“Exploring the growing anomie in large urban centres Isolitude is a haunting and thought provoking piece.”

‘for the first time more than half the world’s population, or about 3.3 billion people, will live in cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030′, United Nations Population report.

Running from 6th to 16th November ‘08 Isolitude is a joint installation by street-artist Mike Marcus and sound-artist Amie Slavin. Marcus’ 7-foot tall cutouts populate the gallery space creating a maze that forces you to navigate between the figures whilst Slavin’s 8.2 urban surround-scape presents an immersive and simultaneously detatched virtual environment placing listener & figures in menacing and uncomfortable surroundings.

Marcus has also created (a limited edition of 35) 6-colour screen prints available from jealous gallery

And my involvement ?

As Amie’s engineer I was involved in the hardware setup, and provided a custom (graphics tablet based) surround pan controller used in the mixing/building of Amie’s surround-scape … more on this soon.

Mr BadlyWorn is a Sound Engineer, Musician, Experimentalist and a fully paid-up member of the Frying Pan Collective : expect ambience, noises, sampling, processing and the sound of various recording technologies being thoroughly abused.

visit Badly Worn’s myspace page here

TAPENOISE [lincolnshire, uk]
9:30pm October 18, 19, 25, 26, November 1, 2, 8, 9

Tapenoise is a visual artist, poet, experimental musician and producer. He is a series contributer to resonancefm with a particular focus on anti-capitalism, sustainability, green futures and bio-fuels :

“The extent to which we rely upon electronic modes of comunication and representation today could not be exaggerated, redundancy and obscelesence can soon infiltrate our thinking as we try to keep up.”

visit Tapenoise’s website here

If you’re thinking of doing this yourself, then be warned - Lithium-Ion batteries can be dangerous - I HOLD NO RESPONSIBILITY for you frying yourself, or your microtrack. If you are competant and cautious, its a simple task, but you do so entirely at your own risk - what follows is a guide to where to start, but seriously, if you’re not sure about this then don’t bother and get M-Audio to fleece you instead !!

exhibit A - a dead Microtrack

Cracking the Case

Key to solving the inherent deadness problem is first to get into the case of the device itself. I’ve read of people mangling the audio inputs by using too much force, so take care here. Its not actually that hard but take your time as each time you get it wrong, you’ll end up with a scratch to prove it, or worse still, you could get bitten by the casing snapping back together with one of your digits between the pieces (ouch). Anyway, on the back casing, you’ll notice that the corners are curved around the unit.

exhibit B - side view of half-open case showing position of tabs, and curvy corners

To get in, stick a small flat-head screwdriver between the back panel and the main body avoiding the tabs (marked in red) - the green lines show where its okay to start prising it apart. Do this gently, down the length of one side, and repeatedly lever the case further and further away from the body. Eventually, you’ll see the tabs. When one side is complete, use something (e.g. a kitchen knife) to hold this gap open as you repeat the procedure for the other side - note that there is more space to get started towards the top of the unit on the side with the menu button. A steady hand, and not too much force are whats required, but don’t worry if a couple of the tabs break - not nice, but it’ll go back together again and open up much easier next time …

exhibit C - back panel off, main unit upside-down showing battery outlined in green

The battery is simply stuck to the back of the pcb with a little double-sided sticky tape and can be freed easily. It is connected by one red and one black wire, which can be snipped - one at a time so as not to short the battery. The battery can now be disposed of at your local weee certified recycling centre.

exhibit D - old battery (green) and replacement battery (blue).

Almost any single-cell lithium ion battery will do for this (as long as it will fit in the case once re-assembled) - they are mostly 3.7 volts, which is what we require, and mobile phone batteries suit the bill as they’re small, 3.7v and readily available, the only downside being charge. The original battery is somewhere in the region of 1400-1800 mAh and my replacement is rated at 700mAh, so I expect battery life to be less than half - around an hour of recording time. The replacement battery I found is from an old mobile phone, which on initial inspection was too fat to fit back in the case, so I cracked open it’s plastic case to reveal its interior containing the wrapped lithium ion cell, and a small pcb with the charging circuits.

DO NOT open the batteries any further as you could end up with that nasty lithium stuff plastered about the place (if you don’t know what lithium + water does …)

Anyway, once the original battery is removed, the bare ends of the wires can be soldered onto the replacement battery terminals, being extra careful not to short the battery by accidentally soldering the wires together - a fine pointed soldering tip is probably best, but with care, you can get away with something a little less subtle …

exhibit E - replacement battery with wires soldered, placed in makeshift celophane wallet

Once your ‘new’ battery is soldered to the correct wires its a good idea to wrap it in insulating material so that when its squeezed against the back of the pcb no accidental shorting occurs - I used some celophane from a tobacco packet, and a generous helping of gaffer tape

So, the new battery is ready to charge. Don’t put everything back together yet as its a good idea to play it safe and watch the battery charge to look out for any signs that things are going wrong - plug the unit into the mains, power it up, and stand back …. If the battery starts to bulge, hiss, whine, or exhibits any other weird behaviour then stop charging immediately, take it outside and stand clear - it probably won’t explode, but if it does, it ain’t gonna be nice - chemical burns anybody ? … see why I say I’m not responsible for your hacking now ?

2 or 3 hours later, the battery will be charged, so remove the power supply, switch the microtrack off, and then test to see that it boots up okay.

exhibit F - the microtrack running from a mobile phone battery

So, now we’ve verified that it is in fact working its time to put the back on. Its worth spending a little time investigating any damage that may have been done to the points where the back mates with the rest of the body as any plastic out of place may hinder the smooth reseating of the panel. Also, bear in mind that the slide switches for phantom power, record level and hold need the back panel edge between the back of the slider and the rest of the case. If the case goes back in the wrong place, these sliders will be mis-aligned making them look weird and hard to operate - and the case won’t close properly, so do this side first, and the second side should (with a little persuasion) easily reseat with a satisfying click.

All in all, that took about 4 hours including charging time, and cost me nothing. If you haven’t a spare battery just lying around it’ll not cost much from places like this. The Nokia BL-6C equivalent is rated at 3.7V / 1070 mAh and at £10 seems maybe a good bet - anyway, shop around as the more mAh you can find (that fit in the microtrack) the more recording time you get.

Inspired by early bucket brigade machines, bucketEER is a simple stereo reverb effect consisting of 16 delay lines, each with an all-pass filter. Mono or stereo input, with 3 output modes, bucketEER can be used for delay effects and basic reverbs. Sounds suprisingly good considering how simple it is …

features :

Pre and Post effect shelving filters
Predelay with control over level and time
Size and Time controls
Width and Mix controls
Central readout of knob values
17 Randomize buttons - ‘global’ and ‘local’
Freeze Function
Bypass switch for each bucket and slot
Output level meter
8 presets

get it here : bucketEER

firstly, its damned powerful compared to scripts
second, its gawd awful complicated

So far, I’ve hacked together a couple of GUI SEMS (thanks to AstralP) and I’ve got this crazy idea that SynthEdit could be wireless. Whether or not this will be fruitful remains to be seen, although I’ve discovered that I can make 2 vsts guis communicate in the host (not FL, that is). Its kinda spooky, and not really what I had in mind, but its potentially interesting never the less.

The results of my fumblings can be found here : www.roughdiamondproductions.com/SE

Dawn is a visual artist and composer. Her work explores the interplay between sound, space, movement and material. 53 of her 57 minutes is a work for 24 differently pitched wine glasses. The composition is based on a ‘change ringing’ system, as practiced by bell ringers. Following that there is a 4 minute improvisation on guitar seeking a range of harmonics produced by the strings. The final minute is a collection of different location recordings roughly cut together to investigate how the environment acts as a resonator or filter, like the body of an acoustic instrument, shaping the sound passing through it.

visit Dawn’s website here

A lore unto himself, Mr Suzuki, although primarily a top-notch drummer, is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and exceptional (experi)mentalist. A skilled listener with a passion for the unusual, Suzuki goes in diverse directions, not afraid to blend nastiness with beauty, complexity with ambience. His 57 is entitled ‘Under the Knife’ and consists of 9 tracks on the dark side sporting titles such as anaesthesia, amputation, incision and convalesence.

visit Muddy Suzuki’s myspace page here

Amie Slavin’s work reflects a deep interest in voices both literal and metaphoric. She creates pieces to represent people, communities and issues, exploring and stretching the audio palate. She makes use of both found and designed sounds, in addition to vocal interview and composed content. Her 57 consists of 2 pieces - wavePOWER and wavePLAY - complimentary and contrasting pieces focussing on our societal relationships with all types of waveform.

visit Amie’s homepage here

Ex-Gloria Mundi, ex-Eddie & Sunshine, ex-full-time Mother, ex-Big T Pot, ex-Random Infusion. A lifetime’s experience of giving people fun and something to think/smile about. Sunshine’s 57 is a collection of 20 pieces grouped together into an experience called Listen in the Dark, featuring found sound, samples, electronic instruments and story-telling. Switch the lights off and enjoy.

visit Sunshine’s myspace page here

version 1.1 features the ability to view the day, date, year etc too, and a new (s)wanky graphic waveform display of the incoming stereo signal

get it from the usual place

[http://daz.roughdiamondproductions.com/history/whitelabel-vst-plugins/granuloso/]

wtf?

well … it creates a swelling (ooo-errr) in volume once the threshhold is passed, but instead of holding the max volume, as soon as the attack is finished, it goes straight to the decay stage. So, play a note that is over the threshhold and it grows and then shrinks back to its correct volume, so its like the opposite of a ducker, but with a different envelope, hence the name … unDUCK - its not a ducker.

time from concept to product on website - about 57 minutes …

get it here : no manual, free to use as you like …

features :

Mono or 6 note Poly
3 loop modes
ADSR Envelope
4 LFOs each with envelope and delay
pre and post filters - 5 types
distortion and quantizer
Dual waveform displays with zoom
plays 16 or 24 bit wave files [32/44.1/48/88.2/96k]

LFOs are freely assignable to modulate :

Pitch
Detune
Coarse loop points
Fine loop points
Filter Frequencies
Filter Resonance / Gain

NEW in version 0.7, granulOSO now has 3 panels of granular goodness - SOURCE, MODULATORS and FILTERS.

The Source page lets you pick (and modulate) your granules
The Modulators page allows control over the 4 LFOs
The Filters page has 2 12dB/oct multi-mode filters, distortion and quantizer

Additionally, 0.7 has a new keyboard (thanks to Vera) with duplicate controls for main ADSR envelope, LFO frequencies, source gain and output level.

Includes example source material and 8 presets.
get it here

if you need help in understanding this plugin, then maybe audio production isn’t for you …

get it here

features :

2 inputs,2 outputs
mono, stereo or dual mono operation
mixable channels & sidechains
sidechain filter with hp, lp, resonance & gain
lookahead of upto 1000 ms
‘just in time’ link mode
channel & sidechain link switches
sidechain monitoring switches
response invert switches
output pan & mix controls

special introductory price of £7.50 until 01/08/08
download sideGATE : here

features :

beef-up your kick with 20 to 200 Hz sin waves.
bend and twist - add punch and guts
designed for added oooomph.

Volume
Pitch
Bit depth

1 input, 1 output :
1 Oscillator
Overdrive with controls for drive and threshhold
Bit crusher
2 Clippers
2 parametric EQ bands
adjustable attack [click]
seperate controls for ‘badd’ & ‘ass’ levels
dry/wet mix control
additional input and output gates
post mix cut/boost control
16 presets

Envelope controls :

Volume
Pitch
Bit depth

special introductory price of £7.50 until 01/08/08
download baddASS : here

4 inputs, 2 outputs :

channels 1&2 duck in response to channels 3&4
channels 3&4 are mixed back into outputs 1&2

10 response curves
190 ways to fade from one level to another [and back]
lookahead of upto 2 seconds with ‘just in time’ link mode
6 levels of automatic presence control
3 gender settings
8 presets [also works as a gate]

special introductory price of £10 until 01/08/08

download here : www.roughdiamondproductions.com/whiteLABEL/products.php?r=autoBED

1 Hotpoint Washer/Dryer
1 Neglected pair of trousers containing …
1 Cheap as chips mobile ‘phone

Methodology :

Forget that ‘phone is in trousers.
Introduce trousers to washing machine
Run full D cycle
Empty machine and discover ‘phone
see if it still works.

Hypothesis :

I figure the sim card will survive its accidental-aqua-adventure, but as for the rest of the ‘phone, I would imagine that the detergent will have deposited sufficient salt on the circuit boards for the thing not to work. As for the battery …. well, thats a whole exciting area itself - dare I plug the unit in and see if explodes ?

Outcome :

The phone is in bits following its sojourn in the spin cycle, so … I let it dry in the sun for a few days and gave it a whirl. No charge in the battery, so attempting to charge it I discover the battery fizzes and starts to expand. Quick ! out to the garden goes the battery in case of explosion and a new phone is bought. To my delight the sim survived and I get to keep my contacts and phone number - hurrah.

download baddASS : 1.44mb zip, manual : here

what on earth is WKOLXONVKEFTJ ? google returns nothing [well, this post at least]

hmmmmmmmmmmm……..

download voldeLAY : 1.46mb zip, manual : here, more info : here, audio examples here

whiteLABEL has now had visitors from a hundred and one countries
the first mp3 demos of autoBED in action are now online :

http://www.roughdiamondproductions.com/whiteLABEL

download sideGATE : 1.46mb zip manual : here

So there it is - I can now saw I’ve engineered a live session for the BBC - bonza !

I did a mix the other day and wanted to create the effect of a sound growing out of nothing. In stereo. I wanted to apply a band pass filter and gradually make the band wider and wider until the sound was no longer being filtered. This proved somewhat trickier to get right than the idea would appear. I had to use 2 different plugins in different slots and record automation in several layers riding the resonance as I swept through the frequencies so as not to create any lumps. What I need, thought I, is something that combines a highpass and a lowpass in one plugin, so rather than deploying 2 instances of a rather complex [too big for the job] vst and control them from 2 different screens of the control surface I can now have all the controls needed, on one page, in one plugin. Smashin’

download simpleTON : 1.25mb zip - manual : here

download deeeeeLAY : 1.43mb zip manual : here

oh, and I almost forgot, the dll is 200k lighter resulting in [marginally] quicker load time

download sidePRESS 1.71mb zip … pdf manual : here

download autoBED : 1.5mb zip … pdf manual : here

get it here 

[update : by 10.03.08 downloads reach 2600 from people in 82 countries]
[further update : by 23.04.08 - 16000 from 121 countries !!]

lookahead delay now upto 2000 ms - was 1000
vst automation parameters tidied up, trimmed - down, re-organised
internals tidied up, some junk removed - download now a little smaller
choice of response modes - new led on right - when lit, fades are in db, when unlit, calculated using internal Voltage model.

download autoBED : 1.81mb zip … pdf manual : here

As if this wasn’t news enough, one of Amie’s other pieces ‘WavePOWER, WavePLAY, WavePOWER‘ will be featured as part of ResonanceFM’s contribution to the AV 08 Festival during their week long broadcast from the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

Get it here

Back in 1980 I attended the SCES and heard a demo from Peter Moncrief which purported to show the audibility of absolute phase by playing a 0.5 Hz square wave through an LS3/5a. There was an obvious difference in timbre between the B110 going in and coming out.

When I got back home, I attempted to duplicate the experiment, using Audio Technica electret headphones. (They were selected not only for their quality, but because their step-up transformers were electrically isolated, making it easy to reverse polarity.) A Heathkit generator provided the 0.5Hz square wave.

In the process of experimentation I discovered that the square wave _always_ sounded like “tick tock”. Always. I attached a ’scope and confirmed that the polarity didn’t matter — the first pulse I heard had a different timbre from the second.

Using the ’scope to show the polarity, I found I could mentally “flop” the “tick” and “tock”, and the inversion was stable with time. It was sort of the audio equivalent of the Necker Cube.

So, I’ve created wave files to have a stab at doing this demo (obviously knowing nothing more about it than whats provided in the post). I’ve discovered that the LS3/5a is a speaker designed by the good old beeb and considered somewhat of a classic. Of these, I have none, and I can’t even be bothered to look for the meaning of B110 - I bet its probably the code for the driver in the LS3/5a, or a magnet design number or somesuch. What I can provide is an approximation of a square wave at 0.5 Hz.

Okay, that’s great. To further explore this, I’ve created a pulse wave at 1Hz, and I’m not letting on which file is which.
They both sound similar, as they both consist of 19 clicks over a 20 second duration. The square wave maintains its peaks and a click is effictively produced everytime the waveform pass through zero, whereas the pusle wave peaks and then returns to 0 creating a click - hence the difference in frequencies of the originating ‘waves’.
The test is this :

Visit this page to download the zip file containing 2 wave files. Without looking at the waveforms listen to them. Are all the clicks in the file identical sounding ? Is it for both files, or just for one ?

Do your speakers sound different moving from + to - when compared to from - to + ?

When You’re done, visit this page to share your results.

That’s all really - on listenning, I [fwiw] experienced something similar to what William described with a definite ‘up / down’ feel to what I was hearing with the square wave and the ability to switch sides on the rythm, but I’m not sure if I got the same results with the pulse wave - I’ll try again in a few days time … in the mean while, happy listenning

download freqDELAY : 1.66mb zip … pdf manual : here

freqDELAY is a multi-band freak-out delay machine. The incoming stereo signal is processed through 4 bands of delay with seperate control over delay time, level, feedback, filter shape, frequency and resonance. Additional multiplier controls allow the relationships between bands to be preserved whilst changing e.g. all delay times from one knob. Finally, mix control selects how much dry and wet signal to output.

download wavePLAY : 1.84mb zip … pdf manual : here

Designed by Sound Artist Amie Slavin, wavePLAY is a simple 4 oscillator wave-explorer synthesiser. Each oscillator has controls for wave shape (7 types) frequency, amplitude and pan. The initial idea for wavePLAY was to provide sounds for a piece of the same name by Amie to act as a partner piece to wavePOWER, a 20 minute voice and sound bricolage exploring amongst other things the potential of tidal wavePOWER as a means of producing clean, sustainable electricity. wavePOWER was broadcast / netcast on Resonance 104.4fm on feb 11th ‘08 and is scheduled for another airing sometime in march.

Read more about the work of Amie Slavin.
Read more about wavePLAY and wavePOWER.

download autoBED : 1.84mb zip … pdf manual : here

Imagine a scenario where you have a voice-over and a backing track, and want them to co-exist nicely in your production. Well, thats what autoBED is for.

Basic instructions for use (with reference to cubase ®, my host of choice). Assuming you have a stereo music track and a mono or stereo voice-over track, you’ll first need to create a quadro group track. Now route the music track to the group track inputs 1 and 2 using surround panner in Y mirror mode so that the left channel goes to quadro channel 1, the right to 2. Now do the same for the voice-over (keying) track, but this time, route it to tracks 3 & 4 of the quadro group. Now autoBED is setup for ducking the music whenever the voice-over hits the threshhold level. This screen-shot shows what happens with the envelope of a pure-wave-carrier and an ambient recording of a drumkit as the key - the key isn’t in the final mix for clarity’s sake :

download sideGATE : 1.75mb zip … pdf manual : here … this one for : more info

When the modulator is higher than the threshhold, the carrier is audible, when lower, gated - leading rise to the sort of functionality needed to say, replace a bass drum with another sound using the bass drum’s envelope :

First create a stereo group. Route the synth to the left channel of the group, and the bass drum to the right. Set the channel knob fully to the left, and the sidechain knob fully to the right. This is the basic start-point as the bass drum now gates the synth.

• The newly implimented auto Attack mode now ties attack time to look-ahead delay time to save having to do sums,
• autoGAIN mode improved so it has unity gain with regular gain knob
• autoGAIN display now working for right channel when auto mode is on
• presets freshened up a little

oh, and I’ve updated the website too : [whiteLABEL vst plugins]

I’ve been inside the case and its not gonna be difficult to fix but still …. arse

On a more positive note, I’ve now got the old laptop running as a virtual synth - haha - it’ll manage about 4ms latency comfortably running a single vsti with 3 moderately hungry insert fx, not bad for a vanilla dell pentium M 1.4gHz running XP on a paltry 256mb of ram with a cheap as chips internal audio chip.

Three cheers for cantabile : http://www.toptensoftware.com/cantabile/

So, two firsts - Amie had an hour of air-time, and I had one of my plugins used for about 10 minutes of the show.

“WavePower, WavePLAY, WavePower” is scheduled for another play in March - keep an ear on Resonance FM for more details.

Read more about the work of Sound Artist Amie Slavin.
Read about Wave POWER.
Get the wavePLAY vst plugin.

get it here : http://www.roughdiamondproductions.com/whiteLABEL

find them here : http://www.roughdiamondproductions.com/whiteLABEL

VST and ASIO are trademarks of Steinberg Soft-und-Hardware GmbH.

for more info on monks’ roar, visit amie’s page.