Everything you ever wanted to know about programming

... synths!

In a discussion on Muff's Modulars & More, a discussion broke out about books to use for synth programming. All the usual suspects were trotted out (Strange, Roland 100m manuals), but someone pointed out that all of the Sound On Sound synth tutorials were now freely available.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

One of the best written series ever on synth programming, this one is a must-read if you wanna go beyond presets (or figure out what that shiny new modular synth is good for...).

[ddg]

Cool night networking (in more ways than one)

Got a note from John Gunther (CU mastermind of interesting concerts), letting me know that there was going to be a crazy new net-performance (in combination with NYU and Purdue) on Sunday. Luckily, I'd gotten home from visiting my parents and headed down for the show.

It just happened that several of my favorite people were there, including Janet Feder and John:



John Drumheller:



and EJ Posselius:



I also got to re-introduce myself to Synthia Payne:



And watch some dancers improv to a pretty wide variety of sound and music:



This was a pretty heady undertaking, trying to do collaborative improv from all three locations simultaneously. I'm proud to say that (IMHO) the best work came out of the Colorado crowd, with a haunting drone piece by JD's BLork ensemble, and a fabulous "round" led by John Gunther. It's amazing to see what telematics has become; I'm going to have to try this myself sometime...

[ddg]

Dancers Mediated!

Well, the big show went off this weekend, and it went great. 10 computers and 9 projectors in the end, all run by a network of Max/MSP/Jitter patches. I ran the whole thing from a central system on a podium, shooting OSC messages all over the room to control the video playback selection.

The best part (for me) was seeing the dancers work with the "flaming" feedback system. In order to match the music and the other visuals (as well as not taking away from the Henry Moore sculptures), I built a rather interesting patch with built-in limiters and other control mechanisms. Since feedback is so unpredictable, it led to a more controllable system - but still not predictable.

The dance troupe (7 dancers from the 3rd Law Dance Company) did a fantastic job, and all of the people helping with the rig worked very, very hard to make this happen. It was nice to work "big" for a change (the room was 60' by 60', and varying from 14 to 20 feet high), and I did my best to make interesting use of the space. Everyone that saw it seemed to like it, so I guess my vision was vindicated!



I need to take a nap now! I will put production details on the artBlog starting tomorrow.

One review: westword blog

[ddg]

"You gotta be kidding me...!"

OK, so you may already know I'm a knucklehead Packer fan; something that makes my art friend sad for me, and makes my football friends worried for me. Nevertheless, Sunday night provided an incredible game between the Vikings and Packers (one the the Packers won, but that was just an extra benefit). I'm sure a bundle was made on the game, because it seems like everyone in the world watched it.

But Brad Childress, coach of the Vikings, is in the process of making an ass of himself. "The worst officiated game I've seen" indeed. As Kevin Seifert (of ESPN NFC North blog) says, this is a loser's complaint. Childress has continued his discussion, using Nixon-esque "expletive deleted"'s to get his point across, then following it up with a tattletale about the NFL chief of officials admitting to a blown call. I'm thinking that using a public podium to squawk about officials is probably setting yourself up for something untoward in the future (regarding bad calls).

But more than anything, what I'd love to see is a football ref get in front of a podium and say something like "That was the worst coached football game I've seen!". This would be appropriate, since one blown call could have easily been overturned if Childress could have found something useful in his pocket (like a red flag). Also, when Adrien Peterson is getting something like 20 yards per carry when he runs, letting Favre throw is pretty dumb.

Can't control Favre's choice of pass vs. run? Well, that's what the Big Hook is for. Or are you afraid that he might pout? Whatever...

I guess Childress is going to get a fine. Too bad it's just that. I'd love to see how a 15-year veteran referee would grade Childress' coaching technique (maybe as Phillips-like) as an alternative to a fine. Maybe that would help owners see exactly which rail to use to run ignorant coaches out of town.

[ddg]

Whazzup?

I know I haven't been posting much here - since the Spark Festival performance, I've been doing a lot of work for my classes, working *really* hard on some of our new ideas we came up with at a Cycling company meeting, and doing some prep work for this big multimedia show at the beginning of November. But I took out a little time for a guilty pleasure: installing Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro.

Guilty pleasure? Sure - because there are some things I want to do that are pretty Windows-focused. Examples: the expressPCB board layout software, Sony Acid and Sound Forge - and that super-sexy Mahjong game that they give away for free. This has led to me actually making some headway on the circuit board, doing some of the work for the Sound Production class I GTA and wasting a significant amount of time on casual game-play.

Things are coming to a head with a lot of projects, so I suspect that Windows is going to go unused for a while until I get my head above water, although I will need to do a little video production on that end of the field.

But Windows 7 is working pretty well - once I got the trackpad working that way I want it. Basically, it took jumping into the Bootcamp control panel and turning off almost all of the trackpad options, then going into the Windows mouse control panel and slowing down the mouse activity significantly. Now, the mouse works about the same on Windows as it does on the Mac (my initial reaction was that I was PISSED at how poorly it worked...), and it is effective enough to do all of my Windows work without having to always fire up the HP.

I'm probably going to be AWOL for a little while until I'm done with the big November 6th performance. I'll make sure to do a decent write-up about that. In the meantime, you can see my day-to-day activities at my artBlog and at my devBlog. This is where I spend less time thinking and just write about what I'm doing.

[ddg]