Dueling Percussion is another Max/MSP Patch that I created for an electroacoustic music course instructed by Arne Eigenfeldt at SFU. (previously)

The idea is simple. Imagine having two snare drummers facing each other. One plays a bar-long rhythm, then the other responds by playing a similar but slightly embellished rhythm. They trade back and forth, continually attempting to outdo the other. Now imagine that one of the snare drummers is a computer. This MaxMSP patch listens (through a mic) to a rhythm being played, quantizes it, changes it slightly, then plays it back a bar later.

For this to work, though, both the human and the computer have to agree to a tempo, so this patch incorporates a tap-tempo metronome. To start, the human does a count-off by clicking sticks four times. The computer interprets the tempo and starts a metronome.

Download

duelingpercussion.zip

Setup

1. Press reset a few times to make sure everything’s in a known state. Max patches can be weird in this regard.
2. Set BOTH noteout objects to use your midi interface

Options

1. Set the velocities for the metronome note. There’s one for downbeat and one for the others. They’re located at the bottom of the metronome.
2. Set the note numbers for the metronome note and instrument note. I use a click for the metronome and a snare for the instrument.
3. Set the minvel for bonk low enough to hear your instrument but high enough to not pick up stray noises. (This may not be easy)

Usage

1. Hit reset again, just to be sure
2. Click (or tap the mic) 4 times to start the metronome
3. When the “listening” lights are on, play a rhythm
4. Wait a bar as it plays back a similar rhythm in response
5. Try enabling “Quantize” “Subdivide” or “Omit”

Cellular Automata is a discreet mathematic model related to fractals. I’ve chosen to use a one-dimensional cellular automata simulator as the basis for a process composition using Max/MSP. This was originally an assignment for an electroacoustic music course instructed by Arne Eigenfeldt at SFU.

Download

Cellular_Automata_Composition.zip

How to use it

1. Make sure the midi objects are configured to play through quicktime or another instrument
2. Turn on the metro object in the gray panel
3. Start the simulation by clicking one of the large checkboxes in the red panel which represent cells
4. As the simulation continues, you can continue to interact with it by turning cells on or off manually.

How it works

At every time step, each cell takes on a new value based on the values that it and its two neighbours had at the previous time step. The value is determined by the “celaut” object which I also created. This particular version of celaut uses the standard “Rule 150″ of cellular automata.

Each cell is mapped to a midi note which are divided among three channels. The programs of each of these channels change periodically to a new random value.

More info

More information about the theory of cellular automata is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_autonoma

Another example of its use in music is at:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-camusic/

I needed to use Cardiris on a mac to scan business cards and then easily import them into Mozilla Thunderbird. Cardiris can generate vCard3.0 files, but Thunderbird only accepts 2.1 (as of this writing). With this script, you can use Cardiris to generate a vCard2.1 file, and then automatically have it emailed to your email address for easy importing into Thunderbird.

Requirements

This script has been tested with Cardiris 3.0 on Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4. The vCards it generates have been shown to import flawlessly into Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (20050404).

You must be able to send email through the sendmail program. In Mac OS X 10.3, this ability is disabled by default, but you can re-enable it using PostfixEnabler. 10.4 Tiger seems to work right out of the box.

Download

Cardiris vCard AppleScripts

Installation

• Open “Email vCard2.1X” in a text editor and change the email address to the one you want to mail vCards to. It is listed twice in the file. Make sure and change it in BOTH places.
• Save the file
• Go and find your “Cardiris 3.0″ program (probably in Application folder)
• Right click (or ctrl-click) on the program and choose “Show Package Contents”
• Navigate to Contents/SharedSupport/Cardiris/BC
• Place the two AppleScripts in that folder
• Close everything & Launch Cardiris. The scripts will show up along side the other export options. You’re ready to rock.

FAQ

Q: When a try to use the script, why does the program crash?
A: The most likely cause of this is that while editing the script, you accidentally converted the file’s line breaks. The scripts MUST have macintosh line breaks.

Q: Can I write my own scripts?
A: Go ahead. Have a look at these scripts as well as the other export scripts that are included with Cardiris. Notice that the file is divided into two halves. The first half is executed for the first business card, and the second half executed for subsequent cards. Under most circumstances you’ll want the same thing in both halves.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

The full text of the GNU General Public License is available at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt