A much overdue post...

...it's been a busy past couple of months for myself and now that I've had time to relax a little I thought it was probably about time I posted a little update here too:

I have now finished my degree at the University of Hull and will be graduating next month. With all of the marks I've had thus far I am still on track for a first class finish so here's hoping that's still the case when I receive my final set of marks in about three weeks.

What next? Following an interesting talk given by Atau Tanaka last month, I have been inspired to further explore new concepts of audience and artist relationships with a particular focus on technology and interactivity (my key area of interest after 3 years of studying). I think a masters course that allows me to work within this field is what I shall be pursuing, so long as funding permits!

In terms of current and recent projects, I realise that my website is now due an update too and hopefully this will happen at some point in the next couple of weeks. To give a idea of what I've been up to since my last post:

Back at the end of April, I went to Germany with my traditional folk group Frozen Gin. We played a very enjoyable set to one of the most welcoming crowds I have ever had the pleasure to perform to and made some great friends who I hope to see again! Gleichen zeit im nächsten jahr? Studio recordings of some of the tracks we played that night are also available to download here.

Around the time we played that concert I also got my hands on a new iPad and have been having plenty of fun it. Having made plentiful use of apps like TouchOSC in the past on smaller iDevics I've been experimenting with some ideas, creating some new MaxMSP patches to use it with. One of those which I have pursued a little further I have decided to call PhatPad (or I should say 'had'):

WIP icon and WIP title for my latest creation.

It turns out someone has already made a completely unrelated app called PhatPad so this probably won't be its final name, however the concept is something that's proved to be quite useful. Given the restricted number of dials on my Moog Little Phatty (yes I have far too much gear) I decided to make a TouchOSC/MaxMSP combination that allows more flexible control utilising multiple faders and XY pads etc. I also get semi-wireless control (the iPad communicates with the MaxMSP patch over wi-fi which passes along MIDI messages to the Moog) which is especially useful given that I've been building in a mini-sequencer too!

I'll get some videos posted of that as soon as I've done some more work on it. With all the more pressing work I've had to complete since I got the iPad, I've not had much chance to look at it since I first worked on it!

I've probably missed something but I've got far more time on my hands now so updates should come a little more quickly (I hope). Additionally, from the end of this month I'll be based in Manchester. Fancy that!

General Update

I thought it was about to time to give a quick update after some recent developments!

The Charms Of The Sea installation project is nearing completion and is looking rather good. If you're in Scarborough from the 18th to the 28th of November be sure to call in at the Rotunda Museum. I will be present on a few ocassions to give any technical support as well as talk about the project with members of the public.

In other news, today I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by and meeting Satoshi Shiraishi, a Japanese musician and artist based in Holland. He gave a very intersting presentation on realtime timbre analysis and performance with a homemade digital instrument constructed from water pipes and a saxophone/clarinet mouthpiece! He also showed some great videos of previous performances/installations and demonstrated some very nice MaxMSP/Jitter patches including a fascinating 'realtime timbre space' rendering frequencies in a three-dimensional OpenGL environment.

It wasn't until after the talk and I was speaking to Satoshi that I discovered one of my lecturers had demonstrated my own iTouch Synth to him and I was very honoured to have an artist as talented as himself be so complimentary about my work! I also found out that he and I have both been undertaking similar exlplorations in the use of electric guitars with Arduino hardware, very spooky indeed.

Having been reminded of this today I thought I should give an update on 'Strat-O-Synth'. The project is now back on track and I have for the last few days been working on the framework of the FM synth that will be controllable with the Arduino circuitry I'm rigging up with my guitar and playable with the pitch-tracked guitar itself. The components will now be mounted to the guitar in some form of external enclosure that I am currently sourcing. Stay tuned for further updates!

Project Updates - October

Having started the first semester of my final year at university, I thought I'd just give a quick word about some of my ongoing projects.

Guitar Virtual Instrument

I've made some more progress with the guitar project, which I'm now tentatively calling 'Strat-o-Synth', although I have fallen a little behind schedule with the hardware stage. Despite making measurements beforehand, I appear to have cut the board that I'm attaching wires and other components to slightly too wide to fit inside the instrument, meaning I can't get the scratchplate fully back on. As a result, I'll have to tighten up the arrangement of the wires and components so that I can compact the board a tiny bit more!

Despite this space issue, the circuits are performing as I hoped they would so I should be able to post some photos of the complete hardware before too long and finally make some more progress with the actual software instrument.

Museum Installation - Charms Of The Sea

Along with my virtual instrument project, the same university module focusing on interactive and alternative interfaces also requires myself and other students to create an interactive audio-visual installation. In order to best apply our skills for this task, our lecturer has arranged - in conjunction with Mark Hildred of Apollo Creative and Scarborough Museums Trust - for us to create an installation for a brief set my the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough.

The piece will be based on the various charms collected by naturalist William James Clarke in the early 20th Century from all over the world, in particular those from the sea. This installation is part of the lead-up to an exhibition for the Cultural Olympiad inspired by his work, coming in 2012.

I myself will be working in a four-man team to create a section on 'Health' charms, one of four overall sections making up the installation. As part of the assignment, I will be required to blog regularly about both my group's and my own progress throughout the project. A link to this blog will be posted soon.

The installation will be open to the public at the end of November. 

Other Projects

After the expanded performance of 'Dinner In Three Movements', myself and other members of the collaborative music and contemporary dance group 'Flambé' have begun various preparations for our next piece. More information will be available in the coming weeks as well as a brief video documenting the creation and realisation of the September performance.

As always please feel free to visit my website and get in contact with me for any more information. Thanks for reading.

New Project - Virtual Instrument With Guitar Control

Hi there, I thought it was about time to make my first official post on my blog and outline my plans for a new project! Here goes:

Some hardware I'll be using in my new project!

For the final year of my degree beginning this Autumn, I've once again chosen a module that focuses on creating and utilising alternative and interesting forms of interactive music performance (or composition, art installations etc.). Following the success of my 'iTouch Synth' (Mac application available here!) I have again decided to design and create a virtual instrument, with an alternative method of control.

iTouch Synth'

 In the accompanying documentation for 'iTouch Synth', I stated that the limitations encountered in my previous computer music projects - the projects I have created in MaxMSP - had arisen due to a necessity to map my own creations to another person's i.e. my software patch to a their hardware controller. With this in mind, I found using the customisable environment of the iPod application TouchOSC liberating, given that I could custom fit my own controls to software patch.

I love my MIDI controller, but it has its limitations.

 As much as I enjoyed and was pleased using this customisable touch-screen control - which I will continue to use in the future - I couldn't help but long for the feeling of tactile controls! It was this longing and a hypothetical idea for expanding the capability of existing instruments that brought me to my latest project idea.

iPod Touch - too flat!

 At this stage, my basic plan is to have a virtual instrument - a synth or sampler, possibly a hybrid - that is played using my electric guitar - with frequency and amplitude tracking etc. Alongside this I plan to employ hardware controls for adjustment of software parameters. Rather than using my current MIDI controllers, iTouch or investing in a floor-controller, I've instead decided to have integrated controls on and within my electric guitar, using the open-source hardware Arduino.

My Arduino Duemilanove and breadbord.

So far my experiments have covered FFT frequency tracking and re-synthesis as well as endless breadbord prototyping of the hardware but the project is developing quickly! Stay posted here in coming weeks for information on this developing project!

Some of the components to be added to my guitar.