Polymicrotonal/improvisational benefit for Tsunami victims

Hello to any list members in the Boston area!

Tomorrow night (Friday, January 14th), I will be participating in a
art-and-music-fueled fundraiser to aid those devastated by the recent
earthquake and tidal waves in Asia.

The event will take place at the Art Attack Gallery, 108 Beacon St.,
Somerville (bordering on Cambridge), MA, USA.

The first 45-minute set will begin at 7pm and will include myself on
variously-fretted guitars, keyboardist Peter Stoltzman, Jerome
Deupree (drummer of Morphine and now, of Orchestra Morphine), and
other illustrious musicians, mixing tuning systems in an unrehearsed,
unplanned foray into sonic mayhem. Hopefully it will sound like love,
because that's what we want to send our Asian brothers and sisters
right now.

Several other 45 minute sets will follow, with equally interesting
lineups, including one at 10pm with the incomparable
microtonalmistress Katt Hernandez on violin. If you're familiar with
the world of jazz and improvised music, I can guarantee you're in for
some pleasant surprises!

-Paul

>Hello to any list members in the Boston area!
>
>Tomorrow night (Friday, January 14th), I will be participating in a
>art-and-music-fueled fundraiser to aid those devastated by the recent
>earthquake and tidal waves in Asia.
>
>The event will take place at the Art Attack Gallery, 108 Beacon St.,
>Somerville (bordering on Cambridge), MA, USA.
>
>The first 45-minute set will begin at 7pm and will include myself on
>variously-fretted guitars, keyboardist Peter Stoltzman, Jerome
>Deupree (drummer of Morphine and now, of Orchestra Morphine), and
>other illustrious musicians, mixing tuning systems in an unrehearsed,
>unplanned foray into sonic mayhem. Hopefully it will sound like love,
>because that's what we want to send our Asian brothers and sisters
>right now.
>
>Several other 45 minute sets will follow, with equally interesting
>lineups, including one at 10pm with the incomparable
>microtonalmistress Katt Hernandez on violin. If you're familiar with
>the world of jazz and improvised music, I can guarantee you're in for
>some pleasant surprises!

Record it!!

-Carl

Hi All,

I thought you all might be interested, I've put out a new release of my program 'blue' that contains a Microtonal PianoRoll, able to edit any Scala scale file. Information and screenshots of the pianoRoll are available at:

http://www.csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/pianoRoll.html

(The pictures show editing using a Bohlen-Pierce scale, thus 13 notes per "octave" are there to edit.)

As this is a first release of this PianoRoll in blue, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
steven

>Hi All,
>
>I thought you all might be interested, I've put out a new release of my
>program 'blue' that contains a Microtonal PianoRoll, able to edit any
>Scala scale file. Information and screenshots of the pianoRoll are
>available at:
>
>http://www.csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/pianoRoll.html
>
>(The pictures show editing using a Bohlen-Pierce scale, thus 13 notes
>per "octave" are there to edit.)
>
>As this is a first release of this PianoRoll in blue, so any feedback
>would be greatly appreciated!
>
>Thanks,
>steven

Thank you, God. This is one thing I've been wanting for about
the last 3 million years. You're a genius! I can't wait to
try it...

-Carl

>Hi All,
>
>I thought you all might be interested, I've put out a new release of my
>program 'blue' that contains a Microtonal PianoRoll, able to edit any
>Scala scale file. Information and screenshots of the pianoRoll are
>available at:
>
>http://www.csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/pianoRoll.html
>
>(The pictures show editing using a Bohlen-Pierce scale, thus 13 notes
>per "octave" are there to edit.)
>
>As this is a first release of this PianoRoll in blue, so any feedback
>would be greatly appreciated!
>
>Thanks,
>steven

Hi Steven,

I've forwarded this to the tuning list.

/tuning

-C.

>>Hi All,
>>
>>I thought you all might be interested, I've put out a new release of my
>>program 'blue' that contains a Microtonal PianoRoll, able to edit any
>>Scala scale file. Information and screenshots of the pianoRoll are
>>available at:
>>
>>http://www.csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/pianoRoll.html
>>
>>(The pictures show editing using a Bohlen-Pierce scale, thus 13 notes
>>per "octave" are there to edit.)
>>
>>As this is a first release of this PianoRoll in blue, so any feedback
>>would be greatly appreciated!
>>
>>Thanks,
>>steven
>
>Thank you, God. This is one thing I've been wanting for about
>the last 3 million years. You're a genius! I can't wait to
>try it...

Oh man, this is a CSound instrument? Blimey. :(

-Carl

Hi Carl,

Thanks for forwarding this on to the Tuning list, and my apologies for not explaining the details of blue. blue itself is an environment for composing with Csound; the PianoRoll itself is able to work with any Csound instrument the user creates, or using the other blue instruments (which in the end translate to Csound instruments) such as the blueX7 (a dx7 emulation) or the BlueSynthBuilder (a graphical instrument builder).

I have to say, one nice thing about using Csound is that it is not limited to midi's 0-127 values for notes, thus it was much easier to build without that limitation. I guess any other synthesizer system would do just as well that isn't communicating with MIDI.

Thus far this has been an enjoyable tool for myself to explore composing in different scales, and hopefully others who use or perhaps may become interested in Csound. If anything, maybe other program authors will take the idea from blue and implement it in their own programs, perhaps in ways that would be more accessible to musicians not working in Csound.

At least I can take comfort that your reaction to the idea was positive. =)

Thanks,
steven

Carl Lumma wrote:
> >>Hi All,
> >>
> >>I thought you all might be interested, I've put out a new release of my
> >>program 'blue' that contains a Microtonal PianoRoll, able to edit any
> >>Scala scale file. Information and screenshots of the pianoRoll are
> >>available at:
> >>
> >>http://www.csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/pianoRoll.html
> >>
> >>(The pictures show editing using a Bohlen-Pierce scale, thus 13 notes
> >>per "octave" are there to edit.)
> >>
> >>As this is a first release of this PianoRoll in blue, so any feedback
> >>would be greatly appreciated!
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>steven
> >
> >Thank you, God. This is one thing I've been wanting for about
> >the last 3 million years. You're a genius! I can't wait to
> >try it...
> > Oh man, this is a CSound instrument? Blimey. :(
> > -Carl
>

>Thanks for forwarding this on to the Tuning list, and my apologies for
>not explaining the details of blue. blue itself is an environment for
>composing with Csound; the PianoRoll itself is able to work with any
>Csound instrument the user creates, or using the other blue instruments
>(which in the end translate to Csound instruments) such as the blueX7 (a
>dx7 emulation) or the BlueSynthBuilder (a graphical instrument builder).

Yes, I went to the blue mainpage. Very impressive.

>I have to say, one nice thing about using Csound is that it is not
>limited to midi's 0-127 values for notes, thus it was much easier to
>build without that limitation.

I hear that.

>I guess any other synthesizer system would do just as well that
>isn't communicating with MIDI.

Have you checked out Open Sound Control? NI Reaktor supports it,
among other things.

My only gripe with CSound is that it wasn't designed to be realtime.
That, and it's apparently very user-unfriendly.

>Thus far this has been an enjoyable tool for myself to explore composing
>in different scales, and hopefully others who use or perhaps may become
>interested in Csound. If anything, maybe other program authors will take
>the idea from blue and implement it in their own programs, perhaps in
>ways that would be more accessible to musicians not working in Csound.
>
>At least I can take comfort that your reaction to the idea was
>positive. =)

Oh, yes. Let me ask: can you do smooth scrolling in your GUI?

-Carl

Carl Lumma wrote:
> My only gripe with CSound is that it wasn't designed to be realtime.
> That, and it's apparently very user-unfriendly.

Actually, Csound works pretty well in realtime, although some version do this better than others (the best being CsoundAV).

Art Hunkins (http://www31.brinkster.com/abhunkins/) writes primarily realtime pieces for Csound, some of which use on-screen widgets, and other that use a combination of on-screen widgets and MIDI controllers.

I've written a set of pieces in collaboration with Art that are for realtime Csound (http://mysterybear.net/article/6/cloud-dragon) as well as a Csound-based sruti box (http://mysterybear.net/article/8/drone-instrument---sruti-box). My other Csound pieces are all playable in realtime, although I render them as MP3/OGG.

As for user-friendliness, you have a point, but it is also a matter of taste. There is also a tradeoff of power vs. use of use. I'm a programmer and I like writing code, so it works for me. OTOH, I am starting to learn blue to make it easier to do things on a higher level.

- Dave

Hi Carl,

> Have you checked out Open Sound Control? NI Reaktor supports it,
> among other things.
>
Last I checked, NI Reaktor supported OSC but it was really just a wrapping for MIDI, sort of MIDI messages over OSC. Looking for information, I found this:

http://barely.a.live.fm/pd/OSC/r3osc-2.html

which makes it seem that they've limited themselves to the same values that would be usable by MIDI. (At least, it was the case with Reaktor 3).

I originally started blue some five years ago, less than a year after I started programming. At the time I was also just getting into Csound, and so blue was originally tailored to handle things I wanted to do with it. Over the years, the idea to make blue not be bound to Csound but other synthesizers like JMax, JSyn, SAOL, or others has crossed my mind, as well as even a no synthesizer system and making it a generic OSC system. In the end, I stuck with Csound due partly to prior investment in time, but also because I found that Csound does most anything I ask of it.

I found that Csound's note format was something really good for me to build blue around and works well for how I think about music. OSC would be fine too I guess, but is even more generic, and I think may have been too hard for me to build around when I started blue. Perhaps someday I'll build a new blue that works around OSC or another message format, but probably not anytime in the near future. (However, blue's source code is open source under the GPL, and I encourage anyone who would want to take it and repurpose it for whatever they like to feel free to do so.)

> My only gripe with CSound is that it wasn't designed to be realtime.
> That, and it's apparently very user-unfriendly.

I end up rendering with Csound in realtime when I work on music with blue, but I am not interacting with the music that is rendering, only listening. When blue goes to render, it saves a temporary CSD that Csound is able to use and then calls Csound, and this can be set to render in realtime. On the whole, it's been enough for me and it suits my way of working, though I understand how that would not work for others.

As for user-unfriendliness, I think Csound has a bit of a learning curve, but on the whole, the things I've put into blue help me manage the complexity and keep me focused on the music-making aspect of it all. Without blue, though, when I first started using Csound with just a text editor, I did find it a bit trying.

> >At least I can take comfort that your reaction to the idea was
> >positive. =)
>
> Oh, yes. Let me ask: can you do smooth scrolling in your GUI?

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are asking, but I've tried my best to make the UI responsive and smooth. There are a couple of occasions when scrolling slows down, but on the whole, I don't find enough difference from native applications to make me feel that it's awkward or drastically different in any way.

steven

> > My only gripe with CSound is that it wasn't designed to be realtime.
> > That, and it's apparently very user-unfriendly.
>
>Actually, Csound works pretty well in realtime, although some version do
>this better than others (the best being CsoundAV).
>
>Art Hunkins (http://www31.brinkster.com/abhunkins/) writes primarily
>realtime pieces for Csound, some of which use on-screen widgets, and
>other that use a combination of on-screen widgets and MIDI controllers.
>
>I've written a set of pieces in collaboration with Art that are for
>realtime Csound (http://mysterybear.net/article/6/cloud-dragon) as well
>as a Csound-based sruti box
>(http://mysterybear.net/article/8/drone-instrument---sruti-box). My
>other Csound pieces are all playable in realtime, although I render them
>as MP3/OGG.
>
>As for user-friendliness, you have a point, but it is also a matter of
>taste. There is also a tradeoff of power vs. use of use. I'm a
>programmer and I like writing code, so it works for me. OTOH, I am
>starting to learn blue to make it easier to do things on a higher level.

Thanks for the links, Dave. But I'll make a passing note re. the idea
of a tradeoff between power and ease of use. I think this is a huge
fallacy. I don't think such tradeoff is ever necessary.

-Carl

Carl Lumma wrote:
> Thanks for the links, Dave. But I'll make a passing note re. the idea
> of a tradeoff between power and ease of use. I think this is a huge
> fallacy. I don't think such tradeoff is ever necessary.
> > -Carl

No argument there. I'm not saying that it should be that way or that it's inevitable, simply that it is often the case. Sometimes when I use Csound I miss having knobs and sliders and patch cables (virtual or not) and having a bunch of presets to choose from. And with a more conventional hardware/software synth, sometimes you want to be able to get inside and twiddle things that the the manufacturer/developer didn't think to expose, or exposed in a clumsy way (like tuning tables). Ideally, we should have a system that has the best of both worlds, and there's no good reason why we can't.

For geeks of my particular code-oriented bent, Csound just fits better, warts and all, and front-ends like Steven's blue program (which I just started using today, and already like a whole lot) make it even better, but it's certainly not for everyone.

- Dave

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

> Have you checked out Open Sound Control? NI Reaktor supports it,
> among other things.

The new version of Plogue Bidule as well. I just started messing
around with an Essential Reality P5 glove (thanks goes to, I think,
Robert for posting about it)) and the Mac driver for it works with an
OSC application.

>> Have you checked out Open Sound Control? NI Reaktor supports it,
>> among other things.
>
>The new version of Plogue Bidule as well.

Good to know.

>I just started messing
>around with an Essential Reality P5 glove (thanks goes to, I think,
>Robert for posting about it)) and the Mac driver for it works with
>an OSC application.

I have that glove. Which OSC application?

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

> >I just started messing
> >around with an Essential Reality P5 glove (thanks goes to, I think,
> >Robert for posting about it)) and the Mac driver for it works with
> >an OSC application.
>
> I have that glove. Which OSC application?

An OSC server called "p5osc". I got it from here:

http://www.audiomulch.com/simulus/p5glove/

The OSX applications and Max patches that I found for the glove all
require p5osc. I am currently using P5 MIDI Assigner.

Paolo

>> >I just started messing
>> >around with an Essential Reality P5 glove (thanks goes to, I think,
>> >Robert for posting about it)) and the Mac driver for it works with
>> >an OSC application.
>>
>> I have that glove. Which OSC application?
>
>An OSC server called "p5osc". I got it from here:
>
>http://www.audiomulch.com/simulus/p5glove/
>
>The OSX applications and Max patches that I found for the glove all
>require p5osc. I am currently using P5 MIDI Assigner.
>
>Paolo

Thank you. I'm going to have to get a Mac one of these days...

-C.