SP-Tools – Machine Learning tools for drums and percussion (alpha)
For the last few years I’ve been working on ideas and approaches to using electrics in a realtime/low-latency context with acoustic drums/percussion. The most recent of these have been working with the FluCoMa Toolkit to do some of the things I was doing before (but better) as well as try out some new things altogether.
During that time I honed in and refined a lot of the settings, descriptors/parameters, and algorithm choices to get something that I felt performed really well. Even as compared to commercial alternatives.
I decided that once FluCoMa put out the v1 of their toolkit, I would try and wrap up a bunch of the ideas into a cohesive package that focused on the approaches that I’ve been working on. After pushing hard on it for the last few months, I feel I have something that I can put out there. It’s still in what I would consider an alpha stage, though everything is quite stable. I’m only really considering it alpha as I will likely add more objects/abstractions/approaches, refine the ones that are there, as well as get a sense of how people are using and want to use it and potentially tweak some of the structure.
So for now you can download the package here:
http://github.com/rconstanzo/sp-tools
I’ve also made a quick overview video that talks you through the basic idea of the package, shows off some more examples, and will hopefully get you going with it.
If you have any comments or questions, or run into any bugs/problems, feel free to drop me an email and/or create an issue on GitHub.
Kaizo Snare
I spent the better part of last year working on a performance that was a strange combination of things. It pulled together turntablism, feedback/friction, machine learning, signal decomposition, 3d printing, robotics…and a snare drum. All of these were ideas I was working on and exploring separately, but as things can sometimes do, they ended forming into something that was much more than the sum of its parts.
Rhythm Wish
Although this idea/piece is a couple of years old now, I realized I’ve not written about it in any detail (although I have talked about it on several occasions). So this is that. But more than that, I want to talk about what this idea isn’t, and how gloriously isn’t it is.
This is story of how a complicated idea became simpler and simpler until nothing else was left but its core.
Friends. Objects. Lights. Feet.
Over the years I have had many wonderful discussions with people whom I have never met. Either through emails, forums, or even chatrooms I have talked about all manner of things with people scattered around the world. Sometimes these virtual friendships manifest in the physical world and a thing is born. An art thing. This is one of those times.
Black Box project
The Black Box project is a project that involves Pierre Alexandre Tremblay on bass/electronics, Patrick Saint-Denis on robotics/electronics, Sylvain Pohu on guitar/electronics, and myself on drums/electronics. It’s a four-way collaboration that has gone through two residencies (in Montreal and Huddersfield), to work out the finer details of putting a large-scale show together.
It looks and sounds something like this:
Cut Glove – new gamepad-based software
Here is the new piece of software based around an Xbox 360 controller that I’ve been working on for about a year. It is called Cut Glove and it’s a live-sampling and processing patch that contains mappings based on video game mechanisms and metaphors.
This is what it looks like:
Some of the core ideas in the patch are based on sampling and processing modules I developed in The Party Van, another piece of software I’ve written. However, in Cut Glove I rebuilt everything completely from scratch, with tons of new features, more options, better overall sound, etc…. At the core of Cut Glove is karma~, a Max external I recently put out which can you read about in detail here.
Before I go into detail about what Cut Glove does, and more importantly, how the mappings are implemented, here is the first of three Cut Glove performance videos in this blog post:
You can click here to download Cut Glove(v01), the required externals, and instruction manual.
The rest of this blog post will go into detail about the background, development, and technical implementation of Cut Glove.
karma~
Here it is. Finally…
I am incredibly proud to present karma~, a dynamically lengthed, varispeed record/playback looper external for Max.
And here is a tutorial video showing some of what karma~ can do:
karma~, has been in somewhat active development since September 2014, when I first contacted raja to see if he would be interested in writing the C code for it. Thankfully, he was interested and able to. From that point we’ve exchanged hundreds of emails discussing the feature set, implementation, and bug fixery. I am eternally grateful for his programming wizardry and endless patience with me.
New Instrument – Grassi Box
I’ve been working on a relay-based hardware repatching instrument for quite a while. The idea being that I could use my computer (running Max) to control a bunch of my weird (ciat-lonbarde) hardware synths.
I recruited Dan Wilson of Circitfied to build the transistor/relay system that works on top of the Arduino teensy core.
Here is a video using attack-based random repatching of an Old Mr. Grassi using my drumset.
And here is a video using prepared/bowed guitar to drive analysis-based resynthesis of a Fourses and Fyrall:
The Party is back
After over a year, I’m finally putting out a version of The Party Van, a free software system/instrument/environment that I built in Max. It’s also officially out of beta now and the version numbers will reflect that. It has gone from v09 to v1.0. It’s been about three years since I started working in Max again and started building what eventually became The Party Van. The software has changed radically since the last release, and has been ready to release for some months now. It was just a matter of making the time to finish updating the manual with all the new features/sections/etc….
I have to thank all the guys on the monome forum for keeping me still plugged into getting the software public-ready and specifically to Thorsten and Morgan for helping me finish the manual.
You can download and find out more about The Party Van by clicking here.
And here are a couple of videos made using The Party Van.
Shbobo/Shnth/Ciat-Lonbarde
So back in March I got some funding from my school to bring one of my favorite instrument makers to the UK.
Peter Blasser has been making crazy amazing instruments for years now, and I’ve been using them from the point they were first available as kits (the original Fourses/Fyrall).
Peter has started a new company focusing on digital/embedded instruments, the first of which is the Shnth. I can attest to it’s kickass-ness.
Check out all the links to learn more about it, but this post is mainly about two videos. The first is an excerpt from a performance Peter and I did. The second is an amazing documentary (by Angela Guyton) about the workshop itself.
Trio with PA Tremblay & Sam Andreae
Had a gig the other night with two of my favorite performers (Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (we just finished recording a followup album) and Sam Andreae.
You can see The Party Van in action on my side, with some more Max/MSP goodness coming from PA. Sam? He kicks it oldschool with some ciat-lonbarde digs, some general DIY grunginess, and with a new school twist, an Arduino.
New Instrument – The Specty
Finally finished the Specty, the more compact and portable version of my Specto instrument. It looks and sounds like this:
For more info including build pictures and all of that click here.
I Rock the Party that Rocks the Party
So as you may know from some of my previous posts I’ve been doing lots of Max/MSP programming, moving my previously hardware-centric performance setup into the laptop.
I recently put out the v05 version of my Party Van software, and it is looking/sounding great if I don’t say so myself.
Here’s a performance video using solo snare + electronics:
The Chocolate Grinder
The Chocolate Grinder is a software emulation of a skipping/glitchy CD player.
It sounds like this:
And looks like this:
The Party Has Begun (Max/MSP+Monome)
So a few months ago I experienced a big paradigm shift. I had been a lofi/hardware guy for many years, but when planning my next big change in hardware, I decided it would be easier to just built it in Max/MSP instead. So I started doing that.
I made this post back in September with the first module of what would become the setup I’m working on at the moment.
Well I’ve been hard at work since then!