Avols

Bad decisions — 1 comment
25
Jun 08

Norwegian opera says no.

The Norwegian opera says no to Tom Waits due to capacity issues with technical maintenance on stage. In the history of bad concert booking this has to be top ten, maybe top five. For me this is the worst music decision this side of 1977. It is like having tickets to a Jimi Hendrix show and then stay home because your tv is on.

http://www.vg.no/rampelys/artikkel.php?artid=500918 (In Norwegian). At least the opera boss will have a place in history as the one who said no to Tom Waits due to technical issues. Congratulations.

Tools - Hardware — No comments
14
Jun 08

So I’ve been Phidgeting…..

Phidgets has many nice products but I do not like to rely on anything USB. Therefore I have avoided those tempting Phidgets until now. It is easy, it is small, has 8 analog ins and 8 digital ins and outs. This is obviously called PhidgetInterfaceKit 8/8/8 and it is growing on me. I like the ease of Phidgeting so much that I am going to build me an instrument and find out how reliable USB will be in my setup.

My Avols interface (I will post more on this later) will still be my first choice, but the Phigdets might turn out as a very good alternative in many cases where high quality AD, DA or Ethernet is not required.

If you want to phidget then make sure you get the right crimps and housings for your cable (see phidget manual for part numbers). And I almost forgot: That insanely priced crimp-tool is required as well (See the company that make the crimps (Molex in this case) for tools). In Norway these things cost around 400$. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

Macbook and RME Multiface I

Back in those cold December days when I bought me a macbook I thought to myself: What a wonderful day. Then it struck me, as by lightning, that to get enough money to buy a fire-wire audio interface that would fit my Macbook, I would have to let my Multiface go. But I couldn’t. Because it would be stupid to get rid of such a good audio card when it would be a perfect adat break out box for another card. So I kept it, tried the audio inputs on the Macbook and it worked. Not pristine, but it worked.

Yesterday I thought to myself: This is a great day for some optical SPDIF. Clas Ohlson had the toslink to jack cables, my Macbook has its optical in- and outputs and the Multiface has SPDIF on coax but also (selectable) on its ADAT-in and out. Perfect. The internal routing on the Multiface is a beauty. From my Ecstacy to the Multiface and then out on SPDIF (optical) to the Macbook and back again.

As if this wasn’t enough, the Multiface is still connected to my Windows horse running the great Samplitude. Two computers – one audio card. Sounds good to me. Now I have my guitar software running on the Macbook and Samplitude on the Windozer and the Multiface handles both of them.

As if this wasn’t enough the Multiface can be disconnected from the PC-Card and ramble on in standalone mode. No need for a cardbus to use its ins and outs, just for setting them up each time the Multiface has been unpowered. Tedious.

EDIT: I was a bit to happy about this the other day when I thought that the Multiface remembered its settings…. No internal memory. It would have been a very nice feature if it could rememeber it self. And I mean, come on, home much memory would you need for something like that? It’s probably just a register setting anyway.

Cheers

Guitar / Max/MSP/Jitter / Tools - Software — 2 comments
30
Apr 08

My screen is my re-patcher

Keep an eye at the text box in the patcher when the modules are moved around. That’s the explanation, and think about changing the order of stomp boxes on the floor.

This is a short demo of using the screen as a re-patcher. I use my computer for most effects processing in my guitar system, and this re-patcher allows me to change the effects order at any time without touching a cable. Changing the effects order should be easy to do for anyone because it creates a myriad of sonic possibilities. This is my approach to the challenge of re-patching on the fly, and I believe it will prove itself useful. Audio coming soon. I want to showcase all modules at the same time, and I am adding the possibility of serial, split to: parallell, merge to: serial processing as well. I don’t think I’ll need parallell processing but it should be possible to do it, shouldn’t it?

cheers

Guitar / Max/MSP/Jitter / Tools - Software — 3 comments
25
Apr 08

Guitar effects

Two new modules for my guitar setup has arrived at their beta stage: The Delavols and the Compavols. When those modules that are currently in the owen are all baked up and smells good, I’ll post some audio examples for anyone interested. Nice thing about using your computer as an effects processor is the lack of unwanted noise. If you still crawl around going mental on everything that is not as analog as the Wizard from Oz, then skip further down the internet and get exhausted for nothing. This is not your cup of tea.

Max/MSP/Jitter / OS X / Tools - Software — No comments
23
Apr 08

New looks in max, new looks in my fauna

I am working on some modules for my guitar system. First of is a vibrato/tremolo with feedback through delay. And today I fiddled around with the presentation mode in a more or less finished patch to check out the new graphic objects. I frankly think that those new interface objects looks good. Well… I like it simple and here is the Vibravols module:

Max/MSP/Jitter / Tools - Software — No comments
23
Apr 08

I’ve waited. Now I hover.

I guess I could write a love song about Max/MSP/Jitter. This fabulous software turned me into a music technologist, and I have used it for just about all my techno needs: GSM-communication, Ethernet, upload, download, my live guitar system, real-time audio and video, sensors, mapping und so weiter. Point is: I’ve got Max5, and I hover. Have not been so excited about software since I got Samplitude and discovered audio editing simplicity.

The new presentation mode is just a dream come through. And the inspector, and the new looks….. I think I like rounded corners.

Computers - general / General / OS X / Tools - Software — No comments
31
Mar 08

TextMate

It is kind of amazing that such a powerful text tool comes at this price. When I wrote my master thesis I struggled with Open Office because I wanted to find out for real how it compares to Microsoft Office. Now I have been a regular user of TextMate and Latex, writing various stuff (text (Latex), PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) almost every day for the last 30 days. To put it simple: I am never going back unless I really, really have to. TextMate is hereby recommended.

Javascript / Max/MSP/Jitter / Tools - Software — 8 comments
19
Mar 08

Javascript but no JSUI

I have always been a fan of the LCD-object in Max/MSP/Jitter but it is somewhat tedious to control stuff on it because of all those drawing commands….. However I am tired of not being able to use those beloved semantics in Multislider so I’ve made me a javascript interface to make LCD behave like a multislider. I think it came out as a beauty.

cheers..

Javascript / Max/MSP/Jitter / Tools - Software — No comments
17
Mar 08

more javascript in max….

I like to write a javascript every now and then to avoid using a million objects in my Max/MSP/Jitter patches, and today was such a nice day for a little javascript…The script came out nice and tidy, but when I wrote another function to send the semantics to an ubumenu for easy navigation in the UI things became somewhat tedious… I’ll keep the receipt around here for anyone interested as there was very little concrete information about this in the documentation (Max/MSP) and even less on the user forums….

Anyway, this is reliable (remove the brackets):
[a=patcher.newobject("user", "ubumenu", 101, 99, 100, 196617, 0,1,1,0);]

The problem was nothing but the font and font size…. With the newdefault method they are messed up, but with newobject everything works out fine. I guess I was confused because the newdefault method creates the object, and allows filling it with content, and anything but the font related stuff…..

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