Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Fire - super multitap delay [ VST | AU ]



It's a sort of multitap delay with panning and controllable morphing between settings.
Instead of controlling each echo separately, there's a bunch of parametrized functions that you can use to generate various kinds of effects.

LiveCut - a real time phrase based beat-slicer [ VST | AU ]



It is a live beat-slicer but instead of manipulating equal chunks of audio like most beatslicer do, it works on the notion of audio cuts whose length and number of repetition depends on the context and the cutting procedure. cuts are organized in blocks which then form a phrase. see Image below. And each phrase can be ended by a roll or fill.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Maestro Frankenstein - "An Application for the Creation of Geophonic Music"



That fact someone had the need to create a beast of a program that transforms your tabular data into music, gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I mean, who wouldn't want to transform the tremors of Mt. St. Helens into a symphony? Really, who???

From the author:

Have you ever wondered what climate cycles of the last million years SOUND like? What would happen if you turned tide level data into sound waves? If geological cycles could make music - what would the melody be? The harmony?

Maestro Frankenstein is a unique application that is designed as a multitrack data sequencer to map timeseries data to notes or musical control values. Although designed with geologic data in mind, Maestro Frankenstein creates a score from any timeseries data and plays it back in realtime with any instrument (MIDI, VST or built-in synth) that you specify.

Vox Machina - text to audio converter



Vox Machina is simple, but usefull. All it does is render text into OSX's synthesized speach. That's it. But now you two can create wonderfull synth vox just like Outkast and Radiohead have done.

Audacity - multitrack waveform editor/converter/multi-tool


Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

  • Record live audio.
  • Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
  • Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
  • Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
  • Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
  • And more!

Unbearable Devices - Midi Sequencers and other madness

Over at http://www.unbearablerecordings.co.uk/devices/ lives a couple of unique programs; the GUIDMachine and the Valevarion Evolved.

From the manual you will find that the Valevarion Evolved is the more interesting of the two. It allows multiple step sequences to run at independent tempos to create utter rhythmic madness. It is only a midi generator, but for what it does it does it well. And it's free. And I can verify that it works.

So plug in all your midi gear then go nuts with the Valevarion and get some wiggity whack compound rhythms going.

AudioXplorer - real time audio analyzer


Real-time analysis

AudioXplorer provides real-time analysis window where user can visualize the sound, spectrum and sonogram. Several real-time windows can be opened simultaneously.

Static analysis

AudioXplorer provides static analysis window: user can record or generate any sound and performs operation on it. Sound from the real-time window can be dragged at any time to the static window for more analysis.

Crystal VST


Crystal is a semi-modular software synthesizer featuring both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/lforates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing, granular synthesis, program morphing, MIDI learn, and imports soundfonts. The musical applications for Crystal are literally boundless.

Orca VST 2.3


ORCA is an experimental monosynth built to showcase some exciting new technology that we've been developing. Based on detailed and accurate models of analogue synthesizer circuits and components, ORCA excels at deep, squelchy basses and thick unison leads.

Destroy FX Universal Binaries

If you head over to http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/audiounits.html you will find UB ports of all of destroy fx's freeware Audio Units. About 14 different pugins.

automat Audio Unit




It's a bad ass subtractive synthesizer.

Impromptu


Impromptu is an OSX programming environment for composers, sound artists, VJ's and graphic artists with an interest in live or interactive programming. Impromptu is a Scheme language environment, a member of the Lisp family of languages.

Time plays a major role in the Impromptu environment allowing accurate real-time scheduling of events and code blocks. Impromptu is a dynamic environment designed for the creation and manipulation of running programs in live performance.

xEQ Audio Unit


xEQ is a straight forward parametric EQ/Tone Control. It consists of Low and High shelf filters and three Peak/Cut filters. It is very useful for placing around distortion effects. Place before as a tone control and after to simulate a speaker cabinet's frequency response curve.

xTrem Audio Unit


xTrem is a tremolo unit capableof a nice range of tremolo shapes. It works as a mono or stereo tremolo. In mono mode, the left channel controls are active. The two channels are fully independent except for the tremolo depth setting. This gives it the capability of producing some interesting panning/tremolo combinations.