The Reactive Sound System adds sounds to the current soundscape, either to mask for example speech, or to make unpleasant sounds more pleasant. They have also developed an acoustic curtain with a microphone and flat speakers which can work with the system.
Still trying to get through all my notes from Resonances… Of the many installations at NIME 06, I found three of them particularly interesting: {#image227}Musical Loom by Kingsley Ng was based around an old loom standing in a dark room (or rather a “tent” built between the entrances to the toilets…). It was possible to “play” the loom and sounds and images would appear. The technical setup was built with a combination of infrared cameras and ultrasound sensors, and using EyesWeb for control....
We have started a collaboration between between UiO and AHO, and some of the music technology students followed courses with the interaction designers at AHO this spring semester. This was a great success, and I was impressed with what came out of it. Henrik Marstrander has worked on a table interface where he can control various musical parameters, and Jon Olav Eikenes and Marie Wennesland has made a multi-touch multi-touch interface modelled after Jeff Han....
There were lots of concerts at NIME 06, and many interesting things to comment about: Ben Neill played Mutantrumpet a hybrid acoustical and electronic instrument which was very interesting. {#image219}Circumference Cycles by Chris Strollo and Tina Blaine was very captivating. Glass plates suspended by metal wires with amplification and some effects, sounded great! Mari Kimura’s two pieces (Polytopia and Tricot) were great and showed how well electronics can be used together with an acoustic instrument (violin)....
Apple has recently filed an interesting US Patent Application:* * The invention generally pertains to a hand-held computing device. More particularly, the invention pertains to a computing device that is capable of controlling the speed of the music so as to affect the mood and behavior of the user during an activity such as exercise. By way of example, the speed of the music can be controlled to match the pace of the activity (synching the speed of the music to the activity of the user) or alternatively it can be controlled to drive the pace of the activity (increasing or decreasing the speed of the music to encourage a greater or lower pace)....
Doug pointed me to Deep Listening: Deep Listening is a philosophy and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros that distinguishes the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. The result of the practice cultivates appreciation of sounds on a heightened level, expanding the potential for connection and interaction with one’s environment, technology and performance with others in music and related arts.
The Eurovision Song Contest (or Melodi Grand Prix as it often called) is a bizarre annual music competition broadcasted over the whole of Europe. The music is rarely in focus, and most people tend to “love to hate” the concept. However, for many of the new countries in Europe the contest is important to show their own existence and bound with their allies this Norwegian commentator writes.
Native instruments states that KORE should be the new universal sound platform solving “all problems” in large music software setups. Basically, it works as a generic host for plugins (VST and AU) that can be used in sequencers, and it comes with a hardware controller to facilitate the control. The argumentation is convincing and the pictures nice, but it seems like this “new” product only scratches on the surface of the real problem....
Seems like everything is getting USB-connectivity these days. The Samson condenser microphone has been out for a while, and not Behringer is releasing a . iAXE393 USB-guitar, the Ultimate Electric Guitar with Built-In USB Port to Connect Straight to Your Computer. Jam and Record with Killer Modeling Amps and Stomp Boxes. Seems like it only outputs digital audio, though. Would have been interesting if it had had a built-in audio-to-MIDI (or even better to OSC) converter....
{.imagelink}Sonic Visualiser from Queen Mary’s is yet another software tool for visualizing audio content. However, there are some features that stand out: Cross-platform: available for OS X, Linux, Windows GPL’ed Native support for aiff, wav, mp3 and ogg (but what about AAC?) Annotations: Support for adding labelled time points and defining segments, point values and curves. The annotations can be overlayed on top of waveforms and spectrograms Time-stretch Vamp Plugins is at the core of the Sonic Visualiser, and it seems like they want this to become a standard for non-realtime audio plugins....