No need to say to much here, simply see the intermorphic site – www.intermorphic.com.
Intermorphic is the new company from me and Pete, and we are building some fun and useful new tools, tools for generating ideas. We are drawing on the experience and knowledge we have built up from developing Koan and miniMIXA. When the products are released, we will be actively seeking feedback on how we can improve them and to make sure they are focusing on doing the main things people want to do with them (and getting that right is always hard!).
The first product we release will be liptikl, a lyric generater for songwriters and poets. As some readers of this blog may know, I am a guitarist and have been writing songs for years. However, the hardest part of all for me is coming up with good ideas for the lyrics – and that stops me finishing many tracks. I know I am not the only one, so I wanted us to look into this challenge and see if we could help people like me to get those lyrics sorted and songs done!
What we are building should help you break writers block, and come up with good and unusual word associations. I have already used the early versions to come up with some interesting ideas. Cannot say more now, you will just have to wait and see how it works when we release it!
The other 2 products we have to do are noatikl, a replacement for the legendary Koan Generative Music System,
Well, we are now getting very close to nailing miniMIXA V3. One of the important things we have been asked for, and so we wanted to get in, was synching of microphone recordings. Well, we have done it . What that means is that you now get a count in period before you make a microphone recording – so you can get ready for your take. You can set how many bars you want this to be and how many bars you want to record for, as well as a system latency factor (as all mobile devices have different capabilities) – and the recording then synchs to the bar boundary. It is really useful and great fun!
The miniMIXA++ product will also include an autoloop recording feature. This means you can do take after take and only keep the take when you think you have nailed it.
This feature addition will make it much easier to use miniMIXA for capturing ideas on a mic, maybe as you are riffing or jamming to a background groove. You could then even sing/jam, record and sync harmonies on top.
I was very privileged to be invited by Microsoft’s Jason Langridge to demo miniMIXA today. This was at the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Press Launch at Weber Shandwick’s offices in London.
From what I saw, Windows Mobile 6 looks absolutely fantastic for connectivity, email, look-and-feel, ease of use and so many other things. Jason also gave some excellent demos of a range of software applications, including Deepfish, and a superb business card scanner (Worldcard Mobile from http://www.penpowerinc.com/. The easy way you can filter and use email, get maps and information to local amenities, greatly improved improved outlook calendar and the new Windows Mobile Device Center (the replacement for Active Sync) etc seemed brilliant. I must admit, on the basis of what I saw today, I am looking forward to buying my own WM6 device!
When it came time to demo miniMIXA on WM6, I did it on an HTC Hermes device. This has a 300MHZ processor with VGA screen. I also briefly showed miniMIXA on an older WM5 HTC TyTN device, and explained that the exact same demo/performance I gave on the touch screen device was just as easy to give on the smartphone with keypad.
You can hear a mono recording of the actual demo/talk I gave HERE
The recording features my commentary throughout the demo. The demo mainly covered the MusicDJ mode, but I also gave a quick showing of the simpler RingtoneDJ mode. To go through all of the capabilities would have taken hours, rather than 10 minutes, so I concentrated on showing a live performance! The audio recording of the demo was made on my Micro BR.
There is a video clip of a screen capture of a similar miniMIXA performance now on YouTube, recorded at 22Khz stereo. This is a mix created with the more advanced MusicDJ mode, which is being used by the Slough Young People’s Center.
The video on YouTube also doubles as a quick tutorial on using miniMIXA++ and MusicDJ mode, as it is annotated to show how to do various things.
The audio output created from this mix was recorded to my Micro BR from the headphone output of the PDA, and the screen capture of the video was recorded on my laptop. I used Microsoft Movie Maker 2 to pull the two together. You can see the video clip below or link to it is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBP97NwG4nU.
In relation to the SYP Mobile Mashup below, there was also a report on Radio 1 Newsbeat during the Scott Mills show, just before 6pm yesterday. You might be able to hear it here for 7 days (it is at the end of the 15 minute report). I understand that Radio 1 has an audience of 2 million listeners, so that is pretty good! When they mentioned it will cost you £200 to £400 pounds, what they meant was that that was the price of a higher end Smartphone or PocketPC – not the price of the miniMIXA software (which is around £10 to £20)! I guess there will be information about miniMIXA posted on the BBC website later.
NB: You might also be searching for mini mixer, mini mix, minimix, minimixer, music mixer, mobile phone etc.
On Saturday I was at the Slough Young People’s Center (SYPC) launch of their 6 MOBILE MASHUP courses. One of these is music mixing with miniMIXA. It was an interesting afternoon and DJ Spencer Lowe had created some drum loops that he was trying out, and various MCs including PanicPhaze joined in. Tao have a press release about the collabaration with SYPC here.
We were lucky to have Nadia from Radio 1Extra come to check out the course start and interview DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze. She also interviewed someone signing up for the course, and the SYPC Center Manager. Nadia’s report is being broadcast on Radio 1 today at 2:40pm, after the entertainment section (was around 3pm).
Here is the link to the 1Extra Homepage, click on the ‘Listen Live – Real’ link to tune in to the station: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/
Here is a picture of Nadia interviewing Spence, who is explaining how miniMIXA works.
I made a short video clip of the initial performance setup, and then where DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze were briefly showing Nadia the software (I did not make clips of the performance and audience though). l put something together and have uploaded it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nqTef3j30
On Monday night (12th Feb) at the Tao 3GSM party in Barcelona’s Red Lounge, I did short performance on miniMIXA, mingling with the party goers – in between a great set from the house DJ, “DJ Monk”. I had miniMIXA++ running on an PocketPC and sending the live 22Khz stereo audio output stream via bluetooth to the venue’s PA system. It all worked fine, and I had some senior mobile industry figures mixing live, too.
For the set I had purchased from Time and Space some middle eastern audio loops (Roots of the Middle East and North Africa from Big Fish Audio and SoundScan Arabian Traditions from Universal Sound Bank) and was mixing these together with some excellent bass and drum loops from the Music Tech Magazine, plus an audio track and a modular synth riff, together with some spot loops. I had set these up with the miniMIXA++ Cell Mix (MusicDJ) mode, and used the new beta XY control surface and quality filter to cool effect.
It really was pretty spectacular (and fun) to be doing this all live on a mobile device, on the floor. I lost the bluetooth connection a couple of times when someone passed in front of the bluetooth module (it was a low power one), so that was useful to know.
Even though I am not a DJ, people seemed to enjoy it, and especially enjoyed participating in the mix and hearing themselves over the PA – seeing the excited reactions was really cool. The XY control surface went down particularly well, too. In the hands of a real DJ, this could all be so much cooler still.
For those interested, I have uploaded a quick mix of roughly what I did. It uses 11 of the 12 tracks in miniMIXA, and all 4 sections in MusicDJ mode. It uses high quality low pass and high pass filters (controlled with XY control surface), reverbs and even a modular softsynth. You should hear that everything is pretty tight. It was live mixed, and recorded (direct to SD card) on an HTC Universal. You can find the recording here :Red Lounge – Tao 3GSM Party Mix.
Was this a world first performance? Quite possibly(!), as it included the following elements: live 12 track mixing on a Windows Mobile device; 22KHz stereo output over bluetooth to the club’s PA; audience participation; modular synthesizer; spot loop triggering; full track audio file streaming from storage card; XY control panel (controlling filter cutoff/Q); loading content into the mix on the fly (auto pitch shift/time stretch from other MIXApaks); use of a range of live fx at track and global level.
3GSM gets ever closer (next week now), and I am planning to show a new addition to miniMIXA – an XY control surface in the beta FXM Editor module. This allows you XY control of e.g. a high quality low pass filter on an audio loop or a modular (or even MIDI!) synth line – huge fun for a live mix. The FX chain (including the filter) can also include e.g. a stereo delay or reverb, so the whole sound is rather spectacular, and really cool to play with.
Not only is this something that I am going to show at the Tao buses (where Tao is showing its GamePlayer), but I also hope to do a small live demo at the Tao party – mobile music mixing, with audience participation, over bluetooth. Not being a “live performer” I am hoping the technology all works on the night
Just gone live is a fanastic clip made by the Slough Young People’s Center (SYPC) of a miniMIXA mashup – the SYPC DJ and rappers sound great, and are undoubtedly making mobile mixing history. There is a great vibe about the performance which was done on a Dell Axim, but I am sure future sets will be on phones. Interested sponsors should take note!
I have never had a knack for knowing what to do with drums, and have tried a number of approaches – from loops to MIDI riffs. Nothing ever worked for me, as I wanted the flexibility of MIDI, but the audio quality of loops and the variability of an intelligent instrument. I tried Groove Agent but did not really get along with that too well. Well, I have found it, and it is EZDrummer from Toontracks. www.ezdrummer.com
Yes, it is MIDI loops (lots of them), and great sounding samples. But, best of all, it has an easy interface to just drag them into a mix (I use Sonar). Check it out if you get a chance and find drums a mystery like I do!
. What that means is that you now get a count in period before you make a microphone recording – so you can get ready for your take. You can set how many bars you want this to be and how many bars you want to record for, as well as a system latency factor (as all mobile devices have different capabilities) – and the recording then synchs to the bar boundary. It is really useful and great fun!
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It really was pretty spectacular (and fun) to be doing this all live on a mobile device, on the floor. I lost the bluetooth connection a couple of times when someone passed in front of the bluetooth module (it was a low power one), so that was useful to know.