Hello everybody:
A few weeks ago I ran into a post (which I cannot find now) of this forum that said, just like passing by, that there are some limits to the usage of Pd-extended when making profit out of patches.
If someone wants, for instance, to play live using some flavour of Pd and has the chance to get some money out of it, or teach electronic music using it, or to make any device that runs Pd on some part of hardware, how do the licenses apply? Is is fair to make a living out of teaching / performing / making gear using Pd-anything?
I am aware that no one can 'close' the code to sell it or erase the comments (where the licenses are written) from it, and I strongly agree with that. Since I try to teach at the University using FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) as much as I can, I am in some sort of blank when it comes to the, so to speak, 'business' world.
Since here in Argentina most of the people are still drifting aimlessly in cracked commercial privative software (both OS's and apps) I feel an urge to shed some light on these matters so anybody will know that there is an option if you cannot afford a commercial software license or (better) you want to be free from those highly restrictive contracts. There is no need to steal, crack or forge anymore. There is FLOSS.
Thank you all for your tolerance and, I hope, answers.

Sumidero.

Ps: I took the courage to introduce Pd to people at FLISOL (translated: Latin American Festival of Free/Libre Software Installation) Thank you all for all you've taught me. Links to pictures coming as soon as I get them.

April 6, 7, 8 2011
11:00-19:00
Xth Sense – biophysical generation and control of music

@NK
Elsenstr. 52/
2.Hinterhaus Etage 2
12059 Berlin Neukölln

FULL PROGRAM: http://www.nkprojekt.de/xth-sense-%E2%80%93-biophysical-generation-and-control-of-music/

~ What

The workshop offers an hands-on experience and both theoretical and practical training in gestural control of music and bodily musical performance, deploying the brand-new biosensing technology Xth Sense.

Developed by the workshop teacher Marco Donnarumma within a research project at The University of Edinburgh, Xth Sense is a framework for the application of muscle sounds to the biophysical generation and control of music. It consists of a low cost, DIY biosensing wearable device and an Open Source based software for capture, analysis and audio processing of biological sounds of the body (Pure Data-based).
Muscle sounds are captured in real time and used both as sonic source material and control values for sound effects, enabling the performer to control music simply with his body and kinetic energy. Forget your mice, MIDI controllers, you will not even need to look at your laptop anymore.

The Xth Sense biosensor was designed to be easily implemented by anyone, no previous experience in
electronics is required.

The applications of the Xth Sense technology are manifold: from complex gestural control of samples and audio synthesis, through biophysical generation of music and sounds, to kinetic control of real time digital processing of traditional musical instruments, and more.

~ How

Firstly, participants will be introduced to the Xth Sense Technology by its author and led through the assembling of their own biosensing wearable hardware using the materials provided.
Next, they will become proficient with the Xth Sense software framework: all the features of the framework will be unleashed through practical exercises.

Theoretical background on the state of art of gestural control of music and new musical instruments will be developed by means of an audiovisual review and participatory critical analysis of relevant projects selected by the instructor.

Eventually, participants will combine hardware and software to implement a solo or group performance to be presented during the closing event. At the end of the workshop, participants will be free to keep the Xth Sense biosensors they built and the related software for their own use.

~ Perspective participants

The workshop is open to anyone passionate about sound and music. Musical background and education does not matter as long as you are ready to challenge your usual perspective on musical performance. Composers, producers, sound designers, musicians, field recordists are all welcome to join our team for an innovative and highly creative experience. No previous experience in electronics or programming is required, however participants should be familiar with digital music creation.

Participation is limited to 10 candidates.
Preregistration is required and can be done by sending an email to info@nkprojekt.de

Requirements and further info
Participants need to provide their own headphones, soundcards and laptops with Pd-extended already installed.

Musicians interested in augmenting their favourite musical instrument by means of body gestures are encouraged to bring their instrument along. More information about the Xth Sense and a video of a live performance can be viewed on-line at

http://res.marcodonnarumma.com/projects/xth-sense/
http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/music-for-flesh-ii/
http://marcodonnarumma.com/teaching/

Dates
6-7-8 April, 11.00-19.00 daily (6 hours sessions + 1 hour break)

Fee
EUR 90 including materials (EUR 15).

Contact
Marco Donnarumma
m[at]marcodonnarumma.com
http://marcodonnarumma.com

First my story: (you can skip down to END OF STORY if you want)

Ever since I saw Mike Relm go to town with a DVDJ, I've wanted a system where I could scratch and cue video. However, I haven't wanted to spend the $2500 for a DVDJ. As I was researching, I found a number of different systems. I am not a DJ by trade, so to get a system like Traktor or Serrato with their video modules plus turntables plus hardware plus a DJ mixer, soon everything gets really expensive. But in looking around, I found the Ms.Pinky system and after a little bit, I found a USB turntable on Woot for $60. So I bought it. It was marketed as a DJ turntable, but I knew that it wasn't really serious since it had a belt drive, but it came with a slip-pad and the USB connection meant that I wouldn't need a preamp. And so I spend the $100 on the Ms.Pinky vinyl plus software license (now only $80). This worked decently, but I had a lot of trouble really getting it totally on point. The relative mode worked well, but sometimes would skip if I scratched too vigorously. The absolute mode I couldn't get to work at all. After reading a little more, I came to the conclusion that my signal from vinyl to computer just wasn't strong enough, so I would need maybe a new needle or maybe a different turntable and I didn't really want to spend the money experimenting. I think that the Ms. Pinky system is probably a very good system with the right equipment, but I don't do this professionally, so I don't want to spend the loot on a system.

Earlier, before I bought Ms.Pinky (about two years ago), I had also looked around for a cheap MIDI USB DJ controller and not found one. Well, about a month ago, I saw the ION Discover DJ controller was on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $50. They sold out before I could get one, but Vann's was selling it for $70, so I decided that that was good enough and bought one. I had planned to try to use it with Ms. Pinky since you can hook up MIDI controllers to it. But it turns out that you can hook up MIDI controllers to every control except the turntable, so that was a no go. If I had Max/MSP/Jitter, I could have changed that, but that's also way expensive. So, how should I scratch? My controller came with DJ'ing software and there's also some freeware, like Mixxx, but none of this has video support. So I look around and find Pure Data and GEM.

And I see lots of questions about scratching, how to do it. And there are even some tutorials and small patches out there, but as I look at them, none of them are quite what I'm looking for. The YouTube tutorial is really problematic because it's no good at all for scratching a song. It can create a scratching sound for a small sample, but it's taking the turntable's speed and using that as the position in the sample. If you did that with a longer song, it wouldn't even sound like a scratch. And then there are some which do work right, but none of them keep track of where you are in the playback. So, whenever you start scratching, you're starting from the beginning of the song or the middle.

So, I looked at all this and I said, "Hey, I can do this. I've got my spring break coming up. Looking at how easy PD looks and how much other good (if imperfect) work other people have done, I bet that I could build a good system for audio and video scratching within a week." And, I have.

END OF STORY

So that's what I'm presenting to you, my free audio and video scratching system in Pure Data (Pd-extended, really). I use the name DJ Lease Def, so it's the Lease Def DJ system. It's not quite perfect because it loads its samples into tables using soundfiler which means that it has a huge delay when you load a new file during which the whole thing goes silent. I am unhappy about this, but unsure how to fix it. Otherwise, it's pretty nifty. Anyway, rather than be one big patch, it relies on a system of patches which work with each other. Each of the different parts will come in several versions and you can choose which one you want to use and load up the different parts and they should work together correctly. Right now, for most of the parts there's only one version, but I'll be adding others later.

There's a more detailed instruction manual in the .zip file, but the summary is that you load:

the engine (only one version right now): loads the files, does the actual signal processing and playback

one control patch (three versions to choose from currently, two GUI versions and a MIDI version specific to the Ion Discover DJ): is used to do most of the controlling of the engine other than loading files such as scratching, fading, adjusting volume, etc.

zero or one cueing patch (one version, optional): manages the controls for jumping around to different points in songs

zero or one net patch (one version: video playback): does some sort of add-on. Will probably most commonly be used for video. The net patches have to run in a separate instance of Pd-extended and they listen for signals from the engine via local UDP packets. This is set-up this way because when the audio and video tried to run in the same instance, I would get periodic little pops, clicks, and other unsmoothnesses. The audio part renders 1000 times per second for maximum fidelity, but the video part only renders like 30 or 60 times per second. Pure Data is not quite smooth enough to handle this in a clever real-time multithreading manner to ensure that they both always get their time slices. But you put them in separate processes, it all works fine.

So, anyway, it's real scratching beginning exactly where you were in playing the song and when you stop scratching it picks up just where you left off, you can set and jump to cue points, and it does video which will follow right along with both the scratching and cuing. So I'm pretty proud of it. The downsides are that you have to separate the audio and video files, that the audio has to be uncompressed aiff or wav (and that loading a new file pauses everything for like 10 seconds), that for really smooth video when you're scratching or playing backwards you have to encode it with a codec with no inter-frame encoding such as MJPEG, which results in bigger video files (but the playback scratches perfectly as a result).

So anyway, check it out, let me know what you think. If you have any questions or feedback please share. If anyone wants to build control patches for other MIDI hardware, please do and share them with me. I'd be glad to include them in the download. The different patches communicate using send and receive with a standard set of symbols. I've included documentation about what the expected symbols and values are. Also, if anyone wants me to write patches for some piece of hardware that you have, if you can give me one, I'll be glad to do it.

Keith Irwin (DJ Lease Def)

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/leasedefdj.zip

Hello all,

First time posting here and looking forward to being a positive addition to this forum.

I'm a newbie regarding Linux and was looking to find a VJ beat detection software program for film/video that could sync to the rhythms of a song (bass drum, guitar, hi-hats, etc) to trigger different images.

I only found out recently about Pure Data, Gemq and Bonk but am not quite sure if they offer this feature or if I need to be a super duper software engineer to put this all together.

I'm currently using Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid on a little Aspire netbook.

Thanks in advance and to all the software developers who come up with the cool software for us starving artists.
VJCJ

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from | __ | | _ | | |
4 to 7 | | | | | | ||__ ||
NOVEMBER 2010 || || || |_| ||

*CALL FOR PROJECTS*

The sixth edition of make art – in-between design: rediscovering
collaboration in digital art – will take place in Poitiers (FR), from
the 4th to the 7th of November 2010.

make art is an international festival dedicated to the integration
of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art.
make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an
exhibition, focusing on the encounter between digital art and free
software.

*in-between design: rediscovering collaboration in digital art*

Today's market production accelerates the spread of non-critical and
standardized aesthetics, by means of locked top-down distribution
mechanisms and a series of tools that enforce it. At the same time
new forms of methodologies inspired or powered by free software,
participatory practices and peer-to-peer networks are fueling many
Internet subcultures. Some of these emerging practices will lead to
competitive social productions, while other will remain as pure
artistic experiments.

By adopting production and distribution methods based on free software
and open standards and by sharing the sources of one's work with
others, the collective knowledge base and aesthetic sensibilities can
freely interact to explore uncharted, hybrid directions which no
longer reflect the supremacy of a single idea.

• Does the sharing of artworks "recipes" and tools help debunk
  the myth of the isolated design genius?
• By leaving the possibility of ongoing development and refinement,
  is it possible to ever produce a "final" design?
• Can these methods and technologies inspire new forms of creation or
  tools, beyond self-referential productions?
• Is it wishful thinking to approach collaborative graphical design
  in the same way as an open source software project?
• Is Free and Open Source licensing a catalyst for creation or does
  it add an extra level of complexity?
• Can the limitation of one license trigger new forms of constrained
  creativity?

We're currently seeking new, innovative media art and design works and
projects focusing on the above theme and questions:

• graphical artworks and installations
• lectures
• project presentations
• software and hardware demos

We're also seeking audiovisual performances that will take place
during the festival evenings.

The submitted projects must fit this focus and be made in a free/libre
and open source environment, this includes both its optional
dependencies or production tools and the operating system. We are
asking you to publish the sources of your project under a free culture
license of your choice or release it into the public domain.
Projects that do not meet these criteria will not be considered.

*How to apply*

Submission form and a list of additional requirements are available at:
http://makeart.goto10.org/call/

Deadline: *Saturday 31 July 2010*

Incomplete or late applications will not be processed.

*Timeline*

31st of July 2010 – Deadline call for proposals
Beginning of September – Selected projects notifications
4th-7th of November 10 – make art 2010 - Poitiers (FR)

For examples of previous editions, please visit the archives :
http://makeart.goto10.org/

make art is powered by GOTO10

Call for Papers and Presentations : Free and Open Source Software Panel Session at CAA 2011

Deadline Extended: May 24, 2010

Fight the Power: Open Source, Free Software, and Critical Digital Practice

We invite proposals for papers and presentations for a panel on creative Free/Open Source Software at the College Art Association Conference in New York, February 9-12, 2011.

Digital technology has become a standard tool for artists working in both new media and traditional forms, just as it has become enmeshed in ever aspect of contemporary life. The Free/Open Source Software movement has recently emerged as an alternative model to the traditional software industry. This panel explores the use of Free Software in the studio and the classroom. What possibilities can it open for students, and how does it impact our teaching? How does it fit into professional creative work? Can the ideas behind “open source” be applied to other forms of collabo-
ration? This panel seeks papers and presentations addressing the use of open source software in studio practice and pedagogy, the state of the art in free creative software, and the nature of cultural production in a digital society.

Please submit proposals and queries to

Ben Chang
ben@bcchang.com

For the full conference call for participation, visit http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/

All participants in the conference must be members of CAA. For more information, visit www.collegeart.org.

In Linux the JACK 'system' inputs and outputs are limited to what you physically have on your soundcard, but inputs and outputs of the software that connects to JACK are controlled by said software.

In the preferences in PD you can specify how many input and output channels you want PD to use.These channels will show up in the JACK patchbay under 'puredata'.

The DAW that I use is Ardour, and when you add tracks in the program, those channels show up in the JACK patchbay. Each track will get an input and an output that can be connected to the input or output of another program. In this case you want your outputs from puredata to connect to the inputs of the individual tracks in Ardour.

If you don't see the inputs and outputs from puredata or your DAW in the JACK patchbay then:

1. your software is not connecting to JACK...it's probably connecting directly to ALSA
   or
2. you are starting the software before you start JACK, in which the software isn't getting registered with JACK, and JACK can't manage the connections.

I'll make some screenshots for you if that will help

If you plan on using [xerox~] to phase sync two oscillators, it probably won't cut it. Generally, you want those things to be sample accurate. [xerox~] will give you a click corresponding to zero crossings out its right outlet, but, as far as I know at least, Pd's oscillators can't really use that for phase syncing ([xerox~] is actually based on a Max object, yet strangely Max's oscillators can't use it either). It would require a conversion to message rate to reset the phase, which kills sample accuracy, not to mention the fact that the phase input of [phasor~] quantizes to block boundaries (default 64 samples in Pd), which also kills sample accuracy.

However, if you know the ratio between your two oscillators, phase syncing can be achieved using a master [phasor~] to run both oscillators. Use the master sync frequency to drive the [phasor~], then multiply the output of the [phasor~] by the ratio between the synced (slave) oscillator and the master one. In other words, it should be multiplied by:

slave frequency / master frequency

Then, you just [wrap~] the signal and viola, you have a new synced phasor signal to drive the slave oscillator. The attached patch should hopefully clarify.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/phase-sync.mmb.pd

Hello I installed Pd, jackd and Alsa via apt-get i have debian 5.0(lenny)

Sometimes the sound works, when work it appear an error message:

audio I/O error history:
seconds ago error type
0.14 A/D/A sync
1.00 unknown
1.52 A/D/A sync
5.76 unknown
5.76 unknown
tried but couldn't sync A/D/A
audio I/O error history:
seconds ago error type
1.40 A/D/A sync
3.38 A/D/A sync
3.69 A/D/A sync
7.12 A/D/A sync

when don't works appear this:
couldn't open MIDI input device 0
couldn't open MIDI output device 0
opened 0 MIDI input device(s) and 0 MIDI output device(s).
audio I/O error history:
seconds ago error type
4.69 unknown
4.69 unknown

thnx

Hello everyone!

I'm quite new to this board and to Pd in general, but have been programming for a few months now. I was wondering if anyone has information about a stochastic synthesis program called GenDyn that Xenakis wrote in the 1990's. Two artists that I quite like, Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker, use this software, but I have been unable to locate a copy of this software anyplace. Does anyone have information on this software or an equivalent program?