pulsewidth

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29

ernst — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:51:00 +0000

@colletteparks Fantastic! One of the best exhibits! Oh, and good spokesperson work, Collette! in reply to colletteparks #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22

ernst — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 01:51:00 +0000

@colletteparks Lucky! Is Ryan recording it? in reply to colletteparks #
@colletteparks Boo! in reply to colletteparks #
RT @KeepWerking: Shake your pants to some Silicon Teens http://bit.ly/9zgPzO Love the Silicon Teens! #
@colletteparks True. I think our attractions are taken for granted by people who live here… in reply to colletteparks #
@colletteparks What are you going on about??? in reply to colletteparks #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-15

ernst — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:51:00 +0000

@jkalyn ha! I'm currently mesmerized by the same program… in reply to jkalyn #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-01

ernst — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:51:00 +0000

Look! A blog post! http://bit.ly/9kkk2H #

Another Successful Experiment

ernst — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:20:27 +0000

This recent experiment falls in to the ‘me too’ category, but I’m still pleased with the result. I saw a recent blog article describing the use of an induction mic, essentially a coil of wire, to collect electromagnetic sounds from various bits of equipment. By wiring a coil or an inductor of some sort to a plug and amplifying the signal one can discover a new, hidden soundscape . Nicolas Collins has of course discussed this at length in Handmade Electronic Music and shows excellent examples of what can be found in the netherworld of electromagnetic radiation.

The coil I used in my experiment was retrieved from an eviscerated hard drive. .
My initial attempt to record its output failed, though. It turns out that this coil has a very low output, and I could not provide enough gain adjustment on the line/mic in of my computer. Better results were obtained using my USB audio interface as it has a hardware input gain adjustment. Soon enough I was capturing noises from my laptop harddrive and looping them in Pure Data. Eventually I sent the output of each loop through a filtered distortion, then through delays and reverb, as I usually do. The whole mess sounds like layers of fuzzy, synth-like feedback, but one of the loops captured some sort of a bump, for lack of a better descrition. This bump became the sparse bassline of this improv piece.
For your consideration: induction
pulsewidth-induction by ernst.pulsewidth

Fun With No-Input Mixing

ernst — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:41:57 +0000

This is the equipment I’m going to use for an upcoming no-input mixing performance. For the past couple of days I’ve been practising, if you will, making sure that I can keep the various layers of feedback at bay, for a performance I’ll be doing on Friday. It’s very informal, but I thought some preparation was in order. I’m going to be trying a new performance setup: a no-input mixing board. in the most basic form, the no-input mixer consists of a mixer with the outputs plugged in to the inputs, creating feedback loops. Using the EQ on a mixer channel allows for tonal variations from piercing screams to low rumbles, depending on the EQ. Further variety comes from the addition of effects units in to the feedback loops.

What I’ve enjoyed most about this endeavour is the knob-twiddling physicality of controlling sounds that can sometimes go quickly out of control.

If you check the image out on Flickr there are notes naming each device, but since you’re here this is the lineup: the rackmount devices are a Deltalab ADM 1024 digital delay (light blue) and a Korg SDD-1 digital delay (dark blue, yellow knobs). The mixer is a Behringer Xenyx 1202FX. You also see the Korg KP2 and MiniKP KAOSS Pad effects units. Finally, on the upper right, thereis a Zoom H2 recorder which I was using to record my practice. Perhaps I’ll post some examples of what this stuff sounds like after I’ve done some editing.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-25

ernst — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Smith Tetra4 Synth: Compact Size, Quadruple the Mopho Pleasure http://bit.ly/3mYiQy (via CDM, via feedly) Very nice… #
listening to "Omega – 200 years after the last war – 200 évvel az utolsó háború után" ♫ http://blip.fm/~b3i2e #
listening to "Arthur Brown´s Kingdom Come – Time Captives" ♫ http://blip.fm/~b3hqr #

Installing Pure Data on Ubuntustudio 8.04

ernst — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:16:43 +0000

Pure Data (aka Pd ) is ‘a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing’, as described on the Pd community site. By patching elements or externals, together one can build systems to generate and process audio and create video effects. Pd runs on Windows, OSX and of course Linux.

Pure Data as it is currently packaged in Ubuntu is commonly known as Pd-Vanilla. Pd-Vanilla is shipped with a minimal amount of externals and while they are powerful, it means a fair bit of work to track down and build some of the other externals libraries that are out there.

Worry not, though for there is an easy solution. Thanks to the efforts of Hans-Christoph Steiner and other we have Pd-extended. Yes, you guessed it, Pd-Extended contains Pd and more externals that one could use in a lifetime. It’s not an all-inclusive list, but it is still quite comprehensive.

Now for the installation. First go here and find a link to an installer package. Depending where H-C is in the building/testing cycle there may be links to different version on this page. Once downloaded, simply install the package using your preferred manual package installation method.

You can make the process even easier. An apt repository has been set up for Pd extended releases. Just add this line to your sources.list file using your preferred method:

deb http://apt.puredata.info/releases hardy main
After that, Synaptic is your friend.

Netbook + NanoControllers

ernst — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:54:38 +0000

Here’s a picture of some gear I use to make music. In this photo are my netbook and a bunch of Korg stuff. On the left are my Korg Mini-KP and KAOSS Pad 2. In front of my netbook are my Korg NanoControl and NanoKey, and above the KAOSS Pads is a little old Yamaha MM-10 mixer I use from time to time.