Scientist extracts images directly from brain!

It sounds like science fiction, but it seems japanese researchers have managed to extract letters using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine!

Via Pink Tentacle:
"The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

For now, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. But Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, suggests that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

“These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity,” says Dr. Cheng. “In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.”"

This opens up some insane possibilites if you ask me!

Doepfer A-106-1 Xtreme filter AR-FM Demo

I just bought a A-106-1 Xtreme Filter, I got it in the mail today!

Audio rate FM using four ADSR's in loop mode, the ADSR's are running in audio-rate.
ADSR1 is doing the syncronization.
ADSR2 is synched to ADSR2 and connected to a real ring mod, X input.
ADSR3 is not synched and goes into real ring mod, Y input.
ADSR4 is synched to ADSR1 and goes to CV3 (adjustable +/-10) on the A-106-1
real ring mod out is going into LP in on the A-106-1 VCF.
Resonance is up quite high, some kind of clipping is always active, either +, - or both.

Doepfer A-106-1 Xtreme filter AR-FM Demo by Veqtor

Live @ Fylkingen 5/12/08

Teknoist, Me and my friends Daniel Araya and Marcus Ihlar, don't miss it!

Tim Exile @ Elevate Live Video

This is what in my opinion electronic music is all about,
it's the man, the machines, Tim Exile! =P

If you don't know Exile from before, he's made a lot of reaktor work, from core-cells to ensembles to his live-setup.

"Sell sell sell sell, spin the carouselle once more, one more brick between the rich and the poor"

Analogue vs Digital

So, for fun I wanted to do something with my currently extremely limited modular: I patched 2 ADSR's from my A-143-2 into self-trigger mode, with their speeds set to high. This creates two oscillators with a waveform which goes from saw-wave, to triangle and into ramp. Then I ran them into my passive ring-mod. The output was recorded while I tweaked away at it.

Then I decided to go crazy, I put the soundfile into a track in Ableton Live and set the sample's playback setting to complex, I recorded tempo-changes to create fft'y time-stretches where needed. Next up was dtblk, binding settings to a midi-controller, made automating it a really good time. The end result was bounced to a new file, as I wanted a fresh start.

Next up was loads of filtering, using PSP Nitro, Oligaric, Arcdev Cyclotron and much more. This was done in parallell, in order to create more movement in the sound.

Veqtor-AnalogVsDigitaltest.mp3

If you're wondering how I get it to integrate well with the modular sound, then I can give you some pointers.

1. Always work in 96 Khz and 24 or more bits, to avoid aliasing at all times, especially when working with recorded modular material! Then when all processing is finished, you can use some nice resampler, like the one by izotope which is available inside Audiofile Engineering's Wave Editor, for mac users, Adobe Audition's resampler isn't too bad either. Doing it this way will create a highly vivid result.

2. Automate

3. Automate

4. Automate, I really can't stress this enough, without movement, even if it's hard to hear it, effects and such which are static is what a lot of people associate with a digital sound.

5. Use your DAW and plugins to do things which aren't possible in the analogue world (why try to make your computer something it's not?), ideally, use a modular software, such as Plogue Bidule as a modular effect to control these plugins. Plogue Bidule can be utilized with multiple inputs and outputs to create extremely complex routings.

6. NEVER, and I mean NEVER, synthesize a waveform on a computer unless it's meant to have digital characteristics, a highly trained ear simply tells it from an analogue one instantly, unless it's a painstakingly accurate emulation, like d16-group's phoscyon, but it is the only example of an analogue emulation that has actually tricked one of my friends ;-)

TipTop Audio's Z3000 pics and Audio Demos

This is from Muff Wiggler's Forum, he also was kind enough to post some audio demos!

"First is a comparason between Blacet VCO sine and Z3000 sine. I just pan back and forth between them with a joystick. It starts with 2 bars of Blacet sine, then 2 bars of Z3000 sine, then back to Blacet, etc.

It ends with 4 bars of Blacet VCO."

Simple Sines

"The second is just a very rough demo of applying FM to the Z3000. I'm not modulating the FM index through a VCA or anything, just one Z3000's triangle wave into the FM input of the other Z3000.

First you hear the Z3000 saw by itself. I have the other Z3000 into the Linear FM input, but the Linear FM control is set to nothing. A few bars, then I turn up the Linear FM control just a bit, then turn it down, then a bit more, then turn it down, then a bit more, then down....you get the idea

Then in unplug the external VCO and plug it into the Exponential FM input. Then I mess around with the tuning of the external VCO.

Then I unplug it and you have the dry saw again.

Now this is just a quick n' dirty because I know people are talking about it on other forums. I only had a few mins for this, I'm supposed to be working and gotta get back at it"

FM Test (this is my favorite -v)

The original forum thread

update:
Here's another pic by REwire



And a nice little sound example by him as well:

256mbps Mp3

Soundlist: Pulse, PWM, Saw, ExpFM, LinFM, Sync, HSM (Hard Sync Modulation)

FM and source was RS95e. During end HSM, I was moving the waveform shape of the RS-95e.

REwire_-_TipTopZ3000_Demo.mp3

Sounds like a really powerful module! For a complete description, check it out at Analogue Haven

and don't miss noisesource's awesome review!

On the fringe of science...

Fringe, a series co-created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, has captured my interest lately. It's a science fiction series and it's subject is "fringe science".
What really lifts this series above average is the acting-effort of John Noble as the mad-scientist, Dr. Bishop.

Oh, and so far I've spotted an Roland MC-303 and several computer-screens sporting something extremely similar to Max/MSP or pure data (couldn't tell because of low resolution.)
Makes you wonder who the prop-guys are.

nitro2k01 - INSEX Micro EP

My friend nitr2k01 just released a FREE "Micro EP" of 4 tracks made on Gameboy using only two channels, the pulse no.1 and the pitched noise channel. And not just that, the pulse instrument had to be really short.

Check it out NOW!

Multi-Touch "Cell"

Via Create Digital Motion
"Multi-touch for visualists? It’s coming, and it may have nothing to do with names like Apple or Microsoft. But while many projects now are experimental and pricey, your hands do seem to be close to being liberated from the mouse and keyboard alone."

I can't wait to make a av-patch in max w. one of these!

Reaktor + Touchscreen

Via KORE@CDM and Create Digital Music

Building instruments and effects in Reaktor is a lot like building your own hardware. But ever wished those fabulous UIs you’ve seen could be used via something other than … ugh … your mouse? View Reaktor with a touchscreen or touch-controlled projection, and it’s an entirely different game. We already knew Tim Exile was a fan of touchscreens, but here’s what it can do in the hands of another Reaktor master.

Above are videos of Metrognome a.k.a Karl White getting down with a custom ensemble on a touchscreen. Karl reveals on the NI forums:

That was a huge undertaking and is one very complex Reaktor mod. I’ll be making more stuff public on the user library once I get the documentation lined up.

His site sports a lot of cool reaktor stuff like the BushInABox:

Plogue Bidule + DtBlkFx = Fun

Something I've been working on, using plogue bidule to turn dtblkfx into a FSU-device (like glitch but with fft fx)
Example, featuring livecut:

Plogue+DtBlkFx

Meet the bitfreak!

This is the Bitfreak for Reaktor 5, it uses pseudo-random, or pitched noise (NES, Atari 2600) as it's main sound source, and more than 200 types of it!!!There is no other software synth that does anything even similar to this
(I have no idea why, because it sounds awesome!).
Now you have another good reason to get your hands on Reaktor 5!

Download (rar)

Bitfreak Demo

A MIDI-Ready Nintendo Game Boy, with Help From Arduino

Arduinoboy mGB from trash80 on Vimeo
via Create Digital Music

Lovers of the sound of the original Nintendo Game Boy, the Minimoog of game systems with its distinctive, rich 8-bit sound, this may be the best solution for integrating it with other music gear.

Our friend trash80, aka Timothy, has completed a project with open-source code for the affordable, easily-programmable Arduino electronics platform. To make it work, he’s built his own custom cartridge, adding standard MIDI communication with other devices. An 1/8” minijack plugs into your Game Boy cart, but you get standard MIDI DIN on the other end for connecting to keyboards, computers, and the like. With all the code available, you should not only be able to build your own MIDI Game Boy, but apply some of trash80’s techniques to other MIDI hardware projects, as well.

Full documentation:

Flickr set

Code, project detail, and docs at Google Code

That’s the full Arduinoboy shield below:

trash80 also has a great liveset demo featuring the wayfar midines and monome:

Liveset Filter Scratching from trash80 on Vimeo.

Spiral Sequencer for Reaktor

via Kore Noisepages. The new spiral sequencer, created by lazyfish. Looks cool...

"Native Instruments has posted a teaser video of something new called Spiral. It’s a sequencing instrument, and as you can see modulation is represented by swirling squares. It looks fantastic, it sounds wonderful and fluid – it’s, naturally, the creation of Reaktor maestro Lazyfish, who brought us ensembles like the cellular automata-powered Newschool and the brilliantly inscrutable Gaugear in Reaktor 5.1. Lazyfish is the kind of person who can make you believe the future of software instruments is unlimited."

A short étude for flute UPDATE!

Just a short étude I did for school.

Update:
Today our études were to be performed by professional musicians, although many of them were okay, I had the bad luck of getting a somewhat... disillusioned, to say the least, flute player as the person who was going to perform my étude. Now what really bugs me is that these guys were getting paid to do this and only one out of five seemed to take it remotely serious. If they could at least try...

Yet another time my love of electronics has been reinforced, not having to think about fumbling musicians ruining your ideas really helps when trying to be creative... Not to mention what computers can do to sound recordings. I did record it and just for you to compare I edited it to sound a bit more like I would have wanted it to be like. First it's his FAIL, and then the edited.

veqtor-a_small_flute_etude_failvsediting.mp3

What annoyed me the most was his excuses that the piece was written way too fast and bla bla bla. Hey, this guy is supposed to be a pro right? How come he's not at least on par with most other flute players. If you don't take your profession seriously (not as in being overly proud of being a musician but as in being devoted as hell) you should just quit, especially when it comes to being a musician these days since information is so readily available no one's interested in semi-professional skills.

I wish I could work with someone like this instead:

DtBlkFx is awesome and free!

Do you sometimes discover an awesome thing that's been around for ages but you for some reason haven't encountered it despite how cool it is? DtBlkFx was one of those things for me. My flatmate showed it to me the other day and I've been hooked ever since!

It's an FFT-multi-effect for Win and Mac and has a couple of different transformations you can perform on the FFT'ed material, but what really opens up some new oportunities is the masking, which lets you for example select all the even harmonics and perform the transformations on it instead of on everything.

Official Site and Download

And here's a little thing I made using a couple of instances of it, and some BO, with a lot of Random, tempo-synchronized LFO's controlling almost everything there is in both effects...

edit: try opening it in audition's spectral view:












Veqtor-DtBlkFx_Glitch_Demo

The Combine Interview

“Where’s the Party At?” Bendable DIY Sampler Brings 8-bit Back

Via Create Digital Music.

Todd Bailey’s “Where’s the Party At?” wants to return to a simpler, glitchier era of sampling. When CDM spoke to Hank Shocklee, Public Enemy’s legendary producer, he talked about how those artists really preferred earlier samplers because of, not in spite of, their flaws. And because lo-fi is a little easier to pull off, this makes a great project.

WTPA is an open source 8-bit digital sampler kit, designed to be hacker and bender friendly. Inspired by the preponderance of wack samplers proliferating in music today, WTPA brings back the fun, the danger, and the aliasing errors.

I want one!

Adrenalin 3/10

Stockholm's first real Breakcore-club, Adrenalin is held at Fylkingen, on the 3rd of October DuranDuranDuran gets to see the miserable culture-starved scandinavian city of Stockholm and probably play to the smallest breakcore crowd in europe...

Unless you and your friends go there, so as not to embaress ourselves.

Veqtor Loves Renoise 2.0 BETA

Some of the features that I had only dreamed of:

• Full, automatic, sample precise Plugin Delay Compensation (PDC) for Track FX (native and Plugin) and Instruments (aka everything). You simply don't have to care if a VST Plugin or instrument introduces unwanted latency. Renoise will compensate it for you under the hood.
• Mac OSX: Added support for Audio Unit (AU) Plugins (finally)
• Multi output VSTis (AUs) are now fully supported. Samplers or Synths with multiple channels can now be routed to individual tracks.
• Sending notes to VST (AU) FX is now supported. Simply create a FX alias in the VST Instruments pane to do so (link an instrument to an existing FX).

A little gift to you...

This is just something I've been working on a few nights in a row, decided I just wanted to give it away. Relaxation-music, so click the download, make a cup of tea and fire it up and grab your favorite book or magazine, also works great falling asleep to. Cheers

Download Veqtor - Retrospective (35 megs @ 710 kbps FLAC)

edit: a new version of this track has been submitted to the what.cd compilation 2, until I know if it'll be on there it won't be available for download...

edit2: the new track can now be downloaded from here. It's a bit different, and a lot more worked through AND it's in FLAC! Enjoy!

(c) 2008 Göran Sandström, all rights reserved. All forms of public broadcast without prior authorization forbidden by law.