Based on work with the Oblong g-speak “spatial operating environment” gestural system - research that inspired the film Minority Report - our friend Trey Harrison has been doing some wonderful work with new Theremin-style interfaces. He writes:
I have been working with Oblong Industries (http://oblong.com) and
took some of my
spare time to combine their technology with my Salvation project
(http://slvtn.com)
and build a theremin-like instrument.
There are three degrees of control:
Pitch is adjusted by moving hands left and right.
Volume is adjusted by moving hands up and down.
Vibrato is adjusted by moving hands foward and backward.
Many players and hands are possible, and the control can be applied to any MIDI instrument.
I like the fact that two hands are only the beginning — invite friends for collaborative sessions and get an octo-armed version! The pitch scaling certainly makes it easier to hit the notes, although it does remove some of the expressive pitch bends of the original Theremin. It’d be nice if an additional gesture (pinching, perhaps?) could allow you to warp between scale degrees.
AFP - Google's new China music search feature will solidify its foothold in the world's biggest Internet market, but massive music piracy could spoil hopes of catching up to market leader Baidu, analysts said.
April Fool’s, San Francisco style – with a parade. Now that’s more fun than sitting in front of blogs. Photo: Patrick Boury.
Here’s a cruel joke for you: the first day of Frankfurt’s Musikmesse trade show? The date on which all the music tech press releases for the show have dated their embargo? April First.
Now, to me, the whole point of April Fool’s is surprise, or at least humor. April Fool’s has become so obligatory that everything from faux press releases to blog posts are dedicated to the topic whether they were inspired or not. So, you know what? No April Fool’s Day here. Anything covered on this site tomorrow will be – to the best of my knowledge, anyway – real. (Or as near reality as we ever get.)
Ironically, news in our world is so unsurprising, any interesting news is immediately suspected of being fake. Teenage Engineering’s is so cool looking that, aside from concerns it may not ship, some of you have gone so far to worry the whole thing is an elaborate April Fool’s prank. (One clue that that’s nonsense: it was announced on March 30. It even missed the Ides of March.)
But there you go: case in point. Reality actually can be cool. So we’ll stay away from the pranks this year, and any foolery will be of the technological kind. Enjoy.
Reuters - Microsoft Corp has signed up multiple software partners for its upcoming cellphone software marketplace, including Web music service Pandora, game publisher Electronic Arts Inc and social site Facebook.
The age of the high-density screen has begun. You can bet these will start to replace the tired (and functionally limiting) LED readouts of the past. The upshot: hardware with usability rivaling computers. Oh, and it’ll look damned purty.
Teenage Engineering has this gorgeous vid of the “OP-1″ controller/synth prototype in action:
By the way, my sources say this thing is real. Actually shipping is another matter entirely, but there is a talented team backing this one up. And I think we’ll watch hardware makers raise the bar in all aspects of design, whether or not the big-name vendors figure that out or not.
A real highlight for me at the Game Developer Conference was getting to hear Satoru Iwata deliver the keynote. Aside from being CEO of Nintendo as they have launched their most successful console ever, Iwata-san has left a sizable development legacy as a veteran of HAL Laboratory (Balloon Fight, Kirby). In the game community, I think the reception to his keynote was mixed – mostly, it introduced long-overdue storage solutions for Wiiware titles, along with some relatively minor game titles. But as a person interested in design and development – and what innovative interfaces could do for music and not just games – I found the rare insight into Nintendo’s development process inspiring.
The surprise: despite their enormous resources, Nintendo is moving to ever-smaller development teams. And they’re taking dance classes to work on their musical rhythm.
Any developer with limited resources is familiar with what Iwata described as the “development death spiral”: financial pressure means rushed titles with poorer quality, resulting in fewer sales, resulting in greater financial pressure. Oddly, Iwata didn’t quite explain how do navigate out of the death spiral, explicitly. “Once you enter the death spiral, it is difficult to escape,” Iwata acknowledged. But the implication of his presentation was that you could do more with less, by focusing on process – not necessarily adding resources, but focusing on humans and fun. (The analog for music, perhaps, would be as much “expressivity” as fun.)
To illustrate, Iwata spoke mainly of Nintendo’s chief designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of … um, , in fact. Now, some of Miyamoto’s habits have been widely published, like his tendency to turn hobbies (gardening and puppies) into games. But to hear a normally-secretive Japanese company talking frankly about its process is something special.
Miyamoto’s Way is what Iwata called an “Upward Spiral.”
He observes people everywhere having fun. He thinks about how the core of that fun might come into games. But even as one project starts, he is still observing other people having fun – more ideas are born. Most developers prepare a thick design document to explain their intension to their teams. Mr. Miyamoto almost never writes one.
His first goal is always the same – a [prototype,] very limited and very clear. The amount of time being spent on the game’s appearance is zero.
Mr Miyamoto always has multiple projects in this stage at the same time.
What I find most important is how in each phase of overall development, he can clearly distinguish which details must be perfectly finished in that phase, and separate them from the parts that can be tentatively prepared.
You can see just how primitive some of these prototypes are in the example below from Punch Out. I think this is actually an important issue, as many beginning developers of games and audiovisual works don’t get primitive when doing early drafts, thus making it harder to make changes later.
Miyamoto is also notorious for randomly kidnapping employees for playtesting – playtesting without focus groups or statistics collection, but more qualitative evaluations of how people like a creation. Again, this isn’t unheard of in the industry, but it seems not to happen enough. And Miyamoto looks very fetching in his Cowboy / Outlaw getup.
Now, prototyping is nothing unique to Nintendo. But remarkably, Miyamoto’s prototype phase can last “more than two years.” And while no other developer has Miyamoto working for them, I expect that this is unusual:
I make it a point not to ask how [the project]’s doing. I believe this could make the team cut corners, or settle for less than their desired outcome.
This is not very good for my mental health. This is because of Mr. Miyamoto’s tendency to … upend the tea table.
“Upending the tea table” – also known as the “Miyamoto Test” – is a signature Miyamoto move by which the designer scraps a development process in mid-stream in order to make corrections. Again, this happens in the game industry, though perhaps not as often as it should – and certainly, no one has the leeway Miyamoto does.
Mr. Miyamoto is never an … angry man. He resets the dishes he had scattered, explaining just how they should be arranged on the tray.
I know many developers and critics are increasingly becoming frustrated with the dogma of fun, believing it forces the industry into a narrow range of expression. But, then, I enjoy depressing movies. Defined as enjoyment, Nintendo’s philosophy of fun is more a kind of commitment to its users. As Iwata puts it:
We create entertainment, and entertainment is meant to be enjoyed. If it can’t be enjoyed, it’s not the consumer’s fault – the fault belongs to us.
(At this moment in the presentation, in fact, Iwata bent forward slightly and halted, as if to consider the shame of such a potential situation.)
Alternative ideas about rhythm from Nintendo’s latest for DS.
The musical connection to all of this is the rhythm game, “Rhythm Heaven.” We were lucky enough to get a copy for DS as we left the presentation; more on how it works soon. The game has already had a life as a Japanese-only Game Boy Advance title, but is now a worldwide release on DS. Several revelations were interesting to me in this presentation:
Nintendo is turning to increasingly-smaller teams – as few as five on the GBA game and three on the DS. That says a lot about the way the videogame titan views effective development, and should give hope to penny-pinching indie developers and publishers, as well as us musical / visual experimenters toying with developing new interfaces.
Rhythmic theory: The impetus for the game was designer/developer Tsunku’s new “rhythmic theories,” and ideas about how to teach and play with rhythm.
Dance instruction: To help developers learn better rhythm themselves, Nintendo turned not to music lessons but dance movements – Tsunku bet that movement would help hone the programmers’ rhythmic skills.
As Iwata explained:
How can a good rhythm game be created if the developers’ themselves don’t have much rhythm?
The quickest way to learn rhythm, [Tsunku] believes, is to dance. So the developers danced. Maybe they’re like winners of the Japanese ‘Dancing with the Stars.’
This was the first time as a game producer that I had to approve a budget for dance lessons.
Dancing developers.
Rhythm Heaven creator Tunsku.
For those of you wondering what the future of platforms for gaming or music are, Iwata had other juicy stats, as well. In 2008, female usage of the DS was up sharply to 47%. That brings hope for less male dominance of music technology. And anyone betting the iPhone would obliterate the DS as a gaming platform ought to think again. The DSi – the latest DS model with downloadable titles and a built-in camera – set a new advance-order record on Amazon for game systems. Some 90% of WiiWare titles are independent, so that makes me imagine that we could see creative new music and visual creations on both WiiWare and the DSi download service soon – a nice change from the current situation, which requires you to hack your system just to get real music apps. It’s nowhere near as open as the iPhone, though, so installed base aside, I think the iPhone / iPod touch remains a friendlier development platform.
Iwata closed with a nice sentiment for all of us:
Remember, in the Great Depression American inventors invented the jet engine, television, and even the chocolate chip cookie. As a developer, I believe anything is possible. The future of video games is in your hands.
I’m always a fan of “off-the-fovea” thinking, which was part of why I went to GDC. Hearing game developers tackle these problems I think has a lot of lessons for development of other creative projects – and I certainly believe a lot of these lessons are applicable to audiovisual makers, even if you don’t intend to release an iPhone – erm, DS — music game. Prototyping, testing and observation, small teams, using movement to make music and rhythm more powerful – all of these have great lessons not only relative to the game industry’s norms but for everyone else, too. I’m curious to hear what you think. But, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a DS break.
I need voice recognition, because I’ve just covered my keyboard with drool.
The Teenage Engineering OP-1 (Operator 1) is a “pocket-sized” controller and synth. For once, it eschews the cliches of modern hardware design for a look that is truly 2009, influenced by the layout of classic Roland drum machines but made minimal and elegant. It’s a controller. It’s a synth. It has … an FM radio in it? (Yes, that’s FM radio, though it also has the FM synthesis you might expect.)
Stand-alone synthesis (no computer needed), with 8 synth models, 8 samplers
Synth models: FM synthesis, virtual analog, more (can’t tell what other synth models they intend)
Effects: Delay, Flutter, Filters, EQ
Sequencer — described as “at present time, secret.” A secret sequencer? Isn’t it already somewhat secret, seeing as the device isn’t shipping?
Arpeggiator
FM radio (so you can record Akufen-style radio samples?)
Built-in mic, speaker
Record to MP3
12 mm thin
USB 2.0, minijacks for audio in / out+heaphones
Battery-powered using the power connector, which is “the same as used in robotic automation applications”
Holes for a carry strap
Don’t be a dream. Don’t be a dream.
All of this has an unbelievably beautiful interface.
The only real question is, is all of this too good to be true? Teenage promises an initial run of 100 to the “beta” list, with the project completion slated for 10-12 months and price TBA. Now, we’ve heard that before, and painfully, we tend to see a rough correlation looking something like this:
But note, this is only correlation, not causation. That is, the awesomeness of something does not prevent it from shipping. So I’m holding out hope that the OP-1 will indeed see the light of day, and we’ll be sampling FM radio and programming FM synth sequences on a bus. I can’t wait.
(I’ll amend the illustration, and we’ll put the OP-1 alone in the upper right-hand corner of this graph.)
As noted in comments, LSDJ creator Johan Kotlinski is , too. That makes the “secret” sequencer all the more tantalizing. (It still makes sense that it’d be some sort of step sequencer, given the hardware interface, but what kind?)
Teenage Engineering are not new to truly brilliant designs. They created an installation of toy-like robotic singers for Absolut – the vodka company – called . Heck, I want these, too. Brilliant work.
The iPhone 3.0 SDK is a fantastic update, bringing a lot of what was on developer wish lists for the device. But some of the early speculation - that the so-called “library access” would enable music games and DJ apps — may have been premature. Jordan Balagot writes to let us know that, at least in the current SDK, access to media is very limited.
The “library access” in the 3.0 SDK is only a player control API similar to that of the iPod; there is not even read only file access for MP3s nor any way to modify the output from the library. So no iPhone DJing, no BPM detection, no interactive PD or Reaktor patches with your library.
Unfortunately, this seems consistent with Apple’s desire to be the one and only media player on the device. I’m hoping that this is still something Apple plans to add - imagine the ability to add effects or run games based on the library (a la the PC game Audiosurf) or create DJ apps. I know many people who use iPhone or iPod as sample players or backups for live sets; having a custom player app could also be useful.
By comparison, Google’s Android has no such limitations on its - the fundamental difference being that you aren’t limited from playing media on your device. Unfortunately, Android has its own limitations: no real audio buffer access, which means it’s not possible to build effects or DJ apps or games on Android, either.
And that’s typical of the sort of situation the newest mobile devices present. We have the iPhone, more sophisticated technically, but limited, apparently, by design in order to protect Apple control over certain functions. Then we have the Android, philosophically unlimited but technically limited by some key missing capabilities.
My question is, which device will evolve first to give us the freedom to make use of its full potential?
If we’re lucky, perhaps the 3.1 SDK? (Or something we’ll still see in 3.0 that isn’t done yet?)
When it comes to media–digital or otherwise–you’ve got options. Lots and lots of them, from formats that have been around for decades to new services that may or may not amount to much over the long haul. At prices that range from nothing to kinda pricey. It’s an embarrassment of riches, so here’s a quick T-Poll to see how the Technologizer community’s getting entertainment (and news, and information) right now.
I haven’t taken the survey myself yet, but when I do, my answer will be, basically, “all of the above with a few exceptions, such as Blu-Ray, and in several other forms, too…”
