Archive for the 'Music' Category

Since Version 2.0 Quicktime has had the capability to play MIDI files using either a built in sound synthesiser package or any hardware MIDI device. As I am interested in creating audio-visual works and programs work with existing digital interfaces and networks I recently began to investigate the possibility of triggering MIDI events from a Quicktime Movie. I could create a ‘click’ track to run in synch with a video track and trigger live sounds and effects through MIDI to excellent audio programs like Ableton Live with each clip. This was all looking very exciting except that the ability to send these MIDI signals seems to have been lost.

A ‘music’ track can trigger sounds from;
1. The built in sound synthesiser (licenced from Roland); or
2. Another collection of samples or ‘sound font’ if it is installed on the user’s computer; or
3. Sound samples embedded in the music track itself.

One of the cool things about dealing with sounds this way is that the pitch and tempo of sounds can be controlled relatively independently. For example with a drum track composed of short samples arranged in synch with a video loop, the player could slow down the speed of the clip and the drums would follow. Or, the drum sounds themselves could be pitched up or down without effecting the video or going out of synch.

While this provides a lot of potential options for music output from Quicktime I’d really like to be able to interface with other MIDI hardware and software.

After a long search for a solution to this problem I still haven’t achieved this, but I’ve found some extremely cool little audio/MIDI utilities which I’m already finding useful:

Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba allows the audio recording of any Mac OS X application’s output. It can be used to record internet radio stations in any format, live performances and even game soundtracks to MP3 or AIFF. Another cool feature is the ability to tap into Core Audio‘s ability to process VST and Audio Units real time audio effects. This means you can add reverb, equalisation, distortion, delay etc to any audio in real time and record it to hard disk.

SoundFlower from Cycling ’74 is another useful little utility that gives you an additional ‘virtual’ audio input and output for routing sound within OS X. Similar to the way Propellerhead’s ReWire lets you plug some audio applications into each other, SoundFlower also allows any audio application to pass sound to another for further processing. This means I can trigger sounds in a Quicktime movie and process them in Live. This rocks.

Jack Tools is another utility which does the same sort of thing but I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet. SoundFlower seems better at first glance but I’m sure they are quite similar.

FingaMIDI is yet another cool audio utility I found as part of my search. This one is definitely going to be used in future live performances. When activated via a Sytem Preferences pane, FingaMIDI turns the trackpad of any recent Powerbook or iBook into a three-dimensional MIDI interface. Just like a Korg Kaoss Pad, the trackpad outputs the absolute X and Y co-ordinates of the user’s finger as well as Z pressure.

[The User] are a Canadian artist collective, formed by Thomas McIntosh and Emmanuel Madan. As they write on their website, “[The User] inhabits the trailing edge of technology”, focussing on alternate uses for obsolete technology. Their most famous work Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers was recently sampled by Radiohead in their excellent radiohead.tv. The work involves the sequencing of multiple dot matrix printers to produce rhythmic patterns of noises. Video and MP3 samples are available on the website.

Their most recent work Silophone opens interaction up to users anywhere in the world through a web interface. ‘Users’ can upload sound files to a server and trigger their playback into a giant empty silo. The resulting sounds are then streamed back to the user via realaudio.