EMUSIC-L Weblog

electronic music and anything tangentially related

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Entries Tagged as 'software'

Freeware music tools for OS X

May 2nd, 2008 · No Comments

 I happened across Ken Restivo’s blog the other day (lots of good "math funk" there in Ogg Vorbis format), and was interested to note that he’s doing almost everything - recording, synthesis, mixdown, the works - on LInux, using free software.
Having listened to the stuff he’s got there and liking it quite a lot, I [...]

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Tags: software

Lying users and synth manuals

February 15th, 2008 · No Comments

In "Every User Lies" at the excellent Coding Horror blog, Jeff Atwood refers in passing to the concept of the "active user" - the person who immediately runs the software without looking at the manual at all.
In my trying out of various softsynths (most notably the WayOutWare TimewARP 2600 and the GForce Oddity and impOSCar), I’ve found myself doing that - firing up [...]

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Tags: essays · gear · software

The ARP 2600 manual

January 19th, 2008 · No Comments

Quite some time back, I found a scanned copy of the ARP 2600 User’s manual. I’ve always had a soft spot for the 2600, though I could never quite afford one; it’s always seemed like a great balance as far as analog synths go.In a recent fit of “my disk is too full”, I unzipped [...]

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Tags: gear · resources · software · speculation

A quick guide to opensource synthesis

November 5th, 2007 · No Comments

 A quick overview of Pure Data, ChucK, Supercollider, Csound, and several other synthesis languages/tools I haven’t heard of before. Looks like it would repay some link-mining. [Edited 01/08 ... I forgot the link!]

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Tags: resources · software

Different Skies 2007 Countdown

October 12th, 2007 · No Comments

And of course I couldn’t resist the opportunity to write an OS X widget to track time remaining to the start of Different Skies.

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Tags: software

The Hand That Feeds

April 27th, 2005 · No Comments

OS X readers: if you haven’t already done so, pop on over to the Nine Inch Nails website and pick up the GarageBand version of The Hand That Feeds. It’s a fairly typical track; but for that reason it’s pretty interesting.
It’s a great guide to pop song construction. A relatively short track, but with a [...]

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Tags: resources · software

Long Now Chimes.app III

April 7th, 2005 · No Comments

Here is a first-cut version of the OS X Long Now Chimes application. The user interface still leaves a lot to be desired, but it makes pretty noises and works. Have fun.
I’ll be working on designing a nice pop-up date setter for later, and better interaction/integration of the interface and the ChucK program.

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Tags: generative art · software

Long Now Chimes.app II

April 6th, 2005 · No Comments

I was able to get in a little more diddling with the application on the train yesterday; it can now successfully generate a peal for a date (still entered by hand right now, yuck) and play it. Command-. stops the playback as one would hope. It would be nice to get a spinner working (other [...]

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Tags: software

GarageBand

April 5th, 2005 · No Comments

Apple has added a new iApp, GarageBand, to iLife ‘04. For $49, Mac OS X users can have a decent multi-track recorder and loop compositor. Looks great!

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Tags: announcements · software

Long Now Chimes.app I

April 5th, 2005 · No Comments

I’ve been working on an OS X application to play the Long Now Chimes. If you’ve visited the previous link, you’ve gotten to hear MIDI versions of the chimes.
The MIDI version’s quite cool, and gives nearly anyone a chance to hear the chimes, but I wanted really chimey chime sounds, and I wanted them to [...]

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Tags: software