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Post by NightMachines on Jan 1, 2019 13:29:29 GMT
Happy new year, everyone! I spent the past two weeks mostly away from home and traveled a lot on trains. This meant a lot of time with my iPad, checking out new things, like trying to draw some virtual art and editing and scoring full videos on the device, which nowadays works incredibly well. I also finally “invested” in Auria Pro Cubasis 2, which feels like a true game changer in mobile DAW functionality. Anyway, I was editing some videos and thought I’d like to add some crazy visuals. Naturally, I once again combed the App Store for audio visualizer apps that would accept inter-app or Audiobus audio, but this only ever led me to K-Machine, which I had never dared to dive into before. Not his time though! I downloaded it, watched a few videos, looked at the manual and like so often thought: “damn ... I wish I’d be better at math and coding”. Oh well. I then discovered vertexshaderart.com, which is made by Greggman, who also did the HTML5 Bytebeat editor, and which is compatible with K-Machine. There are only a few tutorial videos, but I still managed to have some fun coding up some colorful, moving squares, while listening to spacedog’s latest ambient jams: 1. www.vertexshaderart.com/art/S3xrtQ73jjKSYCofF2. www.vertexshaderart.com/art/Dzq7Xbo9hsf8fwr583. www.vertexshaderart.com/art/YNrYu5vLMifYXQAyj4. www.vertexshaderart.com/art/LhgDszKTstGZBHjt7Those could also react to music and even IAA through K-Machine, but I haven’t really conquered coding this functionality yet. It’s only a line of code though and first tests seemed fruitful. Of course, if you’re a good coder, you can get super crazy too: www.vertexshaderart.com/art/xxhTPvXjTWPCPLM2vwww.vertexshaderart.com/art/xTf82BxK4LCcHNgq6So I hope to experiment with this further, which is fun, similarly to the Bytebeat coding, because once you understand the basics (really just four or five lines of code here), you can more or less randomly enter values and get decent results and still learn things while you’re at it. Have you done something like this as well? Do you have other app recommendations? I heard Processing is a good language for generative art too and I might try it out as well.
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Post by spacedog on Jan 1, 2019 16:02:57 GMT
Thanks, NightMachines, I hope that I provided suitable inspiration. I did enjoy your graphics and I am avoiding the pull to try my hand at this myself - not that I am in any way visually artistic, IMO. Mainly as I, too, would love to be able to add some video graphics to my music. It would be a great complement to the music, and to have coded it myself is really persuasive.
Back in 1985, I started my working life as a mathematical modeller of electromagnetic systems and I always enjoyed the beauty of well-executed code - the problem was usually getting reality to live up to my models . Although my career progressed away from the cutting edge of writing the code, the fascination never left me and I often have to fight the urge to divert away from making music towards learning more about modern coding, or playing with these amazing pieces of hardware that are available to us now. As a final year degree project, I designed a simple MIDI interface to inferface with a giant lab computer with a footprint only marginally smalled than Belgium (I still remember both CP/M and the S100 bus layout) and I wrote a basic sequencer program in Z80 Assembly Language, so I have a tendency towards wanting to do these things. I have to fight it
A couple of years ago I took a free online course (MOOC) from Monash University that covered Processing and Nodal. Lots of generative art and music. I took it through the UK-based Future Learn, but I can't see the course there any more; it was called "Creative Coding". That was an excellent introduction to writing amazing routines with a really low number of lines of code - this was so much more powerful that what I had grown up with, and great fun. Again, I had to fight the urge to spend that free time on this.
Recently, I started to play with Generative Sequencers, I have used the Tonecarver Nova one and more recently Transition. Both are good, and less complex than Nodal (and completely free, as a bonus). Transition is more stable on my system and I have used it on a few tracks, with some reasonable boundary conditions to tame it.
The whole Generative art/music has been an interest for quite a while and I will have to dig out my old copy of Brian Eno's "77 Million Paintings" software again. Once I finish the latest piece of music, of course
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Post by thetechnobear on Jan 8, 2019 17:35:45 GMT
ooh, nearly missed this thread - probably as Im not into mobile stuff at the moment. on the broader topic of visualisation, I started dabbling in this a bit last year, when I ported Critter and Guitari ETC over to the Organelle (imaginatively named OTC ). I started really enjoying this, even installed a monitor in my home studio which now displays visuals via OTC from a send on my mixer. (I find its important to have things 'just there' so you use them, rather than having to grab cables/wire things up etc) ETC/OTC is all lo-fi stuff, which I find quite nice, and its simple python/pygame stuff... (could easily port it to macOS/windows and ive got it running on Linux for dev/testing) This year, Im thinking going a bit further and using a rPI3 with PiSound, which has a bit more processing power, currently, Ive been looking at OpenFrameworks... but considering looking at Processing too. (on the mac, Id like to play a bit more with Max and Jitter, that could be really fun for video ) and completely off topic, I also quite interested in direct modular video generation, in particular things like lzx vidot, but not sure I can find anything in my price range! (perhaps tangible waves need to provide some video modules ) … also after superbooth last year, I got very tempted to buy and modify a vectrex! anyway, definitely hope to get a bit more organised in this area in 2019.
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Post by NightMachines on Jan 9, 2019 18:53:07 GMT
Thanks spacedog and thetechnobear! I’ll look into those generative sequencers some more. Now that I’ve gotten the Arduinos working with AEM I might just try myself at creating a sequencer! Haha! I’ve looked at the ETC a couple of times as well, but haven’t really checked out the Python language yet. It’s probably not much more difficult than other languages though, I guess. Probably easier
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Post by spacedog on Jan 11, 2019 17:07:01 GMT
[...] I started dabbling in this a bit last year, when I ported Critter and Guitari ETC over to the Organelle (imaginatively named OTC ). I started really enjoying this, even installed a monitor in my home studio which now displays visuals via OTC from a send on my mixer. (I find its important to have things 'just there' so you use them, rather than having to grab cables/wire things up etc)
ETC/OTC is all lo-fi stuff, which I find quite nice, and its simple python/pygame stuff... (could easily port it to macOS/windows and ive got it running on Linux for dev/testing) [...] OMG... what are you doing to me thetechnobear , I had been pretending that I didn't want an Organelle, and I had been doing SO well. I'd also convinced myself that whilst the ETC looked like a lot of fun, it's quite expensive for just having some visuals whilst I was improvising. Then, what do you do... you only show me a way and a reason. I do have to hold myself back from diving into these things as I really do enjoy that kind of dabble, I'm just a bit out of the game - well, a lot out of the game, really. I can see myself easily losing weekends playing with an Organelle, and if visuals could emerge form it as well. Then, to cap it all, I also found Orac and my resolve snapped. Fortunately, Juno were completely out of Organelles - in fact, there seems to be a World shortage. I can see why, with all of these possibilities. My admiration is high for the work you and others here obviously put into this. I am really enjoying what I can get out of the AE Modular and it's getting put to immediate use, but this is definitely calling to me. I did also make the mistake of reading about Bytebeat as well...
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Post by thetechnobear on Jan 11, 2019 23:48:51 GMT
he, he … yeah the organelle is a fun instrument to have around... pretty versatile. bare in mind you cannot use OTC at the same time as something like Orac, as they both use a lot of CPU Orac is pretty good alongside AE, as you can use various sequencers from it (you need a cheap USB midi -> midi DIN) , also I like running AE thru it for audio effects, e.g. my port of the mutable clouds, or rings reverb, and you can do this simultaneously. anyway, glad you like both OTC and Orac, and I had a lot of fun developing them, and I love the fact theres a few musicians out there enjoying them.
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