Music Hackspace

Sound synthesis with Max/MSP BEAP
2020-06-27 11:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | Online
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Level: Beginners with an understanding of the fundamentals of music technology and Max
Note: the same workshop will happen twice the same day to cover a wider range of time zones. Tickets are not for both workshops
Max and Max For Live offers virtually unlimited sound synthesis possibilities. Every copy of Max and Max For Live includes BEAP, a library of modules that emulate the function and signalling of hardware modular synthesizers, developed as a pedagogical tool for the Electronic Production and Design students at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
BEAP provides a set of higher-level building blocks that can be used to develop a myriad of sound synthesis techniques. Think of it like a modular synthesizer in Max and Max For Live. Within the landscape of sound synthesis many architectures exist, such as Subtractive, Wavetable, FM and Physical Modelling. BEAP provides modules for the majority of these architectures in an easy to implement series of high-level building blocks.
Via a series of simple signal flow style patching activities, participants will develop meta cognitive knowledge of each synthesis architecture, its sonic timbre and the techniques needed to deploy them within the wider landscape of music production.
Topics include:

Architectures
Signal path routing
Oscillators
Filters
Modulation Sources
Scopes
Sequencers

Requirements:

A computer and internet connection
Max 8 (Max 7 is ok but you might not have access to all the features used in this workshop)
A good knowledge of music technology
A basic knowledge of Max/MSP

About the workshop leader:
Phelan Kane is a Berlin & London based music producer, engineer, artist, developer and educator. For over twenty years he has been active in both the music industry and the contemporary music education sector, with a focus on electronic music and alternative bands. His specialism is sound design and production techniques such as synthesis and sampling, alongside audio processing and plug-in development. His credits include collaborations with Placebo, Radiohead, Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode, Moby, Snow Patrol, Mute, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner Bros. He holds an MA in Audio Technology from the London College of Music, University of West London, an MSc in Sound & Music Computing at the Center for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London and in 2008 became one of the world’s first wave of Ableton Certified Trainers. He is a member of the UK’s Music Producers Guild, holds a PG Cert in Learning & Teaching, is an Affiliate of the Institute for Learning, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and until recently was Chairman of the London Committee for the British Section of the Audio Engineering Society. He is currently running the electronic music record label Meta Junction Recordings and the audio software development company Meta Function, which specialize in Max for Live devices releasing the M4L synth Wave Junction in partnership with Sonicstate.
See Phelan’s Ableton Certified Trainer profile
Note: the same workshop will happen twice the same day to cover a wider range of time zones. Tickets are not for both workshops

Audio chips, e-textiles, touch interfaces: 40 years of computer music research
2020-06-25 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
Adrian Freed is the former Research Director of UC Berkeley’s CNMAT, the historical Californian research centre led for over two decades by the late David Wessel. At CNMAT, Adrian led a number of influential projects on computer music, including the widely used Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, developed with Matt Wright.
Adrian published his first paper in 1975, at a time where computers were out of reach, and he started hacking with digital and analog chips. As technology progressed, he worked on the Fairlight CMI and powerful processors for the time, that would cost less than $10 today. He dedicated his research to the new field of computer music, and went on to build systems ranging from analog designs to e-textiles.
In this talk, we’ll hear from Adrian’s long career, and the exciting new project he is working on, the FingerPhone.

Andrew McPherson: Augmenting Instruments
2020-06-22 18:00 | YouTube and Facebook
Dr Andrew McPherson is a Reader at Queen Mary University, where he leads the Augmented Instruments Lab. He invented the Magnetic Resonator piano, Touch keys and Bela, and is on a mission to empower anyone to build their own instruments. In this talk, Andrew will revisit his inventions and give tips to get started building your own. Join the live stream and participate to the live chat!

SWAM: software instruments that sound real
2020-06-18 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
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Sound designer and musician Stefano Lucato started creating solo string libraries in 2003, and has been on a quest ever since to create the most accurate reproduction of acoustic instrument sounds, to be available in plug-in format. He teamed up with software developer Emanuele Parravicini to build a technology that they used together to release software versions of nearly all orchestral instruments.
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Stefano and Emanuele created Audio Modeling in 2017, and run the business from a small village in Lombardy, Italy, between Milan and Lake Como. Their software instruments are used all over the world by composers and producers in the studio, as well as live.
On the 18th June, I will interview Emanuele Parravicini about Audio Modeling’s journey and projects, and we’ll hear demonstrations of the instruments live. Tune in on Facebook and YouTube.

Workshop with Ruben Dax: Live Looping with Ableton Live
2020-06-13 17:00 - 19:00 | Online
Book a ticket here
Ableton Live provides a great software environment for live looping – empowering a solo performer to bring an entire song to life in front of an audience in an engaging and relatable way. Outside of performing, live looping can also be used as a composition tool allowing you to create new music in a faster way with less distractions. Live looping using software, such as Ableton Live, affords you greater flexibility in your workflow, performance style, and mixing techniques in comparison to using traditional hardware looper devices.
In this workshop we will be diving deep into the different techniques for live looping using Ableton Live 10 as our digital audio workstation. We will progress through basic recording and layering techniques, using Ableton’s powerful ‘Looper’ device, MIDI mapping your controls, and even discovering how to craft automated (hands-free) live-looping performances.
Here’s a chance to learn the methods that for years I’ve experimented with, developed, and optimized for my own multi-instrumental live looping performances and start building your own!
Topics

Ableton Live
Ableton Live Looper device
Basis recording and layering techniques
MIDI mapping
MIDI controllers
Live looping automations

Requirements

An instrument and a way to capture sound, or a MIDI controller connected to a virtual instrument
Ableton Live 9, Live 10 or even Live Intro!
Using a MIDI controller can increase your flexibility (such as Novation Launchpad, Akai MPC, Ableton Push, ROLI Lightpad..)

About the workshop leader
Ruben Dax is a musician, multi-instrumentalist and instrument designer, who uses Ableton Live to compose songs with live loops. His YouTube channel shows a range of videos where he creates tracks with diverse sounds and instruments, aggregating them in loops to create rich, layered tracks.

Max and Node.js: the Age of Javascript
2020-06-13 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
Difficulty level: intermediate.
Javascript is the glue of the Internet, the universal language that runs in billions of web browsers and networked systems across the world. Max’s Node support connects the Max program into the ecosystem of Node.js, a Javascript engine which can network, talk to hardware, connect to databases, run sophisticated web servers, and much more.
In the workshop we’ll look at the link between Max and Node, and how the different worlds of graphical and textual programming connect. We’ll also look at some specific Javascript coding techniques and connect them to the 3D world of Max’s Jitter and OpenGL systems. From there we will start to explore ways to attach Max to web servers, allowing Max’s data to flow into and out of dynamic web pages.
Topics:

Max
Javascript
Web technologies
Jitter and 3D Graphics

Requirements:
A good working knowledge of Max is expected, as well as an awareness of how Jitter works. Some familiarity with textual programming languages and/or web technologies would be useful, but not required.
About the workshop leader:
Dr Nick Rothwell (aka Cassiel) is a composer, performer, software architect, coder and visual artist. He has built media performance systems for projects with Ballett Frankfurt and Vienna Volksoper, composed sound scores for Aydın Teker (Istanbul) and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance, live coded in Mexico and in Berlin with sitar player Shama Rahman, written software for Studio Wayne McGregor and the Pina Bausch Foundation, and developed algorithmic visuals for large-scale outdoor installations in Poland, Estonia, Cambridge Music Festival and Lumiere (London / Durham). He also teaches at Ravensbourne University London and writes for Sound On Sound magazine.

Atau Tanaka: Making music with muscle sensors
2020-06-11 18:30 - 20:00 | Online
Prof Atau Tanaka is a well known figure in the New Interface for Musical Expression network, an international conference he helped get started in the early 2000s. Atau is both an academic (head of the Embodied AudioVisual Interaction group at Goldsmiths, university of London) and an artist who performs internationally. His artistic practice with muscle sensors spans over 3 decades and hundreds of performances.
On the 11th of June, Atau will give insights into his approach, and tips for anyone looking to create custom interfaces to control music parameters live. Live on YouTube and Facebook.

Building Joué instruments: meet founder Pascal Joguet
2020-06-08 18:30 | Online
If you’ve been making music for more than 15 years, you might remember the first touch screen controller destined for music application, Jazz Mutant’s Lemur. Originally launched in 2005, the Lemur was a highly customisable multi-touch screen controller, designed to create your own control user interface. The Lemur offered high definition of control by sending data over OSC, an audacious move that no major MIDI controller manufacturers ever dared to make.

I won’t dive too much in the story of the Lemur, Peter Kirn did a great job at writing its obituary 10 years ago, and you can find it here. Suffice to say that it found its demise shortly after the launch of the iPad in 2010.

Pascal Joguet was the founder of JazzMutant, and the Lemur wasn’t the last design he had in him. A few years ago, Pascal co-founded Joué, aiming to create expressive instrument with a playful design, to lower the barriers of music production.
With a successful Kisckstarter campaign on the way (ending 9th June), Joué will be launching the Joué Play and accessories in October 2020. On Monday 8th June, we will host Pascal Joguet for a livestream, where he will retrace the story of his designs in the past 20 years. Here’s the Kicktstarter video of the Joué Play.

Tim Exile: creating Endlesss
2020-06-04 18:30 - 20:00 | Online
Tim Exile has worked with live looping and sampling as an artist for a decade before building his own plug-ins, released by Native Instruments. His unique methods and concepts developed for live performance inspired him to build a music making flow, Endlesss, that would allow musicians to create music collaboratively.
Tim and the Endless team are preparing a special announcement on 2nd June. Our session takes place two days after, where Tim will share his journey from musician to entrepreneur, and the vision that led him to create the Endlesss app.
About Tim Exile
Musician and technologist Tim Exile founded Endlesss to bring the joy of spontaneous collaborative creativity to music-making in the way TikTok and Instagram did with other media. These platforms empowered their users to create regular short-form work in an open social space.
As a seasoned musician and producer, Tim missed the elements of spontaneity, creativity and community in his long solo studio sessions. He set out to develop his ‘Flow Machine’ instrument for electronic improvisation which would become the DNA of Endlesss. Tim saw the potential of what he’d built to unlock a new purpose for music-making – a fast-paced, live-action, game-like alternative to the complexities of music production and the competitive music industry. Tim has developed software instrument products with Native Instruments and released records on Warp Records. He’s performed live in every continent with his ‘Flow Machine’, collaborated with a diverse range of artists such as Nile Rodgers, Imogen Heap and Beardyman and has spoken multiple times at TED and TEDx conferences about music and improvisation.
Download Endlesss here (iOS only)

Georgina Brett: live looping vocals
2020-06-01 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
In this online session Georgina will talk about the conception and actualisation of each piece she performs, the various methods of composition she uses. With a very simple set up she creates complex rolling matrices of vocalisations and lyrics.

Georgina Brett’s music is created using her voice and effects pedals, creating instant choirs of sound, often in an hypnotic style. The point of this music is not only to captivate with extraordinary timing and melodic style but also to help the listener to relax, in our ever-increasingly distracted world. Her double album Nonsense A and Nonsense B is of purely vocal works with no ‘deliberate’ words or lyrics. The albums show the voice as an instrument, and as a vehicle for emotional expression. “So much music is made in order to make us feel something so as to manipulate us to buy or to follow.. this album let’s your thoughts be whatever they want to be.” The albums also play with the idea that we like to interpret, constantly listening for meaning instead of just listening.

Working with samples in Max and Max for Live, with Darwin Grosse
2020-05-30 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
In this 2-hour workshop, Darwin Grosse (Cycling ’74) will use Max/MSP to combine audio clip playback with VST effects and Max for Live devices to create a range of soundscapes from glitchy beats to warped ambiences. The focus will be to create a personal performance system that can be tailored to your interests and style. Topics covered will be audio playback, effects processing, user-interaction development and MIDI mapping.
A basic familiarity with Max will help ensure success!

About the workshop leader
Darwin Gross is Director of Education at Cycling’74. Darwin is responsible for the tutorials and help files that can be found in every release of Max. Darwin is an experienced workshop leader, who enjoys building small music machines in Max, such as drones, rhythm generators and other re-useable projects that he can connect to hardware controllers or modular synthesizers. Darwin has been running a podcast since 2013 on Art, Music and Technology, with over 350 podcasts already released. https://artmusictech.libsyn.com/

Virtual drumming workshop with Shay Dyer-Harris
2020-05-30 11:00 - 12:30 | Zoom
Virtual drumming workshop with Shay!

Shayanna from Kinetika Bloco will lead a drumming workshop using household objects!
The Kinetika Bloco is a performance group with an exuberant mix of young brass and woodwind players, drummers, steel pan and dynamic dancers all in costume creating a “unique new British Carnival sound with a decidedly London edge” (BBC Radio2)
During lockdown Shay has adapted her workshops to use household objects rather than tradition steel drums.
This fun and interactive workshop requires no previous skills and all the family can join in!
About the workshop leader
Shayanna has been with the Bloco since it began. Having gone through the project from participant, to volunteer, to staff, Kinetika Bloco has a special place in her heart. Shayanna can be found running workshops or managing the team on projects with any age and all levels of knowledge. Shayanna is also a singer, songwriter and hosts shows. with the company Blue Revolutions she shares with Sam “Blue” Agard.

David Zicarelli: Fun with Complexity using MC in Max
2020-05-28 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube and Facebook
The patches demonstrated in this video are available here

Making and controlling complex sounds on a computer where hundreds of events are happening simultaneously can be hard work. Aren’t computers supposed to make doing complex things easier? Max has a new feature called MC that can make it fun and easy to work with large numbers of simultaneous events and audio channels. You don’t need a multichannel audio system to play with MC. All the examples shown work in mono or stereo.

What is MC?

MC stands for Multi-Channel and is a way to encapsulate many audio channels, and manipulate them together. This is a very useful replacement for projects that have multiple channels of audio and require unique representations and flows for each of them. Check out below David’s presentation of MC at Loop in 2019.

About David Zicarelli
David is the founder and CEO of Cycling’74, makers of Max. David founded Cycling’74 in 1997 to commercialise Max, a programming language that had been invented at IRCAM in 1985, and licensed to Opcode for commercialisation in 1989. David worked then at Opcode and acquired the publishing rights to the software in 1997. Max grew an audience in more than 3 decades, in education and as a tool for artists. In 2007, Ableton and Cycling’74 announced Max for Live, the integration of Max into Live, allowing Ableton Live users to use Max patches in their workflow. Cycling’74 was then acquired by Ableton in 2017, and Max for Live is seeing a lot of improvements since, opening up possibilities for long time Max users to find new audiences among the Live user base.

Amy Dickens: Inclusive Design for Digital Musical Instruments
2020-05-21 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
The 21st May 2020 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. To celebrate this, we are exploring in our live-stream today the design practices to help make musical instruments (hardware and software) more accessible. To find out more about GAAD, please check their website.
Should we make instruments easier to play? This is a question that might divide professional musicians, who have acquired their skills through hardship. But for everyone else, there is little doubt that the fun should start as soon as we engage with an instrument. Making instruments easier to play is also a critical issue for people with disabilities ranging from limited mobility to visual impairment. So, if you’re thinking of making an instrument, why not consider lowering the barriers of playing them?
In this talk, Amy Dickens will shed light on the inclusive design practices for Digital Musical Instruments, and how to make music accessible to everyone. Amy will walk us through some of the standards and best practices for accessibility, as well as design considerations for music technology of all kinds. For those wanting to take part at the end of the session there will be an activity in designing some digital musical instruments for different levels of ability.
About Amy Dickens:
Amy Dickens is an accessibility ambassador, Developer Advocate, and researcher at The Mixed Reality Laboratory, UK. As well as being an audio engineer and musician, over the past five years Amy has been conducting research into accessible music technologies. Currently living in London with partner and Jack Russell (Moo Bean), Amy is working on producing a framework for accessible musical experiences and finishing their all important PhD Thesis.
On the subject of accessibility and music, check out also the great work of charity organisation Drake Music.

Tweakable: a online programming environment for music and video
2020-05-18 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
We cover Max/MSP and Jitter a lot, as it is the most popular visual programming environment, especially if you want to hack audio and video in your own way. But it isn’t the only visual programming language out there. We found out recently about Tweakable, and it turns out to be quite remarkable.
First, it is entirely online. No downloads, no sign-up, the URL above takes you directly to a web page, where Tweakable runs. You might think that you are launching a video when you click on the usual triangle, but in fact you’re turning the engine on, and everything turns out to be editable. And you can build a user interface, too!
I’ve managed to extract an example with Julian’s help, see below. The original patch is available here.
[Update] Julian has added a share option that exports the code of a patch for easy embed. Wow.

Tweakable has a collection of simple examples to get you started, such as the one above, and it can get pretty complex. It’s made for musical applications so it has examples of algorithmic compositions, canon, fugue, jazz etc.
It gets better. It also supports video, through a similar patching system. The possibilities are super interesting. You can design your own audio/video project and encapsulate it onto your webpage, and visitors can also experiment with it.
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The author of this software is Julian Woodward. Based in Britain, Julian (Visual Systems Ltd) began developing Tweakable five years ago as a side project, and is now working on it full time. Julian will join us for a first public discovery of Tweakable on Monday 18th May. Ask questions on the live chat or on the forum.

Introduction to Audio and Video in Max/MSP
2020-05-16 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
In this workshop, we will use Max/MSP to create custom, interactive A/V experiments. We will first get grounded in the concepts and workflows of Max and creative coding by making video programs in Vizzie. Then we will go through the basics of using and manipulating audio in Max through MSP objects. We will connect sound to video and vice versa, and then create custom interfaces for our A/V experiments.
No experience with programming, music, or video is required. Bring audio or video samples you would like to work with!
About the workshop leader
Cassie Tarakajian is a software engineer and educator, who contributes to Cycling’74 and Processing, and teaches at New York University.

Kate Stone: interactive surfaces for music
2020-05-14 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube and Facebook
Kate Stone is the founder and CEO of Novalia, a UK-based company whose mission is to create “magical” interactions. Magical is the word Kate uses to explain that she aims to hide the technology away, and augment our analog interaction with the world with subtle and meaningful improvements. Imagine a musical instrument, a clarinet, say, equipped with invisible sensors and bluetooth chip, capturing the musician’s gestures to control video, or audio effects. Or a printed piece of paper with conductive ink that triggers sound.
Kate imagines a world that is more like Harry Potter than Minority Report. And although she claims she’s not a musician, most of her work revolves around music. From the McTrax she built for McDonalds to DJ Qbert’s album cover, music interactions seem to be the perfect home for her technologies. And for the past year, she’s been chair of the board of the MIDI Manufacturers Association.
Kate will be live-streaming on May 14th at 6:30pm UK time on our channel on YouTube and Facebook.

Roger Linn: designing instruments
2020-05-11 18:30 - 20:00 | YouTube
In 1980, Roger Linn designed the first drum machine with samples of a drum kit, the LM-1. Along with the LinnDrum and the Linn 900, Roger’s inventions played an important role in the sound of the 1980s, which can be heard on recordings from Michael Jackson to Prince.
40 years on, Roger is still inventing instruments. His latest instrument is the Linnstrument, a fretted surface equipped with pressure sensors. Notes are laid out in a similar way to the guitar, and the sensors capture the pressure and lateral movements to render vibratos and tremolos.
In this talk, Roger will present the Linnstrument and discuss his past inventions, and approach to designing them.
For more information: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/

Music in times of lockdown, with Jordan Rudess
2020-05-07 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube
Meet Jordan Rudess, the legendary keyboard of Dream Theater. Jordan is also very well known for embracing technology in any form that allows him to seek more expressivity and performing abilities.
Jordan is at heart a music hacker, who can make music with anything, and his insight has been valued over the years by many musical instrument companies, from KORG to ROLI, XKeys and he was an influential force to extend MIDI with MPE. As a touring musician, Jordan has been affected by the lockdown, and Dream Theater’s concerts have been canceled or postponed.
In this interview, Jordan shares his thoughts on making music from home and his passion for music technology and instrument design.

Ocean: a new online & collaborative sequencer
2020-05-04 18:30 | YouTube and Facebook
In this 8th live-stream, we hosted Robin Hunter who has recently launched a collaborative, online sequencer running in the browser: Ocean.

Online collaboration for music makers has fuelled many dreams over the past 20 years, but many of them have turned into nightmares. From Rocket Networks (acquired by AVID in 2003) to LL Cool J’s Boomdizzle or Ohm Force’s ambitious Ohm Studio, many have tried to make it easy to collaborate online. Bandlab and Soundtrap seem to be doing quite well however and betting on growing large audiences, in particular by targeting education.
Ocean is following on those footsteps with a very simple interface exempt of the jargon and complexity that we see in audio workstations. It’s designed to get people started immediately, and features a fun collaboration approach that makes it a good experience. There are much more features that will be needed before anyone can make a song with Ocean, but it’s a great first step. For those of you in education, or in lockdown with kids, have a try, it’s free!

Online talk #7: Interactive visuals with Jitter, with Rob Ramirez
2020-04-30 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube
Follow live on YouTube and Facebook.
When performing live with computers, musicians often wonder how to visually entertain the audience. Playing music from behind a laptop gives little cues to how the music is made. The performer could be a virtuoso, or writing e-mails, they wouldn’t behave differently. This is a departure from acoustic instruments, where each note requires physical actions visible to the audience.
When musicians work with visual artists, they can propose a narrative and aesthetic that matches the song, but what if you’re performing on your own? How can you produce entertaining visuals that reflect what you are doing behind the laptop?
In this talk, Rob will give an overview of Jitter, and how it can be used to build visuals that connect to your audio events.

Online talk #6: Yuri Suzuki presents the E Z Record Maker
2020-04-27 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube
Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist and partner at creative agency Pentagram. Throughout his career, he collaborated with Teenage Engineering, Will.I.Am, Jeff Mills, and designed music hardware and installations such as Ototo or the Pyramidi.
In this talk, Yuri will present his latest invention, the E Z Record Maker, a device allowing you to record vinyls at home from any audio input. As of today, the device is only available in Japan and will ship sometime in 2020 to Europe and the US.
http://www.yurisuzuki.com/

Granurise: A granular synthesizer for MPE instruments
2020-04-23 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube
Watch the live-stream here, 23rd April 2020, 18:30 BST / 10:30am PT.
Meet Andrej Kobal, from Slovenia. Andrej is an artist and a programmer, who built GranuRise, a rich and complex granular synthesizer for the Seaboard RISE (hence the name, GranuRise). In this live-stream, Andrej presents the vision he worked on for the past 7 years, demonstrate the product, and share how he built it with Max. Join the live stream to ask him questions.
7 years in the making
I first met Andrej Kobal in 2016, when he shared a prototype of his granular synth, which he had built for his own artistic practice. I was blown away by the possibilities that were already available in that version. Andrej turned out to be a perfectionist, and it took him another 4 years to bring Granurise to a version he felt comfortable distributing. In the meanwhile, MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) instruments became more popular, and MPE support in DAWs also became more pervasive, so anyone trying Granurise now should have an easier time than in 2016. Granular synthesis can have many control parameters, and it is a great synthesis technique to use with an MPE controller. You can truly feel how the dimensions of control of the Seaboard have a direct impact on the sound, which you cannot achieve using a normal MIDI keyboard.

Granurise isn’t a typical VST or AU plugin, it’s a Max for Live device. As such, it can be played within Ableton Live, or standalone, but unfortunately not within any other DAW, unless you use Soundflower or similar re-routing software. MPE support in Ableton isn’t there yet, but there are workarounds for Max for Live devices.
The user interface of GranuRise is feature-rich and intuitive. It offers micro-level controls for the grains, and macro-level controls such as sequencing. The preset bank and morphing capacity is great to store experimentations, and morph between them to discover new sounds and smoothly transition from a state to another. Unlike most plug-ins, GranuRise has been built for live performance, and you an use it standalone.
What is granular synthesis?
Over the past 20 years, granular synthesis has become an ubiquitous form of synthesis. Every mainstream plug-in company has released their own version of it, or integrated aspects of it to their suites of plug-ins. It was first coined by Iannis Xenakis, who conceived a music theory based on grains of sounds, (1960). Notable developments in the theory of granular synthesis were brought by Curtis Roads in his book Microsound (2001).
Essentially, granular synthesis proposes that sounds can be formed by the assemblage of smaller sounds, or grains of sounds. These grains can be excerpts of a larger sound (for example the sustained part of a piano note). Each of these grains can be played faster or slower, to increase or decrease their pitch, and be altered independently. These grains are then layered together with variable offsets, frequency, delay lines, feedback, and an overall density parameter that controls the number of sounds layered together. Over time, many more control parameters have been added. Check out Maurizio Giri’s example below for an implementation in Max.

Useful links for Granular Synthesis
List of granular synthesis software
Max tutorial by Cycling’74
Supercollider tutorial by Nick Collins

Physical modeling synthesis with Pat Scandalis
2020-04-20 18:30 - 20:30 | Music Hackspace, Somerset House, West Service Yard, Victoria Embankment, London, WC2R 1LA, United Kingdom
Join the live stream on 20th April 2020, 6:30pm BST / 10:30am PT, or watch it later.
In music, physical modeling synthesis is a technique aiming to reproduce analog sounds in software. Our guest speaker, Pat Scandalis, along with Julius Smith and Nick Porcaro have worked together since the 90s at CCRMA, Stanford, to create physical models of instruments. It isn’t a very common form of synthesis, due to the complexity of doing it well, and the CPU it requires to run.
Physical modeling synthesis is the key technique used in Pat Scandalis’ app GeoShred, which he built for iOS and iPad with MoForte and Jordan Rudess. Check out the impressive reel below.

Physical modeling synthesis has come a long way and is becoming a very attractive method to produce expressive sounds. Think of a physical model as the instrument itself: if it is the model of a violin, then it has 4 strings, a body, it can be played with a bow, staccato, etc. Each of these parts play a role in producing the sound. In a physical model, like with the real instrument, it is possible to alter a few of these parameters at the same time. When connected to a MIDI controller with multiple dimensions of control, a physical model instrument will offer a more reactive and richer response than traditional sampling engines, because of the variety of dimensions that can be controlled at once.
A great way to get started experimenting with physical modeling is to use the Karplus-Strong model, which gives the basics for modeling a plucked or percussion instrument. Sam’s tutorial, below, gives a quick account of how to implement it in Max (it’s nearly 10 years old, but still applies!).

The JUCE library also has a basic implementation of the Karplus-Strong algorithm in its examples, and you can check out the code on GitHub here.

Make Music with the Data Universe
2020-04-16 18:30 - 20:30 | YouTube
Meet Milton Mermikides and Phelan Kane. Two artists on a journey to make music with data. Milton and Phelan’s approach reveals the musicality of the world’s elements. With the support of programming, computer vision and sampling, they identify patterns in images, videos, or abstract data to create rich compositions and sound design. Watch Milton’s TEDx talk below for a moving – yet funny – overview of his work. In our live-stream, Milton and Phelan will explain some of the techniques used to create the compositions you can hear in the talk.

Ever since Pythagoras and the theory of the Music of the Spheres, composers have been inspired to use patterns found in the universe to create music. In the 19th Century, that approach developed across the arts, and not only in music. French poet Stéphane Mallarmé explored the position of words and their relationship with meaning, and his work famously inspired composer Debussy, whose work in turn inspired painter Kandinsky. Each time, the structure found in each work was used and translated to another art medium.
Oskar Fischinger’s 1938 Optical Poem, in turn, offers a visualisation of music, an approach which was then popularised in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

On Thursday 16th April, we will hear more about this fascinating approach that inspired so many artists, in a way that can inspire today’s artists and engineers to create new materials from the world of data that surrounds us.
Milton is a Reader in Music, Head of Composition and Director of the MMUS Programme at the University of Surrey. He is also a professor of Jazz Guitar at the Royal College of Music in London.
Phelan is a music producer, recording and mix engineer musician, mastering engineer and music programmer. He is based in London and Berlin, and is joining the live-stream from Berlin.

Online talk #2: Create music in Virtual Reality
2020-04-09 18:30 - 19:30 | YouTube
Join the live stream on Thursday 9th April, 6:30pm BST / 10:30am PT.
In the past three decades, Virtual Reality has been a wall onto which many dreams have been projected. From Minority Report to Ready Player One, VR inspires worlds of possibilities. Today’s world seems however far from the film industry’s depiction of a possible future. VR has been successfully adopted by a number of hard core gamers, but despite heavy investment from Facebook, Samsung, Microsoft and many others, it is still unclear how VR will deliver entertaining experiences to the general consumers.
So, how about VR for Music? There are options out there, such as Drum Hero, or Wave Beta. They seem to unanimously release on gaming platforms, such as Steam or Oculus, which is where you can find customers equipped with the necessary headsets. Our guest is no exception to this, having release Tranzient on both platforms.

Jim Simons is the founder of Alive in Tech, the studio that released Tranzient. Jim previously worked at Focusrite and Yamaha, and is an experienced musician. Jim will lead the second session of our weekly online talks with a demo of Tranzient, and will answer live questions. You can watch the stream below when it’s live, or after it has happened!

Max meetup live streamed
2020-04-02 18:30 - 21:00 | St James Hatcham Building, Goldsmiths, 25 St James, London, SE14 6AD, United Kingdom
This Meetup will be live streamed here.
Experienced Max users Valeria Radchenko, JJ Burred, Mike Zbyszynski and Nick Rothwell will share some of their practices and patches during this first online event. You will be able to ask questions in the chat and access the patches on the Music Hackspace forum.
Max is extensively taught here at Goldsmiths University, the new home of the Music Hackspace. and students and academics are doing remarkable things with it. Check out Prof Atau Tanaka’s research on music creation with bio sensors, Dr Mike Zbyszyński’s software experiments and many more in the Computing and Music departments. There even are some short Max courses available to anyone, taught by Daniel Ross, who also runs SEEM.
What is Max?

Max is a music software that allows to build interactive media, by connecting audio, video and gestures in an infinity of combinations. You can download the Max 8 demo here.

A Human-Data Interaction workshop on Music and AI
2019-09-20 14:00 - 19:00 | Somerset House Studios, River Rooms, New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA, United Kingdom
Will AI generated music one day replace human composed music? Can machine learning help us model listening habits or instrumentalist gesture? Can deep learning model musical style or create novel forms of sound synthesis?
We seek to separate the fantasy from reality, and identify realistic research challenges in the midst of all the hype by organising a half day event at Somerset House. On Friday September 20, 2019, from 2:00pm-6:00pm, we will organise a workshop on Music and Artificial Intelligence. It takes place as part of a UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) funded research network, HDI Human-Data Interaction: Legibility, Agency, Negotiability.
The event will bring together leading researchers, musicians, and social commentators to discuss concrete challenges and opportunities that technologies of information processing bring to music and the creative industries.

The discussions will help to shape a subsequent Call for Proposals to fund projects that will put academics into partnership with artists and industry to create new systems and critical studies that look at the deployment of AI and machine learning technologies in creative acts of music making, performing, and listening.
The workshop is organised by Prof Atau Tanaka of the Embodied Audiovisual Interaction (EAVI) unit at Goldsmiths in collaboration with Music Hackspace.
The venue is located on the ground floor of Somerset House and is fully wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet. If you have any other access requirements, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate them.
If you have any questions about this event or any of our workshops please contact workshops@stagingmhs.local.
Image credit: John Hersey

Spatial Sound Meetup #4 with BBC R&D
2019-09-04 18:30 - 21:00 | Somerset House Studios (G18), Somerset House Studios, Lancaster Place, London, United Kingdom
A new series of monthly meetups taking place at Somerset House Studios, focusing on new spatial sound technologies, with talks and discussions around creative uses of spatial and AR audio.
The meetups will take place on the following dates, you can register here:
12th June – Professor Zoran Cvetkovic from King’s College
3rd July – Contributors TBA
7th August- Contributors TBA
4th September – Contributors TBA
Each session will be hosted by BBC R&D and will feature a presentation by invited guests.
BBC R&D has been at the forefront of innovation in media technology since the founding of public service broadcasting in the UK.
Based in Research Labs in the North and South of the UK, the department is comprised of just over 200 highly specialist research engineers, scientists, ethnographers, designers, producers and innovation professionals working on every aspect of the broadcast chain, from Audiences, Production and Distribution right through to the Programmes themselves.
The venue is located on the ground floor of Somerset House and is fully wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet. If you have any other access requirements, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate them.

Creative Electronics Laboratory with XNAME
2019-08-31 11:00 - 18:00 | Somerset House Studios, New Wing, Room G16, Entrance via Lancaster Place, Somerset House, London, WC2R 1LA, United Kingdom
This workshop guides participants in the construction of a small robot animated by sunlight. After a brief introduction to the rudiments of electronics, the focus is on building a small oscillator soldering all components directly on the microchip. When hit by lights, the robots emit sound. When connected to a speaker they turn into a synthesisers that can be modulated with intermittent and coloured lamps. According to the components selected and the creativity of each participant, every bot will be unique in sound and appearance.
All the necessary components will be distributed at the beginning of the workshop, and every participant can keep the synth built. No previous experience in electronics is necessary to take part in this workshop.

XNAME is a musician and instrument designer. You can find out more at her website (contains flashing lights).
If you have any questions about this event or any of our workshops please contact workshops@stagingmhs.local.
We can offer a student discount of 10% off this workshop. Please email us for a discount code.
The venue is located on the ground floor of Somerset House and is fully wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet. If you have any other access requirements, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate them.
