Wobbles 1.0.2 is now released, fixing a bug where many users would hear static at the output. Get it here. Wobbles has now been downloaded over 2000 times. Thanks for the interest.
I've spent days trying to send MIDI data from an Arduino (Diecimila) to Max/MSP on my Windows 7 laptop. There is a load of information out there on this, but a lot of it is convoluted and outdated. I finally got this working today, so I thought I'd share my configuration with others:
In my code, I'm using MIDI Library. I'm sending note-on messages and control change messages with my data every 100ms. That's not an ideal rate, but it works for my purpose for now.
My Arduino is connected to my laptop via USB.
The first utility I'm running on my laptop is LoopBe1, which is a virtual MIDI driver. It provides a virtual MIDI input and output. MIDI messages sent to the input are repeated at the output.
The second utility I'm running is S2MIDI, which sends converts serial data into MIDI. I have the COM port set to the virtual serial port the Arduino is connected to, the baud rate set to 31250 (standard MIDI baud rate) and the MIDI output port set to "LoopBe Internal MIDI" (you need to run LoopBe1 first in order for this to show up).
Finally, in my Max patch, I am set-up to receive MIDI from "LoopBe Internal MIDI". I'm using the "ctlin" object to get access to my control change data.
Let me know if you have a simpler configuration. Using two utilities is definitely not ideal or necessary. A lot of people recommend MIDI Yoke, but I couldn't get it to work at all.
A new Osprey Signal tune has just been released with some visuals:
Winter Static might not be be released publicly for awhile, but another 8 track (so far) album is in the works. A site has also been launched at www.ospreysignal.com.
I'm releasing an album soon called Winter Static under the name Osprey Signal. The music is sort of ambient, downtempo and experimental. Here's the cover art:
I've been insanely busy, but now I'm finally starting to have some time again. Since my last post I have returned to Newfoundland, gone through another term of school (including 3 design projects), had a close uncle pass away, recorded an album and started a new work term at Avalon Microelectronics. My work term at EA went really well. NFS: World is now in beta testing which you can apply for here. That's it for now. I'll probably make some posts about the projects I worked on last term and the upcoming album soon.
Wobbles has just been updated to version 1.0.1. This was mostly just to fix a crash that some people were getting with the AU release. No issues have been reported with the VST release. Wobbles has received about 500 downloads in just two weeks. That's a whole lot more than I expected.
I just released a free vibrato plugin called Wobbles. You can check it out on the downloads page or by clicking here.
I'm hoping to release an audio "scrambling" effect sometime soon. I've been playing with Max/MSP and Sonic Birth a lot lately, they're really fun.
I am now in Burnaby, BC and have just started a 4 month work term with EA. I'm really pumped to be here and everything has been fun so far. EA is a very upbeat place to work. They have a lot of free-play arcade games, free coffee, people bring their dogs to work and there are lots of other perks. There's a friendly dog who's close to my desk. Sometimes he wanders over and I get to pet him. I've been assigned to the Need for Speed: World Online team. For those of you who don't know, Need for Speed is a racing game series that has been around since 1994. The game that I'm working on is a free-to-play massively multiplayer take on the series. So far it seems like my job will be focused around tool development for the game's database. I probably can't say much more than that.
As a project for term 1 (Winter 2008) of the engineering program we had to design a product to solve any problem we wanted. Many members of my group were musicians, so we set out to design a device that would turn sheet music without the musician having to take their hands off their instrument. We came up with an incredible number of ideas and eventually settled on a design which involved an electromagnet(solenoid), a rotating arm, an Arduino microcontroller and a foot pedal. Paper clips would be placed on each page to turn through before operation. Pushing the button on the foot pedal would cause the solenoid to turn on (grabbing the next paper clip), rotate the arm (turning the page), deactivate the solenoid (letting go of the page) and turn the arm back. This worked fairly well, but occasionally multiple pages would get turned. To prevent this we added a servo motor and an arm to the bottom of the device. This would hold the pages down when necessary.
One on Twoism is a compilation series of electronic/ambient music composed by the members of Twoism.org. The project is organized and mixed by Grim on Mbient (Robin Temming). This year I decided to help build the microsite for the third installment of the compilation: One on Twoism Volume 3. I initially came up with an idea in Photoshop involving a page and cover from an old book. I sent the idea off to Joseph Bastardo- the talented guy who designed the album artwork. He made some awesome additions to the design, meshing it much more with the album art. I cut the design up and made it into an actual site using HTML/CSS/PHP and then it went online last saturday.
I didn't have a chance to submit any music to the compilation this time around, but I did have a song included on volume 2.
