steve cooley presents

the new new stuff is “four pattern mode” where all 4 patterns will run in a row for an effective 64 step length sequence, and being able to clear a voice sequence or a whole pattern sequence.

Wow, we had such a great time at Smoke Tiki last night! Thanks to everyone who came out to see us, you’re really what makes it a great night for us.

Haptic Synapses live at Smoke Tiki Lounge, San Jose California 2009

We’re playing a live performance tomorrow night, thursday december 10th 2009… at the Smoke Tiki Lounge in san jose (http://www.smoketiki.com/) We’re going on at 11pm, at which point a $5 cover kicks in. So.. show up early and get in for free. We’re performing with multiple instances of the step sequencer hardware and software that we’ve been developing since april of this year. Check out http://beatseqr.com for more info.

Hope to see you there, and if you can make it please say hi!

Three down, two more to build. $399, interested?

Are you in the silicon valley area? Do you love techno music? Are you available about once a month to collaborate with us? Take a look at this graphic. Does this make sense? email me at steve@sc-fa.com if so.

Here’s an early and very simple example of how you can take the midi loop transmitted from Steppa to drive some visuals. Every sound you hear in this video is doing something to the visuals. Some are obvious like making the main shape jump around and spin, and then there are some other effects that are more subtle, like the crystallize filter that appears later. The way I did this was through Quartz Composer via the midi note receiver… it’s a really cool effect!

Programmatic visuals from a midi loop from stevecooley on Vimeo.

What I like about this is that unlike a “music visualizer”, it’s not reacting to bands of the audio spectrum, it’s reacting directly to the midi loop, so there’s absolutely no question about what instrument is driving what visual element. More to come soon!

This isn’t quite ready yet, but… Check out this one-shot recording of the new 64 step length capability

Hey there, it’s Steve Cooley from Haptic Synapses and Beatseqr.com.

Here’s a trick that I’ve been playing around with using quartz composer to generate curve data and send it out to osculator, and then from there you can send it out as midi cc to whatever music app you want that will accept that data to control various things. It’s pretty neat, and there’s a lot of room for exploration here. As required by the Rules of Ideas Being Spread On the Internet, we have to have a silly name for this, so let’s call this a “quartzillator”.

Load up quartz composer. I think even 10.4 had the OSC sender patch, so it should work that far back. 10.5, 10.6, and presumably every version after should be able to do this.

In a blank composition, place an “interpolation” patch and an “OSC Sender” patch. The options of these patches are ok at the default, just find out what port quartz composer is going to be using to send the OSC data out on so you can tell Osculator to listen on that port.  Add a new float OSC argument with whatever name you want.. I called mine “/oscillator”.

listen to the port sent from QC in osculator and set it up as MIDI CC

Connect the interpolation patch’s Result output port to the OSC argument’s input port. Quartz Composer is now sending curve data out on that udp port with that argument.

Connecting the interpolation patch to the OSC send patch

Launch Osculator and set the OSC Input Port to whatever the output port number was in the OSC Sender patch in quartz composer.   The argument that you made (in my case “/oscillator”) in QC should show up automagically.  Set the event type to be a “MIDI CC” output and set the value to be zero (for now.. there may be some conflicts on some numbers you choose.. most seem to be ok).

listen to the port sent from QC in osculator and set it up as MIDI CC

Ok, so if everything is working correctly, you should be able to go to your music app of choice that will accept MIDI CC messages, and assign the new “quartzillator” to whatever parameter you like.  Here’s a video of the effect in Propellerhead Reason… again, this should work in logic, live, reason, VSTs with midi learn, AU’s… pretty much anywhere that will accept midi cc.

ENJOY! Happy exploring!

Hey, so I’m switching off soundcloud… so look for the links to the audio recordings as below:

Live at Works 2009-11-09 ———————————————————————————–

Another great set!

We had a beatseqr user meetup at my house on friday night. Check out the photo!

Also, I wanted to mention that Derek and I did some great work and managed to get chase lights working while the sequencer is running. This feature will give you a sense of where you are in the sequence.

On display at Heart Of Chaos – “Uproar 2009″ show at first street billiards: