Software

jam2jam XO

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:12:45 +1000

Jam2Jam XO is an activity (application) designed for use on the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop running in the Sugar environment. The jam2jam XO activity uses a number of features built in to the OLPC XO, including audio playback, inbuilt camera, joystick controllers, and mesh networking capabilities. The activity is written entirely in the language Python and accesses a number of Sugar/XO API's.

Jam2jam XO software turns the OLPC XO computer into a music performance instrument. With Jam2jam XO players can create and perform music and present images on their own or synchronised with others over the mesh network as a band with each user playing different instruments: bass, drums, guitar, keyboards.

Jam2jam XO uses generative technologies so users can make choices about the musical activity in real time and influence changes in the instruments by moving the instrument icon up and down to alter the music in various ways. With Jam2jam XO you can be playing in a band within minutes and learn about musical concepts through playing collaboratively with peers.

The music can be changed by moving the selected instrument icon around the screen, thus controlling musical parameters. For example, if a user chooses to reduce the 'Density' parameter on the 'Bass' instrument, the effect is to make the bass part sound 'sparse' by playing less bass notes. The algorithm makes choices concerning which notes to omit playing. In addition to algorithmic parameters, some audio parameters (Timbre and Volume) also work on the audio data within Csound.

jam2jam XO can be used on one machine as a solo performance, or the activity can be shared and up to 4 XOs can play together as a laptop band. An XO band can be expanded by adding a singer, guitarist or other musicians. To create a network jam, one machine needs to share the jam2jam XO activity. When other user 'joins' a Jam, they request an instrument from the person who 'shared' the jam. The 'joiner's' XO then plays the audio and provides parameter control for this instrument. For the sharer, this instrument is relinquished (muted). Timing information is communicated between laptops to ensure the jammers stay in time with each other.

The jam2jam XO software was designed and developed as part of the Network Jamming research project supported by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) in 2009. The jam2jam XO team are based in Brisbane, Australia and consist of Steve Dillon, Thorin Kerr, and Andrew R. Brown.

SoundCipher

Thu, 3 Sep 2009 05:20:09 +1000

SoundCipher provides an easy way to create music in the Processing development environment. With the SoundCipher library added to Processing you can write software programs that make music to go along with your graphics and you can add sounds to enhance your Processing animations or games.

SoundCipher provides an easy interface for playing 'notes' on the JavaSound synthesizer, for playback of audio files, and communicating via MIDI. It provides accurate scheduling and allows events to be organised in musical time; using beats and tempo. It uses a 'score' metaphor that allows the construction of simple or complex musical arrangements. SoundCipher is designed to facilitate the basics of algorithmic music and interactive sound design as well as providing a platform for sophisticated computational music, it allows integration with the Minim library when more sophisticated audio and synthesis functionality is required and integration with the oscP5 library for communicating via open sound control.

Like most of the Processing ecosystem, SoundCipher is a free, open source project released under the GNU GPL licence.

Visit the SoundCipher web site.

Read my paper from ICMC 2009 for details of SoundChipher.

AV Jam

Fri, 3 Aug 2007 08:14:30 +1000

AV-Jam is an application that generates music and video that you can control while it plays. The AV Jam software was originally written by Andrew Sorensen of MOSO corporation, and I now maintain and develop the software.

It is collaborative interactive artwork, enabling its subject to jointly control the music and video using a network of control surfaces connected to a computer. The user is able to jam just like a musician, but without the need for complex instrumental skills. The AV-Jam system was designed to promote meaningful engagement with media art for people of all ages. Clever algorithmic processes generate music and video that shape the result by adjusting parameters on the AV-Jam interface.

The AV Jam system enables groups of people, often young people, to control generative music and video processes as a collaborative performance. The system is designed to encourage social engagement around create tasks and to introduce participants to important music and video processes and concepts by experiencing and controlling them.

The AV Jam was exhibited at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum from early February to mid March 2008 and was a great opportunity for ACID to undertake extended public trials of it’s technologies that are designed to facilitate collaboration around creative media performances.

The AV Jam system is built on adaptive media techniques and theories of meaningful engagement developed by ACID researchers. The research trials provide an opportunity to observe how effectively these techniques and theories work in practice.

Networked jamming systems, such as AV-Jam, provide learning opportunities based on real-time improvisation. Such environments provide interaction as a public and enjoyable opportunity, accessible in the contemporary and familiar format of virtual and present collaborative learning spaces. The benefits of networked jamming are that it makes creative activities accessible and engaging. It embodies creative knowledge in an audio/visual environment allowing simultaneous reflective discussion or demonstration of musical understanding. A networked jamming environment provides opportunities to develop creativity skills while taking into account technical and interpersonal skills relevant to experimental and interactive artworks in a prototype phase. AV-Jam uses dynamic music technologies developed by the Creative Communities project of the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID).

SenseMix

Wed, 1 Aug 2007 12:49:43 +1000

The SenseMix project was a collaborative research and development project based at the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) that ran from 2005-2006. It was driven by the idea that mobile phones and other personal ubiquitous technology can be used by people to assemble digital media that they encounter.

Sense Mix applications use the mobile handset to ‘intelligently’ mix collected images and sounds into structured forms for storage or sharing. These applications are designed to increase the creative agency of the users in their everyday life by enabling them able to use their mobile phone to re-contextualise their context by creating and
evolving cultural artifacts from their surroundings.

The project developed tools and processes for the creation and sharing of content based on remixing images and sound. These tools and processes aim to provide a compelling motivation to engage with the media on the phone and, through generative algorithms, as well as sequencing and timing information personalisation of the content, enhance the desire to share that content over mobile networks.

There is a video demonstrating the SenseMix applications on Vimeo.

A paper describing the project was published at Mobile HCI 2006.

Yuille, J., Forwood, M., Brown, A. R., et al. (2006). senseMix: sharing creative mobile content. Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, Helsinki, Finland. ACM Press, pp. 271-272.

Impromptu

Mon, 5 Mar 2007 09:56:27 +1000

Impromptu is a development environment for computational art written by Andrew Sorensen. It is my main platform for developing computational arts works and for live coding. Impromptu runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and above, is an AudioUnit host, utilises the Scheme language for scripting, and supports the following data types:
• sound
• image
• text
• video
• 3D graphics
• MIDI
• OSC
Impromptu is a dynamic environment that has been designed to support the free flow of creative ideas and to allow rapid evolution of those ideas.
Impromptu is free. Download it here.

Binary Beats

Tue, 7 Feb 2006 03:09:52 +1000

Binary Beats is a probabilistic drum machine I wrote so to produce variable drum beats with some musical sense. Its quite amazing how prominent powers of two (binary) numbers are in music with a simple metre. Binary Beats generates beats according to weighted probabilities, so the music may not always be the same each cycle. The degree of variation is specified by the probability weightings from 0 no probability, through 50 where there is a 50/50 change of playing, to 99 where you are certain that a beat will sound.
This is the binary influence (these numbers are all powers of 2). The drum machine only works in 4/4 time and changes in the 1 column effect the first beat of the bar only. Changes in the 2 column effect the 3rd beat of the bar. Changes under 4 effect beats 2 and 4. Changes under 8 effect all off beats. Column 16 effects all 16th notes not previously part of an other columns. This is a surprisingly musical organisation when you get used to it and one of the major advances this software provides.
The density control effects all probabilities in the one part, while intensity effects probabilities in all parts. At 50 they have a 1:1 multiplying effect (no change). Below 50 they thin out the music by lowering the probabilities, above 50 the thicken the texture by increasing all probabilities. Very cool for live performance when you want to have “more” or “less” full-on drums.
Below is an audio example of the output of Binary Beats.

ActivePixels

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:08:37 +1000

ActivePixels is an application designed by Andrew Brown and Daniel Mafe, and programmed by Brown. It uses generative processes based on cellular automata-like rules relating to colours in a grid formation. Building on a history of uses of the grid in visual art and especially in the paintings of Mafe, ActivePixels provides an interactive pallet for the creation of computational art works. It creates generative animations that can iterate around a single set of rules or morph between rule sets over time. It also includes rule-based musical generation algorithms such that the same grid-based data set is used as the basis for visual and musical output, with each changing in real time as the data set is transformed by the rules.
Mafe and Brown have exhibited works over a number of years created using this software. The work has been supported by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design and the QUT Computational Arts Research Group. A paper titled "Emergent Matters" outlines the collaboration and was published as part of the Speculation and Innovation conference proceedings in 2006.

Interactive Dynamic Stochastic Synthesizer

Sun, 6 Mar 2005 20:04:27 +1000

The Interactive Dynamic Stochastic Synthesizer (IDSS) is an instrument that uses stochastic synthesis. It extends the original dynamic stochastic synthesis process devised by Iannis Xenakis and provides an effective interface for interaction. The IDSS was built in the language Java using the jMusic library for audio and music event processing.
There were a number of driving forces behind the development of dynamic stochastic synthesis that the IDSS development has attempted to maintain. In particular these relate to the fact that dynamic stochastic synthesis manipulates data in the time domain and that frequency and spectra attributes are emergent. One of Xenakis’ interests in creating dynamic stochastic synthesis was to explore a synthesis method that did not rely on harmonic synthesis techniques based upon Fourier’s theories. When developing the IDSS, attention was paid to maintaining or reinforcing these emergent sonic characteristics. Also, the IDSS was intended as a real time instrument either for performance or composition and therefore many aspects of the implementation were designed to facilitate effective interaction and control of the dynamic tendencies.
I used the IDSS for solo performance and duets with Greg Jenkins in Australia and New Zealand, mainly during 2004 and 2005.
There are papers on the IDSS and its use in performance from the ACMC 2004, Interaction 2004 and ICMC 2005

MindMap

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:06:21 +1000

The MindMap software is a simple idea visualisation tool. Written as an exercise in Java after frustration at not being able to find a similar simple tool, it has become a useful sketch pad for ideas and a way of organising thoughts. It still has the awkward rendering of the AWT Java graphics but is efficient and serviceable. MindMap will run on all platforms with Java support, including Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
Download it from free here.

jam2jam gray

Mon, 8 Mar 2004 09:50:50 +1000

jam2jam gray is a Java application I wrote that generates music that you can control while it plays. The jam2jam software was designed to promote meaningful engagement with music making for musicians of all ages. Clever algorithmic processes generate music that you control. You shape the music by adjusting parameters on the jam2jam interface. The idea is to experiment and listen to the sound and make great grooves either on your own or with others. The key to success is to take risks, be creative and listen to the sounds that your actions make.
Networked jamming with music involves a contemporary musicianship which embraces the computer as instrument, the network as ensemble and cyberspace as venue. Networked jamming systems, such as jam2jam, provide learning opportunities based on real-time improvisation using digital instruments connected via electronic networks. Networked jamming environments can afford interactions in an accessible way while operating as virtual and present collaborative learning spaces.
The benefits of networked jamming are that it makes creative activities accessible and engaging. It embodies musical knowledge in an aural environment allowing simultaneous reflective discussion or demonstration of musical understanding. A networked jamming environment provides opportunities to develop a contemporary musicianship taking into account creative, technical and interpersonal skills
Download jam2jam gray.

Digital Instrument Building

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:09:13 +1000

The Digital Instrument Building project developed a web-based tutorial resource designed to assist in the training and self education of up-and-coming digital instrument developers. The tutorials covered topics including music software design, audio synthesis, digital signal processing, compositional systems, and computer programming concepts. They focused on development in the Java language, one of the most popular software languages in the world at the time, and built on the jMusic library previously developed by members of the project team. The project drew together the design and pedagogical skills of digital instrument makers from Australian universities, with advice from expert music software developers. The web site has been useful to musicians studying music software development and, as a freely available resource, has provide support for enthusiasts and professionals in Australia and around the world.
The web site for Australian Digital Instrument builders was completed during 2003 and has been online sine 10 June that year at http://digitalinstruments.net.au. It has hosted about 45 visitors a day, or almost 17,000 visitors per year since then. This section of the report will outline the process of developing and producing the web-based tutorial resource, the site.
Research about Australian digital instrument developers was undertaken to ensure that relevant areas of activity were covered by the tutorials and as background material for inclusion in the ‘context’ category. This research included formal literature reviews, web searches and personal communications by the project participants. Results of this research were presented at the Australasian Computer Music Conference and published in their proceedings. A copy of this article is freely available from QUT ePrints - http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00000138/

NIAM

Sun, 2 Mar 2003 10:02:02 +1000

This generative music application allows the user to compose music made up of cyclic patterns. Musical attributes can be treated separately and cycled in or out of phase. A number of parts can be overlaid to form a complex texture. NIAM is an acronym for N Is After M, in homage the the conceptual debt that this program owes to David Zicarelli's M software.
I built NAIM in Java with jMusic and it can be downloaded here.

jMusic

Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:09:13 +1000

jMusic is a project designed to provide composers and software developers with a library of compositional and audio processing tools. It provides a solid framework for computer-assisted composition in Java™, and is also used for generative music, instrument building, interactive performance, and music analysis. jMusic supports musicians with its familiar music data structure based upon note/sound events, and provides methods for organising, manipulating and analysing that musical data. jMusic scores can be rendered as MIDI or audio files for storage and later processing or playback in real-time. jMusic can read and write MIDI files, audio files, XML files, and its own .jm files; there is real-time support for JavaSound, QuickTime and MIDIShare. jMusic is designed to be extendible, encouraging you to build upon its functionality by programming in Java to create your own musical compositions, tools, and instruments. In a spirit of mutual collaboration, jMusic is provided free and is an open source project. jMusic is 100% Java and works on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, or any other platform with Java support. jMusic was developed by Andrew Sorensen and Andrew Brown.

I have written a book about computer music that uses jMusic for the code examples. “Making Music with Java” is available at Lulu and Amazon.
Visit the jMusic web site here: http://jmusic.ci.qut.edu.au