MusicAlgorithms bills itself as “an interactive exploration of the relationship between music and mathematical formulas”. I call it awesome. The site encourages you to explore and modify a variety of algorithms and listen to the resulting music. You can even export MIDI and notation. Prepare to lose track of time…
120 Years of Electronic Music provides a overview of electronic musical instruments from 1870 through 1990.
This site charts the development of electronic musical instruments from 1870 to 1990. For the purposes of this project electronic musical instruments are defined as instruments that synthesise sounds from an electronic source. This definition leaves out a whole section of hybrid electronic instruments developed at the end of the last century that used electronics to manipulate or amplify sounds and tape recorders, wax recording devices, Musique Concrete and so-on. It has been decided to leave in some non electronic instruments such as the Futurists “Intonarumori” due to their importance in the history of and influence on modern music.
Related: Reverse Time Page has a brief history of the 1955 RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer with sound samples from RCA’s promotional recordings.
Livid Instruments has announced Builder, a system that will allow people to easily and inexpensively design their own MIDI controllers. The Builder line consists of the Brain MIDI processing board, Brain Editor software and BYOB (Build Your Own Board) modular circuit board system.
Livid provides a quick start guide for the Brain on their wiki. The following videos show Builder in action. I can’t begin to describe how badly I want one…
Here’s a little New Year’s Eve gift for Reaktor users. This macro provides both a MIDI value knob (0-127) and Note/Octave menus. The controls are linked, so turning the knob will update the menu selections and vice versa. This will make adding intuitive, readable MIDI note and value controls to your Reaktor instruments much easier.
Usage:
Click here to download the macro.
Logic Pro’s Environment is a source of confusion, frustration and even fear for many users. However, for the most part, it isn’t really that complicated. The Environment provides a powerful, modular system for realtime processing of MIDI messages. All the work is done by a small group of specialized objects that you connect with virtual cables, similar to a modular synthesizer. Most tasks require nothing more than a (very) basic understanding of MIDI.
If you’re new to the Environment and/or MIDI, you might find this project a bit ambitious. Don’t let that discourage you. Each step will be explained in detail, and along the way you’ll learn several tricks that you can use to make your own Environment projects more powerful and easier to use.
Download the Logic Pro 9 project archive for this tutorial here.