Pd patch which creates the subtractive synthesis system. The first interface is something similar to a mixer, since it makes possible to separately change the volume and position of the stereo panning of each of the four filters through the use of a widget that implements a multitouch interface. The vertical dimension of the graphic object has been associated with the volume control of each filter, while the horizontal direction allows the user to control the panning between the left and right channels.

The second interface has four buttons that allow the user to choose four different settings for the range of variation of the filter frequencies. The frequency value of the four filters is controlled by the position of the corresponding potentiometer by means of a mapping process in a well-defined frequency range defined by a maximum and minimum value. Each button of the Control interface recalls a different configuration in the patch for the extreme values (maximum and minimum) of the frequency regions in which the interpolation is carried out. Furthermore, by positioning the potentiometers all up or all down, it is possible to obtain precisely the values of the filter frequencies set for the different presets."

See the Artis Lab below for more.