London Music Hack Day

[Alex]

Hi all,

http://london.musichackday.org/2010/
"A full weekend of music hacking. Software + hardware + art + the web.
Come build the future of music."
September 4-5

I know a few of y'all are Londoners, so I was wondering if anyone else
on this list was thinking of going. I've never been to one of these
dos but it looks fun, a good excuse to do something a bit different
for a couple of days. Anyone?

Alex

[Kevin McDonagh]

I'm considering it. Not sure what I'd make. One thing I've learned
from previous hack days is to prepare your thoughts before the event.
You want to make something super duper simple and on the day just sit
down and code. So I might do some research before it.

Regards, Kevin McDonagh

[Carl-Gustaf Harroch]

We could build the reactable? Anybody has a retroprojector?

[Martin Roth]

I'll definitely be there. RjDj will present the latest and greatest, and I will make the first official release of RjDj's Pure Data runtime, called ZenGarden. I'm also excited to see this new space in O2 centre! :)

[Alex]

But oh! I'd be well up for helping if you did that. Not to the
extent of being able to source a retroprojector sadly, but any tasks
that might help it along.

Other than that I was thinking of doing something collaborative, not
focusing on the tech so much as some kind of sharing or jamming
technique. Off the top of my head I thought of syncing mobile drums
over bluetooth, or a facebook app for shared composition (I have never
used the FB API, so possibly more learning than hacking...).
Something which would suit a two-day hack and would be fun at the
end. Never short of plans, always short of time...

Right, I've got all excited and signed up. Sounds like I'll
definitely be seeing Dan and Martin, and it'd be cool to catch Carl
and Kevin if you can make it!

Alex

[Peter Kirn]

I'm actually working on *possibly* traveling out there... as it
happens, my significant other will be in London that week on work, so
that's an added bonus. Just have to see if I can finance it, seeing if
I can hook up a last-minute speaking gig or something (that's
sometimes worked in the past) for incidentals and would then burn some
miles.

I'd love to see y'all and cover what you're doing, of course ... well,
cover what you're doing regardless!

And if not, will check in virtually and see some of you (Martin!) in
Sweden!

Peter

[simon dixon]

I've just signed up to attend and I'm up for collaborations on stuff, Here's a few ideas to throw into the mix (no pun intended ;) )

1.) An synth built out of multiple android phones, each phone operates as one processing block of the synth e.g one phone is a tone generator, one phone is an asdr envelope, one phone is the filter and one phone is the output mixer. Each phone renders a chunk of data and then passes it to the next phone for processing. Sound parameters are controlled by physically moving the phone - up/down for slider, rotate for knobs. Maybe pass data around by wireless/bluetooth? This idea may be hard to hack in a day mind you :)

2.) Facebook/twitter mood music generator(or player) - generates(or plays) music based on semantics of your last facebook/twitter status update. Eg happy post = nice music (major key), annoyed post = angry music(off key), sad post = sad music (minor key). Could be an app you can include on your facebook page. 

3.) Some sort of turn based music making game, player one creates/chooses a loop, then player 2 creates/chooses a loop then player 3 etc until all players have chosen. The mix is then played back to all. On each turn a player can only hear one loop ( the one chosen by the previous player). Kind of like this folded paper drawing game for kids http://kiddley.com/2006/10/31/a-game-of-consequences/

Cheers

Simon

[Kevin McDonagh]

Those are great ideas! I like the game, if you mixed it with Facebook people could take part at different stages of the music's development and wouldn't need to be located near one another to play together. Also your other friends could watch it's development. 

Regards, Kevin McDonagh

[siliconeagle]

Yeah i am signed up too ..

they are good ideas Simon, i think some sort of game might be a good
target. possibly a few games with OSC communication might be quite
easy.

also maybe something with soundcloud integration - seems to be where
the mixes are going these days.

possibly we can utilise on of the ported engines (zengarden or
supercollider) for unit generators.

i was also thinking of something like audio boo (you record sounds on
your phone and upload them) on iphone but then you can take the
samples and make music out of them. Have been working on a phase
vocoder for my uni project. it will strectch one sound at a time (in
real time on an N1) so far but am hoping to optimise so that more
sounds can manipulated together. basically it needs a faster fft.

rob m

> of like this folded paper drawing game for kidshttp://kiddley.com/2006/10/31/a-game-of-consequences/

[Dan Stowell]

The gang's all here! We're gonna swamp that music hack day...

Might be nice to do some sonification, e.g. a spatial audio map of
where all the barclays bikes in london are...
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/08/02/live-london-android-find-cycle-hire/

[Martin Roth]

Ooh, I like that idea the most Dan. I like Simon's "synth orchestra" idea too, as it seems to be a hot topic these days.

[Carl-Gustaf Harroch]

If we need, Kenton from the londroid UG made the widget for the bikey thingy.

[Kevin McDonagh]

Thats a very unique idea which fits right in with all this talk about bike hires. There are certainly possibilities around the bike hire. I'm not sure which reactions would signal which noises though. Would the whole network of bike hire affect the orchestra or would you venture into a zone which had quieter sounds when there was less activity/more with greater activity? Maybe you could do both as separate audio tracks. 

Regards,
Kevin McDonagh
Director / Developer / Android
+44 07 981 932 411
Fancy working on lots of awesome Android? We're Hiring!
http://novoda.com/blog 

LinkedIn Delicious Google Reader Twitter Flickr
Google Talk/novoda1, Skype/novoda.com

[Martin Roth]

Whoa. You could hook up the compass and GPS so that in your headphones a tone would come from the direction where there was a bike available. And obviously the volume would indicate distance. You could let the app run the in background and do other things with your device and always know where to go just by listening to your ears.

[simon dixon]

A gaming element could maybe be built in to the app. If each bike hire location 'sings' using a different tone or song, the game could be finding the correct bike hire location based on the audio.

Another idea is each hire location represents a loop and as you travel past it, it adds the loop to the mix in your headphones. The loops could be volume mixed as get closer / further away 

--
Simon Dixon

\ PRETTY

E:  si...@pretty.co.uk
W: www.pretty.co.uk

A: 11 clink street studios
A: London SE1 9DG

F: 087 1433 4095
T: 020 7378 8815

[Carl-Gustaf Harroch]

Sounds like the old kids' hiding game "cold, cold, warmer, hot, HOT"

[Martin Roth]

I like the loop mixing idea. That way, anywhere that you are in the city you have a slightly different mix.

[Alex]

How do you implement your FFTs? We've been mulling over FFT libraries
and things for SuperCollider, so I'd be interested to hear your take
on the problem. Currently I'm thinking that pulling in libfftw and
getting it to talk to the Android build system is the best idea, but
it's quite out of my usual field of igno^H^H^H^Hexpertise.

Alex

[Martin Roth]

I've used fftw in the past and quite like it, though I have never tried to compile it with Android NDK. The library is GPL though. I'm not sure if that license is compatible with what you've got. But I'm sure that there are other FFT libraries available which are not GPL (though admittedly, I think that fftw is quite standard).

I'd be happy to work together and try to compile fftw or get some other fft library working on android at MHD.

[Alex]

This all sounds really cool, if we're thinking of doing a
collaboration I'd love to help make a machine like this. Also,
related to the synth orchestra thing, I had an idea a while back to
make phones chatter to each other using light and sound (and
potentially motion), in a similar fashion to Yann Seznec's Gelkies
(from which I probably nicked the idea).

http://www.theamazingrolo.net/2010/02/gelkies-at-the-hannah-maclure/

Just another idea to add to the aforementioned mix. I'm around for
both days, so hoping to try a couple of hacks if the time allows.

Alex

> >>> Fancy working on lots of awesome Android? We're Hiring!<https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFF6VTNzYkx6b2tURk1v...>
> >>>http://novoda.com/blog <http://novoda.com/blog>
> >>> LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmcdonagh> Delicious<http://www.delicious.com/kevinmcdonagh>
> >>>  Google Reader <http://www.google.com/reader/shared/appletvdesign>
> >>> Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/kevinmcdonagh> Flickr<http://www.flickr.com/photos/appletv/>

> >>> Google Talk/novoda1, Skype/novoda.com
>
> >>> On 3 Aug 2010, at 13:08, Carl-Gustaf Harroch wrote:
>
> >>> If we need, Kenton from the londroid UG made the widget for the bikey
> >>> thingy.
>
> >>> On 3 August 2010 13:06, Martin Roth <mhr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>> Ooh, I like that idea the most Dan. I like Simon's "synth orchestra"
> >>>> idea too, as it seems to be a hot topic these days.
>

> >>>> On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Dan Stowell <danstow...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>> The gang's all here! We're gonna swamp that music hack day...
>
> >>>>> Might be nice to do some sonification, e.g. a spatial audio map of
> >>>>> where all the barclays bikes in london are...
>

> >>>>>http://www.androidguys.com/2010/08/02/live-london-android-find-cycle-...

[Alex]

Thanks! SC is GPL, so that's cool. I'll take a look at it in the
next couple of weeks, and might pick your brains about it on the
day :)

[Martin Roth]

Sure. I so have some experience compiling such libraries for Android/NDK. I think that we can definitely get something working.

[Kevin McDonagh]

Just for the record I'm looking to hook up on someone else's idea.

I'll only be looking to finish one stupidly small thing well. Our first hack day we over shot, second we got it all done but had a rough user experience/demo as an end product. This time I'll be looking to get an end to end as soon as possible and then polish it until you can see your reflection.  

I haz skillz in general web designz, scripted languages or Android. 

Regards,
Kevin McDonagh
Director / Developer / Android
+44 07 981 932 411
Fancy working on lots of awesome Android? We're Hiring!

http://novoda.com/blog 

LinkedIn Delicious Google Reader Twitter Flickr

Google Talk/novoda1, Skype/novoda.com

[siliconeagle]

i just used the numerical recipices fft - have been looking around for
others..

yeah fftw would be best. (it has to be licenced for commercial apps
afaik). Doesn't seem to be ported to android yet
look like there is some summer of code project to port fftw to arm-
neon
http://gsoc2010-fftw-neon.blogspot.com/

this guy from MIT has a fft in his t-pain app - which looks quite
good. Actually it says it was taken from PD, its likely in zengarden
already? I might give it a go actually and see how it compares with
the numerical recipies one.
http://github.com/intervigilium/MicDroid

the best(fastest) one i could find seem to be in ffmpeg but it looked
pretty heavy (mostly assembler) - think it is being worked on at the
moment..

have also heard of there being an FFT library in the std build
somewhere ...

this libgdx has an FFT in it too (KissFFT)
http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/source/browse/#svn/trunk/gdx/jni/kissfft

would be worth a test as well. I will probably give them a go in the
next couple of weeks as part on my uni project.

rob m

[Martin Roth]

There isn't an FFT in ZenGarden right now. But for Apple platforms it
would be very easy to implement because Apple provides a hardware
accelerated version in their Accelerate framework.

[Dan Stowell]

Hi -

I just remembered that supercollider still has an old fft
implementation by John Green in its cupboard [1]. Actually the synth
server uses FFTW or vDSP, both of which are faster and better, but
this one is available as a fallback for some other platforms. The
reason I mention it is that it's simpler than FFTW (it's just one
file, no wisdom etc) so if there's something preventing use of the big
lib(s) then this may be an option. (All float though with no arm
tweaks.)

Dan

[1]
<http://supercollider.svn.sf.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/common/Headers/common/fftlib.h?view=markup>
<http://supercollider.svn.sf.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/common/Source/common/fftlib.c?view=markup>

[siliconeagle]

looks quite good actually..

On Aug 4, 1:23 pm, Dan Stowell <danstow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi -
>
> I just remembered that supercollider still has an old fft
> implementation by John Green in its cupboard [1]. Actually the synth
> server uses FFTW or vDSP, both of which are faster and better, but
> this one is available as a fallback for some other platforms. The
> reason I mention it is that it's simpler than FFTW (it's just one
> file, no wisdom etc) so if there's something preventing use of the big
> lib(s) then this may be an option. (All float though with no arm
> tweaks.)
>
> Dan
>
> [1]

> <http://supercollider.svn.sf.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/common/Hea...>
> <http://supercollider.svn.sf.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/common/Sou...>

[siliconeagle]

Just saw this post on the beagle board group
http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/0aa3a4ebe77ee2a6

There is an assembler FFT in the ARM OpenMax library - but to use with
gcc it needs porting to gcc gas format, so if anyone knows how to do
it - I could help out with porting..

though we might just be able to wait till its in fftw...

regards,
rob

[Kevin McDonagh]

So whats the game plan guys, got any good ideas? I've not had any time to clean up on any other languages so I'm going to be likely resorting to copy/paste/google mastery.

Everyone should check out the NodeJS competition for inspiration:

http://nodeknockout.com/teams#

I was thinking that instead of the bikes with music thing we could instead do something like a nodeJS plugin which analyses the structure of a page and then generates a soundtrack for that page based on the DOM elements. We also do an onHover() so that when you hover over an item it plays that musical note from the track.

 

Regards,
Kevin McDonagh
Director / Developer / Android
+44 07 981 932 411
Fancy working on lots of awesome Android? We're Hiring!
http://novoda.com/blog 

LinkedIn Delicious Google Reader Twitter Flickr
Google Talk/novoda1, Skype/novoda.com

[Alex]

Oh! I've always wanted to do that! I've never noded before, but it
doesn't look too daunting. We could hook in a SC or Pd backend and
spend plenty of time tweaking the generation routines.

As another option: I've been thinking about Simon's mood app
suggestion- particularly because it has an element of collaboration
involved, which I think suits hacking as part of a group. I had the
idea of a sort of modern blues harmonica type arrangement, using a
small pentatonic tenori-on type interface. You give it a grid pattern
and tell it your mood, and it puts the result somewhere your friends
can hear it. The mood would determine the instrument, the key, and
possibly the rhythm, so you'd get the experience of creating a melody
in tune with your emotional state, but it would be ultra-simple for
anyone to pick up. This might be a bit more interactive than node can
do on its own (or it might not) but I can envision making it as a
mobile app over the course of a few hours (if someone else was writing
the server-side sharing part).

Alex

On Aug 31, 9:35 am, Kevin McDonagh <ke...@novoda.com> wrote:
> So whats the game plan guys, got any good ideas? I've not had any time to clean up on any other languages so I'm going to be likely resorting to copy/paste/google mastery.
>
> Everyone should check out the NodeJS competition for inspiration:http://nodeknockout.com/teams#
>
> I was thinking that instead of the bikes with music thing we could instead do something like a nodeJS plugin which analyses the structure of a page and then generates a soundtrack for that page based on the DOM elements. We also do an onHover() so that when you hover over an item it plays that musical note from the track.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin McDonagh
> Director / Developer / Android
> +44 07 981 932 411

> Fancy working on lots of awesome Android? We're Hiring!http://novoda.com/blog

>
> LinkedIn Delicious Google Reader Twitter Flickr
> Google Talk/novoda1, Skype/novoda.com
>
> On 18 Aug 2010, at 13:23, siliconeagle wrote:
>
> > Just saw this post on the beagle board group

> >http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/0aa3a...

[simon dixon]

Hi Guys

Due to family issues I can no longer attend the hack day, I'm pretty guttted.

Your mood app idea sounds ace Alex, here's some inspiration

http://inudge.net/index.en.html

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Have fun, I look forward to seeing what you build. 

Cheers

Simon

[Kevin McDonagh]

I'm up for making your idea alex but it sounds pretty complicated!

All of the successful hackathon entries I've seen are one pagers which are easy to explain.

Could you put the idea into one sentence?

[Alex]

How about: "A tool to write and share simple melodies which express a
mood."

The core hack would be:
- a wery small sequencer and
- a host/dumping ground for the output, which would be sequences to
load into the sequencer

If there are several contributors they could write alternate
sequencers which express the data in different ways and for different
platforms, UI design, and social network plugins.

I bow to your prior experience though, if you think it's too much then
you're probably right!

Alex

[Kevin McDonagh]

I'm sure there is something in it ,maybe we just simplify it right down.

We could do something like take the user through a 3 step process where they: 

1. Choose a face icon (happy,anrgy,sad)

2. Using a slider they choose a degree of happy/angry/sadness 

3. Mix it with some sort of salt (random icons of animals or funny objects)

then out the other side comes a track?

Having finite objects but innumerable sequences might make it an easier task.

Apart from a dead basic app, I've never made an audio app before so I'd need your guidance as to the high level logic. At least this way with icons and stuff, I'd definitely be able to work on the UI.