Music visualisations

A collection of music visualisation using Magic (by Color and Music). It is  easy to use and very responsive to the music. It is still an initial exploration phase and I am liking the results. It is easy to focus on what you need to ceate rather than the interface. There could be a few more included effects but the program is under active development so these should eventuate.

Tracks with Sector

Sector (iOS Kymatica) creates interesting tracks by dividing a loop into sectors and providing the ability to jump to any other sector given a probability of that jump.

The examples given tend to use the full probability future where any sector jumps to any other. A more directed approach also provides interesting tracks. The aim of the directed approach is to combine repetition with variation. A track with too much variation can seem jumbled while too little variation will be bland.

For example; with a loop in Sector with 16 sections. 1 – 8 form part A and 9 -16 form part B. Sector 8 has a 50% chance to jump to sector  9 and 50% chance to jump back to sector 1. Sector 16 has a 50% chance to jump to sector  1 and 50% chance to jump back to sector 9. This with break the sequence from A B to AABABBAAABA depending on how the probabilities fall. Changing the probabilities leads to further directions. The jumps within the sections provide additional variation so the sequence is more like A A’ B A” B” A”’ B”’ A””.

From there 3 and 4 section can be used with variations to the probabilities. A sequence could be A c B c A where c is a transition sector. A section A ends there is a probability to go to section c which will go to section B . Likewise at the end of section B there is a probability to section c which then go to section . Alternatively there could be sections A B C where there a different probabilities to jump into those sectors. In all these examples the sections A will sound different from B but similar to each other which provides the continuity.

The ability to change the play back wave forms and their probability of occurrence provides addition variation which is important  for the transition sections.

With 4 possible sector mappings, 4 sequence mappings and the ability to set four sectors as triggers you can play Sector by setting up alternative mappings and sequences and moving between them.

 

My Disquiet Junto set on Soundcloud

I often do the Disquiet Junto projects depending on if the final song is up to standard. Some of the projects I don’t get into if since they often seem to be just sound rather than music based.

SOTU – Sounds of the Universe [Hollow Sun]

Sounds of the Universe

Hollow Sun have finally revealed their true nature as Mandaloria space aliens with their release of SOTU. The device first opens with Mandaloria script and it took multiple explanations to explain to Earthings that a simple option+left click on the editing button would show Roman characters. If this was a intelligence test then Earth failed and I for one welcome our new Mandaloria masters. The device also fails to create wobble bass sounds which shows that the designers at Hollow Sun do not breath oxygen.

In practical terms SOTU comes with over 1 gigabyte worth of samples which are selected randomly from the large glowing control.The settings are straight forward with overall sound edits on the main panel and  secondary panel via the edit button to alter the mix and characteristics of the individual sounds. If you change the sounds the setting will remain the same. Usable even audible sounds generally require long sustains, a least half way along the semi circle slider, and often long notes.

As the individual sample can’t be selected for a patch directly once you have something you like save it as preset otherwise it might be hard to get it back. If you need preset name use one from a star name list. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proper_names_of_stars)

 

SOTU is quite easy to use and creates great ethereal spacey sounds which I know one day maybe not today or even tomorrow but someday I know will need.

SOTU is part of the Alien Devices series, costs £15 and really requires a full version of Kontakt : http://www.hollowsun.com/HS2/alien_devices/sotu/index.htm