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A new version

I’m proud to announce the first release candidate of OSCulator 2.9!

So many changes have been done so far, I wanted to give this version a trial before releasing it through the automatic update process.

Social networking plug

I now have a Twitter account I will use for sharing updates and some news. If you download this release candidate, consider following me:

Highlights

Now, the main highlights of this release are :

• Initial Wii Motion Plus support.
• Wacom Tablet users can choose the key combo to use for mouse locking.
• OSC router is now much more transparent as it now handles now not only numbers but also all types of data.

And also other cool new features like a new status bar saving some important real estate, a Notepad to take notes inside the application, and literally tons of bugs fixed. For the complete change log, and a download link, follow this link.

What’s in, what’s out

After talking with some non-native english speakers users, I decided to stop translating OSCulator in other languages. The first reason is how localization (translation), prevented me to make any change to the user interface. The second reason is the dependency on 2 or 3 friends that had to contact every time I was changing text. The last reason is more semantic: I believe that technical software in an identical field of application should be in the same language so all the terms are consistently the same across every programs. The language for multimedia technical parlance has always been English, so I’ll stick to that.

Mac OS X Tiger users should be aware that this major upgrade will be the last for Tiger systems. Back in version 2.7, I announced this was going the last for Tiger, but after many users reaction, I kept the 10.4 support going. For your information, supporting the Tiger platform means spending almost 40% of my working time only on testing and debugging those nasty bugs. Now, the decision is made: OSCulator 2.10 will be compatible with 10.5 Leopard and higher.

All this means that I can spend time on other features like the status bar which not only has a great look, but also reports useful info. I have been able to make lot of subtle changes to the user interface which was stuck since the day I decided to translate oscltr in 4 languages.

Now I’m free and it feels good.

Stay tuned

During the release candidate period I will post some articles about the Motion Plus, I guess this is the part which really needs some explanations. I will also talk about the OSC router, and other tips and tricks.

So, stay tuned. If you have any question, the forum is there to help. Thanks for reading.

Peace, Cam

Ronan sent me this amazing video where he plays retro games using the Wiimote and OSCulator :

While it’s fun to play games from archaeologic times, it’s also fun to have a merry hack party and invent the games of the future. The event will happen in Nuremberg on 6 to 8 november at the “Zentrifuge” Event Hall.

Here’s more information from the the makerjam website:

A weekend marked by fun, innovation and the joy of experimentation. Games developers, designers, artists, programmers, hardware wizards – beginners and professionals – form teams and develop computer games. A competition with the emphasis clearly on fun.

Whether you burn for ideation, concepts, sketching, artwork and design, game logic, hardware design, programming, character development, or audio – the Game Jam has room for every type of talent. The teams are free to choose their controller, programming language, and platform. Work with Flash, a game engine, or a PC game kit. Develop a game for mobile phones, for a PC or for a console – as long as you own the tools and can bring them along. Lash up your old joysticks to a monster control panel, program an iPhone as the central controller, build innovative interfaces with Arduino, or find newer, smarter ways to integrate mouse, keyboard and webcam in your game.

Tobi very kindly donated his time and passion to contribute a tutorial for German speaking users. It covers how to trigger clips and effects in Ableton Live with a Wiimote.

You can watch the videos on his YouTube channel.

When I first heard of Silent Way — a plugin suite written by Os from Expert Sleepers — my first thought came to a song performed by Weather Report. The lead keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, was well known for his use of the ARP 2600. He used to have two of them, with one having the keys order inverted so he could play low and high notes together on both keyboards.

Silent Way is a suite of plug-ins designed for use as part of a modular analogue synthesiser system. The plug-ins produce no sound themselves, nor do they process sound – rather, they generate signals to be used as control voltages (CVs), which can be patched into the control inputs of oscillators, filters, VCAs etc. of an analogue system. Also, with the addition of the CV Input plug-in, it is possible to bring CVs from the synth into the computer, for recording or processing.

With this in mind the relationship to Weather Report’s song became even clearer in my mind. Joe Zawinul was a notable innovator, thus naming a plugin after a song he wrote for Miles Davis in 1969 was certainly appropriate. My interpretation has changed though, I understand the name reflects the fact that these plugins are just “silent”.

Using Analog Modular Synths is not always easy or convenient. First, you have to deal with calibration and fine tuning of the parameters. You have to consider that temperature can affect your settings, so playing them on stage is not really obvious. Also, there’s not a lot of solutions when it comes to using them along with modern setups involving a sequencer, plugins, MIDI or OSC.

Typically you would use a CV to MIDI converter, but then loose a lot of information because MIDI’s limited data range. With some tweaking you would be certainly able to play sequences with the CV/MIDI converter, but it is not straightforward as some careful calibration is still needed.

Nonetheless, even with these limitations, modular synths are still designed, produced and used. There are even pieces of music written exclusively for modular synths. So, what makes them so appealing when you know difficult they are to use?

According to some people, their organic and raw response still surpasses digital signal processing based systems. But it’s not only that: there is a lot of plugins and digital workstation that sound great.

Really, I think their power lies in the ability to tweak them, turn the buttons, patch some cords, do this all in “real”.

It’s like using an analog mixer desk, instead of mixing with the mouse in Pro-Tools. I like this analogy very much, because it gives a good understanding of how things are evolving today: we want analog mixers, but drive them with a digital audio workstation. We want software plugins, but also keep the possibility of using an old Roland Tape Echo device, guitar pedals, EMT reverbs, and use all of them together — with automations. (to some extent, it’s like shooting pictures on film, and scan them on a film scanner without even making prints)

Silent Way helps this analog and digital cohabitation go further thanks to its automatic calibration and tuning features. If you own a compatible audio interface, the CV/MIDI converter is not needed anymore, and the computer takes control of your modular synth, exposing its rich features to your digital audio workstation.

Silent Way works both ways, your computer can control a modular synth, and a modular synth can control your computer. On his blog, Navs talks about his setup involving a Moon Modular sequencer and Logic running a virtual instrument. In his post, he shows a beautiful sequence generated by the synth which is plugged into his audio interface, acting as a soft CV bridge thank to Silent Way, then into OSCulator to process the OSC messages, and finally into Logic where the virtual instrument is hosted.

It turns out this Kyma Symposium is a very good occasion to explore some ways to use OSCulator. At least I can put down my developer hat and be a musician, again.

During my research I thought it would be nice to show a little demo of VDMX, a modular VJ mixing software. I actually tried several of them, that is Modul8 and Resolume. There is also Isadora which is looking very professional.

I picked VDMX because it offered those little details that a long time Mac user likes:

• it supports natively OSC, provides Bonjour discovery, and binding an OSC message to a button is as simple as saying “hello”, or “bonjour” if you will.
• it leverages the architecture of Mac OS X by using Quartz composition up to the max, and I like it. I’m sure VDMX developers will do wonders with the new technologies Snow Leopard offers, like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL.
• it has a reasonable price tag considering the capabilities it offers.
• Memo Atken is using it too.

Incidentally, at the same time, Martin Thoburn was experimenting with controlling video from his iPhone. He’s a media artist, and I really like his work. Here’s a beautiful montage he did for the NASA Remix Contest #7:

Examining his work makes no wonder he’s a extremely talented user of Photoshop, After Effects, Resolume … but he admits he’s no expert when it comes to programming OSC routings in languages like Max/MSP, Puredata or Processing.

OSCulator was there to help him create the routings he needed to translate the data from TouchOSC to Resolume, turning his iPhone in a cheap but powerful video control device. Here is one of the 5 layouts you can use:

There are still some little caveats to solve however. Hopefully, the Resolume team will fix those bugs, and Martin will be able to increment his bundle to version 1.0!

The First International Kyma Symposium is scheduled for 8-10 October 2009 in the vibrant Poble Nou neighborhood of Barcelona during the annual LEM festival. The preliminary program includes master classes presented by the creators of Kyma, papers and demos presented by Kyma practitioners, and a program of concerts, live improvised silent film scores.

Symbolic Sound and Station 55 invite you to share your ideas, experiences and art with fellow practitioners at the First Kyma Symposium by attending the symposium and interacting with your fellow Kyma practitioners!

I will be there showing demo of OSCulator and Kyma with my friend Manu Iyengar who helps me on some new tricky developments. I’m looking forward to meet lots of people that helped me creating OSCulator, like Carla and Kurt (makers of Kyma), but also my friends Matteo Milani and Frederico Placidi who are running the U.S.O project ; they will bring a Lemur so we can have fun messing around with Kyma and OSCulator.

Here is the preliminary program for these exciting days:

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In his blog post, Ricki Gregersen describes how he used OSCulator and MIDI Pipe to use his DTxplorer drumkit to trigger some real-time animations done in Processing.

This is a fun post to read for those who want to know more about how to integrate different pieces of software together.

New Features:

• New Event: Latched Combine. With this event, it is possible to combine two triggers into one. For example, it allows to fire a note only when another button is pressed.
• New Event: Kyma Note. Like MIDI Note, but for use with Kyma.
• Nyko Wireless Nunchuk can now be used as an extension for the Wiimote.
• MIDI Program Changes.
• Kyma Program Changes and special commands (Next, Previous, Random).
• WiiFit Balance Board can now be used as a virtual X/Y surface.
• New event “Pitch Bend” in the “MIDI Note” category.
• Real-time graph showing the value of the monitored input. Press Space key to display and close the mini window or choose “Quick Look” in the Routings menu, there is also a new toolbar item. Quick Look windows positions are saved in the document.
• Mouse events are now working on multiple monitors.
• Added support for MIDI Notes input.
• iPhone: Added support for TouchOSC “bank button” (grey button on the top of the display).
• iPhone: Added auto-configuration support for MSA Remote.
• Kyma: Can now be hot plugged and unplugged.

Changes:

• Tested under Mac OS X Snow Leopard and fixed some minor issues.
• Wii Drums and Wii Guitar are now working properly.
• Fixed a problem where the Wiimote slot configuration would not be remembered.
• Fixed a crash condition when the Wiimote was connected with an extension.
• Fixed some calibration problem with third party Wiimote extensions.
• Added new templates for the Wii Drums and the Wii Guitar.
• Fixed a bug where MIDI Note Velocity would not be updated correctly.
• When a preset changes, mouse buttons, keys and notes are now released.
• Fixed a crash condition when sending NaN double values with the Quick Look window displayed.
• The Quick Look window is now displayed even when the application is running in the background.
• Fixed some display problem in the Quick Look window.
• Changed the behavior of the Duplicate command to forbid duplicates of duplicates.
• Fixed a problem that would cause a crash when auto-configuring an OSC message. For example, this was potentially happening when connecting a Wiimote.
• Added Channel Pressure and Pitch Bend to Kyma Extended Control Changes.
• Fixed a problem with capping the input under special circumstances.
• Fixed a Wiimote disconnection bug in 10.5.8.
• Fixed a potential infinite feedback loop with MIDI Input.
• Removed an erroneous message when cancelling “Perfect Pairing” extension installation.
• Fixed a potential crash in the Quick Look window.
• Fixed a crash when using MSA Remote “bank” buttons.
• The Wiimote’s Raw IR mode has been slightly updated. Now, a size of 0 means that no dot is detected.
• Added support for newest built Wiimotes.
• Fixed a bug that could crash OSCulator when using a Wiimote and deleting an event.
• Renamed “Global Velocity” to “Channel” Velocity in the “MIDI Note” category.
• Fixed Wacom mouse locking that was broken in 2.8.2.
• Enhanced “Default OSC Host” handling to work better with TouchOSC.
• Stability and performance improvements, notably under heavy stress or with very large sets.
• Updated Sample Patches with ready to use TouchOSC templates.
• Wiimote: Fixed a bug in the Perfect Pairing extension affecting PowerPC users of Mac OS 10.4.
• Wiimote: Enhanced battery updating and reading.
• Wiimote: Workaround for the non-disconnection bug introduced by Mac OS X 10.5.7.
• Wiimote: Updated the Perfect Pairing extension with new Wiimote and Balance Boards.
• Wiimote: Drawer will now always open on the right hand side.
• Wacom: Fixed a problem where mouse wouldn’t be captured again.
• Fixed a problem with scalings and value capping.
• Fixed a problem where OSCulator could open documents of the wrong type.
• Kyma: Corrected a bug affecting users of PowerPC (G4 & G5) processors.
• Kyma: Corrected a bug that could crash the application.
• SynthPond is now compatible with OSCulator.
• Fixed Wiimote continuous discovery that was not working on some computers.
• Fixed automatic configuration of the Wiimote when using Kyma.
• Changed main table headers so they are properly localized.
• The Relative Mouse Move event has been enhanced.
• Fixed Value menu updates.
• Fixed a crash happening when using OSC input port with more than 4 digits.
• Muted the debug messages the Kyma Flame driver was issuing.

Alexander Schubert has written a piece for violin, sensors, live video and live electronics. OSCulator has been used to centralize the communications between all the components of this work.

The piece extends the possibilities of expression of a violin player in several ways by using sensor capturing of the player’s motions and a processed video representation of his movements. The goal is to create a new way of musical performance making the whole body of the player part of a complex musical instrument shifting a piece based entirely on live processing in a scenic and intuitively perceivable field.

You can watch this movie in higher resolution here.

My Italian friends Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi (aka U.S.O. Project – Unidentified Sound Object) are out now on Synesthesia Recordings with the new album called “Nachtmusik aus 01″ (SYN-004), available in digital download only.

Listen to 60-second excerpts: (.m3u) www.synesthesiarecordings.com

I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt Italy had something special with modern arts. Like sports cars, they know how to make things taste and look good. Following this tradition of style, the two performers are creating intense and organic atmospheres which make you forget the music has been done with electronic equipment.