1-bit video demo for Circuit Benders' Ball application from Kurt James Werner on Vimeo.
A demonstration of the type of visuals I am working on for my set of 1-bit music for Circuit Benders' Ball 2021.
DEAR READER
will byers stan first human second
No title available

Discoholic 🪩
sheepfilms
todays bird

titsay
Xuebing Du
Keni
Stranger Things
Acquired Stardust
h

★
Not today Justin

No title available

tannertan36
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Origami Around
tumblr dot com
Three Goblin Art

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Pakistan
seen from Italy

seen from United States

seen from Spain
seen from South Africa

seen from Italy

seen from Indonesia

seen from United States

seen from South Korea

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Netherlands

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
@kurtjameswerner
1-bit video demo for Circuit Benders' Ball application from Kurt James Werner on Vimeo.
A demonstration of the type of visuals I am working on for my set of 1-bit music for Circuit Benders' Ball 2021.
Bret Victor Glitch
Was watching a Bret Victor video, when suddenly...
Intense Safari glitch — possibly caused by throttled internet speed in Brunswick, Maine?
My new sounds:
Press via the San Francisco Chronicle for an event that I co-founded, the Stanford Code Poetry Slam!
[...] a handful of literature-minded coders gathered at Stanford University to celebrate the inherent beauty of programming languages, both written and spoken. Rules of poetryCode poets find resonance between the constraints of programming and the traditional rules of poetry, where forms like the sonnet dictate strict rhyme schemes and syllable counts. Aimee Norton's "Apache Code Errors" arranged common error classifications like "303 see other," "302 found" and "409 conflict" to build a minimalist narrative. Julian Bliss, a 20-year-old computer engineering student from Santa Clara University, presented a code that appeared to spell out "hello, world" - a test phrase programmers often use when picking up a new coding language. Adding dramaInstead of simply reading the code, Dimri inserted some interpretation and drama - for instance saying the line virtues After the slam, contestants stuck around to wax poetic about the nature of code and poetry, debating whether higher-level languages were better for code poetry than clunkier ones like C, or whether punctuation - which is key in programming (tough luck, e e cummings) - should be spoken aloud.
Ad Hoc Ladder Network Glitch
Watching ad hoc network analysis videos for fun, while trying to launch Matlab, while trying to plug in two external monitors. Glitches ensued.
I'm working on designing an Arduino shield to work with old AY-3-8912 PSG chips. Here's the results of my fist tests interfacing the chip with the Atari. The was based of Octobit's work on the AY-3-8910 (available at http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/AY38910#.UwWYkZE2zwK), which was based off of kalshagar's work on the related Yamaha YMZ294 (available at http://kalshagar.wikispaces.com/Arduino+and+a+YMZ294). I had to modify Octobit's work to accommodate the different pin arrangement of the AY-3-8912 and correct the wiring of the 2MHz clock (his diagram shows a Vcc line going to ground). I modified his starter code to write a few little tunes and play around with various aspects of the AY-3-8912's synthesis. 0:00-0:08 : channel A playing a dinky square wave melody with no amplitude envelope 0:08-0:24 : a classic PSG timbre trick. This series of chips can produce three channels that contain square waves, linear feedback shift register (LFSR) noise, or both. One global amplitude envelope system could be applied to all of the channels. To get around the timbre limitations of just square waves + noise, composers would apply the global amplitude envelope very fast to get crude but varied AM timbres. Here, I've applied this technique very inelegantly by applying a very fast triangle wave amplitude modulator at random frequencies which change every few notes. It can actually be used to great effect by controlling the modulation:carrier ratio to place sidebands carefully (just like in FM synthesis). 0:24-0:40 : The same trick, with the melody at a lower octave. 0:40-1:02 : Using channels A & B to play a Bach-ish one-to-one counterpoint, with a more normal global amplitude envelope. 1:02-1:12 : Same thing, sped up really fast to give a Galaga-style sound effect. 1:12-1:22 : Same thing, but with the original melody. This one actually sounds a lot like Galaga... 1:22-1:54 : The original Melody, but with noise enabled on channel A. Each note, the period of the LFSR changes, giving different noise timbres each time. The AY-3-8912 was a popular 3-voice PSG chip from the 1980s, which was used in the Intellivision and Vectrex video game consoles, as well as various arcade games and home computers. Even early on in the chip’s history, it was popular for hobbyists and hackers (as shown by at least one magazine article on its use in the context of the Atari). Today, several people have built off of early projects and maintain ongoing discussions focused on using the AY-3-8912 with microcontrollers. The sound of the chip remains popular enough that is has even been digitally modelled as part of Chipsounds, a commercial digital audio workstation (DAW) plugin by Plogue Art et Technologie and MAME (the multiple arcade machine emulator).
I'll be presenting on my TR-808 circuit modeling research at the CCRMA DSP seminar in two weeks, come see it!
Abstract: Can a digital system provide satisfactory emulations of classic analog musical instruments and effects? Polarized reactions to the impending release (this month!) of Roland's TR-8 Rhythm Performer (a digitally modeled TR-808/909) have reignited this old debate. I've focused my research on creating physically-informed, circuit-bendable, digital models of analog drum machines. At this DSP Seminar, I'll present my methodological framework and analysis/models of two of the 808's sound generators: the bass drum and the cymbal. My digital models, implemented in Cycling 74's Gen~, retain the salient features of the original analog drum machine and allow for accurate emulation of circuit-bending and common 808 mods. This work takes an engineering approach to hacking and circuit bending, clears up misconceptions about the 808's circuitry, and plugs a conspicuous drum-machine-shaped gap in virtual analog research.
Time to start learning about the 74HC595 8-bit shift register, which is used in a lot of Arduino demo projects for reducing the number of pins needed from the Arduino to address the AY-3-8910/12
http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/AY38910#.UwKTfpE2zwI
https://github.com/Quasimondo/Arduino-Sketches/tree/master/AY-3-8910%20Sound%20Chip/Quarzless%20Control
AY-3-8912
Got 2 AY-3-8912 chips from Greg, awesome! Time to get these talking to the Arduino.
Romain's new Mephisto system in action!
He writes:
Mephisto is an open source device that can be used to control any OSC compatible program, system, etc. Up to five sensors can be connected to it and configured in a JAVA application to control the parameters of you favorite effect and synths.
This video presents a simple practical use of Mephisto with an accelerometer and a guitar (thanks to Tim O'Brien for the performance).
More informations at: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~rmichon/mephisto/.
Create Digital Music glitch
Internet browser decided to get glitchy while I browsed Create Digital Music.
Goat Simulator glitch
Goat Simulator is apparently going to be a thing. I was visiting their website to check things out and was presented with this glitch. I played around with resizing my browser window, and it looks like this is coming from someone getting overzealous with a grid layout library (Masonry or something), and applied it to headings. Goofy, but kind of fitting actually.
KZSU Day of Noise Glitch
Watching the live stream of KZSU's Day of Noise 2014, and things glitched out. I played at the day of Noise in 2012, you can check out a recording here.
Phillip David Stearns is offering his online Skillshare course again:
Glitch Art - Creating Design from Error: Databending Basics
"Learn the basics of databending, familiarize yourself with the art and artifacts of working with different file formats, create stunning glitched GIFs."
I took Phillip's class last year (you can see what I worked on here), and loved it. A nice little community grew around the projects, and people were sharing their methods and work in a really fruitful and supportive way. I can only assume this year's class will be just as good, I highly recommend it (and I'll be back too!).
Roland has been teasing their new AIRA line (which will include a TR-808 "remix," the TR-08), and it seems the line will be based around a virtual analog, featuring a technology that Roland is calling "ACB" (Analog Circuit Behavior). This is apparently a very polarizing issue, and lots of people have reacted negatively to the announcement - they think that a computer model of analog technology could never faithfully recreate the original. I think that is totally incorrect. As part of my PhD studies at CCRMA (Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), I've been researching the circuitry of the 808 for a year, and one of my findings has been that there is no reason that the 808 cannot be simulated with virtual analog. My research focuses on breaking the circuit into functional blocks, and creating physically-informed analyses and digital models of each block. Even though my research won't be presented or published in conference proceedings until later this year, I wanted to share something that I believe is a strong counter example to the idea that analog devices cannot be well-simulated in a digital system. I took the circuitry of the TR-808 bass drum sound generator and entered it manually into LTSpice, a free SPICE ("Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis", technology whose development began at Berkeley in the 70s). Setting the tone knob fully open, and the volume knob at 50%, I ran a transient analysis with a maximum time step of 0.000002267573 seconds (10x oversampled, with respect to CD audio, where fs=44100), exported the output voltage into Matlab, resampled to CD audio with Matlab's interp1 function, and wrote it out to a .wav file. The first 12 seconds simulate the case where the decay knob is turned all the way up - the bass drum will ring out for a long time. The next 12 seconds simulate the case where the decay knob is turned down a bit. You can see and hear that the long decay case has all sorts of variation between notes, and the shorter decay case has much less variation. If we turn down the decay enough, there will be hardly any variation between notes. I think that this clears up one misconception that many hold about analog drum machines, regarding the so-called "machine gun effect." The "machine gun effect" is the (usually un desirable) effect of playing many identical repeated drum hits. In the case of sample-based or signal-based models, people have created all sorts of workaround to deal with the effect, including randomizing synthesis parameters on each hit, or triggering from a large library of near- but not totally-identical samples. Although it is usually attributed to the non-linearities of analog circuitry, or some sort of real-world randomness, the dominant reason that TR-808 bass drums (and by extension, other sound generators involving bridged-T networks or envelope generators) can sound different when many notes are played in quick succession is that a filter's response is going to be added to any response that is already happening (the filters obey superposition). The decaying tail of the previous note and the new note can interfere constructively, destructively, or anywhere in-between. Anyone who has jumped on a trampoline knows the phenomenon of "double bouncing" and the disappointment of a slightly mis-timed double bounce. This is precisely the same concept, and it has everything to do with the fact that it is a filter creating the drum sound, and nothing to do with the fact that that filter is analog. This simulation actually runs much slower than real-time (it takes about a minute to render a second of audio). One point of my research (besides drawing attention to the ingenious designs of the 808's creators and supporting the work of drum machine modders and designers) is making models that are physically-informed, but simplified enough to run in real-time.