The Compose music tablet is a design concept, by Ouyang Xi, He Binbin, Zeng Li & Li Bo, intended to provide a mobile composition solution.

The pen acts as a mic that you sing into. When docked into the digital paper tablet, your vocal harmonies are automatically transcribed from the recording in the pen into a score.

For old schoolers, you can write directly on the display. It also contains sound libraries for an entire orchestra – so once your composition is finished, you can play it back.

I saw this at Yanko Design, which, unfortunately, does not link to the designers’ page or offer much in the way of information. If you’ve got any additional info on this, let me know in the comments.

Townshend plans to use the music created on the web on the next Who album as long as his bandmate Roger Daltrey gives the project the go-ahead.

Speaking at the launch of The Method yesterday (25.05.07), Townshend said “When I first had this idea John Entwistle and Keith Moon were still alive and in the band. They were very dismissive of it.”

“But today, The Who is just me and Roger Daltrey. If I was going to work with this idea, I would want to do it full on and if Roger was into it then I don’t see why we couldn’t make an album.”

Townshend first had the idea for The Method in 1971 when he wrote a futuristic film script called The Lifehouse in which he prophesised about the coming of the Internet, and how it would allow people to ’share music, make music and call people together to celebrate’.

Despite his passion for computer-composed music, the rocker admits he hasn’t been able to get singer Daltrey, who is a self-confessed technophobe, to try out the unique software.

He explained: “He hasn’t tried it out yet. I suppose he might if I led him to the computer. I think he would need to be let alone to try it out.”

The Method launches on May 1.

The software works as a composer instead of a tool for composing. Users can create the basic part of a song by developing the motive which allows a key shift in the phrase. In other words, the program will bring the inspiration to the user. The software is available in three versions: Basic (free), Standard and Professional, for Windows OS.

LvB’s X simplifies creation by providing a simple graphical interface to be used by those with no prior knowledge or understanding of how to make music with a computer. Essentially, LvB’s X is designed to obtain a well-balanced relationship between musical regularities and irregularities. Every note of every instrument, except the drums, has its own sample – there is no musical predetermination as loop-based samples.

Pricing & Availability

The Basic version of LvB’s X is free and available immediately as a download at www.lvbsx.com. The Standard version ($99.95, shipping included) is available for download with software and printed user manual sent to customers via mail. The Professional version ($249.95) offers a special program for educational professionals ($49.95).

System Requirements

LvB’s X requires a Windows (XP, 2000, 2003) based OS, sound capability, at least 99MB/690MB of free disk space for Basic/Professional version installation and minimal graphics resolution of 1024 x 860 pixels.

More information and a demo are available at the LVBSX site.

Synful generated a buzz at January’s winter NAMM show with the introduction of the Windows version of its innovative “Reconstructive Phrase Modeling” (RPM) orchestral synthesizer. Now MAC users can also benefit from the expressivity and ease of use of Synful Orchestra.

Synful’s RPM technology represents a major step forward for expressive music synthesis. Synthesis is accomplished by selecting short phrase fragments from a database of idiomatic recorded instrumental phrases. The fragments, often corresponding to transitions between notes, are morphed in pitch and time and spliced together in real-time to form the synthesizer output. Phrases are stored and synthesized using a proprietary additive synthesis format that not only facilitates flexible morphing and splicing but also greatly reduces the size of the database compared to traditional sampling.

The entire Synful Orchestra fits in just 32M of memory. A 21 day fully functional free trial can be downloaded at the Synful site. http://www.synful.com/Download.htm. Online sound examples including The Rite of Spring and Beethoven String Quartet.

Synful Orchestra Features

• Smart articulation for realistic staccato, legato, portamento, and accents. Play naturally like a musician and Synful Orchestra responds.
• Synful Orchestra instruments include Piccolo, Flute, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn, Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba, Violin, Viola, Cello, Contrabass.
• Exceptional realism and expressivity using Synful Reconstructive Phrase Modeling Technology: Note transition modeling, intelligent phrase fragment search and splice, additive synthesis, infinite note extend without loops.
• AU, VST and DXi plugins included.
• Entire orchestra fits in 32M of memory.
• 80-150 real-time voices on Windows P4 1.5 GHz.
• 70-140 real-time voices on Mac G4 PowerBook 1.5 GHz. See System Requirements. Easily uses Dual Processors on the Dual G5 for more voices.
• Runs on MAC OSX 10.2.8 or higher, and Windows 2000,XP.
• Innovative Reconstructive Phrase Modeling controls include Harmonic Tilt, Harmonic Parity, Transient Noise Trim, Sustain Noise Trim, Gain, Tune, Pitch Wheel Range, Delay for Expression, Synful Pitch Wheel mode for realistic portamento and pitch slide effects.
• Natural timbral vibrato controlled with Mod Wheel.
• Simple standard MIDI usage.

Steinberg

“Virtual Bassist is probably the first product in the virtual instrument world to offer a full virtual bass player within DAW environments that really behaves and sounds like a real bass player,” says Helge Vogt, Steinberg’s Product Manager for Virtual Instruments. “We’ve concentrated not only on providing the most dynamic grooves, gorgeous sound quality and astounding realism, but also on making that instantly accessible to the customer,” Vogt continues.

Virtual Bassist offers real phrases played by studio bass players, covering a huge range of musical styles with its vast pool of sounds and grooves. Owners of Steinberg’s other “Virtual Band” members Groove Agent (2), Virtual Guitarist and Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition will find a set of grooves that perfectly match the rhythm parts from those instruments, forming a powerful and versatile backing band. The integrated GrooveMatch technology allows users to quickly adapt their Virtual Bassist parts to drum grooves, moulding bass parts to existing beats. Steinberg’s Virtual Bassist is also designed to be eminently “playable”, with MIDI keyboard notes selecting the pitch of the played groove while the Modulation wheel allows simultaneous and dynamic switching between groove complexity levels.

Virtual Bassist supports all major plug-in formats such as VST, DXi, and AU. ReWire support offers easy integration into Pro Tools®, while the standalone version allows Virtual Bassist to be used without a host application.

Price and availability

Virtual Bassist is available for $249.99 USD. Virtual Bassist requires an installed Steinberg USB copy protection device (or Steinberg Key).

The program is unusual because it applies evolutionary theory to the creation of music. Basically, MusiGenesis adds randomly-generated musical elements to a song and allows the user to play the role of natural selection, keeping the elements he likes and deleting the elements he doesn’t like.

Eventually, you build up a complete piece of music that can be exported in WAV or MP3 format. MusiGenesis uses its own built-in software synthesizer, so it doesn’t require MIDI or DirectX.

Audio samples and an evaluation version are available for download at the Music Genesis site.

For more information, visit the Music Genesis site.

2005 NAMM Show

Replete with dozens of fresh, up-to-the-minute styles and a battery of quality new drum sounds, Groove Agent 2 offers the latest drum grooves and styles within the comfortable confines of modern DAW environments supporting the VST, DXi, ReWire or AU plug-in formats.

“Groove Agent 2 is based on the same highly successful technology that made Groove Agent such a popular product,” comments Helge Vogt, Steinberg’s Product Manager for Virtual Instruments. “But GA2 offers a huge new library of additional, hyper-modern styles and sounds for those productions that require the hippest drum grooves. And there are some other great refinements that will help establish Groove Agent 2 as the leading virtual drummer plug-in,” adds Vogt.

The 27 new styles include an array of the latest grooves in diverse flavors currently in demand such as ultra-slick RnB, Bristol Trip Hop, Old Skool HipHop, Retro Rock, roof-raising Punk and grinding Grunge grooves. Providing the kerosene for the 27 explosive new styles are the 9 new drum kits. The all-new top-quality studio kit offers a highly polished, refined sound while being widely usable for many modern pop and rock productions. Other kit highlights include painstakingly recreated retro drum synths, ultra-hip noisy lofi drums, a diamond-hard metal kit as well as added percussive sounds.

Other feature refinements include added output busses, with up to 8 stereo outputs now available within the virtual mixer of the host application such as Steinberg’s Cubase SX3. The highly convenient “No Internal Samples” switch disables all internal GA2 samples with a single mouse click, to ensure that no internal sound is triggered by, for example, a MIDI track of GA2 grooves which is feeding another drum machine or virtual sampler. Each group now also features its own Solo button, making it even quicker to hone in on the drum sound that needs particular attention.

The GUI has also been overhauled, with added scales and easier access to vital controls. Groove Agent 2 also offers a new “Save to MIDI file” feature, which stores GA2’s rhythm output to a MIDI file for detailed editing, regardless of which DAW application hosting Groove Agent 2.

Price and availability

Groove Agent 2 will be available for $249.99 SRP in February 2005. Existing Groove Agent customers can update to the new Groove Agent 2 version for only $79.99.

More information is available at the Steinberg site.

2005 NAMM Show

“Featuring the talents of the programming team behind Virtual Guitarist and Groove Agent, Virtual Bassist provides all manner of bass guitar phrases, sounds and styles,” comments Helge Vogt, Steinberg’s Product Manager for VST Instruments. “Steinberg is now in the unique position of offering a whole backing band of intelligent, musically-oriented VST instruments directly within the virtual audio environment,” adds Vogt.

Using dynamic phrases based on real performances by top studio bass players, Virtual Bassist looks set to become the definitive electric bass guitar player virtual instrument. Utilizing a huge array of samples and phrases in 25 styles, Virtual Bassist covers almost every conceivable music genre, delivering top class sounds and phrases for rock, pop, reggae, metal and hip hop to name but a few.

While the huge range of included intros, fills and variations provides a vibrant, dynamic library of bass guitar sounds, the MIDI Export/Import features allow grooves to be opened up in the MIDI Key Editor of the host application for detailed editing, adding a further level of variety and adaptability. Virtual Bassist is also designed to be eminently “playable”, with MIDI keyboard notes selecting the pitch of the played groove while the Modulation wheel allows simultaneous and dynamic switching between groove complexity levels.

Virtual Bassist also offers GrooveMatch, a powerful tool that moulds the Virtual Bassist bass line to any existing drum groove. Owners of Groove Agent, Virtual Guitarist or Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition will find pre-matched grooves for phrases and patterns in those instruments, creating a tightly integrated drum, bass and guitar rhythm section within VST, DXi, AU or ReWire host applications. Virtual Bassist also runs in stand-alone mode on PC and Macintosh computers.

Virtual Bassist customers will enjoy a full range of outstanding sound-shaping features, including a range of six high- quality virtual stomp box effects optimized for bass guitar, a choice of amp heads, bass cabinets and microphones as well as mic positioning options to build their ideal bass guitar parts. The included effects can also be used on any other audio channel in music production environments such as Steinberg’s Cubase SX3.

Pricing and availability

Virtual Bassist will be available from Q1, 2005 for $249.99 USD MSRP.

More information is available at the Steinberg site.

Symbolic Sound

Using a Wacom Tablet as a 3-D Sound Control Surface

Sound designers can use a Wacom pen and tablet to perform creature voices or match SFX to picture. Musicians can quickly and intuitively explore the parameter space of a patch or even perform the tablet as a new musical instrument.

“Our goal is for sound designers and musicians to be able to shape sounds with their own hands. The human hand is virtually a direct connection to the human brain,” said Symbolic Sound president Carla Scaletti. “Using your ear and your hand, you can explore and refine sound design patches with incredible speed.”

With the Wacom Intuos3 or Graphire3 pen tablets, sound designers and musicians can use the eraser-end of the pen to simultaneously control up to 8 sound parameters using pen position plus (on the Intuos) pen tilt. You can map any sound parameter to pen orientation by using the Pen Status window.

By flipping the pen over, musicians can use the tablet as a continuous microtonal musical keyboard, sending KeyDown, KeyPitch (left/right), KeyVelocity (up/down), plus an additional key event called KeyTimbre (front/back). Sounds designed for the Continuum Fingerboard are fully compatible with Sounds designed for the Wacom tablet in keyboard mode (and vice versa).

New Oscillator Flavors

The new Kyma Oscillator generates the full range of sound, from a single impulse, to a formant-shifted tone, to the classic continuous waveform oscillator. By giving you control over the duty-cycle of any waveform (independently of the fundamental frequency), this new oscillator can be used to synthesize anything from granular pops and pulses to the familiar continuous analog waveforms.

A new CrossFadingMulticycleOscillator allows you to smoothly interpolate between any two waveforms over the course of a single cycle.

Inspired by revolutionary composer/architect Iannis Xenakis, the XenOscillator lets you define a waveform by adjusting any number of “breakpoints” and interpolating between them with straight lines, curves, or if you prefer, “raw” with no interpolation at all. You can even use the Wacom pen to redraw the waveform of the oscillator while it is playing.

Sound Parameter Vector Spaces

Using the new PresetSpace module, you can define a 1, 2 or 3 dimensional subspace by placing the presets of a Sound on the vertices of a line, a square, or a cube. You can then move through that space by interpolating between those endpoints.

A related module, InterpolatePresets, treats any number of presets as points in an n-dimensional space and then allows you to travel along a line connecting those points. In effect, you are controlling any number of faders with a single master fader that interpolates between presets. Use this module to perform your patches live on stage, sequencing through them in order or jumping from one patch to another as you improvise with other performers.

Combining these spatial modules with the Wacom tablet control opens up a whole new way of performing, composing, and improvising with sound. The tablet can detect the pen through a sheet of paper, so you can even create your own 2-dimensional scores or maps for improvisation, lay them on the tablet, and perform them live.

Timeline Controller Overlays and other additions

In the Timeline you can now view multiple automated controllers from multiple Sounds, allowing you to more easily coordinate controllers with each other.

Pricing & Availability

Kyma X.1 is available as a free upgrade to registered Kyma X owners.

Wacom Graphire3 and Intuos3 tablets are available direct from Wacom and can also be found in most computer and electronics stores (both physical and on line). Registered Kyma X owners can purchase an Intuos3 4X5 pen tablet and wireless mouse directly from Symbolic Sound.

Tablets ordered from Symbolic Sound include a special plastic overlay providing an XYZ grid, polar coordinates, and the halfstep markers for a two octave continuous pitch keyboard.

If you already own a Graphire3 or Intuos3, you can print and laminate a copy of this template from PDF files supplied by Symbolic Sound (or use these templates as a starting point for designing your own personalized overlays and grids).

Kyma X.1 runs under Macintosh OS X, Windows XP, and Windows 98/ME/2000 and Macintosh OS 9.2. Wacom Graphire3 and Intuos3 USB versions are supported under OS X and Windows XP operating systems only (no support for OS 9 or Windows 98/ME/2000).

For more information, visit the Symbolic Sound site.

TazMan Audio

TheExtractor makes it is possible to control a synthesizer/sampler or effect unit (as long as they accept MIDI data) by using audio input instead of a MIDI keyboard.

Features:

• 2 different pitch detection algorithms.
• Note and Beat transient detectors result in an automatic generation of MIDI notes.
• Volume and Brightness parameter detection.
• Input Gate for tracking just the input signal you want (and ignore low level noise).
• Modulation Matrix provides you with the choice to select which MIDI messages (Targets) you wish to generate from the 5 extracted parameters (Source).
• Graphical displays of the Input, Pitch, Spectral and Note output parameters.

TheExtractor is a VST plug-in for Windows that can be purchased online for $34.95. Demo version and audio examples are also available.

For more information, visit their web site at http://www.tazman-audio.co.uk.

“Featuring the talents of the programming team behind Virtual Guitarist and Groove Agent, Virtual Bassist provides all manner of bass guitar phrases, sounds and styles,” comments Helge Vogt, Steinberg’s Product Manager for VST Instruments. “Steinberg is now in the unique position of offering a whole backing band of intelligent, musically-oriented VST instruments directly within the virtual audio environment,” adds Vogt.

Using dynamic phrases based on real performances by top studio bass players, Virtual Bassist looks set to become the definitive electric bass guitar player virtual instrument. Utilizing a huge array of samples and phrases in 25 styles, Virtual Bassist covers almost every conceivable music genre, delivering top class sounds and phrases for rock, pop, reggae, metal and hip hop to name but a few.

While the huge range of included intros, fills and variations provides a vibrant, dynamic library of bass guitar sounds, the MIDI Export/Import features allow grooves to be opened up in the MIDI Key Editor of the host application for detailed editing, adding a further level of variety and adaptability. Virtual Bassist is also designed to be eminently “playable”, with MIDI keyboard notes selecting the pitch of the played groove while the Modulation wheel allows simultaneous and dynamic switching between groove complexity levels.

Virtual Bassist also offers GrooveMatch, a powerful tool that moulds the Virtual Bassist bass line to any existing drum groove. Owners of Groove Agent, Virtual Guitarist or Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition will find pre-matched grooves for phrases and patterns in those instruments, creating a tightly integrated drum, bass and guitar rhythm section within VST, DXi, AU or ReWire host applications. Virtual Bassist also runs in stand-alone mode on PC and Macintosh computers.

Virtual Bassist customers will enjoy a full range of outstanding sound-shaping features, including a range of six high-quality virtual stomp box effects optimized for bass guitar, a choice of amp heads, bass cabinets and microphones as well as mic positioning options to build their ideal bass guitar parts. The included effects can also be used on any other audio channel in music production environments such as Steinberg’s Cubase SX3.

Pricing and availability

Virtual Bassist will be available from Q1, 2005 for $249.99 USD MSRP.