“I wish that I was addressing our community under different circumstances.

Unfortunately an event has occurred that in my opinion warrants a unique approach that ends not only in a solution for the situation that I have found myself in but also takes a fresh look at how we can help better serve our entire community as a whole. I have been robbed of much of my current gear, for both recording and three different live shows.

I will pay anyone either $20,000 US Dollars or my equivalent time as a producer in exchange for the name and address of the perpetrators. This information will be more helpful to me, than just getting my gear back. Over 150k dollars of gear was stolen including my main show computer containing the entire show for This Binary Universe. This is priceless to me, as is my Hartman Neuron and Dave Smith Poly-Evolver…”

- Brian Transeau, a.k.a. BT

BT continues with a partial list of the equipment stolen from his studio, and proposes a non-profit community subscription service where individuals can “thumbprint” their gear to help track future stolen goods. Read more here.

Link via matrixsytnth.

Ninbento is a modification of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System that acts as a music visualization system. Using a custom-built circuit and a practice known as “circuit bending,” the modified NES will “listen” to music and generate chaotic and colorful displays to the beat.

Video by apleasantnoise. Thanks to PAgent of PAgent’s Progress for another great find.

Part of getbent.

Music: a Mathematical Offering by Dave Benson

A good friend of mine recently sent me a link to “Music: a Mathematical Offering” by Dave Benson. I’ve only briefly skimmed the text. However, I can already assure you this free online book is full of useful information. It does veer into the technical, as it is packed with equations that may seem a bit alien to some. Don’t let this dissuade you, as there is plenty of knowledge for people of all backgrounds.

The PDF is 524 pages long, making printing a not-so-viable option. For those who wish to read a hard copy, you can purchase the book from Amazon.

Here is a list of chapters in the online version:

1. Waves and harmonics
2. Fourier theory
3. A mathematician’s guide to the orchestra
4. Consonance and dissonance
5. Scales and temperaments: the fivefold way
6. More scales and temperaments
7. Digital music
8. Synthesis
9. Symmetry in music

I would also like to point out that my synthesizer of choice, Csound, is covered.

flickr photo be me

I’ve recently started to experiment with High Dynamic Range photography. Some of the works I’ve seen on flickr are absolutely amazing. However, there are times when I think the technique becomes too hyper-real, even for my tastes. Either way, I’m having fun with it, which I guess is the only thing that truly matters.

thumbuki20070214.csd

The fifth Csound Blog entry is up.

“According to wikipedia, convolution is ‘a mathematical operator which takes two functions f and g and produces a third function that in a sense represents the amount of overlap between f and a reversed and translated version of g.’ However, this explanation tells us little about convolution as applied to audio…”

Topics covered:

• Convolution
• Impulse Response
• Reverb
• Filter

More at The Csound Blog. For more information about Csound, please visit cSounds.com.

Flickr Photo by devowski.

thumbuki20070206.csd

The fourth Csound Blog entry is up.

“One of my earliest synthesizer fascinations was the robotic voice produced by band vocoders. While in college, I stumbled across the vocoder schematics in The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads. Equipped with only Csound and my new-found knowledge, I created my first vocoder instrument. I have since designed many variations, and will likely to continue doing so for many years to come. Because robots rule…”

Topics covered:

• Band Vocoder
• Envelope Follower
• Speech Synthesis

Visit:
The Csound Blog