planet.linuxaudio.org

Cellular AutoMidi is a generative music making app, making use of a modified version of the ever-popular Cellular Automata algorithm – a simple evolutionary model on a grid that works nicely for sequencers. (See, among many others, Lazyfish’s legendary NEWSCHOOL for Reaktor, and Audio Damage’s Automaton.)

Cellular Automata is nothing new, but here, you get to see it as an AIR/Flash app, which means a modular CA-based creation you can drop anywhere. (More on the cross-platform details after the jump.) And hey, if we can have countless step sequencers, why not countless cellular automata step sequencers? The project is developed by Leeds, England-based Flash developer Lawrie Cape.

It also deserves special mention for some nice sounds made with NI’s Massive synth, using FL Studio as host; see the video.

Cellular AutoMidi – Generative Audio Flash AIR App from Lawrie Cape on Vimeo.

Lawrie writes:

Each cell can be alive or dead. Once in a generation, each cell looks at it’s surrounding cells, and dies if it is lonely or overcrowded. If a dead cell has an optimum amount of neighbors, it will come to life! Each generation, all the cells which have come to life will sound a note. The notes are assigned based on the cell’s y position, and are all in the pentatonic scale.

There’s a few controls at the bottom which change how things work too.

Start/Stop – Starts/Stops the automation.
Load – Loads a pattern from the text box.
Export – Exports the current pattern to the clipboard. You can send it to friends, or save it for later, then load in with the load button.
Clear down – Stop and clear the current pattern.
Law Mode – An error when coding the cell rules gave this other odd mode.
Skip Audio – Just show the cell animations.
Sing Dead – Instead of singing the recently revived notes, sing for the recently deceased.
Note duration – Alter the system speed.
Also, along the top there are banks of preset systems. Click play to start a saved pattern, and click assign to assign the pattern currently displayed to that button. You can also trigger each pattern with the keyboard keys 1-8.

When you press Export, your pattern is automatically copied to the clipboard, so you can save it, or share it with people. Here’s a pattern I made – you can load it by pasting it into the load box, and pressing Load!

I’ve written a post about it on my blog here – http://www.lawriecape.co.uk/theblog/index.php/archives/735

And you can download the app there too.

What about MIDI function on different operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux)?

Flash Midi Server is Processing based, but I’ve packaged it as Win and Mac apps in the Google Code download at – http://code.google.com/p/flash-midi-server/downloads/list
In the next couple of days, I’ll put together and test a Linux version, and hopefully release the Processing source code too – although as my first Processing project, I’m sure the code is pretty ropey.

So, give it a try, and maybe someone with some Processing MIDI skills can recommend some tweaks to MIDI operation. I think this will be particularly welcome on Linux, where the toolset is a bit leaner.

If you use it, let us know what you think or what you create!

VirSyn have announced one of the nicest effects I’ve seen yet on a mobile platform in the form of iVoxel, a vocoder for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. On the handhelds, it looks like something you could easily hold up to your mouth and rest atop a synth; on iPad, you get a nicely-sized touchable keyboard for control. And they’re clearly hinting at more work to come.

http://www.virsyn.net/mobileapp/

iVoxel isn’t available yet, but it is coming. So, how does this compare to your laptop? You can get VirSyn’s full-blown MATRIX 2 vocoder for EUR119 on sale now, run it on a computer, and get all the advantages of hosting in your existing production software along with more advanced features (which you have to give up on the iPad). That laptop rig is the same one Kraftwerk used, in conjunction with Cubase 4 and a Sony laptop. iVoxel uses the same, superb sound engine – an impressive feat. My guess is – irrespective of iOS, Android, or whatever OS – these devices will really excel once they’re able to provide the same sorts of workflows that the laptop do. The appeal of touch input and the form factor is clear.

Open source pitch correction?

Poor man’s Android AutoTune, anyone?

MicDroid by Ethan Chen is a pitch-correction app for Android. Aside from enabling I Am T-Pain-style effects without iOS, pitch matching could lead to lots of other creative applications – pitch to MIDI, vocally-controlled synths, and more. The code is mostly available under an MIT license.

You can also grab MicDroid from the Android Market, with features like a shiny UI, sharing, recording to SMS, and encoding – and it’s still only in “alpha” state.

The underlying library on MicDroid is called AutoTalent by Tom Baran, and if you’re not terribly (or exclusively) interested in Android, that library is available under GPL2 on any platform. That gives you the ability to create all sorts of creative voice input applications on various platforms. Check out both from GitHub, and if you’ve got an Android, you can give MicDroid a try whether you’re a developer or not:

MicDroid @ github

http://web.mit.edu/tbaran/www/autotalent.html [MIT research page]

AutoTalent free plug-in downloads for LADSPA, Mac AU and VST, and Windows VST – stability may vary

Tom describes Autotalent “as the result of a week of recreational signal processing.” And yes, if you’re a PhD candidate at MIT’s DSP group, “recreational” and “signal processing” can actually go together.

I’m excited to mess with these plug-ins, though, because to me the generic pop music effects you hear all the time are just the tip of the iceberg. Experimental vocals, ho!

Updated: Via comments, Paul Davis points us to a more up-to-date “fork” of AutoTalent, Talented Hack. It features improved detection, MIDI input (for greater control of pitch correction), MIDI output (so you can use this as a pitch-to-MIDI plug), and generally cleaned-up code. It also runs as an LV2 plug-in, which is far more convenient on Linux. But even just having cleaner code alone means it’s probably a smart candidate for swapping into the Android tool (cough, cough).

From: Andres Cabrera <mantaraya36@...>
Subject: [LAA] QuteCsound 0.6.0 Released
Date: Jul 28, 12:52 pm 2010

Hi all!

QuteCsound 0.6.0 is finally ready! QuteCsound has now come of age as it
recently celebrated two years since its first svn commit! This release
takes QuteCsound way beyond my original expectations thanks to the
encouragement, ideas and work from many users. This is another
milestone release, with the implementation of the new widget format,
which opens the door to new functionality and extensibility.

QuteCsound is a frontend for Csound featuring a highlighting
editor with autocomplete, interactive widgets and integrated help. It
can open files created in MacCsound, and aims to be a simple yet
powerful and complete development environment for Csound.

QuteCsound has been tested on Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris,
and it is free software released under the LGPLv2 or at your option
GPLv3.

There are binary packages for Windows and OS X, and a source package
for other platforms.
You can get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qutecsound/files/QuteCsound/0.6.0/

There's more information here (along with an overdue home page revamp):
http://qutecsound.sourceforge.net/

There is also an experimental package for OS X (called "-full"), which
contains Csound inside, so you don't need a separate Csound installation,
(which means it will work immediately without installation - very handy if
you don't have the root password for a system).

Please try it and let us know any issues.

Questions, comments and suggestions for QuteCsound are very welcome
and can be posted to the main Csound mailing list, but better still,
join the QuteCsound users mailing list at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/qutecsound-users

Thanks as usual to the testing team, who made sure regular users get a
smooth ride by taking a bumpy ride...
Thanks especially to Francois Pinot, Andy Fillebrown, Joachim Heintz
and Rene Djack, but also to the translators and the rest of the testers.

QuteCsound is now accepting donations. If you find QuteCsound useful
and have some money to spare, please consider donating to the project,
to support development:
http://sourceforge.net/project/project_donations.php?group_id=227265

New in version 0.6.0:
* New XML Widget format for storing widgets. If file only contains the
old widget format a backup file is saved just in case.
* The new format allows many new funtionality like:
- Font, Font size, Font Color and background in a larger number of
widgets.
- Rounded borders and border width in various widgets.
- Font sizes are now approximate pixel values, which provides
better cross-platform font cmpatibility and a broader selection of
sizes
- x and y zoom for scope and graph widget
- If only old widget format is present in the file, a backup copy
is saved with extension .old-format
- Minimum and maximum values for spinbox, controller and scroll number
- Adjustable ranges for controller widgets
* Presets for Widgets are now available, and they will be stored as
XML text in the csd file. They can be used from the right click menu
in the widget panel. Reserved channels "_GetPresetName", "_GetPresetNumber",
"_SetPreset" and "_SetPresetIndex", which allows control of presets from
Csound or other widgets.
* New reserved channel "_MBrowse" for buttons, which allows selection
of multiple files, which are separated by the "," character.
* Font scaling and Font Offset configuration option for control over
global font rendering size.
* Added bookmarks in inspector (any comment starting by ";;" in a csd
file or "##" in python file is treated as a bookmark)
* Added option to save using Windows or Unix Line Endings [message continues]

read more

From: Ronald Stewart <ronaldjstewart@...>
Subject: [LAA] Indamixx Pro SL - 5 day sale $899.00
Date: Jul 28, 12:52 pm 2010

--0015174c17068e810c048c4d5d30
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi All,

I try to send to LAU lists but somehow it gets hung up somewhere so I will
try to announce this way.

In short, I am having an unadvertised 5 day sale on Indamixx Pro SL. Anyone
interested can contact me, or visit the link below.

Just thought there might be some who would like to know.

Here is the link
http://indamixx.com/on-special.html

Also there is a detailed product PDF on that link page.

super thanks!



Thank you

Ronald Stewart
Creative Director
Trinity Audio Group Inc.
9854 National Blvd. #322
Los Angeles CA 90034
310-733-9285

--0015174c17068e810c048c4d5d30
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi All,

I try to send to LAU lists but somehow it gets hung up somew=
here so I will try to announce this way.

In short, I am having an un=
advertised 5 day sale on Indamixx Pro SL.=A0 Anyone interested can contact =
me, or visit the link below.


Just thought there might be some who would like to know.

Here is=
the link
http://indamix=
x.com/on-special.html

Also there is a detailed product PDF on th=
at link page.


super thanks!



Thank you

Ronald Stewart
Creativ=
e Director
Trinity Audio Group Inc.
9854 National Blvd. #322
Los A=
ngeles CA 90034
310-733-9285


--0015174c17068e810c048c4d5d30--

read more

Alan W. Moore is in town and going to have 2 lectures. Tonight (28.7.) he speaks about the “House Magic” project at Frise Hamburg, 20:00.

Alan W. Moore, art historian and retired artist, speaks about the “House Magic” project. This “bureau of foreign correspondence” (himself) is a years-long project dedicated to explaining the movement of occupied social centers – besetzten Häusern mit politischen Richtung aka “Centro Sociale Occupato Autogestione” (CSOA) – to a U.S. audience. The first show was produced by the visual arts collective at ABC No Rio in NYC last year, and included “wallpaper,” stencils, banners, videos, books and dossiers from the internet. Later shows of this mobile archive were in Chicago and Philadelphia. Moore's research trip this summer has taken him to London, Madrid and now Hamburg. Auf Englisch mit some Deutschliches interpolation. With pictures.

Tomorrow 20:00 he speaks at Unlimited Liability (Norderstr. 71 ug) about "New York Art Gangs, post-'68"
--"Artists' groups do not make objects so much as they make changes"--

Beginning with the Arts Workers Coalition in 1969, NYC artists formed groups to advance their agendas and ideas. The arising of the Soho district, Gordon Matta-Clark, P.S. 1, Artists Meeting and Art & Language New York, Colab and punk art, Political Art Documentation group, and Group Material comprise a trajectory or lineage of politicized artistic practice. Today sees a resurgence of collective formations in the USA, and also a consideration of collective practice in itself. Alan Moore was a critic, video artist, and member of Colab, ABC No Rio, MWF Video Club, and hangs out with 16 Beaver Group. He is doctor (without medicine), and teaches when he can afford to. He is in Hamburg researching for "House Magic," an information project on European occupied social centers.

Inkscape’s Fill and Stroke panel is rather large and wider than the Layer and Align and Distribute panels I use often, causing the whole sidebar to take even more space away from the canvas area.

Screenshots of Inkscape 0.48pre1 (edited to remove rendering glitches on the color sliders):

So I wondered how this panel could be made more compact. Rough mockup:

The fill-rule toggle buttons in the top right of the original are mutually exclusive, so I reduced them to one icon for toggling here. Never once had a use for them. The legend for the color sliders doubles as combobox. For the Wheel mode, there would have to be either vertical text or an icon. Sliders with labels right on them save space, but the contrast has to handled with care, of course. For whatever reason, Inkscape uses two visual styles of comboxes, I used only one in the mockups.

Integrated gradient editing:

Filed under: Planet Ubuntu, Widgets, Windows

In this guest column, we turn to veteran synthesist and music tech expert Jim Aikin. When Jim wants to do digital synthesis, one of the tools to which he turns is a veritable favorite with a direct-line legacy to the beginnings of computer sound. That doesn’t mean Csound hasn’t kept with the times, though, or that it has to be unfriendly. If you’ve been looking for a way to dive into sound and code, this could be an ideal path. -Ed.

Csound is one of the most powerful pieces of free, open-source, cross-platform music software in the world. But it’s not the most user-friendly. With the release of QuteCsound 0.6.0, developer Andres Cabrera has made Csound about as easy to use as it’s ever likely to be. You still have to type code — instruments and scores are created in ASCII. But QuteCsound streamlines the process with a built-in text editor that has auto-complete, syntax coloring, and a clickable index pane that lets you jump directly to any comments that you’ve entered in your score.

QuteCsound implements an excellent set of mousable graphic widgets for real-time control. (Okay, it’s not Max, but you can do a lot.) In another pane in the main QuteCsound window you can display the Csound manual. Using pop-up windows, you can define looping score segments and start and stop them with mouse-clicks.

All of the features of Csound, including real-time MIDI and OSC I/O, are available in QuteCsound. After creating a few instruments and a score, you just click the Run button — no need to invoke Csound from a command line. The command line flags are tucked away safely in a dialog box. (Yes, it’s not the ’70s anymore.)

Csound itself is a separate download. Both Csound and QuteCsound are available in doubles (-d) and float (-f) versions, and your two installs must match.

If you’re comfortable with writing code, you may also want to look at blue. Like QuteCsound, blue is free and cross-platform (Mac/Win/Linux). Now at 2.1, blue is a deeper and more powerful but less transparent front end for Csound. To my way of thinking, QuteCsound is more like “vanilla Csound with real-time graphic widgets and a nice text editor.” Blue is a multi-track composition environment in which each of the Sound Objects positioned on a track is created using Csound code.

If you’ve never looked at Csound, it may be a bit intimidating at first. One of the best ways to really learn the system is by buying a copy of The Csound Book, a fat volume that will take you as deep into the math. Advanced math isn’t necessary to produce sound, fortunately.

Here’s my favorite example of how easy it can be. Would you like a ring modulator effect? You can do that in Csound with a single character — an asterisk (multiplication sign). This line:

asig3 = asig1 * asig2

…ring-modulates signal 1 by signal 2 and puts the output in signal 3. There’s a little more to it than that: You have to make very sure that the levels of the two inputs never exceed 1.0. I usually recommend that newcomers to Csound not use headphones, because a bug in your code can cause ear damage! But with a little effort, you can build complex modular synthesizers in Csound using many different types of synthesis. If you take the time to get into it, you’ll be amazed at what it can do.

Visit Jim at musicwords.net. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to give this a try myself. -Ed.

The last couble of weeks a friend of mine from Toronto is riding from Ontario to B.C., on horseback. Although he has no direct wireless connection, on some stops he can update the blog and gallery. Pretty amazing journey through Canada:

http://gowestyoungmen.com

For serious programmers, the text editor they user is an intensely personal thing. Try suggesting to an Emacs user that they should switch to Vim or vice-versa. Most would shudder at the thought.

My choice of editor for the last 15 years has been Nedit, the Nirvana Editor. Nedit has been an outstanding editor; feature full yet easy to use. When I first started using it, Nedit was a closed source binary-only download but sometime in the late 1990s, it was released under the GNU GPL.

Unfortunately Nedit has been suffering from bit rot and neglect for a number of years. The main problem is that it uses the Motif widget toolkit. For open source, there are basically two options for Motif; Lesstif, an LGPL reimplementation of Motif which has been basically unmaintained for a number of years, or OpenMotif released under a license which is in no way OSI approved. On top of that, Nedit still doesn't support UTF-8, mainly because Lesstif doesn't support it.

I have, in the past, tried to fix bugs in Nedit, but the bugs are not really in Nedit itself, but in an interaction between Nedit whichever Motif library it is linked against and the underlying X libraries. Depending on whether Nedit is linked against Lesstif and OpenMotif, Nedit will display different sets of bugs. I have tried fixing bugs in Nedit linked against Lesstif, but got absolutely nowhere. Lesstif is one of the few code bases I have ever worked on that I was completely unable to make progress on.

With Nedit getting flakier with each passing year I finally decided to switch to a new editor. I had already discounted Emacs and Vim; switching from Nedit to either of those two archaic beasts was going to be way too painful. Of all the FOSS editors available, Gedit seemed to be the closest in features to Nedit.

Unfortunately, Gedit does not compare well with Nedit feature wise. To me it seems to try to be simultaneously as simple as possible and to have as many features as possible and the features don't seem to fit together all that well from a usability point of view. On top of that, it lacks the following:

• Regex search and regex search/replace. Apparently there is a regex search/replace plugin, but that uses a different hot key combination that literal search/repalce. Nedit on the other hand uses the same dialog box for literal and regex search/replaces; with a toggle button to switch between literal and regex searches.
• Search and replace within the selected area only.
• Highlighting of matching braces and brackets.
• Language specific editing modes and auto indentation.
• A macro language allowing further customisation.
• A simple, quick way to go to a particular line number (for Gedit, Control-L is supposed to work, but doesn't).

On top of that Gedit could also do with some improved key bindings and some improvements to its syntax highlighting patterns. The Ocaml syntax highlighting is particularly poor.

I'm now going to try to use Gedit, by customising its setup and and using the plugin system to see if I can regain the features that made Nedit such a pleasure to use.

Hi all!

QuteCsound 0.6.0 is finally ready! QuteCsound has now come of age as it
recently celebrated two years since its first svn commit! This release
takes QuteCsound way beyond my original expectations thanks to the
encouragement, ideas and work from many users. This is another
milestone release, with the implementation of the new widget format,
which opens the door to new functionality and extensibility.

QuteCsound is a frontend for Csound featuring a highlighting
editor with autocomplete, interactive widgets and integrated help. It
can open files created in MacCsound, and aims to be a simple yet
powerful and complete development environment for Csound.

QuteCsound has been tested on Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris,
and it is free software released under the LGPLv2 or at your option
GPLv3.

There are binary packages for Windows and OS X, and a source package
for other platforms.
You can get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qutecsound/files/QuteCsound/0.6.0/

There's more information here (along with an overdue home page revamp):
http://qutecsound.sourceforge.net/

read more

Sadly, the video above is the only information we were able to find on the “Double Slide Controller” trombone, built by composer Tomás Henriques. As well as, the instrument took first place in the Georgia Tech Center Guthman Musical Instruments Competition. Right in front of a Bluetooth bow for violins, and a circuit bending group from New York, and…wait; it beat out our favorite modified didgeridoo? Better luck next year.

From: Niels Mayer <nielsmayer@...>
Subject: [LAA] announcing envy24control, mudita (*) edition.
Date: Jul 26, 10:05 am 2010

Summary of updates from envy24control 0.6.0 (GIT HEAD) to "1.0.0":

(0) After a decade, incremented version to 1.0.0 (**)
(1) Implemented missing "Peak Hold" functionality in meters and
reimplemented meters for increased efficiency and lower X resource
usage. (see http://www.linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lad/2010/7/12/171535
& https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=602903 )
(2) All volumes are represented as decibels, including the 0 to -48dB
range of the hardware peak-meters, the 0 -to- -144dB attenuation for
all inputs to the digital mixer, the 0 -to- -63dB attenuation of the
analog DAC, and the +18 -to- -63dB attenuation/amplification of the
analog ADC.
(3) All gtk "scale" widgets have dB legends; the "PageUp" "PageDown"
keys allow rapid movement between the marked levels.
(4) Got rid of myriad compile warnings and other minor fixes across codebase.

Some screenshots:
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/Screenshot-Envy24Control-AnalogVolume.png
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/Screenshot-Envy24Control-MonitorInputs.png
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/Screenshot-Envy24Control-MonitorPCM.png

------------

To the ALSA project: please consider this patch to alsa-tools'
envy24control (**):
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/envy24control-0.6-to-1.0.patch
(patch to 'envy24control' from GIT trunk/head of alsa-tools)
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/envy24control-1.0.README
(summary of changes from 0.6.0 to 1.0.0)

------------

Those wanting to compile directly, or run a 64 bit linux binary I've built:

http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/envy24control-1.0.tar.gz
(full directory, just follow README directions to build/install)
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/envy24control-1.0-fc12-x86_64.tar.gz
(x86_64 binary that should work on fedora12 and equivalent OpenSuse release)

I'd appreciate any testing results or comments on this "1.0.0"
release. In particular, I'd like some assurance that the dB markings
on sliders in "Analog Volume" panel are correct (compared to values
reported by 'alsamixer'). I'm looking for testing with following
devices (as I think my testing covers code for M-Audio Delta 44 &
Delta 66, Terratec Dmx6fire & EWX2496) specifically:
M-Audio Delta 1010, M-Audio Audiophile 2496, M-Audio Delta 1010LT
TerraTec EWS 88MT, TerraTec EWS 88D, TerraTec Phase 88,
Hoontech SoundTrack DSP 24 (all variants).

Thanks,

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

PS:
(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy#In_philosophy :: "mudita, taking
joy in the good fortune of another. This virtue is considered the
antidote to envy and the opposite of schadenfreude."

(**) http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-tools.git;a=tree;f=envy24control;h=d5a56728048135649314456191fe8559c4f68118;hb=HEAD
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-announce mailing list
Linux-audio-announce@lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-announce

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From: Robin Gareus <robin@...>
Subject: [LAA] [ANN] xjadeo 0.4.12
Date: Jul 26, 10:05 am 2010

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


xjadeo v0.4.12 is out. Source & binaries are available from
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xjadeo/files/


Release Notes for xjadeo 0.4.12 (svn r252)
- ------------------------------------------

Xjadeo - X Jack Video Monitor
http://xjadeo.sourceforge.net/

Xjadeo is a simple movie player that synchronizes video to
an external time source such as jack-transport or Midi timecode.

Recent Changes (v0.4.11 -> v0.4.12)
* updated '--help' to reflect new default values introduced in 0.4.11
* allow to select midi-driver at runtime (JACK-MIDI, ALSA-sequencer,
portmidi, ALSA-raw-midi).
* fixed rounding error for non-integer framerates in the
remote-ctrl SMPTE-text parser.
(xjadeo+JACK or MTC is not affected; it's only relevant when using
'seek ' instead of 'seek ' remote-ctl commands)
Thanks to Dave Phillips for running various framerate tests which
triggering this bug-report.
* fixed unresponsive Alert messages (OSX)
* added JACK-Midi to menu (OSX)
* dropped releasing Debian packages on sf.net since xjadeo is now
officially available in Debian.
Kudos to Jaromír Mike? & Alessio Treglia.

Cheers!
robin

- --
Robin Gareus mail: robin@gareus.org
site: http://gareus.org/ chat: xmpp:rgareus@ik.nu
blog: http://rg42.org/ lab : http://citu.fr/

Public Key at http://pgp.mit.edu/
Fingerprint : 7107 840B 4DC9 C948 076D 6359 7955 24F1 4F95 2B42
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkxMZrsACgkQeVUk8U+VK0JsawCfcW2FUNhZcIqvm25A9vgyKBXl
ggIAoJ1RrUsdv78cc2ASALrlT4HJhfB5
=lv0Q
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
_______________________________________________
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http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-announce

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It’s been about six weeks since I posted my little SooperLooper jam, and here it is in its final form, or at least what became of it. This was a difficult one to pull together — I initially just polished my sketch version of it, but that didn’t give me the results I was after, so I ended up ditching that effort and re-arranging it from scratch, finally getting an inspiration for the central progression and ending last week. Once I had that idea, it didn’t take long on the weekend to flesh it out.

This is another Seq24/Hydrogen/Ardour recording, with Blofeld synths, though I also created my own drum sounds (mostly on the Blofeld again) for this one. I also used PHASEX as the synth for the lead arpeggio — it’s a simple patch, but I really liked how it sounded, so it stayed in the final version.

EDIT: Turns out that the download links were broken! I’ve fixed them now, so if you had trouble downloading, please try again now.

mp3 | ogg | flac | 5 minutes 4 seconds

[Okie] designed this audio effect shield for Maple. You’ll remember that Maple is a prototyping system built around an ARM processor, so there’s plenty of power and speed under the hood. First and foremost, the shield provides input and output filters to keep noise out of the system. From there a set of potentiometers let you change the effect, with the manipulation like echo, distortion, and ring modulation happening in the firmware.

The next version of KMid is in the kitchen right now, and it will have 2.4.0 as identifier. Tentatively, August 15th shall be the release date.

The main novelty is KMidPart, a component that implements the interface KMediaPlayer, playing MIDI/Karaoke files and using KMid infrastructure. The component shares the same configuration as the main program, so by default the MIDI port selection and Soft Synth will be common. This component by default shows only a play/stop combined button and a slider for the time position, in addition to the actions Play/Pause/Stop. Hidden, but selectable by means of KMediaPlayer::View interface methods, there are several additional controls: pause button, volume, pitch transpose and tempo (speed). The following pictures show the minimum and complete user interface respectively.



Once installed the new version of KMid, the KMidPart component is immediately available in Konqueror, either as file manager or web browser, since it is a simple standard KParts/ReadOnlyPart service. Examples of web sites that can benefit from this component can be anaigeon.free.fr and greekmidi.com.

Of course, this component is available to all fellow KDE developers so they can include MIDI playback in other programs. The programming API is quite simple, as demonstrated by two examples in C++ and Python included in the examples directory. If the KMediaPlayer interface is not enough, there are other methods and additional signals available through DBus.

From here, KMid will continue to evolve. I am considering further integration with KDE desktop technologies. For example, standard MIDI files are not scanned or indexed currently, but much of their metadata could be exploited with Nepomuk: tonality, rhythm, tempo, number of tracks and instruments. The settings of the songs, now stored in individual text files, may also be candidates for better integration. Another candidate for integration would be Solid, publishing system MIDI ports. Integrating KMid backends in Phonon can not be addressed at this time, but maybe in the future Phonon may evolve and such integration become possible.

Further integration into KDE unfortunately means less chance for KMid users of using it on Windows and Mac OSX. Although there are ports of KDE for those operating systems, both communities are not very active. I have received a suggestion that KMid does not need to depend on KDE, but only Qt4. This would make possible to distribute KMid binaries for Windows and Mac easily. I'm not especially interested in this option, followed for instance by the Rosegarden project, sacrificing both functionality and community by this way.

From: Mike Cookson <cook60020tmp@...>
Subject: [LAA] JACK Network Manager 0.2.3
Date: Jul 24, 5:34 pm 2010

JACK NetSource GUI is renamed to JACK Network Manager (jack-netmanager-gtk), since jack_netsource is only a command line front-end for jack netmanager module.

Changes:
- Name changed from jack-netsource-gui to jack-netmanager-gtk (humany name - JACK Network Manager), since jack_netsource is just a wrapper, controlling jack "netmanager" module.
- Presets support, deprecating creation of script with tray support, due to ability to reuse ordinary scripts by JACK Network Manager itself. During of preset saving name is requested and approriate script is stored in presets directory.
- Ability to start sources at LADISH rooms.
- ladish_launch is deprecated. ladish_control snewapp and rnewapp commands used instead.
- Improved desktop launcher
- New system tray icons; added application icon, unwantedly removed from 0.2.2
- Fixed help text
- Options for jack_netsource from various jack versions are stored in separated file now
- Internationalization of bash scripts through gettext
- Build system improvements: all text files are configured - e.g., instalation prefix now is working. Configured files are stored into separate build directory, which is autonomous and can be distributed. Also, uninstalation is available.
- Internationalization improvements: added update-locales script, which updates template with translations at once, and localization of bash scripts through gettext.

Note for distribution maintainers: if you place menu items for special audio software into extra submenus inside standart Audio menu, it would be nice to have JACK Network Manager item in one place with QJackNet (at least) and QJackCtl.

And create dummy jack-netsource-gui package for smooth upgrade.

Page at GTK-Apps: http://gtk-apps.org/content/show.php/JACK+Network+Manager?content=122327
Latest screenshot is third.
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From: Viggo Simonsen <viggo.simonsen@...>
Subject: [LAA] Klactoveedsedstene v2.1 released
Date: Jul 24, 5:34 pm 2010






New Release: KLACTOVEEDSEDSTENE
v 2.1

a cross-platform graphical Audio frontend
to the popular MPlayer engine.







Hi all,



Klactoveedsedstene v2.1 has just been released.

It includes mainly Bug fixes and minor enhancements

Most important, is the increased Album Art search timeout
value. The old value had become to small, as the search algorithm is
constantly being improved, thus taking longer time to find the optimal
image.





Visit
href="http://www.klactoveedsedstene.com">www.klactoveedsedstene.com,
and try it out.



Plain Frontend:

href="http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_2.0.jar">http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_2.1.jar

Bundled with MPlayer (Linux):

href="http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_nix_2.0.jar">http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_nix_2.1.jar

Bundled with MPlayer (Windows):

href="http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_win_2.0.jar">http://klactoveedsedstene.dk/getKlacto.php?file=klacto_win_2.1.jar









Regards

Viggo

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It would be great to have a theming engine that exposes basic drawing operations to theme authors. Instead of having a number of options per widget, you would deal with primitives like lines, rectangles and gradient fills.

Let me just say that I know of 2 developers who are on it

Now if you want to draw a button that way, it appears to be simple enough. Just a usually rounded rectangle with one or several outlines (stroked rectangles), with gradient fills per outline and one for the body. If you assume light straight from top, vertical gradient fills with 4 stops for the outlines are sufficient for a somewhat realistic look.

Not so if you assume lighting from the top left. What I would like to have for such a case is one gradient per outline, with 8 stops placed exactly between the segments (= curves in the corners and straight lines on the sides). Extra points for the ability to add stops between the 8 fixed ones.

In Inkscape, you have to take the rectangles apart to get to that level of control, making it rather laborious and inflexible, as you can’t change the corner radius in a single step anymore, afterwards.

Example construction of a button:

1. Outlines. It would be most comfortable to define the corner radius once, for the outermost rectangle. It should be possible to add up to at least 4 outlines, defaulting to 1 px strokes and inset.
2. For each outline, there should be the option to have 8 gradient stops between the segments. The implementation could treat the segments separately, each with a simple linear gradient, just like I had to construct it in Inkscape here.
3. Just a vertical linear gradient fill for the body.
4. Plus a horizontal fill with 34 % opacity. It should be possible to layer linear and radial fills, with alpha per gradient stop.
5. A shadow. This button doesn’t gain much from it, but it illustrates that drawing and layering rectangles with offsets would be useful.
6. A plain black label.
7. Gradient fill for the label. This can reduce legibility, but if handled with care, it makes button and label appear more like a whole.
8. Luxury feature: sunken or raised (see 9.) look for the label. I used a crude approach with stroked and offset duplicates here, which works only on small scale. A clever implementation would take the angle of the character stroke and the lighting direction into account to render a smooth surrounding.

Filed under: Planet Ubuntu, Theming, Uncategorized, Widgets

The 4. CD album of Notstandskomitee from 2001 is now available on iTunes

Like the previous release, the split album Y2K with Cyberthreat, all electronic tracks are instrumental, bordering on the IDM area.

The main synthesizer was the Nord Modular 1, all sequencing is done internally with its step sequencers. Additionally Csound, some other hardware synths and effects where used.

Physical release was in 2001 on Block 4, available on vinyl LP and CD with bonustracks, which are all included in this digital release.

E.P.084 - Xyramat - Podcast .: Electronique.it - electronic music magazine :.

New effects added to git development, version 0.6.0 keep us moving at a steady rate:

StereoHarm — stereo harmonizer given as candy to those who keep current w/ development in git.

Compband — multiband compressor.  It seems this one has been requested many times… now finally Rakarrack has a multi band comp.

Opticaltrem — tremolo effect emulating analog tremolos, typically the kind in a tube amp or pedals emulating the tremolo in a tube amp.  For those who know what I’m talking about, this is based on a model of the Light Dependent Resistor (LDR), and in this case, coupled with an incandescent lamp.

Vibe — Yes finally, we have a UniVibe emulator.  The effect is currently in evolution, but at this point sounds like a Vibe.  It is a tedious process to digitally model the frequency response, and some things will probably be left to the “good enough for the girls I go with” rule.  The continous time transfer functions were easy enough to obtain with some reasonable approximation, but because of the range of operation and the somewhat interesting interaction between things the digital representation leaves much to be desired on the technical end of things.  The good thing is the technical differences don’t seem to ruin the noteworthy audible characteristics.  Of course, upsampling to 4x or 6x will greatly help with the frequency response warping I see in the graphs for 48kHz sample rate model.

Maybe the average person will not understand “bilinear transform”, but certainly you will know that “warping” is not a good thing, and if increasing internal sample rate to 4x or 6x will reduce warping, then that is a good thing

Update 07/22/2010:  More improvements make this Vibe a viable competitor to the others out there.  Better yet, stereo processing has been completed so now left and right can be modulated at an offset for expanded stereo spreading of the effect.

Then also are some GUI improvements:

+10dB boost button will be here soon.

Drag ‘n’ Drop function to re-order presets in the preset banks.

Some other things worth checking out.

This year I am going to give a workshop / lab again at Unlimited Liability art store in Hamburg, but not about Pure Data again, this time about video editing with open source tools, mainly Cinelerra. Exakt date will be given soon.

Renoise, the tracker-style music production host, has gotten a massive injection of customizability, scriptability, and hackability. If all you want to do is plug in some controller hardware and have more tangible control of music making, that scriptability can be nicely hidden away. But if you are ready to hack on your music app, this is some enormous news.

For that reason, Renoise 2.6 is being called even by its makers the “Renoise Geek Edition.” But if this hackability catches on, it could mean a music tool that’s more fun to use for everyone – not just scripting geeks.

2.6 has been released into a private beta for registered users, with the full release anticipated soon.

The video at top sums up why the open API is potentially a big deal for everyone. Right now, you can use a pre-built script for two-way integration of hardware like Novation’s Launchpad. As other folks get into the tools used here, though, that could (if hackers get so inspired) lead to lots of other hardware support and musical ideas.

The other big news, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is that longer samples now “autoseek.” That’s best seen in the video below, although I can put it this way – this means if your music isn’t all microsamples, you can now more easily produce and perform in Renoise.

Here’s my personal take on the 2.6 changes. Keep in mind, I’m just wrapping my head around this stuff, too, so take this with a grain of salt. But I can at least express why I’m excited about digging into this release, having followed these developments for some time:

Script everything – using a truly open API. Firefox has extensions. Renoise has Lua scripts. You can customize the user interface, manipulate musical elements in your song, control MIDI, audio, and OpenSoundControl, or actually dive in and create features Renoise doesn’t have yet. Those ready to code can use the elegant scripting language Lua, which means that – while you’ll definitely need some basic coding chops – the results are surprisingly simple and readable.

http://code.google.com/p/xrnx/

You don’t need a separate add-on product, and the API is fully documented, free, with a whole bundle of scripts and snippets under an open source MIT license. Renoise itself remains proprietary, but that means the scripts themselves are free to remix, and coders are free to distribute their work to all Renoise users.

That approach contrasts with the solution devised by Cycling ’74 and Ableton for Ableton Live. Live is not directly scriptable; the so-called “Live API” used by hackers was a set of private APIs. Max for Live provides some, but not all of this functionality, and it’s a paid add-on, so you can’t distribute your work to all Live users. On the other hand, the Lua scripting engine is just a scripting engine – it’s not the synth, sequencer, effect, and multimedia-processing platform that Max is. For some, that may actually make the simpler, more direct Lua interface more appealing; they’re just not directly comparable.

Two-way control of everything.

Using these scripting features, it’s possible to get much richer, two-way communication between control hardware and Renoise software.

That means one of two things:

You don’t care about code. No problem — grab control templates from a community of people who do care enough to hack things together. If you’ve got a Behringer BCF/BCR, Novation ReMOTE, Nocturn SL, or Launchpad, or Livid Ohm 64, you can get started right away. For everything else, watch for the community to fill in the gaps. (monome?)

You’re a coder. Dive in and make things work the way you want. What’s ground-breaking about what Renoise have done is that everything is built atop an open, extensible API for the software itself – rather than kludging together various protocols and tools, which has been the traditional industry solution (if you’re lucky, and there’s any customization at all). Renoise’s Duplex uses an object-oriented system for describing hardware and software and communicating events bi-directionally between them. It’s all built in the API, so it’s all customizable. There’s even an onscreen tool so you can mock-up interactions with hardware you don’t yet own (or haven’t yet built).

Everyone can share their work at a centralized site:

http://tools.renoise.com

OSC Support

Renoise joins MOTU Digital Performer, the open source DAW Ardour, and a host of visual apps that support full, native OSC. That means support for networked, transparent control from anywhere to anything. You can even send Lua scripts as OSC commands, so this new API is really controllable from anything.

Better Linux Support

Linux now adds DSSI plug-in support, bringing a full complement of Linux plug-in compatibility, as well as 64-bit Linux support.

More Support, Tweaks

Mac, Linux performance enhancements (especially on 64-bit Linux), and better support for hardware-based plugins (which I’m assuming means latency compensation) round out this update.

Needless to say, this is all something we’ll be covering more. Stay tuned here.

Thanks to Johann Baron Lanteigne and everyone who sent this in.

From the source:
http://www.renoise.com/about/what-s-new-2-6/

Next year is 20. anniversary of Notstandskomitee and I hope I can release the backcatalog way back to the cassettes at least on the ITunes of this world. Right now I am listening through all the material, nice memories but some stuff I have to leave out because of the liberal use of samples from movies in that time which I can't release in these days.

About 3 weeks ago I started work on the LLVM backend for DDC and I have now reached the first milestone.

Over the weekend I attended AusHac2010 and during Friday and Saturday I managed to get DDC modified so I could compile a Main module via the existing C backend and another module via the LLVM backend to produce an executable that ran, but gave an incorrect answer.

Today, I managed to get a very simple function actually working correctly. The function is trivial:

  identInt :: Int -> Int
  identInt a = a

and the generated LLVM code looks like this:

  define external ccc %struct.Obj* @Test_identInt(%struct.Obj* %_va)  
  {
  entry:
      ; _ENTER (1)
      %local.slotPtr = load %struct.Obj*** @_ddcSlotPtr
      %enter.1 = getelementptr inbounds %struct.Obj** %local.slotPtr, i64 1
      store %struct.Obj** %enter.1, %struct.Obj*** @_ddcSlotPtr
      %enter.2 = load %struct.Obj*** @_ddcSlotMax
      %enter.3 = icmp ult %struct.Obj** %enter.1, %enter.2
      br i1 %enter.3, label %enter.good, label %enter.panic
  enter.panic:
      call ccc void ()* @_panicOutOfSlots(  ) noreturn
      br label %enter.good
  enter.good:
      ; ----- Slot initialization -----
      %init.target.0 = getelementptr  %struct.Obj** %local.slotPtr, i64 0
      store %struct.Obj* null, %struct.Obj** %init.target.0
      ; ---------------------------------------------------------------
      %u.2 = getelementptr inbounds %struct.Obj** %local.slotPtr, i64 0
      store %struct.Obj* %_va, %struct.Obj** %u.2
      ; 
      br label %_Test_identInt_start
  _Test_identInt_start:
      ; alt default
      br label %_dEF1_a0
  _dEF1_a0:
      ; 
      br label %_dEF0_match_end
  _dEF0_match_end:
      %u.3 = getelementptr inbounds %struct.Obj** %local.slotPtr, i64 0
      %_vxSS0 = load %struct.Obj** %u.3
      ; ---------------------------------------------------------------
      ; _LEAVE
      store %struct.Obj** %local.slotPtr, %struct.Obj*** @_ddcSlotPtr
      ; ---------------------------------------------------------------
      ret %struct.Obj* %_vxSS0
  }

That looks like a lot of code but there are a couple of points to remember:

• This includes code for DDC's garbage collector.
• DDC itself is still missing a huge number of optimisations that can added after the compiler actually works.

I have found David Terei's LLVM AST code that I pulled from the GHC sources very easy to use. Choosing this code was definitely not a mistake and I have been corresponding with David, which has resulted in a few updates to this code, including a commit with my name on it.

LLVM is also conceptually very, very sound and easy to work with. For instance, variables in LLVM code are allowed to contain the dot character, so that its easy to avoid name clashes between C function/variable names and names generated during the generation of LLVM code, by making generated names contain a dot.

Finally, I love the fact that LLVM is a typed assembly language. There would have been dozens of times over the weekend that I generated LLVM code that the LLVM compiler rejected because it would't type check. Just like when programming with Haskell, once the code type checked, it actually worked correctly.

Anyway, this is a good first step. Lots more work to be done.

From: Robin Gareus <robin@...>
Subject: [LAA] [ANN] xjadeo 0.4.11
Date: Jul 18, 7:25 am 2010

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bonjour a tous,

xjadeo v0.4.11 has been released. Source & binaries are available from
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xjadeo/files/


Release Notes for xjadeo 0.4.11 (svn r239)
- ------------------------------------------

Xjadeo - X Jack Video Monitor
http://xjadeo.sourceforge.net/

Xjadeo is a simple movie player that synchronizes video playback to
an external time source such as jack-transport or Midi timecode.

Recent Changes (v0.4.10 -> v0.4.11)
* new default parameters:
- screen-update-fps = filefps (use '-f 10' for prev. default)
- MTC-quater-frame: on (use '-c' to disable it)
* added JACK-MIDI port for MTC (./configure --enable-midi=jack )
* System-V IPC remote ctrl mode (OSX does not support POSIX-MQ)
* xjremote is now part of the OSX bundle
* added '{' and '}' keyboard shortcuts to modify time-offset
in larger steps
* many small remote-ctrl extensions for ardour3 integration
- allow to disable some GUI interactions (close window,
left-mouse-click)
- added aliases for full-screen & position remote-ctrl commands
(alphabetical order of commands now does the right thing:
size, position, fullscreen -> size, xy, zoom)


- --
Robin Gareus mail: robin@gareus.org
site: http://gareus.org/ chat: xmpp:rgareus@ik.nu
blog: http://rg42.org/ lab : http://citu.fr/

Public Key at http://pgp.mit.edu/
Fingerprint : 7107 840B 4DC9 C948 076D 6359 7955 24F1 4F95 2B42
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

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A30An1m6b4ZxLX7rwujRrMhyUYQK13/n
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The final version of WinXound 3.3.0 for Windows and Mac OsX is ready for download.

Download link: http://winxound.codeplex.com/releases/view/49139
WinXound Home Page: http://winxound.codeplex.com/

Windows Release Notes:
- Fix: Fixed a bug related to an incorrect UTF8-chars conversion during orc/sco import;
- Fixed other minor bugs;

Mac OsX Release Notes:
- Fix: Fixed a bug in the Code Repository - under some circumstances the text window disappears;

Linux info:
- An Alpha release of WinXound is planned for September/October ...

Let me know ...
Stefano

I created the current Ubuntu Brainstorm Logo in 2008.

Time for an update, especially regarding the font. Here’s a set of design proposals. 1 to 9 and 10 to 18 are the same except for the font for brainstorm, first the Ubuntu font currently in beta, then a customized, thinner and oblique version of it:

Filed under: Logos, Planet Ubuntu, Ubuntu

I don’t often listen to the TLLTS podcast, but I caught a recent episode (number 361) featuring Jono Bacon, and I was not impressed. I wish Bacon would stop commenting about the state of Linux audio, because it’s clear to me — but probably not clear to the larger community — that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

He explained on the show that he doesn’t use Linux for his music production, and I should say up-front that I don’t have a problem with this. Linux certainly isn’t ideal for everyone, and if Bacon has a solid, working Windows-based setup, there’s nothing wrong with him sticking with that and focusing on making music.

However, it’s very clear to me that he has no idea about the current state of Linux audio production, spreading the usual outdated nonsense about JACK being overly complex to set up, ignoring the existence of quite usable MIDI sequencers like Qtractor and Rosegarden, and giving very short shrift to Hydrogen’s abilities as a drum synth. These tools, with a suitable velocity-layered drumkit, might not give the same results as quickly as Bacon’s proprietary setup can, but they’d certainly do the job, especially once you run each drum in to Ardour for separate processing.

Why do I have such a problem with this? Well, it’s because Bacon is widely known and respected as an open-source evangelist, and also as a musician, so his words carry weight. I and my fellow Linux musicians know he’s mistaken, but a casual listener would assume that he knows what he’s talking about, given his background, and would probably write off Linux as a music production platform because of it.

Again, to be clear, I’m not saying Bacon should use Linux. I’m not even saying that he should spend the time to learn about making music on Linux. I just wish he’d stop talking about it as if he does know what he’s talking about.

The Call for Papers for the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) in November in Cambridge, Massachusetts is ending soon, on July 19th 2010 (That's the upcoming monday!). It's a conference about the core infrastructure of Linux systems: the part of the system where userspace and the kernel interface. It's the only conference where the focus is specifically on getting together the kernel people who work on the userspace interfaces and the userspace people who have to deal with kernel interfaces. It's supposed to be a place where all the people doing infrastructure work sit down and talk, so that both parties understand better what the requirements and needs of the other are, and where we can work towards fixing the major problems we currently have with our lower-level infrastructure and APIs.

The two previous LPCs were hugely successful (as reported on LWN on various occasions), and this time we hope to repeat that.

Like the previous years, I will be running the Audio conference track of LPC, this time together with Mark Brown. Audio infrastructure on Linux has been steadily improving the last years all over the place, but there's still a lot to do. Join us at the LPC to discuss the next steps and help improving Linux audio further! If you are doing audio infrastructure work on Linux, make sure to attend and submit a paper!

Sign up soon! Send in your paper quickly! Only three days left to the end of the CFP!

(I am also planning to do a presentation there about systemd, together with Kay. Make sure to attend if you are interested in that topic.)

See you in Boston!

The timetable for the GStreamer Conference 2010 in Cambridge, UK is now online. You find the conference page here and the timetable can be found here. We hope to see you all here in October!.

The GStreamer team announces new releases of the GStreamer Python bindings and the FFmpeg plugin module for the 0.10 GStreamer stable release series.

Check out release notes for gst-python, gst-ffmpeg, or download tarballs for gst-python, gst-ffmpeg,

Hi All,

Jim and I are begining the process of putting together the next issue of the Csound Journal. We are aiming for November for publishing, with late October for a submission deadline. If you are interested in writing an article for the Journal, please contact either Jim or myself. Article submission guidelines and templates are available at:

http://csounds.com/journal/submissions.html

We're looking forward to your contributions!

Thanks,
steven

The GStreamer team announces new releases of the GStreamer core module, the gst-plugins-base module, and the gst-plugins-good module for the 0.10 GStreamer stable release series.

Check out release notes for gstreamer, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good, or download tarballs for gstreamer, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good,

whats about this bashing of Homeopathy, why noone question the practices and prices of the pharma industry?
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/0,1518,706257,00.html

Following the Mini Remix logo, I took care of 2 related projects.

Ubuntu Remix Italiano design proposals. Fabrizio picked the 2nd from bottom:

Just a few tweaks and of course the new font as update of the previous work for the Ubuntu Customization Kit:

Mini Remix again, for comparison:

Filed under: Logos, Planet Ubuntu, Ubuntu

Avid is updating their M-Audio Axiom line of USB controller keyboards. New in this version is DirectLink, which provides automatic mappings for software like Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, and of course Avid’s own Pro Tools, similar to what’s in the Axiom’s big-brother Axiom Pro. The controller itself has also been improved, with lower-profile faders on the 49/61 model, smooth rotary encoders (not knobs!), an angled-up top panel so you can see what you’re doing more easily, and other tweaks.

Perhaps the most significant feature is improved keyboard, with an updated semi-weighted action and adjusted playing angle.

The updated Axiom enters a market that has been maturing recently – a market M-Audio themselves helped popularize in the first place with the Oxygen line.

Novation has continued to update their Automap functionality and added a more inexpensive option in the form of the Nocturn controller keyboards. The Novations are nice, although I’ve heard a fair bit of frustration with the add-on Automap software that sits between you and the software you’re controlling; while it adds functionality, it also adds complexity, and I find it interesting that its rivals are going a different direction.

I just got in a review unit for Cakewalk’s A-PRO series. (See Cakewalk’s current keyboard lineup.) Like the Avid units, it also adds automatic mappings without requiring extra software, supporting a number of hosts for Windows and Mac. Also notable, Roland has added their higher-quality semi-weighted action, so that instead of feeling like a cheap plastic controller keyboard, you get the solid “clunk” in the action that previously was reserved for standalone synth products – without paying much of a premium for the privilege. I’ll be interested to feel how the new Axiom action stands up, as the Axiom Pro keyboard also feels pretty good.

One especially nice feature the Axiom has that many of its rivals don’t: it’s class-compliant. That means you can plug and play without drivers on Mac and Windows, and it’ll work on Linux, too. (I’ve been running Linux for reliable, low-latency performance with the Pianoteq piano, for instance, using M-Audio keyboards.)

I expect the Axiom will be competitive on price and likability, certainly. I asked some follow-up questions with Avid spokesperson John Krogh last week, including an explanation of what the heck the difference is between Axiom’s DirectLink and Axiom Pro’s HyperControl – each methods for zero-config control of your favorite host and instrument software.

CDM: Okay, I’ll bite. DirectLink? HyperControl? What’s the difference?

John at Avid: It’s fair to think of DirectLink as a subset of what HyperControl is. There are some similarities: With both technologies, the keyboard faders, knobs and transport buttons get mapped to mixer channels, pan, and transport controls within compatible DAWs. That’s sort of “basic” mixer mapping.

The new Axioms with DirectLink also feature an Instrument Mode that, when engaged, will instantly map the faders and knobs to meaningful parameters on software instruments within compatible DAWs. This mapping relies on Axiom Instrument Maps, which are essentially preference files for the built-in software instruments included with Logic, Live, and the rest of the DirectLink-compatible DAWs. The thing with the Axiom Instrument Maps is that they’re set up to provide consistent, intuitive access to the most commonly used plug-in parameters. For example, filter cutoff will always be located on the same knob, regardless of the instrument selected, so the experience is more like working with a hardware synth where there are dedicated physical controls for the parameters you’d want to tweak in real time. In general, parameters such as filter cutoff and resonance get mapped to the knobs, and ADSR controls get mapped to the faders (e.g., amp envelope ADSR will map to faders 1-4, filter envelope ADSR will map to faders 5-8).

Currently, there are Axiom Instrument Maps for the built-in software instruments in 3P DirectLink DAWs. More mapping “profiles” will be added over time for third-party software instruments. For software instruments without Axiom Instrument Maps, DirectLink will automatically map the encoders to the first 8 parameters that are published to the host software, and users can use MIDI learn to re-assign how these are set up.

Note that this kind of predefined mapping is only available to software instruments, not plug-ins. That’s one of the big differences. With the Axiom Pro and HyperControl, you’re able to access every software instrument and plug-in effect parameter – not just a fixed number of controls for software instruments (which is limited to the number of faders and knobs on the Axiom keyboard). On the Axiom Pro you can page through every parameter, so there’s no limit to the number of parameters you can access.

HyperControl on the Axiom Pro also provides a lot more feedback on the LCD, and adds QWERTY key command support (ability to assign QWERTY keystrokes to pads and buttons).

there was also a description (referring to HyperTransport) as being an “open” protocol, but my understanding was that the SDK was available only to specific partners. Will there be a published spec on using DirectLink? (It’s all built on MIDI, anyway, so it would be possible for, say, an independent music host developer to voluntarily add support.)

There isn’t a public SDK, but we’re “open” in the sense that we don’t limit DirectLink to specific third parties. We’re willing to work with any third-party DAW developer if they’re interested in adding DirectLink and/or HyperControl support. We just happen to have existing developer relationships with Apple, Ableton, Propellerhead and Steinberg, and we work with each 3P developer on their integration of DirectLink/HyperControl.

CDM: Is the keybed comparable to any other M-Audio keyboards, or is it new?

John: It’s a new keybed that offers a weightier feel compared to the original Axiom (it’s not the Tru Touch keyboard found in the Axiom Pro).

So, there you have it. The “Pro” still has more sophisticated control options, a more serious action, and of course Speed Racer-white styling, but the standard Axiom looks competitive now, too.

What’s your controller keyboard of choice? How has your experience been with what you’ve owned? What’s important to you when making a decision – that is, what do you want to know? (We’ve gotten a number of requests from readers wondering what to get, but that can depend on what variables matter most to you personally.) Let us know in comments.

Avid at Axiom

From: Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <pedro.lopez.cabanillas@...>
Subject: [LAA] [ANN] Drumstick 0.4.1 released
Date: Jul 14, 2:41 pm 2010

Drumstick is a C++ wrapper around the ALSA library sequencer interface using
Qt4 objects, idioms and style. ALSA sequencer provides software support for
MIDI technology on Linux. Complementary classes for SMF and WRK file
processing are also included. This library is used in KMetronome, KMidimon
and KMid2, and was formerly known as "aseqmm".

Changes:
* Removed the precompiled headers build option
* Fixed a bug that affected users running dumstick-based applications with
realtime priority enabled. There is a related problem in glib-2.22 that has
not yet been fixed (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599079).
This issue prevented to execute FluidSynth from inside KMid at startup in
those affected systems.

Copyright (C) 2009-2010, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas
License: GPL v2 or later

Project web site
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick

Online documentation
  http://drumstick.sourceforge.net/docs/

Downloads
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick/files/0.4.1/
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From: Alexander Kojevnikov <alexander@...>
Subject: [LAA] Spek 0.6
Date: Jul 14, 2:41 pm 2010

Hi list,

I'm happy to announce the release of Spek 0.6 - a multi-platform
acoustic spectrum analyser.

Spek is available on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Find out more about Spek on its website: http://www.spek-project.org/

New Features And Enhancements:

Spek 0.6 is part of beta 0.x releases, leading up to a stable 1.0 release
later this year. Check Spek website for the roadmap.

New features since 0.5:

* Switch from GStreamer to FFmpeg libraries for audio decoding. This
speeds up the overall analysis by a factor of 1.5 to 2.
* Decode audio and perform the analysis in separate threads. This makes
the analysis 1.3~1.8 times faster on multi-core systems (issue 11).
* Check for a new version once a week and notify when it becomes
available (issue 27)

Enhancements:

* Windows installer branding (issue 32)
* Option to launch Spek when the Windows installer exits

Bugfixes:

* Fix link activation on Windows (issue 31)
* Fix ALAC issues on OS X (issue 23)
* Re-run the analysis only if the window width has been changed
* Fix opening of files containing Unicode symbols in their name on Windows

Cheers,
Alex
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From: Gabriel M. Beddingfield <gabrbedd@...>
Subject: [LAA] StretchPlayer 0.502: Real-time audio player with time stretch
Date: Jul 14, 2:41 pm 2010


I am pleased to release StrechPlayer 0.502, a time-stretching,
pitch-shifting audio file player. It is powered by librubberband, and
also features an A/B repeat.

NEW IN THIS RELEASE
-------------------

* Reduced Xorg load (was typ. 20-30% CPU even
when idle)
* Fix build errors on 64-bit systems (incompatible
integer types).
* Add CMake USE_COMPOSITING option to explicitly
disable compositing features.

LINKS
-----

Home Page: http://www.teuton.org/~gabriel/stretchplayer/

Tarball: http://www.teuton.org/~gabriel/stretchplayer/stretchplayer_0.502.tar.gz

Binary: Ubuntu/Karmic
http://www.teuton.org/~gabriel/stretchplayer/stretchplayer_0.502_karmic_i386.deb
http://www.teuton.org/~gabriel/stretchplayer/stretchplayer-dbg_0.502_karmic_i386.deb

Debian Dsc: http://www.teuton.org/~gabriel/stretchplayer/stretchplayer_0.502.dsc

Git: http://gitorious.org/stretchplayer
git://gitorious.org/stretchplayer/stretchplayer.git

USING THE PROGRAM
-----------------

After stretchplayer is installed, there should be an [S] icon under
Multimedia or Sound. Or, you can run it from the command line like
this:

$ stretchplayer

The GUI is pretty self-explanatory, and if you hover over the controls
a tool-tip should appear. The GUI also has several keyboard
accelerators.

To play a file, click the file-open icon and select an audio file.
Stretchplayer can play anything that libsndfile supports (ogg, flac,
wav, etc.). However, it does /not/ support MP3 files at this time.

As the file plays, slide the horizontal slider left or right to change
the speed of the song. If you wish to transpose the audio, push one
of the + or - buttons.

INSTALLING THE PROGRAM
----------------------

You will need at least a 1200 MHz processor[1] to use this program.
It also requires the following libraries:

* Qt >= 4.4 http://qt.nokia.com
* librubberband http://www.breakfastquay.com/rubberband/
* libsndfile http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/
* JACK http://jackaudio.org/
* CMake http://www.cmake.org/

If you are running Ubuntu Karmic or Ubuntu Jaunty, you can install the
.deb packages like this (from the command line):

$ sudo dpkg -i stretchplayer*_0.502_karmic_i386.deb

Anyone else will need to build from source. Please read the
INSTALL.txt file that comes with the taarball.

Peace,
Gabriel M. Beddingfield
2010-07-11

[1] With this release, Stretchplayer works OK (but not great) with an
800MHz Celeron processor. Before this release, it was unusable
on this system.
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Remember those Ebay auctions of air guitars going for several thousands of dollars? We don’t either, but Theremin Hero (more info in the YouTube description) is about as legit as you can get to actually rocking on nothing but air.

Much like using a theremin to control Mario, the vertical antenna acts as the fret board while the horizontal one detects strumming. Combine the output of the theremin with some custom software (yet to be released) and Guitar Hero and you have Theremin Hero Air Guitar.

[via Bob's House of Video Games]

Want to annoy fellow fans but  don’t have the lung power to do the job? [Hunter's] electronic vuvuzela is just the thing you need. The plastic noisemakers were so prevalent at the world cup this year that some folks came up with audio filters to remove the sound. The electronic rendition is much smaller, using a 555 timer to mimic the instrument on a small speaker. [Hunter's] build has buttons for five different notes which can be altered with some potentiometer. There’s no schematic but then again for something that’s annoying you don’t want to make it too easy to replicate.

Update: Hunter added the schematic to his site which spell doom for those who enjoy peace and quiet.

Now I am certain, my studio is sort of disfunct Tardis. Its bigger from the inside when it comes to misplacing things and times shifts, usually forward, when I start to program sounds for new tracks.

From: hermann <brummer-@...>
Subject: [LAA] [ANN] guitarix-0.10.0 released
Date: Jul 11, 1:15 pm 2010

guitarix is a simple Linux Rock Guitar amplifier and is designed
to achieve nice thrash/metal/rock/blues guitar sounds.
guitarix uses the Jack Audio Connection Kit as its audio backend
and brings to the jack audio graph a mono amplifier input/output port,
and a FX mono input with two (stereo) output ports.

guitarix provide a jack midi input port to connect a midi controller
(midi learn) and a (3 channel) jack midi output port, feed by a
(scalable) mix of the tuner and a beat-detector.

Release 0.10.0 comes with following changes :

* add tonestack models
* add 2. amp model
* add cabinet impulse response module
* add Patch Info widget
* add Preset File Load/Export option
* add simple looper
* add Oscilloscope and tuner state to main settings
* selectable distortion model (multi/single line)
* selectable EQ model (fixed/scalable freq)
* free mem when not used (delay lines)
* reworked Gui
* fix various bugs

have fun
_________________________________________________________________________

Note:// for experienced Users there is a Experimental widget witch comes
with the tremolo effect contributed by transmogrifox (Rakarrack dev-team)
please look ./waf --help for how to build with this widget activated.
Many thanks to transmogrifox for his contribution.
_________________________________________________________________________


guitarix is licensed under the GPL.

Project page with screenshots:
http://guitarix.sourceforge.net/

download:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guitarix/

please report bugs and suggestions in our forum here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/guitarix/
________________________________________________________________________

For capture, guitarix uses the great 'jack_capture'
(version >= 0.9.30) written by Kjetil S. Matheussen.
If you don't have it installed,
you can look here:

http://old.notam02.no/arkiv/src/?M=D

For extra Impulse Responses, guitarix uses the
zita-convolver library, and,
for up/down sampling we use zita-resampler,
both written by Fons Adriaensen.
If you don't have it installed, get it here:

http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/index.html

We use the marvellous faust compiler to build the amp and effects and will say
thanks to

: Julius Smith
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/realsimple/faust/

: Albert Graef
http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/examples.html#Faust

: Yann Orlary
http://faust.grame.fr/
________________________________________________________________________

For faust users :

All used Faust dsp files are included in /guitarix/src/faust,
the resulting cc files are in /guitarix/src/faust-cc
The tools we use to convert (post-processing and plot)
the resulting faust cpp files to the needed include format,
stay in the /guitarix/tools directory.
________________________________________________________________________

regards

Hermann Meyer, James Warden, Andreas Degert









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http://mccrm.cx/squeakyshoecore

http://mccrm.cx/squeakyshoecore

http://sciencegirlrecords.com/chr15m/squeakyshoecore/

I've started a new album. It is called squeakyshoecore. It is algorithmically generated acid using some software I wrote. I am going to release it online bit by bit, as I finish each track. I will announce each new track here on this blog.

The software makes two different beats and two complementary melodies using random number generators and some carefully tuned algorithms for using those random numbers. The melody shaping rules involve applying a low dimensional random fractal effect on very basic seed melodies, producing a type of self-similarity which seems to sound interesting to humans. The beats are created using a variety of custom rule sets, much like my previous work with algorithmic hip-hop in CanOfBeats and my algorithmic drum-and-bass generator, GhostWave.

After that I manually control how loud each of the parts are present in the mix, what effects are being applied to the different parts, and the parameter values of those effects. I use a midi controller to mix it in real time and record it.

Soon I will make the latest version of the Pure Data patches ("GarageAcidLab") available online under a Free Software license.

Enjoy the first tracks!

P.S. Some other music I've released on the net previously is Cryptolect, end-of-millenium style chopped-up breakbeats.

3 years ago I created a logo for the Ubuntu Customization Kit. Now, the UCK leader Fabrizio Balliano asked me for a logo for another project, the Ubuntu Mini Remix. It’s a livecd containing only a minimal, required set of software, to be used as base for customization.

Concept for the logo: have a core / signify leaving something out / using just a part at the base. I quickly arrived at geometry derived from the Circle of Friends logo. The turquoise color offers a nice balance with the Ubuntu orange and signifies light weight. Fabrizio chose the shaded version at the bottom:

Filed under: Logos, Planet Ubuntu, Ubuntu

My wife has recently gone back to college to get her bachelor of nursing and I've been worried that we would be required to get a Windows machine for her to complete assignments. I'm going to resist as hard as possible as we haven't had anything but Linux in our house for some years. This however, came under threat recently with the first week of school. The math class she is taking uses a web service called Aleks for homework. The service is a homework platform that uses a java plug-in in browser. I see no need for anything on the web to not be cross-platform. While they don't officially support Linux they do include some information on how to get it working under Linux.

I followed the steps on the site and logged into my wifes account and much to my chagrin was not greeted by a functioning Aleks. So, I resorted to google for help. There isn't much info out there giving any more help than the installation instructions on the Aleks website. There are reports however, that it does work.

The solution it turns out is quite a simple one and is found on the official java website. Basically you need to create a symbolic link to the java plugin to the Firefox plugin folder to enable in browser java to work.

Hopefully, this info will save some poor Linux user from having to suffer too much to get their homework done.

From: Nils Hammerfest <nils@...>
Subject: [LAA] Denemo 0.8.18 Release - Free and Open Music Notation Editor
Date: Jul 9, 8:36 am 2010

Get Denemo 0.8.18 http://denemo.org/index.php/Get_Denemo

Release Notes:

-Default behavior is now non-modal
* You can choose one out of four Shortcut systems, including the "Classic" one.
* an easy to understand and very slick interface via keyboard
* seamless integration with MIDI controllers

-Better Paste command.
-Musical Snippets - store musical riffs/motifs to be pasted at will or as rhythmic templates for playing over.

Maximize the space for the score (with/without user's choice of menus).
* Standard View - window size, zoom, number of systems etc
* No-Menu version of this view
* Page View - user chooses a window size, zoom and number of systems, which is stored with the movement for instant recall.
* Single keyboard shortcut for toggling between these views (Esc by default).

-MIDI transport work for JACK users.
-Fix Chord Symbols for music starting with triplets, grace notes etc.
-Fix display of dotted rests
-Arbitrary Tuplets built in: correct MIDI output as well as engraving, of course.
-Diatonic Transposition: Shift notes and chords up and down respecting the current key signature.
-Support for figured bass extenders, including those with no starting figure.
-Cursor can be highlighted, making it easier to locate
-Page turning is animated: as the last line starts to play, the page visibly turns at the top.
-Purely rhythmic notes playback using percussion - click tracks more easily generated.
-Split Notes and Chords to smaller notes while preserving the original duration (make a quarter note two 8th or tuplet of 8th or 7-tuplet)
-Duplicate a Note or Chord as command
-Command line interface for interactive scheme use
-Support for the "French" clef (G on bottom line)
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Better Than Lahar drummer John Pringle is fond of playing other people’s drumsets. He sounds great no matter whose gear he’s playing. When asked about this, he usually quotes Art Blakey, who famously observed that "The instrument is me".

A good point. To take it even further: not only that it doesn’t matter whose gear you’re playing, but also, sometimes not even what instrument. I noticed many years ago that Ed Wynne of the Ozric Tentacles sounded pretty much identifiably like himself whether he was playing guitar or keyboards. I’ve noticed that Stevie Wonder sounds like Stevie Wonder whether he’s singing, playing keyboards, or playing harmonica.

I can operate a bunch of instruments– most of them not very well– but I’ve also noticed, sometimes with astonishment, that the reaction I get is pretty much the same no matter what instrument I’m playing. Keyboards of varying kinds, guitars of varying kinds, singing, even drums– some people really love what I’m doing even if I’m not terribly well trained at it, and some are totally unimpressed no matter how experienced or skilled I am. Their feedback and reactions seem unaffected by whatever instrument I’m on.

Even weirder, I’ve noticed that the reaction I get from people is pretty much the same even in non-musical media: writing (heh, including blogging), code, teaching, or various business things I used to do like selling and presenting, or even political things I did for a while. Happily, most people react pretty positively, a few are really excited and impressed, many are non-plussed, and there are always a few haters. What they’re reacting to may not be the instrument, or the media, but rather me. There may be there’s some unique way that people just do things, or just are, that other people react to either positively or negatively, no matter what instrument or media they’re using to have it take shape.

This is liberating and frightening at the same time. The liberating implication is that it doesn’t matter what instrument or media I’m using, because people who like it will like it. But it also means that people reacting to my various activities really are reacting to me, and this is kind of scary if it’s negative and kind of scary if it’s positive too.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a navel-gazing post, but I think Blakey– and John– are definitely on to something.

Lintian complained about missing man-pages for buzztard binaries. I also had a pending bug for gtk-doc to clarify how one can do man-pages. Last month I wrong some docs about how to document binaries in docbook as well, so that the information is in the api-docs, but one can also generate man pages from the same source. The new guides are not yet on library.gnome.org, but it can be found in git.

I continued with more undo/redo hacking. I have again more tests that all pass and working undo/redo in pattern editor for trivial operations. Need to do edit-groups next and work more on the journal replay part. The testing work resulted in some local check improvements - the BT_CHECKS env-var supports globbing to select tests. Also patched that for gstreamers GST_CHECKS env-var.

While showing buzztard to a colleague I noticed that the audio settings where not used for the sample players. Fixed in svn.

In the early days I made some mistakes in the xml design of the song format. Some tags had different attributes depending on their parent. This makes it impossible to do xsd schema validation. I have changed the song xml slightly (with backwards compatibility of old songs) and now xsd validation works.

Finally I have started buzztard-bin. This is supposed to be a gstreamer plugin that plugs a whole buzztard song, so that one can play that in e.g. totem. The basics are there, should be working quite soon.

83 files changed, 2452 insertions(+), 624 deletions(-)

Open hardware means the ability to create exactly what you want. But it doesn’t have to intimidate the newcomer – not so long as you’re up for a project and a little creativity. The monome grid controller, long a sensation with digital musicians, finally sees a major update in its kit version. The “kit” isn’t built from scratch; instead, it includes the major components largely pre-assembled. A US$60 logic board contains the brain and USB port, with all surface-mount soldering done for you. (You don’t even have to upload firmware to make it run). A $40 driver operates the grid. $120 buys you the main guts – just add LEDs yourself (allowing you to pick a color) – and put the grid and pads into a housing.

Specs on the new version from the monome folks:

• USB bus powered
• supports up to four 8×8 keypad grids, for a total of 16×16
• auxiliary ports for additional digital or analog i/o, such as knobs, joysticks, accelerometers, rotary encoders, switches, LEDs
• boot loader for easy firmware updates and customization, no external programmer needed
• open source firmware and schematics

we’ve designed a modular system which allows scalability and customization. the individual parts are:

• logic: hub which communicates with the computer and other connected modules. easy user firmware updates allow extended functionality.
• driver: helper electronics which light up the grid and collect keypad data. connects to the logic section with a single ribbon cable.
• grid: 8×8 keypad surface, connects to the driver board directly. customizable LED color (not included).
• one driver is needed per grid. for a full 8×8, you’d need 1 logic 1 driver 1 grid. a full 8×16 would require 1 logic 2 driver 2 grid. etc.

Why use the kit? With those additional ins, you could add controls like accelerometers or even the knobs the monome is missing. You can add your own custom enclosure, made from whatever materials you like, so that you have a one-of-a-kind, unique creation no one else has. And you can change the colors of the LEDs, too. Just decide your favorite color. (“Red … no, blue! Aaaaaaa…..”)

I asked co-creator Brian Crabtree to offer some insight into the new kit.

CDM: How is the mk different from the previous kit?

- expanded capabilities while remaining bus powered: up to four 8×8 grids, auxiliary analog and digital i/o
- boot loader for easy firmware upgrades
- more elegant design– single ribbon connector, low profile
- cheaper

Why make those changes?

fundamentally it’s a response to user requests and observing what users are trying to accomplish. numerous people have built 16×16 devices from kits, which not only end up being expensive due to technology redundancy but rather unwieldy due to needing four USB ports (many people embed a powered USB hub). luckily our router software is very capable of combining smaller grids into a large grid, so functionally these mega-devices work great.

most users require some form of analog control (in the form of a knob or slider box) to compliment their button mashing. while the old kit had some minimal facilities to collect analog input, this new revision has a wide, customizable auxiliary section: up to 8 analog inputs (potentiometers, etc) or 8 rotary encoders, and numerous additional switches or programmable LEDs. we’re hoping the kit can facilitate users building highly-tailored devices that match a unique performance style.

the introduction of a boot loader seems like a boring technical matter, but i feel this is one of the more opportune moments for both customization and community building. a boot loader basically allows the firmware of the device to be updated remotely without using a hardware programmer or opening up the device. paired with the fact that everything that went into this kit will be released open-source, i’m expecting variations of the standard kit functionality will appear on the forum and wiki. these will be easily accessible to all kit users, not just those adventurous enough to buy a programmer.

and what might these variations be? two ideas, one trivial, one less so. a very often requested feature is to change the startup animation– very easy now. an often used method host-side could be moved to hardware-side: view offsetting. add four auxiliary keys to an 8×8 grid, each key could used to change which quadrant is viewed within a larger 16×16… like virtual pages, but not virtual.

the design has been refined to be lower-profile, no longer using an FTDI breakout board as the logic section is fully surface mount and pre-assembled. fewer ribbons cables are necessary with the application of board-to-board connectors. the keypad grid has been redesigned using a fancy multi-layer board to enable perfect tiling.

lastly, it’s cheaper. very substantially if you’re building a grid larger than 8×8. these are all still assembled, tested, and packed by kelli and myself up here in the catskills.

How would you direct people to begin on the enclosures? What sorts of creative solutions have people found?

i’d suggest avoiding the impulse to purchase a pre-fab monome case simply to get started using it right away. enclosing the kit is a great opportunity to explore design and appreciate the building process.

See our separate story with some enclosure ideas to stimulate your imagination. -PK

Okay, anticipating a likely question from readers and monome fans: “I’ve never done an enclosure before, but I want to learn. Where do I start?”

i’d start by first using your imagination, then perhaps looking at what others have done. hundreds of people have posted photos and build logs of their kits on the monome forums.

We’d talked a bit privately about why you’d do serial-over-USB (that is, using drivers for the monome’s FTDI chip). What’s the logic behind this choice?

USB *is* serial. we use a transceiver that has a widely supported driver which creates a virtual serial port. the major reason we’ve chosen this method is that it exposes the lowest level of communication directly to the user in a manner that’s easily accessible to essentially every programming language and environment. it’s incredibly efficient and fast.

packets and protocol can be formulated to allow optimal communication– for example, there’s a message to update a full 8×8 frame of pixels, packed into 9 bytes. if we were to update 64 LEDs with 3-byte MIDI (assuming a traditional note-to-keypad relationship) it’d be 189 bytes, not to mention that conforming non-traditional data to a MIDI-centric topology is often unintuitive.

we feel the hardware should have a proportionally light burden involving communication so that the chip can be freed up for its intended purpose– updating displays, collecting data, as fast as possible for low latency. we’ve certainly accomplished this– monome latency is insanely small. the host computer can handle the more complicated communication– in our case we suggest our router which translates serial to OSC, making a readable, dynamic communication layer available to other apps.

Ed.: Note that this driver is now often included in the Linux kernel – making a netbook + monome performance rig, for instance, a tasty choice. More on that soon. -PK

Several years on, what still makes the monome kit stand apart from other grid controllers and DIY options? (No need to mention those by name — what’s special about the monome?)

the decoupled grid controller originated with the monome. the monome community has amassed an amazing collection of contributed applications over the years, most following our preference to keep sources open.

simply put, these applications work best and most easily with monome devices. the community is terrifically active and supportive which is encouraging for newcomers and prospective builders.

this may sound like i’m shaking my own hand, but i’ve been thinking about and refining this device constantly for almost ten years. i hope we’re starting to figure it out.

Readers: want to see more of the monome kit? Need a little more handholding for building one? Let us know, and we’ll hook you up. -PK

Chili – Sweet & Savory from Chili on Vimeo.

Creating imaginative, inventive housings for musical instruments is nearly as old as the practice of making objects that make sound. Even in acoustic instruments, these additions often have nothing to do with sound – a viola da gamba doesn’t sound any better when it’s got the face of a fair maiden carved onto it, but that’s not the point.

So, enclosure creativity when making your own monome grid controller is part of the joy of making a custom instrument. Since this week monome co-creator Brian Crabtree is unveiling a new iteration of the monome kit, I asked him for his favorite examples of creative housings. Some of these have been seen on these pages (screens?) before, but I think they’re worth revisiting. At top, Chili’s Etch-a-Sketch housing. (More details on his rig if you click through to the Vimeo link.)

A vintage radio:

Edison’s classic lunchbox enclosure (and it helps that Edison is one of the most virtuosic players of the monome grid).

failure of the year from edison on Vimeo.

Lastly, there’s no reason you can’t use an instrument as a housing, as here, in which a monome is built into a guitar, with simultaneous access to the guitar signal (creator Ben Brown says this is a work in progress, but it’s really promising):

There’s Something from Ben Brown on Vimeo.

Brian notes that he “could show hundreds of these,” but I’ll refrain from doing a “100 Top Enclosures for the monome” post. Why? Because you should take that time to build your own, of course.

Ardour 2.8.11 is now available. It contains only 1 change from 2.8.10, but its an important one:

• Do not prevent transport operations after an export (and potentially at other times)

All users are strongly recommended to upgrade. Remember that if you have a subscription or paid for an earlier 2.8 version, and were logged into ardour.org at that time, upgrades are free!

From: Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <pedro.lopez.cabanillas@...>
Subject: [LAA] [ANN] Drumstick 0.4.0 released
Date: Jul 7, 4:50 pm 2010

Drumstick is a C++ wrapper around the ALSA library sequencer interface using
Qt4 objects, idioms and style. ALSA sequencer provides software support for
MIDI technology on Linux. Complementary classes for SMF and WRK file
processing are also included. This library is used in KMetronome, KMidimon
and KMid2, and was formerly known as "aseqmm".

Changes:
* New visibility attribute for all public classes allowing client programs to
be compiled with hidden visibility if desired.
* Better error reporting for all the utilities.
* Subdirectory "tests" renamed as "utils".
* Utility "smfplayer" renamed as "guiplayer" and enhanced with a new interface
design and support for Cakewalk WRK files.

Copyright (C) 2009-2010, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas
License: GPL v2 or later

Project web site
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick

Online documentation
  http://drumstick.sourceforge.net/docs/

Downloads
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick/files/0.4.0/
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From: Stefan Westerfeld <stefan@...>
Subject: [LAA] gst123-0.1.2
Date: Jul 6, 9:08 am 2010

gst123-0.1.2 has been released.

Overview of changes in gst123-0.1.2:
------------------------------------
* Added -a option to select audio driver (oss, alsa) and device (/dev/dsp1, hw:1)
* Fix crash triggered when closing the video window (thanks Siddhesh Poyarekar)
* Improved configure check (works now if ncurses headers are not in /usr/include)

What is gst123?
---------------
The program gst123 is designed to be a more flexible command line player in the
spirit of ogg123 and mpg123, based on gstreamer. It plays all file formats
gstreamer understands, so if you have a music collection which contains
different file formats, like flac, ogg and mp3, you can use gst123 to play all
your music files.

Since gst123-0.1.0 support for watching videos has been added; however gst123
should run fine in situations where no X11 display is available; videos can be
played without X11 display, too (-x, --novideo); in this case, only the audio
stream will be played.

It is implemented in C++ and licensed under the GNU LGPL version 2

Links:
------
Website: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/gst123.php
Download: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/gst123/gst123-0.1.2.tar.bz2
--
Stefan Westerfeld, Hamburg/Germany, http://space.twc.de/~stefan
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I’ve been playing with percussion lately, and wanted some metallic sounds, and I remembered a little app that I played with a while ago called Power Station Industralizer, a physically modeled percussion synth. It’s a little unwieldy — it’s non-realtime, so you have to “render” the sound after tweaking parameters before you can play it, and it has some annoying issues — but it can certainly make some nice clangy, smashy, metallic drum sounds. I came up with a few and threw them in to Hydrogen; the results are below.

If you’re going to use PSIndustralizer, you do need to be aware of some issues. The most annoying is that, with settings for “Spring Tension” or “Speed” that are too high — and “too high” is a vague description, because it’s never exactly clear how high you can go before having problems — the render times jump from a second or two up to perhaps a minute or more, and the only way to stop the render is to exit the app. There’s also no JACK support — not a killer, since you render and save the samples rather than using it as a realtime synth — and the exported files sometimes need to be cleaned up manually to remove some nasty DC offsets. Still, I think the sounds hidden in there could well be worth the hassle.

mp3 | vorbis | 12 seconds

Most important when mixing is your ears, though sometimes a spectrum analyzer can be to some help when trying to separate instruments.  Not only is JAMin a great mastering tool but it’s also good for analysing the frequencies of your tracks.

With Ardour the fastest way of getting it to work is by connecting it to the master bus.

Connect ardour master/outs to jamin In_L/R.

Connect jamin out_L/R to system playback_1/2.

Disconnect ardour master/outs from system playback_1/2 to avoid duplicate output of the sound.

Once connected you can solo one or more tracks to see how they blend.

Open Source Musician Podcast Episode #43 - What you Mumblin' about Jack?

Title:

Banter:

Software Releases:

Butt (Broadcast Using This Tool) Version 0.1.12 (2010-04-10) - Has minor changes and is the last planned release. Butt is now able to connect automatically after startup, it has shortened time between connect attempts (fixes Shouted.FM connection problems) and lastly, there is improved wrong password detection for shoutcast. http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.12/

 

- Ardour 2.8.10 is released primarily to fix an annoying regression in 2.8.9:

keyboard presses and releases are now correctly sent to Ardour

created plugin GUIs (e.g. for LADSPA plugins), making it possible to

use the keyboard to set parameter values and define preset names.

 

- Musescore 0.9..6 is out http://musescore.org/en/node/6010 (rlameiro) :D

We are proud to annouce the release of MuseScore 0.9.6, our best and most stable release up to date!

Downloads are available for Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and a Linux tarball.

This release comes with many new features, a lot of fixed bugs, new and updated translations, an improved plugin framework and many more improvements.

 

- Pd extended 0.42.5 Release Candidate 2 is out!

Of course we missed somethings, so now we have 0.42.5-rc2! Fixed since 0.42.5-rc1:

* 64-bit builds on Ubuntu

* 64-bit build on Mac OS X 10.6/Snow Leopard, minus Gem, hid, and pidip (Carbon)

* fixed [plugin~] crashes, now also builds on Mac OS X and Windows

* Pd-extended shows in the GNOME menus again

There are of course many bug fixes and additions since 0.41.4, here are some highlights:

* fixing Graph-On-Parent GUI bugs

* complete 64-bit support for GNU/Linux

* full support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (32-bit)

* a brand new Help Browser that shows all installed libraries

For more details, check the notes on the release wiki page:

http://puredata.info/dev/NextRelease

You can download builds for Debian, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows:

http://at.or.at/hans/pd/installers.html

 

- Darkice has had a patch submitted to add support for pulse audio:

http://code.google.com/p/darkice/issues/detail?id=25

 

Audio Releases:

 

Tips:

Something to watch - IRC User Stuzz lets us know about some development going on with Linux based handheld gaming device to make it a portable audio device. There's talk of developers 'racing' each other to get music software ported to the Pandora, and one mentioned he'd had a look at porting Ardour over. Audacity is about done already. Also MIDI is working (plugging a USB-MIDI cable in), Seq24 and ZynAddSubFx are underway. See these links:

http://www.open-pandora.org/

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/49917-csoundpd-pro-audio/page__p__762440&#entry762440

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/51424-pandora-audiomusic-sequencermixer/page__st__15

 

Gear:

Announcements:

Rants/Calling BS:

Tech Segment:

Listener Feedback:

Contact Info:

Wiki:

http://opensourcemusician.com

E-Mails

osmp@pipemanmusic.com

Twitter and Identi.ca:

http://twitter.com/pipemanmusic http://identi.ca/pipemanmusic http://identi.ca/guitarman

Blogs:

http://pipemanmusic.blogspot.com http://deadbeatguitarist.com/?feed=rss2

Voicemail:

http://opensourcemusician.libsyn.com Forums: http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewforum.php?f=41 IRC: irc.freenode.net/#opensourcemusicians

Podcast Out!

Song: remix of Conquest of Paradise from Vangelis done by Filipe (aka falktx in IRC)

Band Website:

Direct Download: http://media.libsyn.com/media/opensourcemusician/OSMPEpisode43.mp3

From: Stefan Westerfeld <stefan@...>
Subject: [LAA] spectmorph-0.0.3
Date: Jul 2, 8:29 am 2010

spectmorph-0.0.3 has been released. The main improvement is that the piano
samples sound a lot better now, because the attack is modelled better by
the SpectMorph model.

Overview of Changes in spectmorph-0.0.3:
----------------------------------------
* added encoder algorithm to find attack envelope, this makes piano sound much
more realistic
* introduced smwavset tool, which allows managing instruments consisting of
many samples
- encoding/decoding a set of samples
- delta operation for comparing errors of sets of samples
* smextract can now provide an overview of how many bytes in an .sm file can be
attributed to which fields
* documentation updates
* refactoring, cleanups

What is SpectMorph?
-------------------
SpectMorph is a free software project which allows to analyze samples of
musical instruments. This should allow constructing hybrid sounds, for instance
a sound between a trumpet and a flute. Also interpolating between two samples
of the same instrument (different attack velocity of a piano) could be
interesting.

SpectMorph is implemented in C++ and licensed under the GNU LGPL version 3

SpectMorph currently is in the early stages of development, which means that it
is not yet ready to be used by end users.

Links:
------
Website: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/spectmorph.php
Download: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/spectmorph/spectmorph-0.0.3.tar.bz2

There are sound examples on the website which demonstrate the sound quality of
the current SpectMorph models using piano samples.
--
Stefan Westerfeld, Hamburg/Germany, http://space.twc.de/~stefan
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Those crazy Amiga artists were ahead of their time. The lightweight real-time music engines and formats they began were uncommonly efficient, and allowed the exchange of elaborate electronic music using a minimum of resources – with some accompanying compositional and sound design ingenuity required, as well. As a result, getting a phone handset to reproduce their work today is a pretty manageable task, and some of the music available is concise and clever. Pop on some headphones, load up some tunes, and you may feel you’re starring in your very own Amiga point and click adventure the next time you hit the grocery market.

There are a number of trackers and mod players for mobile platforms from iPhone to Windows Mobile, but Android is now in on the game thanks to Xmp (Extended Module Player). Using Android’s JNI-based NDK interface for accessing native code from Java, the “experimental” queue up some files and play back on your SD card. My sense is that this hasn’t been widely tested, which is where you come in: got an Android phone? Ideally, got some obscure models of Android phone? Load this up and see if you’re getting the retro tracker music love. Let us know in comments how it goes.

Full downloads and code for Xmp, a command-line mod player for Mac, Windows, Linux and pretty much every OS every invented, along with the experimental Android port:
http://xmp.sourceforge.net/

Thanks to Dan Galpin, developer advocate at Google, for pointing this out to me.

Now, this brings me to my open question. Suffice to say, someone could build a pretty player interface for Xmp, with playlist support and the lot. But what about actually editing files on your Android device, as you can on iPhone, PSP, GamePark, PC, Mac, etc.? It’s possible that the Xmp code could be used as a template for porting the engine of something like LittleGPTracker. But looking through quickly, I wonder if Xmp itself might serve as a real-time engine? It’d also be interesting to design a tracker interface that took the UI patterns of platforms like Android to heart, rather than just reproducing interfaces designed for other platforms. If you’re interested in such a project or have some insight into what might be practical, let us know in comments.

[Andrew Jenner] pulled off something amazing with this Physical Tone Matrix. He wanted to build a physical version of a flash applet he had seen. Two layers make up the main user interface. The top layer is a sheet of acrylic that acts as a touch interface and below there’s an LED matrix. [Andrew's] touch interface uses wires running throughout the acrylic as contacts which are polled via transistor pairs. As you can see in the video after the break it works well and we like the fact that there’s a tactile component (due to the bumpy wires) you don’t get when working with a touchscreen.

The 16×16 grid of LEDs on the bottom layer correspond to each ‘button’ on the touch matrix hand have some extra functions such as playing Conway’s Game of Life. This fantastic build still has a couple of kinks to work out, most notably the interference in the audio circuit, but we’re quite impressed at what he’s achieved quickly. Plus, this is more economical than a monome and larger than some of the monome clones we’ve seen.

Snippets!

 

 

Just a quick blog this time, as Christopher and I are working behind the scenes, both on our own work, and modest testing of updated tools to use.

 

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For some time, I’ve been a champion of Livid Instruments’ controller hardware, because I like the principles behind it. The devices are handmade in Texas using sustainable woods and environmentally-friendly stains, are standards-compliant with open specifications, open source software, and driverless class-compliant operation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and lend themselves to programmability and customization. They certainly have some of the spirit of the open source monome devices, but for anyone who wished the monome grid also had knobs, faders, and such, and didn’t require weird serial-over-USB drivers, it’s nice that we have Livid, too. This is not by way of advertising Livid, either. I really believe that generally, open configurability and small-batch construction result in hardware that’s more fun to own and use.

But, oh yeah – there’s also the question of what you can actually do with your music using these controllers. With grids, crossfaders, and faders at the ready, the Ohm64 and more compact Block each have plenty of control possibilities.
The gang at Livid, and the community of users this niche line has attracted, have been hard at work over the past months inventing new ways of controlling musical and visual applications. Here are a few of the best of those examples.

Of course, the wildest of all is the Renoise work at top by proflific Renoiser hitotori. Do not adjust your computer; there’s not something wrong with the speed of the video at top. (Who needs drugs, really – even caffeine – with music like that? I’ll have what he’s having. Check out his other YouTube uploads, as well.)

Here are some other applications:

Reason + Ohm64

Before Ableton’s mapping features or Novation’s Automap, there was Reason and Remote. And the use of Remote scripts can still be very powerful, as seen here, complete with some keyboard tricks.

Reason Remote mapping for Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Ableton Live

See Livid’s forums for the Ohm 64 Remote Script, which should work with any recent 8.x version of Live.

What’s most impressive about it is that, thanks to some ingenious work by Mike Chenetz of max4live.info, it not only “automaps” the Ohm64 but even provides access to the “red box” used by Novation’s Launchpad and Akai’s APC. You don’t even need a copy of Max for Live to pull it off.

Ohm64 Ableton Live Remote Script from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

There’s also now a script for the Block. I have to say, I like using the Launchpad with Ableton, but I’m constantly reaching for device knobs that … aren’t actually there. (The Launchpad only has buttons.) That means the Block wins out in day-to-day practicality for most users, unless you only ever trigger clips and never so much as adjust a filter cutoff or wet/dry amount.

Block Remote Script for Ableton Live from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Some of the most amazing integration comes from nativeKONTROL, the advanced scripting project that began with the KORG nano series. These are really advanced scripts that have elaborate, layered control of everything from sequencing drum racks to muting and arming tracks – more control, even, than you get from the APC40. Because it’s a script, you don’t need a special template (any file will work), and you don’t need Max for Live. nativeKONTROL omComponent handles the Ohm64, and just this week blockLive added the Block, seen below. These are payware, at $22.50 for the Block and $25-45 (depending on how many presets you want bundled in) for the Ohm. But they’re really quite impressive pieces of work.

http://www.nativekontrol.com/

Max for Live

I’m burying the lead a bit here: Livid’s open-sourced LividStep Max for Live device is about the most brilliantly useful patch I’ve seen yet. It finally fills a gap Live itself hasn’t managed to fill: it makes patterns you can step sequence live. Video part 1 below; see also part 2.

LividStep: step sequencer made in Max For Live from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Here’s a demo video by user Monoque featuring some nice use of drum pads in Max for Live with Ableton Live. I’ll try to find some other information on the custom plug itself.

M4L – Livid OHM64 integration plug-in v2 from Monoque on Vimeo.

Traktor

The crossfader, faders, and banks of knobs make the Ohm a natural DJ controller. (The Ohm itself was designed by folks who make and use VJ software, so that’s not a coincidence.) Using Traktor Pro DJ from Native Instruments, the Ohm becomes a controller for looping, cues, sync and bpm, mixing, effects, and even navigation of the browser.

Traktor Pro and Livid Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

MIDI and Hardware

Yes, while it seems almost every other recent controller has dropped the good, old-fashioned MIDI DIN connectors, the Block and Ohm64 each have 5-pin MIDI ins and outs. That means you aren’t only restricted to using them with software, as soillodge illustrates here with an Access Virus B and SU10 sampler, plus a noise swash pedal from the brilliant 4ms pedals.

Visuals

The Ohm64 was designed first and foremost by visualists, so it’s naturally a nice controller for those applications, not just Livid’s own Cell DNA, which comes free in the box.

As covered on CDMotion, the GrandVJ guys have automapped the Ohm to their software, and legendary live visualist Johnny DeKam has a really drool-worthy rig combining the Ohm with a ViXiD video mixer and his custom Vidvox VDMX setup. (Vidvox? Livid? VDMX? Vixid? Vidmx? Vidvid? Vidxvidvidvid? Yeah, it’s tough to keep straight, but it’s my job.)

It’s even possible to display very simple, low-resolution images on the Ohm’s grid.

Pictures on the Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Got tips of your own?

To me, all of this variety strikes home an important point: we talk a lot about of-the-box integration, but hardware is cooler when it works with more than just one piece of software. Even if you’re not a power user, your own personal needs may be different from someone else’s. In fact, if you’re not a power user, you’re even more likely to expect to be able to connect a piece of control hardware to more than one thing and have it work. We’ve seen that desire not only with the Livid line, but with gear like the KORG nano series and even devices marketed for use with one app, like the Novation Launchpad and Akai APC. That says to me that smarter control and open devices that allow users to easily contribute their own ideas make sense.

The above compilation isn’t even complete. For more on the hardware and techniques for using it:
http://www.lividinstruments.com/
Lots of good discussion, tips, and the latest scripts live on the forums: http://blog.lividinstruments.com/forum/
And for more video tutorials, see Livid’s Vimeo account.

I’ve tried to feature some of the ideas from the community here, but of course the Livid gang have done the most videos, and I’m sure there are plenty I’ve missed. Are you a Livid owner with your own custom rig? Want to share your impressions, tips, templates, etc.? Let us know.

I've been wanting to dip my toes into programing for android and while I haven't made a full fledged app yet my efforts have produced some fruit.

I'm proud to introduce my latest free software project called Geostatus. It's a simple python script that runs in the Android Scripting Environment(ASE). It serves a very simple purpose in that it checks your current location based on the phones gps and compares that to a list of predetermined locations and updates your Google Talk status accordingly. I've created a git hub repository for it and have released it under the terms of the GPLv3.

You can check it out here

We have a new family member!  His name is Toby:

Toby comes to us through Collie Rescue, Inc.  (You can check out his “adopted pet” page on PetFinder.)

The people at Collie Rescue worked very carefully to find us the right match.  Our family includes Neri, a 9 year old female collie:

Neri is very gentle and sweet.  If we brought a new dog into the house, we wanted to make sure they would get along — no dominance or aggression issues.  Toby is a perfect match for us — he’s easily the most affectionate dog I’ve ever seen.  So far he and Neri have done very well together.  Like Neri, he’s also 9 years old, and just needed a loving, permanent home.  Well, he’s got one now!

So, as of June 24, 2010, Collie Rescue became my official charity.  This is a group that does it right.  Any donations I get on Jamendo will go to this organization, and I’ll be changing some of my album pages along the lines of “If you like this artist, please donate to Collie Rescue.”

Background

In May of 2010, I had just finished my seventh Jamendo album (The Next Age of Adventure) and was starting to write a series of articles about it on this blog.

But then we lost our dog Nora to brain cancer.

As you can tell from looking at the recent posts on this blog, it hit me pretty hard.  I’ve been out of the loop for more than a month.  To any folks who’ve sent me messages or updates or links — well, I probably didn’t get around to reading them.

I had just enough energy to get through the day, then I came home and walled myself off in a world of personal projects.  In the past month, I’ve renewed my programming skills in Python, Perl, and C.  I’ve learned the basics of Lisp and Scheme; I’ve even strayed into logic programming with Prolog.  (And of course last time I talked about getting started with Arch Linux.)

I’ve also started learning a new instrument, the mandolin:

Martin Mandolin, ca. 1943

Weber "Sweet Pea"

The story of how these instruments came into my life is a good one as well, and one I’ll tell later.

This Summer

As for what to expect here –

I’m going to be starting new music projects this summer.  Right now I’m practicing all my instruments, every day, and developing some new techniques.  (Tremolo picking is certainly an area of focus right now, thanks to the mandolin.)

In the evenings I’m working with programming.  See, I have this long term dream of a program that can compose random chord progressions — not just a simple G, C, D, but the types of chords and progressions that I use.  (For instance, check out the chords to “A Dream of Crows”, the tenth track on In Unexpected Places.)  The program needs to be able to “learn” — infer rules from existing chord series.

And as for everything else?  Spending time with my dogs and giving them a great summer as well.

I’ll be charting my progress here.

With the blessing of Ben Lippmeier I have started work on an new backend for his DDC compiler. Currently, DDC has a backend that generates C code which then gets run through GNU GCC to generate executables. Once it is working, the new backend will eventually replace the C one.

The new DDC backend will target the very excellent LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine. Unlike C, LLVM is specifically designed as a general retargetable compiler backend. It became the obvious choice for DDC when the GHC Haskell compiler added an LLVM backend which almost immediately showed great promise. Its implementation was of relatively low complexity in comparison to the existing backends and it also provided pretty impressive performance. This GHC backend was implemented by David Terei as part of an undergraduate thesis in the Programming Languages and Systems group an UNSW.

Since DDC is written in Haskell, there are two obvious ways to implement an LLVM backend:

1. Using the haskell LLVM bindings available on hackage.
2. Using David Terei's code that is part of the GHC compiler.

At first glance, the former might well be the more obvious choice, but the LLVM bindings have a couple of drawbacks from the point of view of using them in DDC. In the end, the main factor in choosing which to use was Ben's interest in boostrapping the compiler (compiling the compiler with itself) as soon as possible.

The existing LLVM bindings use a number of advanced Haskell features, that is, features beyond that of the Haskell 98 standard. If we used the LLVM bindings in DDC, that would mean the DDC would have to support all the features needed by the binding before DDC could be bootstrapped. Similarly, the LLVM bindings use GHC's Foreign Function Interface (FFI) to call out the the LLVM library. DDC currently does have some FFI support, but this was another mark against the bindings.

By way of contrast, David Terei's LLVM backend for GHC is pretty much standard Haskell code and since it generates text files containing LLVM's Intermediate Representation (IR), a high-level, typed assembly language, there is no FFI problem. The only downside of David's code is that the current version in the GHC Darcs tree uses a couple of modules that are private to GHC itself. Fortunately, it looks like these problems can be worked around with relatively little effort.

Having decided to use David's code, I started hacking on a little test project. The aim of the test project to set up an LLVM Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) in Haskell for a simple module. The AST is then pretty printed as a textual LLVM IR file and assembled using LLVM's llc compiler to generate native assembler. Finally the assembler code is compiled with a C module containing a main function which calls into the LLVM generated code.

After managing to get a basic handle on LLVM's IR code, the test project worked; calling from C into LLVM generated code and getting the expected result. The next step is to prepare David's code for use in DDC while making it easy to track David's upstream changes.

(this announcement comes from John Emmas, developer of ArdourXchange)

Owners of Harrison's Mixbus can now obtain a very cheap copy of ArdourXchange if they act quickly. Throughout July 2010 AxC will be on sale for just $20 (US) - that's less than half its normal retail price.

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I forgot to mention another central problem in my blog story about file locking on Linux:

Different machines have access to different features of the same file system. Here's an example: let's say you have two machines in your home LAN. You want them to share their $HOME directory, so that you (or your family) can use either machine and have access to all your (or their) data. So you export /home on one machine via NFS and mount it from the other machine.

So far so good. But what happens to file locking now? Programs on the first machine see a fully-featured ext3 or ext4 file system, where all kinds of locking works (even though the API might suck as mentioned in the earlier blog story). But what about the other machine? If you set up lockd properly then POSIX locking will work on both. If you didn't one machine can use POSIX locking properly, the other cannot. And it gets even worse: as mentioned recent NFS implementations on Linux transparently convert client-side BSD locking into POSIX locking on the server side. Now, if the same application uses BSD locking on both the client and the server side from two instances they will end up with two orthogonal locks and although both sides think they have properly acquired a lock (and they actually did) they will overwrite each other's data, because those two locks are independent. (And one wonders why the NFS developers implemented this brokenness nonetheless...).

This basically means that locking cannot be used unless it is verified that everyone accessing a file system can make use of the same file system feature set. If you use file locking on a file system you should do so only if you are sufficiently sure that nobody using a broken or weird NFS implementation might want to access and lock those files as well. And practically that is impossible. Even if fpathconf() was improved so that it could inform the caller whether it can successfully apply a file lock to a file, this would still not give any hint if the same is true for everybody else accessing the file. But that is essential when speaking of advisory (i.e. cooperative) file locking.

And no, this isn't easy to fix. So again, the recommendation: forget about file locking on Linux, it's nothing more than a useless toy.

Also read Jeremy Allison's (Samba) take on POSIX file locking. It's an interesting read.

From: Alexander Kojevnikov <alexander@...>
Subject: [LAA] Spek 0.5
Date: Jun 27, 12:05 pm 2010

Hi list,

I'm happy to announce the release of version 0.5 of Spek - an acoustic spectrum
analyser / spectrogram viewer.

Spek is a multi-platform app available on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Changes since the previously announced version (0.3):

* Associate with audio files (“Open with…” menu in file managers.)
* Show the name of the open file in the window title.
* Support 24-bit FLACs.
* Drag and Drop support.
* Show file name and its properties in the window.
* Significantly speed up spectral analysis by using the optimal number
of frequency bands.
* DTS files support.
* Distribute Windows version as a ZIP archive in addition to the MSI installer.
* Mac OS X installer.
* Use Pango to render text.
* Brand new icon.

Read more about Spek on the official website [1] and on my blog [2]

Cheers,
Alex

[1] http://www.spek-project.org/
[2] http://versia.com/category/spek/
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From: Stefan Westerfeld <stefan@...>
Subject: [LAA] gst123-0.1.1
Date: Jun 27, 12:05 pm 2010

gst123-0.1.1 has been released.

Overview of Changes in gst123-0.1.1:
------------------------------------

* Fix code to allow uris in playlist. [Siddhesh Poyarekar]
* Fix building with binutils-gold. [Siddhesh Poyarekar]

What is gst123?
---------------
The program gst123 is designed to be a more flexible command line player in the
spirit of ogg123 and mpg123, based on gstreamer. It plays all file formats
gstreamer understands, so if you have a music collection which contains
different file formats, like flac, ogg and mp3, you can use gst123 to play all
your music files.

Since gst123-0.1.0 support for watching videos has been added; however gst123
should run fine in situations where no X11 display is available; videos can be
played without X11 display, too (-x, --novideo); in this case, only the audio
stream will be played.

It is implemented in C++ and licensed under the GNU LGPL version 2

Links:
------
Website: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/gst123.php
Download: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/gst123/gst123-0.1.1.tar.bz2
--
Stefan Westerfeld, Hamburg/Germany, http://space.twc.de/~stefan
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It seems like that last post of mine detailing my selfish reasons for making my music available for free couldn’t have been better timed. ASCAP has launched an attack on Creative Commons, the EFF, and Public Knowledge, asking its members to donate to a fund that will be used to campaign against copyleft licencing in the US Congress. The letter it sent to its members reads like the kind of FUD you’d expect from 90s Microsoft:

“They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”

This could not be further from the truth — Creative Commons gives artists tools to control what they wish to allow other people to do with their own work. It’s not aimed at tearing down traditional copyright, and it’s certainly not aimed at providing free access to existing copyrighted works. I’ve talked about the fact that I use CC because it’s in my best interest, but I wouldn’t claim that it’s the best option for all artists.

I can only think that ASCAP is targeting Creative Commons because it’s becoming a credible alternative to the old performance royalty model. If a cafe owner wants some background music for their customers, they can play any appropriately-licenced CC music; that is, any work not using the “Non-Commercial” clause. As more music becomes available under these licences, and awareness of its existence grows, it will be increasingly practical to work with CC music rather than pay ASCAP fees.