This is a rough demo of a new iPhone music app that I plan to release in a few weeks. It’s a sort of musical instrument/meditation tool/artwork. The patterns are made from images of spinning quilts and rugs, and the audio is shifting loops of contemporary Christian music played backwards. The final version will have more advanced sound control and several modes with different samples, spin patterns, and sound options. I will probably also be porting it to Android.

I released a virtual 10 inch with four new Tree Wave songs.

Since the Pi House Generator was posted on Make and some other places today and I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, I’m posting a longer sample of the program’s output. This mp3 is an hour and half randomly selected from a 10 hour recording I made recently (~100MB download).

update: here is a torrent of the full 10 hours, please seed!

update2: I’ve been told the torrent isn’t working. I can’t look into it now, but I’ll try again in a few days.

update3: A bunch of people have emailed asking about getting a copy of the Pi House program. I may release it at some point, but it needs some work to be ready for public release and it currently only supports uncompressed samples, which means the samples take up over a gig.

update4: Because I got dugg I had to temporarily remove the mp3s, I ran out of bandwidth. I’m looking for somebody else to host them…

update5: mp3s back up.

Using the 1992 Olympic Dream Team game against Croatia to make Jesus & Mary Chain guitar sounds:

original song + basketball samples = *really* noisy guitar sound

also there is no guitar in this at all, it’s all FM synthesis. more later…

I’m performing tomorrow at the opening of the Dallas Video Festival. The festival includes work by a bunch of awesome people, read Tom Moody’s writeup about it.

This will probably be my last Tree Wave performance for quite a while because I’m changing out my setup. Although I’m still using the 8bit gear, I will probably not be performing with it any more. I’m now focusing on the sample-based PC software that I started writing a while back, which I wrote about here and Tom Moody interviewed me about here . I’m actively working on adding the features I need to make an album with it. I have short sample of the latest output from the program online here

I’ve released a new version of my Commodore 64 synthesizer cartridge that includes several new features and some fixes. See change log below. The cartridge and EPROM upgrade are available from the Atariage Store and the ROM images and source are available on the Cynthcart page.

Cynthcart v1.2.4 changes:
- PAL and NTSC note tables and autodetection
- full-screen video mode
- second paddle controls pulse width, LFO depth, or pitch
- automatic activation for filter paddle
- improved keyboard layout
- onscreen help
- SID editor help and status display
- dummy SID register to edit 3 oscillators at once
- save an editor patch in memory
- fixed patch/sound change glitch when playing
- fixed bad notes in top octave

I’m working on a new software project for my upcoming show at Dunn & Brown (January 11th). The program generates house music by progressively calculating the digits of pi and feeding them into an algorithmic music generator that I wrote. Here is a sample of the audio output. This process has some interesting attributes:

- The song is infinitely long and static. Every byte of the audio output is predetermined, even though only a small amount of it has actually been listened to. So you can jump to any measure in the song and it will always play the same music for that measure.

- As the digits of pi progress further and further out, more and more processor cycles are required to calculate the next digit. After months of play, any given computer will not be able to calculate the digits fast enough for the music to play continuously.

- The rate that the number of processor cycles increase per digit is O(NlogN). However based on Moore’s Law, processor power per dollar increases at a exponential rate. So by upgrading your computer regularly with the market trends, you can play the pi/house song indefinitely.

I will post a demo version of the program later when I have some time to clean it up.

1] awesome god midi

2] christians pirate music

3] current artists: a b c d e …

4] leviticus

5] fair use

yikes, should have posted this sooner. I’m performing before the showing of 8Bit at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown tonight. Marcin is supposed to be there too. cool.

hey, I’m playing at the Cavern in Dallas on Sunday with Menomena.

This will be the first live Tree Wave show with STEREOPHONIC SOUND!! I tried running one of the C64’s in stereo at a couple shows before, but it was a hassle and it was really unreliable. I’ve now got a C64 running reliably in stereo using a SID Symphony cartridge (a cart with an extra SID) with a cartridge port expander so I can also use my Cynthcart, and I’ve also got my 386 running in stereo by doing some tricky routing and adding a second BOSS Heavy Metal Pedal.