10. Musical things about Linux

I love Linux. I Love it for its liberties, the spirit and most: Raw performance!
It is just a pity that there is not more commercial software available for it, because it usually offers the best designed workflows.
Here is a list of 10 reasons that spring to my mind why one would like to run Linux. This is not an attempt to persuade anyone to ditch their current setup and go full on Linux. But an attempt to show that it has its place in media production outside of 3D Graphics and storage but also in Audio.

1. Realtime Kernel allows for ultra low latency, unmatched by any other OS!

2. The trinity of Jack Audio and ALSA, held together by Pulse allows you to route any audio or midi signal to any software inside your computer and over the network.

3. Linux can run on very old computers, this helps you reactivate unused boxes. I use a 10 year old laptop as additional synth!

4. DIN is noise, a fantastical and unique digital instrument.
http://dinisnoise.org/

5. FreqTweak
http://freqtweak.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

6. Harrisson Mixbus
http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/

7. Bristol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_(software)

8. Korg Kronos. Yes, its all linux under the hood
http://korg.com/kronos

9. Muse research Receptor. Again, a music dedicated Linux box to run your windows vsts on a lighting fast OS.

10. Graphical package managers. You think the appstore concept is new? Think again, in Linux this is ages old. Search, click install, thats it. You just never had to pay for packages.

There is a lot more to discover, just check out this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_audio_software

Or just dive in and download a complete multimedia production suite FOR FREE!
Check these out:
Ubuntu Studio
Studio 64
Planet CCRMA

THE GAME BOY SOUND - Republished

This article was originally published in one of my older blogs which does not exist anymore

THE GAME BOY SOUND

OK, I got to admit that I have let myself into a bigger project as I thought. I wanted to write review like articles about my favored Game Boy sound programs, but faced the problem that it does not make sense to write that without writing how the Game Boy actually makes his sound. So I stopped writing the review and will give you an overview about the basics here. The plan is to release a game boy article every month, to leave room for the iPhone, pocket PC and DS stuff. So stay tuned and here we go back in time!

Chapter 01: The Game Boy Soundchip or what makes Chiptune Chiptune.

Unlike modern computers, that create sounds mostly via software, old times computers created sounds with dedicated chips. These chips can be seen as more or less sophisticated synthesizers inside in an integrated circuit (IC). The best known one chip synthesizer is for sure the SID chip that came with the Commodore 64 and is very wide spread in pop music today by the likes as Timbaland, Zombie Nation, Welle:Erdball and many others. Just as the C64, the original Game Boy features a sound chip as well. But hey, the Game Boy would never have been that affordable if Nintendo had not integrated all parts as much as possible. Therefore the sound chip is part of the   main processor chip and you will never find the chip alone if you open up a Game Boy. The sound part of the Game Boy CPU is some times called PAPU (Pseudo Audio Processing Unit) and is very limited in it's possibilities compared to the SID. But that doesn't make it less interesting today, because limitation forces the creativity of musicians as well as programmers.

Take it appart:

Even though everybody refers to the game boy sound as 8 bit sound it actually is 4 bit sound. The misunderstanding comes from the fact that the main architecture is running with 8 bit, but the sound parts digital analogue converter (DAC) who turns the digital sound into electric signals is running with 4 bits. This is partially responsible for the raw character of the sound. So if you want to reproduce this you know that you have to adjust your bithifter to 4bit ;)
The Game Boy sound chip can be seen as a synthesizer without filters. It has four channels, that can be seen as oscillators.

1. Pulse (Square) wave with volume envelope and “sweep”
2. Pulse (Square) wave with volume envelope
3. Waveform can play a sequence of 32 4 bit samples ( Yes, this is a 4 bit sampler!)
4. Noise with volume envelope

These channels can be controlled by programs so that game programmers where able to create sound effects and music in the game boy games. As you can see all sound modules are missing filters, one of the challenges this chip offers for music creators. But what can the channels actually do? The pulse channels and the wave channel can create frequencies from 64hz (good bass) to 131072hz (Vampirebat/dolphin dance, humans can't hear that). The noise channel produces frequency mayhem between 2hz  and 1048576hz. But this is hard to control since it is nothing but white noise and therefor atonal. The sweep function of the first channel creates a piuuu that overwrites all other current values The pulse channels can also shift their pulse width, so if you use both channels together it is possible to create fat pulse bass sounds etc. But more about that later.
The waveform channel is very flexible as you can imagine. It can be used to create all kinds of low resolution waveforms from simple synth shapes like sawtooth to full sample playback.

The Control

That's about everything that can be said about the PAPU in general without going too deep into details of programming. If you are interested in this you will find a reference link at the end of the article. For us mortals it is more interesting what programs are already out there to harness the sound power of the game boy. There we will find two different paradigms. One is complete numeric control of every aspect of the sound chip, the other brings a nice graphical interface. And that will be the actual reviews you will read in the following months.

Links:

Programming reference:
http://www.devrs.com/gb/files/hosted/GBSOUND.txt

LSDJ wiki:
http://wiki.littlesounddj.com/GameboyResources?v=gf9

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Sound_System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy

Alchemy Mobile! Great stuff!

Camel Audio has just released the mobile version of Alchemy for iOS.
Alchemy has always been a great example of combining power with inspiring interface.
We have seen this before with Spectrasonics great Omnisphere remote but this time you get the whole synth engine on the go and it is actually pretty cool to create a loop in, lets say Beatmaker 2, load into Alchemy, jam along and record it, copy back to Beatmaker 2. This works great.

As soon as I find some studio time I will see how it performs as a remote.

Sound Design VS Instrument Design

Back in the 90s people spent thousands in order to get a few presets on a hardware. Devices like the EMU Proteus 2000 where basically nothing else but a ROM chip full of samples and some subtractive synthesis modules (cool filters) and an FX chip. Today is not much different, but you usually get Kontakt player or something similar instead. Both times have something in common though: the buyers usually use the presets as given and only modify them with the pre mapped controllers. My point is that there is more to sound design then just engineering or recording the audio material, but a good sound designer programs a complete instrument. Something that allows, or even better, inspires a good performance. Back in the days people shelled out a grand in order to get the "Virus" or "Supernova" sounds. But you always got an inspiring interface along. Today all the mapping is often up to the musician... no wonder everyone is drawing automation instead of performing it.

Sound collections should be delivered with mappings for popular controllers,  touchscreen devices have made it extremely simple to create custom and inspiring interfaces wich could be bundled with any digitally distributed sound set. And even dedicated hardware controllers have become very cheap, such as the Novation remote SL series providing xy pads, Pitch mod sticks and after touch (not polyphonic though) close enough together to control all of them with two hands (I think the Impulse with mod/pitch wheel is a step back).

The importance of a good controller mapping is very well illustrated by this video showing the use of an Haken Audio controller to control the sounds recorded earlier:

Amon Tobin's Making of ISAM sounds

It is not the sounds alone that make the magic happen, but the performance manipulating them afterwards.
This is the reason why I am looking forward to the future, at things like the Linnstrument. Or maybe we might even get a velocity and touch sensitive smartphone/tablet computer one day? Who knows, but today a simple mapping could lead to more interesting songs and productions. I think people who purchase sounds want to perform, not map or worse spend their time programming controller modulation behavior  I hope someone creating a sound set right now finds this inspiring :)

KarmaFX, time flies...

Just a quick post because I found out that one of my favorite windows only plugins is now available as audio unit on the Mac:  http://karmafx.net/?id=1
Yummy! Will buy that license maybe next month or so. It is especially dear to me because it is coming from a former Jeskola Buzz plugin developer. Some of them have entered the VST/AU plugin circuit since a while, such as Whitenoise, KarmaFX or Joachim. Just to name a few.

If you have a PC standin arround make sure to check out Jeskola Buzz and its offsprings. There is nothing in electronic music you can't do with that. It is amazing. After switching from hardware to computers I was using Buzz tracker alone with a Doepfer Pocket dial to create my music. Some even argue that it was the main inspiration for reason... but thats straight from the rumor mill :P
I go patching virtual cables now!