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A New Reaktor in Public Beta; First Look and Sweet Lazerbass Sounds

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Reaktor 5.5’s refreshed interface. Click for a full-sized image.

Reaktor 5.5, the software that’s both a giant bundle of out-there effects and synths and a visual development environment for making your own creations, has entered public beta. Despite the “point-five” appended to the name, it’s a major, new release, with new sound modules, streamlined multi-pane UI, and lots of under-the-hood improvements. And then there’s Lazerbass. We’ll have more details on this soon (Stephan Schmitt and I sat down when I was in Berlin to talk about the direction of the tool).

In the meantime, to introduce the public beta, I turn to Reaktor guru Jonathan Adams Leonard for this thoughts. Jonathan has designed sounds for Kurzweil, KORG, and NI in the past (disclosure: that includes work for NI), as well as the Reaktor toolpack for Kore. Oh, yes – and he built a live rig for Interpol. Suffice to say, he knows his stuff – and as a man who speaks his mind, I think you could say he’s pleased about 5.5.

This story doesn’t make as much sense silent, so Jonathan has whipped up a quick sound demo – more to follow.

CDM Reaktor 5.5 Demo, Featuring Lazerbass by cdm

NI has not released an update for Reaktor in quite a while, so the release of 5.5 is good news for Reaktor users everywhere. Reaktor itself is both an instrument and system for building your own creations. It provides low level methods to prototype just about any sound-making method available, and some you may have never heard of. Most people use Reaktor for synthesis in electronic music, but it also offers fantastic effects for mixing and mastering. Best of all, it’s quite flexible. For anyone interested in learning about sound or making their own custom tools, Reaktor is simply one of the best choices available.

The Facelift

The Reaktor 5.5 update brings significant changes, summed up in the words of Chief Architect and Native Instruments founder, Stephan Schmitt. The first thing people will notice is the facelift and consolidated GUI. Doing away with all the windows for things like snapshots, properties, and the browser, the new GUI is cleaner, with more information in a single frame. Previously, the panel view and structure were two competing views. You could either look at the nice stuff with the knobs and flashing lights, or you could enter the structure view and see underlying wires and objects, but not both at the same time. Now, Reaktor 5.5 offers various ways to split the view into window panes or sub-frames, allowing one to see both the panel and the structure at the same time in a split view.

In addition to the utility of the split view, there’s also a new bookmarking feature. Navigating an object-based environment can be confusing, especially if you don’t know where you are in the structure. Bookmarks can help you return to a location in your structure easily, allowing you to mark places in your creation that need work. The bookmarks serve to reduce extraneous clicking that anyone who has built in Reaktor knows all too well. (Now, where was that iterator?)

Even things like the audio recorder and player are now integrated into the Reaktor main window, so you can immediately capture or playback recorded audio. The panel elements of Reaktor have also been updated, as well. The familiar stock buttons, faders and knobs have all been visuall refreshed, bringing Reaktor’s look and feel more in line with recent NI products like Kore and Guitar Rig.

New Modules and Sounds

Fans of Reaktor over the years have come to appreciate the free updates and content NI routinely provides to customers. This update is no exception, shipping with ensembles previously released as “Electronic Instruments 2″ and an instrument called Lazerbass that’s based on a new Reaktor module called the Sine Bank. Designed by synth wiz Mike Daliot, Lazerbass showcases in one instrument most of the new Reaktor. It’s got a beautiful panel design, excellent sound selections as snapshots, along with gut-wobbling new additive synthesis. NI is known for sonic innovation and that “Future Sound” so many producers crave. Reaktor 5.5 delivers with Lazerbass and with this new instrument alone, puts a wide wandering swath of VST crap completely to shame.

The new Sine Bank module Lazerbass exploits so well is complemented by another new module, the Modal Bank. As Stephan points out, this module will foster a whole new category of Reaktor instruments that feature physical modelling. Since it sounds like an instrument designed around this module is in the cooker, we will check back to find out what Stephan and NI will release first that uses it. In the meantime, there is nothing preventing eager testers and builders from trying it out. With Modal Bank, timbres that resemble very closely the behaviour of real vibrating and resonating systems are within reach of a wider audience of synthesists.

New Technology

Since Reaktor has not been updated in a few years, there was an opportunity to bring out significant new technology. Addressing outstanding users requests, Native has improved the autosave function and internal ‘wireless’ send and receive terminals, and added an entirely new snapshot system. Even deeper, though, are changes to how Reaktor works below the structure. According to Schmitt, 30% of the code is new and brings optimizations to both panel and audio functions. NI has been focused on bringing new products to market since Reaktor 5 came out, and much of the development progress from Kore, Guitar Rig, Traktor and Maschine can be seen and heard in this new update.

New Horizons

Besides being just a bug-fixer, offering some eye candy and some crazy bada$$ sounds, NI is showing with this update a direction. Most people will just grab the sounds and whip off some remixes. Others will take this chance to make some new instruments for their synth arsenal. But does this update tell us anything about this kind of technology, its health and future possibility? For some folks, Reaktor is a great example of a successful virtual instrument whose creative and sonic degrees of freedom have not nearly been exhausted. The market for virtual synthesizers, plugins and effects has increased dramatically in size since Reaktor was introduced. Not only are many more people using virtual instrumentation, but there are lots of plugins and synths to choose from. One look at the KVR plugin database is more than enough to show how crowded the VI party has become. Hardware has also gotten better, and so has hardware software integration in products like the Access Virus, and NI’s own Maschine.

NI itself has become incredibly focused on providing market staples for major categories: DJ, Guitar and Instruments. Based on existing products as platforms, NI has also become adept at providing content and soundware for these market staples, whether a piano made in conjunction with a popular recording artist, or a steady stream of effects and sounds for film based on the Kore player. But where is the freaky, blow-your-mind, are-you-kidding-me, insomnia-inducing tools of NI yore? Well, the scientists and researchers at NI have been busy, and while we have not seen much of NI’s chief architect in the last few years, this update is evidence of some serious bit shredding and diligence.

Jo Ardalan’s tattoo – this is the kind of Reaktor devotion we mean.

Where is the freaky, blow-your-mind, are-you-kidding-me, insomnia-inducing tools of NI yore? …This update is evidence of some serious bit shredding and diligence.

This update seems significant because it not only re-affirms leadership on the part of NI to innovate and destroy, but that plugins are still completely f^%$* cool! You can’t find this thrill in hardware, so enjoy it for what it is; pure hardcore and unadulterated SYNTHESIS.

If you are a synth freak, you owe it to yourself to get Reaktor, and get into this beta. You will learn things and make sounds that other me-too producers will only wonder about.

Requirements for the beta and participation details:
Reaktor 5.5 Public Beta [NI Forums]

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A New Reaktor in Public Beta; First Look and Sweet Lazerbass Sounds

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MOTU Ethno Instrument 2

Monday, July 12th, 2010

MOTU launched the original Ethno ROMpler in 2006 as a plug-in/standalone combination that proved a very convenient way of accessing a variety of exotic sounds.

Some of that material came from previously released sample titles and this remains the case, but Ethno now offers 21GB of content spread across three DVDs, as opposed to the original’s 8GB.

The Ethno GUI is still conveniently contained in one window, and its mildly eccentric design remains a matter of taste. One instance of Ethno will now play as many parts as your system can handle, so ‘scenes’ consisting of many layers of instruments can be rapidly configured within the plug-in. Typing in the browser window will quickly locate material – a handy new feature.

As with v1, the sounds fall into two basic categories: Instruments, this time offering 875 playable multisampled patches; and Loops and Phrases, totalling 7600. The instruments are African, Asian, European (including Spanish, Eastern and Celtic), Caribbean and Australian in origin, and there are vocal performances from each region as well.

Delving quickly into the library, West African balafons, ‘tango accordions’ (bandoneon, surely – it certainly sounds like one!), Arabic ouds and Celtic harps, for example, gave convincing results. There are a good number of new instruments, such as larger African drums, Polynesian percussion, more Balkan voices and a gaggle of gongs. Then there are the new tuning features.

Temper, temper

One new feature of Ethno 2 is that many instruments offer authentic, non-tempered tuning or Western chromatic. For example, the ngoni, a funky six-stringed harp from Mali and neighbouring countries, is tuned to a kind of pentatonic scale, but not quite an equal-tempered one. Using Ethno, we could bring this into line using an altered, tempered version that sat better in a track that also had typical pianos and guitars.

However, when more exposed, playing with just percussion in its traditional setting, the naturally tuned ngoni could be used for greater authenticity. There’s a menu of non-Western scales, containing up to 24 tones that you can map to your chosen instrument.

Ethno accepts files in a format called Scala, which is an established standard. Scala tunings are simple text files than can be dragged and dropped into the tuning menu, and you can create your own as well.

While a greater number of sample layers (velocity, round robin and so on) doesn’t always translate into better sound quality, realism and usefulness, we do feel that some instruments in the collection would benefit from a more detailed, layered sample set. And the violins are unconvincing, as multisamples often are.

In our opinion, Ethno’s strength is still its Loops and Phrases library. Of relevance to this is the new timestretching algorithm which, although not perfect (Spanish guitar phrases, for example, didn’t pitch up that well), worked nicely on things such as voices.

Hall around the world

The convolution reverb helps bring much of Ethno’s material to life and it’s now easier on the CPU. Even so, patches that use it can still be quite CPU-intensive, and while presenting no problem to our MacBook Pro, some caused a dual 1.8GHz G5 running Logic Pro to stall noticeably.

Also new on the processing front is an analogue-style EQ and eight new filter types. Despite the limitations of some of the multisampled instruments, Ethno Instrument 2 won us over with the sheer variety of loops and phrases, and the rapidity with which it’s possible to combine them into a rich-sounding mix.

Hear a few examples of what Ethno Instrument 2 can do with our audio demo:

African Scene

Balafon

Celtic Instruments

Cymbalum

Djembe Drum Groove

Middle Eastern Instruments and Vox

Tango Accordian

Read the original here:
MOTU Ethno Instrument 2

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MOTU Ethno Instrument 2

Monday, July 12th, 2010

MOTU launched the original Ethno ROMpler in 2006 as a plug-in/standalone combination that proved a very convenient way of accessing a variety of exotic sounds.

Some of that material came from previously released sample titles and this remains the case, but Ethno now offers 21GB of content spread across three DVDs, as opposed to the original’s 8GB.

Temper, temper

Hall around the world

Hear a few examples of what Ethno Instrument 2 can do with our audio demo:

African Scene

Balafon

Celtic Instruments

Cymbalum

Djembe Drum Groove

Middle Eastern Instruments and Vox

Tango Accordian

Go here to see the original:
MOTU Ethno Instrument 2

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Beatstation review

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Beatstation is the latest software-instrument from the sampling pioneers at Toontrack. This new product expands the company’s lineup of straightforward drum romplers, adding to the fold innovative user sampling functions as well as bass and lead instruments.
Beatstation is a cross-platform standalone application and RTAS plug-in for Mac and Windows, as well as an AU(OSX) or VST (Windows) instrument. The package includes a 1.3 GB library of sounds, grooves, and patches.

First Impressions

Immediately, it struck me that Beatstation is so easy to use that there is practically no learning curve for anyone already familiar with any other “one shot” sampler. The display features a contextual browser panel on the left and a series of pad-style sample slots on the right. The pad layout is customizable and can be shown as a grid of rows and columns. The GUI also features a simple transport and effects level control knobs.
Beatstation includes a library of sounds – from lo-fi bit-reduced samples to pristine acoustic hits.
Also included are bass and lead instruments – from sampled electric basses to synthesizer arpeggios. I started my experimenting by pulling up an instrument set called “Drive.” I then pressed the play button on the transport, and was greeted with a hybrid/electro groove featuring acoustic drums, bass guitar, and synth lead.
Reaching for the sample pads, I found it easy to browse and audition different sounds across the kit, simply by dragging samples from the browser right onto a pad. The default pad behavior layers all samples on a given pad. In any pad with multiple samples loaded, the effect and filtering parameters of each sample can be independently adjusted.
Right-clicking on a pad brings up the Pad Properties window for that particular sample. Here, I found it easy to tweak and stack sounds. In this view, the user is presented with familiar volume, mute, and solo controls. There are also two master effect sends that can be routed to a variety of dynamic, modulation, distortion, and filter effects. Each sample loaded into a pad has independently adjustable ADSR, trim, pan, and reverse controls. This feature allowed me to create some really interesting layered sounds – a Ludwig kick’s attack rolling into the decay of a synthesized kick, for example. Pads can also load external wave, mp3, and REX files via drag and drop.

Core Content and Expandability

Beatstation is much more than a drum sampler. There are integrated bass and lead instruments covering a wide range of sounds and styles. The sounds are remarkably good and useful, with everything from nicely detailed electric bass to Nintendo chip lo-fi aural experiments. I was impressed that these sampled instruments have tweak-able parameters just like the drum pads. The instruments, together with MIDI grooves, are organized into the browser pane in an intuitive manner that lets you start from a preset ensemble of Drum, Bass, and Lead sounds or mix-and-match your own palette of sound.
Beatstation’s Core Content is expandable with Toontrack’s existing EZX and SDX libraries. This means that user’s of Ezdrummer and Superior Drummer will now get the sought-after ability to mix kit pieces from different expansion libraries as they like. According to the Toontrack site, the company will soon roll out BDX expansion libraries specifically for Beatstation.

Built-in Sampler

Perhaps the most fresh idea in Beatstation is the built-in sample recorder. Designed to capture live sounds from your computer mic, this feature really sets Beatstation apart from the rest of the drum sampler pack. Around my studio, I have a nice, padded piano bench I’ve always thought had a nice “thud” when inadvertently struck, so I thought I would see how it would do in place of a hand clap. Miked with a condenser, it was easy for me to simply click “Show Sample Recorder” in Beatstation and start recording. The sample window allowed me to cut the sample down to the precise length of the hit. I then loaded that sample by simply dragging the waveform onto a Hand Clap pad. The process of tracking an external sound and integrating it into a kit could not be easier. These samples work just like those included from Toontrack, with the same FX routing and ADSR filtering options per sample.

Note: the built-in sampler is only available using Beatstation as standalone. Using it in your DAW as plug-in, you need to drag and drop audio files from other tracks into Beatstation’s window.

Performance

Beatstation runs like a charm on my 2 GHz Lenovo laptop. The standalone plays nicely with my ASIO sound card while the VST plug-in runs well under Reaper. One notable inconvenience is the lack of multiple outputs from the VST. This means that creating stemmed tracks with individual kick, snares, overheads, toms, leads, and basses is not currently an option. I certainly hope to see this feature in a future update.
Also, it is worth mentioning that while I found Beatstation simple and intuitive to use, the user manual is virtually non-existent. Though I’ve been using computer drum samplers since their inception, I could easily see novices needing a bit more instruction than what is provided by the two page quick-start guide included with the program. There is, however, a selectable “Tool Tips” option which does help the user identify useful features. Still, all things considered, I cannot stress enough how simple Beatstation is to use.

Conclusion

Beatstation is a fresh, innovative piece of software that is both fun to use and powerful. Its sampling ability is robust yet easy to grasp. The included sounds are useful, plentiful and better yet, expandable. The clean user interface is intuitive and skin-able. The bass and lead instruments are high quality and tweak-able. While other similar applications seem to tackle one specific clientele, I can see Beatstation as being useful for styles ranging from hip hop to heavy metal, and everything in between.
At a value of $129 (USD), Beatstation succeeds at bringing to the table all the features of its’ competitors and then some – for less money. I would love to see an update bring multi-out VST compatibility as well as a more detailed manual. Even as is, Beatstation is immediately useful for both novices and professionals alike, right out of the box. Toontrack also deserves credit for seamlessly integrating real-time sample capture and for answering user desire to mix-and-match kit pieces from existing libraries and external samples.

Price
Beatstation is $129 (USD) for either the download or boxed versions. The program can be purchased directly from Toontrack.

….immediately useful for both novices and professionals

Product page

Pros

Powerful and easy to use
Integrated (and fun) sample recording
Useful sound content included
Fairly priced

Love It or Hate It

Beatstation is unquestionably good at what it does. As long as you can live (for now) without multiple outs, it’s well worth the price.

Cons

No multi-output
Needs a proper manual
Some of the fx sound a bit too “digitally” harsh
Built-in sampler not available using the plug-in
Some effects parameters hidden, not user editable

by Daniel T. Spear
Daniel T. Spear is a musician, writer, and engineer from Georgia. His website can be found here.

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Beatstation review

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Online, Generative Tool Searches for the Perfect Groove; New MicroTonic Coming

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

The grooves are fun, but the generated names for the groove are even more so. Need a new band name, anyone?

Generative: the rhythmic frontier. These are the voyages of the starship MicroTonic. Its online mission: to explore strange new grooves, to seek out new beats and new musical cultures …

Yes, Patternarium, by software scientists Magnus and Fredrik Lindström of SonicCharge (Synplant, µTonic, Reason’s Malström), have built a server-based rhythmic generation tool. You, the human, don’t have to do much: reality TV show-style, just vote up or down patterns you hear, and the generative scripts will continue spawning new, evolved rhythms. I suppose if you believe in the power of democratic action, eventually this could lead to some sort of new replacement for the “Amen break.”

I actually am more in love with the interface than the thought of servers making beats for me. The results play as a lovely, radial arrangement of rectangles. As for the accompanying starfield and Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn typography, well, that’s just a bonus.

http://www.soniccharge.com/patternarium

These aren’t just beats for your browser, though. You can download the results to SonicCharge’s fantastic synthesis-powered drum machine (VST, AU/PC, Mac). And that brings us to the real news hidden in this story: SonicCharge are cooking up a new version of MicroTonic, which is good news, indeed. They’re not saying much, but they are willing to reveal that the new version supports drag and drop of patterns as MIDI files, meaning that you’ll be able to easily create a bank of pattern-triggering clips in something like Ableton Live. (A recent update to Native Instruments’ Maschine did the same, suggesting drag-able grooves are something we’ll see more often.)

Always delicious, always rhythmically nutritious, µTonic aka “MicroTonic”:
http://www.soniccharge.com/mtonic

Can’t be bothered to try it yourself? Need a narration? Here’s Torley with a video, via Synthtopia.

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Online, Generative Tool Searches for the Perfect Groove; New MicroTonic Coming

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FXpansion BFD Eco

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

If you’re serious about in-the-box drum production, virtual instruments such as FXpansion’s BFD2 and Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 2.0 deliver the goods. But for many of us, their complexity and large hard drive footprint can be a turn-off.

With this in mind, FXpansion has taken some of the best parts of BFD2 and moulded them into a simmered down, more affordable package: BFD Eco.

In this case, Eco means economy, so you get fewer drums, cymbals and features, and the quality of the library has been reduced to 16-bit. This results in a compact 5GB drive footprint. However, you’re still looking at a 12-piece setup consisting of kick, snare, hi-hat, three toms, three cymbals and three percussion elements. With up to 24 velocity layers per piece, realism and playability haven’t been forsaken.

In detail

BFD Eco uses the same playback engine as BFD2, but with a stripped-back interface, comprising the mixer in the lower half and one of three selectable displays at the top. The Kit view shows a drum set graphic where clicking on pieces gives a fixed-velocity audition. The Channel display covers each mixer channel’s settings, including built-in effects (EQ and two others of your choice) and further options via an inspector panel.

Inspector settings are available for all channels (except auxiliary and master) and include tuning, send levels (two auxiliaries, ambience and overhead), damping and various piece-specific options such as top/bottom balance for the snare, in/out balance for the kick and width/distance for the ambience channels.

“BFD Eco uses the same playback engine as BFD2, but with a stripped-back interface.”

Eco’s Grooves page combines a MIDI groove browser, with a simple single-track drum sequencer. Like most drum instruments, you can use this to choose grooves from the library, then drag-and-drop them as MIDI data into your host. Alternatively, you can add grooves to the built-in drum track, creating a preset-based sequence within Eco. Note that when doing this, you can’t modify the MIDI on a note-by-note basis, although you can trim, drag, copy and paste the patterns.

Finally, it’s possible to select a single groove in the browser and have Eco play it in sync with your host (single mode), and this is good if you fancy spinning through some patterns with your DAW track playing.

So far, so good, but beyond this, you also get four ‘groove effects’: Quantize, Humanize, Simplify and Swing. These enable you to quickly adjust the grooves, and if you drag-and-drop the effected grooves into your host, the MIDI data is modified accordingly. We found this great for quickly piecing together variations on drum parts.

(3 pages; go to page: 2 3)

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FXpansion BFD Eco

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Browser Madness: 3D Music Mountainscapes, Web-Based Pd Patching

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

“The hills are alive /
with the sound of browsers”

Ever thought you’d make sounds in a browser, or have new ways of visualizing music playback? It’s happening, with builds of Firefox anyone can download.

Work to make browsers rich with sound synthesis and visualization continues. “Compatibility” isn’t really an advantage yet, because Firefox is the only browser with support, and only in the next version, though that could change in the future. And yes, Flash is capable of some of this, too (though not real 3D), with 90-95% saturation, conservatively, of computers. But if not compatibility, what these experiments do represent is what happens when someone working on a tool (Firefox, in this case) really commits to making sound a priority, and supporting free standards and developer tools (an emerging standard API, WebGL, Processing.js, etc.).

In fact, it’d be great if this occurred everywhere: if you’re making a platform, make sound a priority, and people will do mind-blowing stuff with your platform.

Among the latest fruits:

1. 3D eye candy. Charles Cliffe has a psychedelic visualization of sound playback. The JavaScript nuts are also proceeding to do more things with their language than most would deem possible, even moving DSP calculations to JavaScript code. I remain a bit skeptical there: the question to me isn’t whether JavaScript is “fast enough,” but whether native code is faster or simply the better tool for some jobs. Details below.

2. Patching in a browser – with a Pd clone. Chris McCormick is porting a subset of basic Pd objects to the browser. Now, one side of me wonders whether Pd is the best choice; it’s a somewhat idiosyncratic, if powerful, language for describing sound patching. But on the other hand, I could see this being fantastic in teaching and sharing: put basic patches up in a browser, let people play with them live, then build more advanced tools (with greater hardware access and external support than is possible in a browse) in the traditional Pd tool. As I keep saying, I think there’s far too much partisanship in the discussion (“Browsers for everything!” / “Browsers are useless!”), far too little thinking about how the browser and the desktop tool are more powerful together.

Check out:
mccormick.cx/dev/webpd/
wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API

Also — heck, I may try this out in workshops as soon as next week. The browser could build a basic language for music and visuals in Processing and Pd, then robust performance tools could be built in the native tools, with quite a lot of compatibility between the two.

3. Actual standards. The W3C, the standards body behind HTML, has added this discussion to an Audio Incubator group. (It’s been incubating for some time, but maybe this will help something actually hatch.) Now I’d just like to see these things in Chrome/Chromium, too – I wonder if anyone’s up to a test build, as the standards adoption discussion continues. A number of readers have pointed out that MPEG4 had a specification that included, wholesale evidently, Csound. But this process seems more organic to me – you need actual tools and real-world experiments to evaluate the validity of something, not just standards on paper.

Putting the Awesomeness in Context: An Appeal

A side rant, though: why do Web geeks only care about what happens in the browser? It’s funny to me it seems that outlets like Slashdot jump on stories like browser-based tools, but ignore exactly the same ideas if they’re in a separate app. That’s not a criticism of the Mozilla crew or these brilliant hackers – this is what development is all about, pushing your tools to the limits. But if there isn’t a broader recognition of the value of what you’re doing or why you’re doing it in the first place, there’s a danger that unsustainable tool fetish will miss the point. That is, synthesis in the browser is excellent, but if people don’t understand the value of the synthesis itself, we have a lot more work to do.

Even the tools themselves need a context. It also JavaScript is amazing, but so are tools in Python, Java, Scala, and so on… and some of the enduring power of C still shows here. Browser powers are cool, but the OS is just as important – performance of Firefox would be heavily dependent on support for OS-native, low-latency audio outputs, like JACK on Linux. (Yes, it’s open source, so you can go do it yourself. No, I have no idea how to build Firefox for JACK – maybe a reader does?)

I’ve still yet to see a compelling explanation of what the browser really is, and what’s possible with its interface paradigm. That should be a fascinating discussion, actually, especially with the radical transformation of the browser, particularly as players like Google make it the central aspect of TV-watching or tablet experiences. But the discussion is only really interesting if you don’t start out with the value as a given. For instance, if browsers become a bigger part of what we do, is its simplistic tab metaphor really sufficient? If browsers simply bundle a set of native tools, are there ways “standalone” apps might adopt similar, standards-based approaches?

David Humphrey argues that part of the value here is the view source concept, but the Web has had the same empowering influence on sharing, collaboration, and reuse with platforms other than just JavaScript. The browser itself is a largely misunderstood piece of technology, partly because users (understandably) focus on their experience, and doesn’t pay attention to which aspects are delivered by the browser, the OS, or some other piece of code.

Oh, side note: this isn’t about “the cloud.” The cool stuff here is happening on your local hardware, period. That’s what makes it fast, and that’s what makes it work for audio, and your local machine is getting cheaper, cooler, and less power-hungry all the time. New DSP and floating-point capabilities in devices like tablets could make sound more powerful and flexible than ever before – provided people work out how to maximize, not squander, those capabilities.

So, here’s what I’d like to ask: what form will the standards discussion take? And how can these larger discussions – many of which transcend the discussion of any one tool or standard – find a forum?

Behind the Scenes, More Info

While you ponder that (and I’m open to suggestions), here’s more reading for you:
Experiments with audio, part X [Dave Humphrey's increasingly-awesome blog]

Previously:
Real Sound Synthesis, Now in the Browser; Possible New Standard?

More details on the first example, and how it was built (Minefield is Firefox 3.7):

All runs in real-time with Javascript, WebGL and HTML5 only (uses Minefield Audio build) — no browser plugins are used.

This demo combines the CubicVR 3D engine on WebGL (www.cubicvr.org) with the Mozilla HTML5 Audio API (hacks.mozilla.org), Processing.js (www.processingjs.org) and BeatDetektor.js (www.beatdetektor.com)

Mozilla Audio API is used to sample the HTML5 audio tag on the page, this information is processed by BeatDetektor.js which produces timing information for the Processing.js real-time canvas textures and the CubicVR.js procedurally generated WebGL scene using them.

The camera is set to free roam a simple chase pattern with a probability to follow a nearby cube (fully automated).

Available online at:

http://cubicvr.org/CubicVR.js/bd3/BeatDetektor3HD.html

or if you have a Float32Array enabled Minefield build:

http://cubicvr.org/CubicVR.js/bd3/Bea…

you can find more info about audio api-enabled Minefield builds at:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API

You can also feel free to chat with us about the Audio API via the #audio channel on irc.mozilla.org

Enjoy! And yes, I’ll have to work out a more beginner-friendly, here’s how to do this post.

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Browser Madness: 3D Music Mountainscapes, Web-Based Pd Patching

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Android 2.2: Badly-needed Improvements to Audio, Touch, More; What’s Missing

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Yes, I admit it’s getting better. And that could mean more choices for creative music software makers. Photo (CC-BY) Pittaya Sroilong.

Android 2.2 boasts enormous boosts to performance in Java, JavaScript, and the browser, plus nice end-user features like tethering and tons of developer goodies. But developers interested in pushing the multimedia capabilities of the OS have been eager for some specific good news – particularly with Android a candidate for tablets and new embedded platforms (think new, Android-powered DIY music gadgets).

2.2 isn’t likely to satisfy all those concerns, but it is a step forward. There are some subtle but key aspects you might miss, since they aren’t quite headline news for most gadget sites. Apologies for an atypically technical post, but this stuff is important if the platform has a future for readers of this site. And if anyone doubts this is news, let me tell you – talking to music developers from a variety of backgrounds, I hear both immense desire to look at Android, and some significant skepticism about the limitations, many of them specific to performance.

What’s improved:

Audio gets a separate priority. Changes to AudioManager mean that audio can gain focus. Currently, audio processes on Android often get preempted by other processes, so that literally, another service syncing data can screw up your sound. What I can’t tell here is whether the audio focus helps successfully prioritize sound – or if it just helps mix sound with other apps. At the very least, it should avoid other apps cutting into a music performance app without you wanting that. If we’re lucky, Google has also improved audio performance, so that audio apps can set shorter buffer times without adding clicks and pops. (I’ve found disabling data sync stops sound from skipping, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work – not even close.) It’s possible these issues could be positively impacted by improvements to the Java virtual machine (in fact, it’s almost a sure thing).

Android 2.2 blog post, full revisions; NDK changes on the NDK site.

Media recording APIs are finally set up right. As Google puts it, “New APIs in MediaRecorder for specifying audio settings for number of channels, encoding and sampling rates, sampling rate.” Or, as I’d put it, less charitably, “MediaRecorder API no longer involves pain.” This is also a big deal for Android applications that take audio input, including in-progress ports of free synthesis environments Pd and SuperCollider, and Jasuto, whose developer got tripped up on this very problem.

MotionEvent has been improved, for better multi-touch event handling. Developer Luke Hutchison has had to manually write code that works around some unreliable multitouch processing. Google promises better reporting in the new version. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll know until this build ships; this can only be tested on devices.

Better storage. Flexibility in storage is a key advantage of Android (cough, Apple) in some areas, but needed work. Now, the ability to (finally) install apps to the SD card means that music-rich apps or interactive music albums become possible. And automated data backup could be a boon to people using Android as a creation device.

A smarter NDK. Debugging. ‘Nuff said. And that’s something native developers (see, again, SuperCollider and Pd) can download and use right now, today.

By the way, motion fans should be happy with doubled camera preview FPS and YUV support in OpenGL, among other tweaks.

Now, the bad news.

What’s Missing

JIT (Just in Time) compilation for Java translates to vastly improved performance, so you can’t wish for more. But there are still things musicians could use.

Everyone’s been writing open letters to Steve Jobs. Let’s make this an open letter to Google.

Why should Google care about musicians? How about because Google threw down the gauntlet today on its comparative “openness,” compared life with Apple devices to 1984, and prides itself on its Linux heritage?

No, actually — let me put this better: don’t you want Android to be a rock star, Google?

Native audio access. This NDK added still more support – native access to image buffers, which will help people writing graphics apps. But with that and OpenGL finished, audio should be next on Google’s list. Android devices all appear to use Linux audio standard ALSA. There’s really no reason native DSP code shouldn’t talk directly to the audio output. Google: pay attention. Audio apps have been some of the biggest hits on Apple’s App Store; Smule alone has made ocarinas, AutoTune, and Glee fandom cultural phenomena on the iPhone. Android really does need improved audio performance to compete. Unless a miracle has happened on the Java side, that means providing the NDK as at least an option. And it’s self-selecting: the only programmers who would even try to write their own DSP code and ALSA interfaces would be the ones who already know what they’re doing. You’re not going to get stupid questions about this on IRC like you do with people who haven’t read the UI documentation. Get it?
Reach out to better multitouch hardware partners. I’m beginning to think that waiting for OEMs to stop sucking at multitouch on phones and tablets is a losing game. So, Google, you’ve got the biggest tech brand power on the planet now. You’ve got smart people. Find a way to hook up your mobile partners with the people who can make touch hardware and firmware work, and the whole platform wins.
Hardware support (question mark). The Droid already supports USB host mode – so why isn’t it a standard? And why shouldn’t Android benefit from the Linux kernel and provide external hardware support in the API? Help the device live up to the “open” hype you keep espousing; it doesn’t make for a flattering comparison if the iPhone OS has more hardware features for developers than Android, especially with tablets on the horizon. So wait, why a question mark? It looks like good stuff is happening here. Tablets show promise, and the announcement of Google’s TV product suggests not only video out but USB, too. So the key is, will developers be able to use those features? It’s not really an “open” platform if the answer is no. It just seems at this point like we’re waiting on standard APIs and documentation. TV video out is a safe bet when Google’s promised TV SDK appears early next year. But by then, Apple may have a similar offering – and it’d be unfortunate if Google didn’t extend capabilities to their whole line, rather than slice up the platform.

Specific as these things are, they could be the detail that makes a (pardon the word) “magical” app for the platform. And hey, that’s also mean some rockstars using Android. That can’t be too bad, can it?

I’m hopeful. And I think the vision of the platform could be extraordinary. Imagine an Android phone that connects to a music rig onstage, an audiovisual app that makes the audio output really shine, or an interactive album you can watch on an Android-powered TV accessory from your couch? On that last question, imagine people listening to albums in their entirety, blissing out to specialized generative visuals? (Return of the psychedelic prog rock album cover!)

Users, take all of this with a grain of salt, because I still want to test 2.2 to evaluate real-world performance. But it’s worth saying, because the fact that we have 2.2 means Google’s talented Android team is already moving on to the next thing.

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Android 2.2: Badly-needed Improvements to Audio, Touch, More; What’s Missing

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More Browser Notation: Type Notes Quickly, Store Scores Online

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Music scores remain one of the best ways to record or share many musical ideas. If you’ve done even casual notation, you’ve likely had the experience of scrawling something down on a scrap piece of paper, manuscript or otherwise.

Imagine, instead, quickly scrawling something in the now-ubiquitous web browser window.

Gregory Dyke writes with a notation project he’s built with Paul Rosen; he says that it’s further along in its development than the notation project we saw last week. As before, it employs JavaScript and HTML5, and ~~the Canvas element~~ SVG support, rendering quickly in any modern browser right inside a web page. (Correction: it’s SVG, not Canvas, that makes this work, thanks to the raphaeljs library.)

Abcjs is an open source parsing and rendering tool for ABC written entirely in javascript, so it allows sheet music to be rendered as both standard notation and MIDI entirely with the browser.

Here are a couple ways to use this:

For rendering any ABC notation found on a web page as standard notation,
see http://drawthedots.com/abcjs

For a free on-line editor and tune storage website, see
http://drawthedots.com

Enjoy! And we’d appreciate feedback of all kinds.

Notes:
1) ABC 1.6 is mostly done, and many parts of ABC 2.0 are supported. We are actively working on improving the rendering.

2) We know that the rendering in IE is not as pretty as Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, but we’re working it!

Here, the ABC notation format is a standard, so you can simply type in or copy and paste any ABC-encoded text and render it right away.

It looks ideal for dropping musical excerpts or examples into a page, but this project even in its early stage offers another idea: why not quickly type in your notes in simple text characters, then store and share that score with others? There’s even instant music rendering.

Simple, lightweight examples do have a way of opening the door to more technically-involved discussions, and this is no exception.

ABC is nifty and easy, but it isn’t capable of representing more sophisticated scores in the way that the free Lilypond format is. I noted last week that Lilypond is nonetheless readable and easy for basic entry, even as it adds sophisticated features with a little more work. I think even having a web window with ABC is nice enough, and it should be possible to go from the simpler format (ABC) to other, more complex formats (MusicXML or Lilypond). But this question of how to interchange files remains one of interest. After the post last week, the project we saw spawned a long discussion in its blog’s comments on how interchange might work. Greg, for his part, concedes that “abc is quite powerful, but stops at complex multivoice scores where voices move across staves (simple multivoice and multistave is possible).” That could make putting Lilypond in the browser a useful activity, and since it is possible to go from MusicXML to Lilypond, it should enable MusicXML, as well.

As with sound synthesis, putting notation in the browser demonstrates how both the “desktop” app and the “browser” app can differentiate themselves. The browser focuses on quick, simple entry and sharing. The desktop app remains the tool for connecting to MIDI hardware, performing more sophisticated entry and layout, and project management. Far from competing, each gives the other greater purpose and a clearer sense of how the two design approaches can differ. Because a Web rendering engine like WebKit is also embeddable, the line doesn’t even need to be absolutely clear. I can imagine, for instance, Lilypond editors that use WebKit for lower-quality, real-time notation previews, prior to doing a full Lilypond render in PDF. (There are real-time PDF rendering libraries like Cairo, too, so I have no idea whether that makes sense, but the array of options open to developers is nonetheless expanded.)

The project is free and open, so let us know if you modify it somehow. (JavaScript-controlled, 3D-produced generative scores, perhaps?)

http://code.google.com/p/abcjs/

Updated: Gregory replies with an email, and it was useful enough to me that I’m reprinting it in full. He notes most importantly that ABCjs is capable of more sophisticated rendering than seen here, even if it doesn’t yet do as much as, say, the Lilypond renderer does.

Thanks a lot. You’re spot on with the note taking idea – I wonder whether this would be a good way to create a mobile browser app – still runs a bit slow on mobile safari though – about 8seconds for rendering on my 3g. Nice to see you discuss abcjs as a full blog post.

Just a note: we don’t use canvas, but svg, using raphaeljs to bridge across browsers.

In hindsight, we should probably put a more sophisticated example on the landing page. For example, the tunes below render quite nicely (although not with complete midi playback). We should probably finds ourselves a demo score which runs the whole gamut of several voices, ornamentation, chords, guitar chords, dynamics, etc.

Thanks again for the heads up

Greg

X:3
T: TEST: Erev Ba % —
C: from Israel
M: C|
L: 1/4
K:G
V:1
“G”dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z | “D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “G”b3z | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z |
“D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “B7″b3z | “C”ceg>g | f/g/f/e/ e2 | “Am”Ace>e | “D”d>c B/A/G/F/ |
“Em”G2 E2 | “Am”A2 “D7″A/B/ G | (“G”G4|G2) z2 | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z |
“D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “G”b3z | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z | “D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “B7″b3z |
“C”ceg>g | f/g/ f/e/ e2 | “Am”Ace>e | “D”d>c B/A/G/F/ | “Em”G2 E2 | “Am”A2 “D7″A/B/ G |
“G”G>A B c/A/ | “G7″d>e =f/d/B/A/ [K:C] ||”C”G2z2| “Dm7″d/e/f/e/ d/c/B/A/ |
“G7″G2z2 | “C”z/ G/c/B/ c/d/e/f/ |
g g/a/ g2 | “Dm7″f/g/a/g/ f/e/d/c/ | “G7″B/c/d/c/ B/A/ G| “E”^G>B e/d/c/B/|
“F”c2 a>a | g/a/g/f/ .f .e |
“Dm”d2f>f | “G”e>d c/B/A/B/ | “Am”c/d/c/B/ A/G/F/E/ | “Dm”D/E/F/D/ “G7″G A/B/ |
“C”c3 e| .g.a.g e/d/ |
GcBc/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″def/g/e| “C”e3z | GcBc/e/ | “Dm7″d3z |
“G7″def/g/e| “E”e3z | “F”FAc>c| B/c/B/A/ A2| “Dm”DFA>A| “G”G>F E/D/C/E/ |
“Am”c2A2 | “Dm”d2 “G7″d/e/c | (“C”c4|”Dm”c2) “G7″d/e/c| (“C”c4| c2) z2 |]
%
V:2 gch=0
“G”z4 | “Am”z4 | “D7″z4 | “G”z4 | z4 | “Am”z4 |
“D7″z4 | “B7″z4 | “C”z4 | z4 | “Am”z4 | “D”z4 |
“Em”G2Bd | “Am”c2 “D7″c/d/ B | “G”B>ABd | B>A G/A/ B| d2 z2 | “Am”A/B/c/B/ A/G/F/E/ |
“D7″D2 z2 | “G”z/D/G/F/ G/A/B/c/ | d d/e/ d2| “Am”c/d/e/d/ c/B/A/G/ |
“D7″F/G/A/G/ F/E/D/C/ | “B7″^D/B,/D/F/ B/A/G/F/ |
“C”c2 e>e | d/e/d/c/ cB| “Am”A2 c>c| “D”B>A G/F/E/F/ |
“Em”G/A/G/F/ E/D/C/E/ | “Am”A/B/c/^c/ “D7″d e/f/ |
(“G”g4|”G7″g2)z2 [K:C] || “C”GcB c/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″de f/g/ e| “C”e3z |
GcB c/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″de f/g/ e| “E”e3z | “F”FAc>c | B/c/B/A/ Az |
“Dm”DFA>A | “G”G>F E/D/C/D/ | “Am”c2 A2 | “Dm”d2 “G7″d/e/c | (“C”c4|c2) z2 |
Gede/g/ | “Dm7″f>e f/e/d/c/ | “G7″Bcd/e/c| “C”c c/B/ c/B/c/d/ |
e e/f/ ee | “Dm7″f>e f/e/d/c/ |
“G7″Bc d/e/ c | “E”B>A ^G/A/B/G/ | “F”F2 A2 | c2 FE | “Dm”D2 F2 | “G”B2 e2|
“Am”e2c2 | “Dm”f2 “G7″f/g/ e | (“C”e4| “Dm”e2) “G7″f/g/ e | (“C”e4|e2) z2 |]

The mobile question is especially interesting to me; it may be that you need non-JavaScript, “native” SVG libraries, but porting that shouldn’t be impossible either way. I’d love to have a mobile Android sketchpad, especially since my Droid has a keyboard. I’ll look into some testing.

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Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas in the Browser; Standard Formats for Scores

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The march of “because you can” experiments with the new generation of Web browsers continues. Last week, we saw real-time synthesis in the browser from a team at Mozilla. Next up: music notation.

Mohit Muthanna has executed a gorgeous example of musical notation using HTML5’s Canvas. (The Canvas is a new feature of the Web standard that makes drawing to the display directly in the browser more functional than in the past.) JavaScript code is translated directly to “engraved” notation on the screen, without any other dependencies, plug-ins, or intermediate libraries.

Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas

This isn’t just using browsers for the sake of it, however; music notation is an important language for sharing musical ideas. Back when I was a freelance educator for Sibelius, a popular feature was that program’s pioneering “export to Web” function. Sibelius’ feature even allowed commerce and other features, but it also meant the need to install a plug-in.

Mohit’s work is a project that spanned “a few weekends.” That’s some of the beauty of the current age of development: you can scratch together a prototype quickly, so that you do something rather than just talk about it. Once a prototype is available, visible, and tangible, it’s sure to lead to deeper discussions about the “right” way to do something, which is the primary reason for creating prototypes in the first place.

Accordingly, the demo of the technology isn’t any more interesting than the comments that follow. As they should, observers immediately wonder about how standard interchange formats could aid in exchanging scores.

So, what are the common interchange formats for notated music? Glad you asked. Some front runners:

Lilypond is mentioned most in comments, because it’s a rich, human-readable format so simple you can comfortably edit it directly in a text editor, it’s a standard format, and it’s the only format here that has an accompanying engraving standard. That is, a common, open-source renderer will immediately turn your score into printed notation. Most formats (like a Word DOC for instance) depend on different apps to be rendered and used; Lilypond is both the format and the standard renderer, and both are free.

MusicXML:Perhaps the most sophisticated of these formats, MusicXML is a royalty-free standard supported by virtually everything on the planet, including, notably, Lilypond itself. MusicXML is the most common way of interchanging with tools like Sibelius and Finale (and many more obscure options).

Abc notation is a very simple language for encoding notation as ASCII. What’s nice about it is that it’s very compact. It can also interchange with formats like Lilypond.

Those are the three that interest me the most. There are others, I’m sure; feel free to bring them up in comments. (Fair warning: I could go on various rants about how complex and inscrutable some of the TeX-based formats are.)

A follow-up post engages the format and interchange issue. SVG support appears to be a definite.
A Question of Formats

Side note: I disagree with the idea that Lilypond is a “TeX-based format” that fails to be “accessible to non-geeks.” I’m not a “non-geek,” but I’m enough of a geek that I have no time, and accessibility is really important to me. Lilypond I find to be eminently readable and concise, usable by hand in a way that TeX is not. There’s no need to attach the stigma of one to the other. ABC is too informal to handle anything beyond simple scores, though it might be just fine for the browser context. I do agree with the MusicXML complaint, though: it works well with these software packages, but it’s not something you’d want to actually use directly.

You may notice that there are richer, freer, easier means of exchanging notation files than there are, say, multitrack music project files. You can thank centuries of music notational tradition for that – the original “standard” before anyone used such things. (“Paper: the original browser!”)

I realize I have to put some disclaimers on any mention of browser standards, lest people think I’m joining the hyperbolic “let’s move everything to the browser” movement. That’s not the point. The idea is, if you can have a standard means of representing something like a score, and you can standardize mechanisms for displaying it in current-generation browsers without the need for plug-ins, exchanging ideas becomes easier. That doesn’t compete with the idea of “native” clients on your desktop. On the contrary, standardizing on a format like Lilypond has made those clients smarter, easier to work with, and more compatible with one another. The browser is itself a bundle of native code, dependent on the desktop operating system to work, and making use of that OS’ facilities for everything from typography to sound.

As with the synthesis last week, something as essential to musical expression as notation is a perfect example of how those facilities evolve. There is no real difference between doing something “on the desktop” and “in the browser.” As these formats demonstrate, though, there’s a big, big difference between doing something with a standard, with the ability to exchange material and remain compatible, instead of having a bunch of isolated software packages that can’t communicate with each other.

I hope some readers here who are experienced both with technology and notation will suggest some ideas for how these tools can continue to evolve and interoperate.

See more here:
Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas in the Browser; Standard Formats for Scores

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More Browser Notation: Type Notes Quickly, Store Scores Online

Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas in the Browser; Standard Formats for Scores