Dylab has a 4 way Korg DS-10 jam up. I know a lot of us wanted Electroplankton to fill this kind of role and it's really cool to see the DS as instrument thing finally happen. The jam features briefly in the intro this video:
You can visit Dylab's site to listen to the whole thang.
Also he's just released a 4 track EP with hard acid on it. You can have a listen and purchase it from Juno.
Related: Electroplankton on onetonne.
This is really only an experiment, but I thought I'd give it a crack. I have setup an amazon store which contains a bunch of stuff for you, dear reader.
It's full of handpicked musical stuff. If you find something you like you can buy it from there and it will help support onetonnemusic, which in turn will support my indy posters, and also onetonnemusic's charitable adventures!
Gear that's in there at the moment is a selection of absolutely essential albums, DVD's and the powerful and clever Nintendo DS lite (plus electroplankton & elite beat agents for your musical delectation). Is there something missing from the store? Let me know. No reason why this cannot be a community project! info at ausmusician dot com with any store related thoughts and feedback (or post your thoughts on the forums)
Check it out after the jump! More fine tuning to come!
Well, stow away yer cash it's time to pony up and buy the homebrew hardware for your DS. There is an awesome interview with Pakl on Expansion Port that talks about the project.
Hark at this:
Pakl: Well, I’m impatient for the tenori-on to come out… one of the basic concepts of the tenori-on is that a cell in a grid can trigger a note… so I was playing with this concept on the DS touch screen, and decided that 16 cells should be easy to access when playing the DS like a guitar. the Tenori-On is an instrument being developed by Iwai (the maker of electroplankton)… I have been thinking for a while to make a Tenori-On emulator on the DS to satisfy my appetite until the Tenori-On comes out (But I think the DS screen is too small to really have a satisfactory Tenori-On interface… so SoundCells is the next best thing.)
Yes! We are all waiting for the Tenori on! Sounds like i have a potential member for my Toshio Iwai Fanclub! You can lay down tracks and have them playback to support your wailin' too. Nice.
You can download Patryk's ukelele homebrew from his hosted site here. and when Soundcells is ready to cook he will be hosting it there.
Via 4 Color Rebellion. Visit Patryk on the intertron here.
More video after the jump.
There's a nice (exclusive) interview on Cubed with Toshio Iwai. Amongst other things, there's discussion on Electroplankton, Tenori On & Live performance. It's actually a rather nice conversation and the interviewer asks some great questions.
There is a fascinating insight on the missing save function in Electroplankton.
Cubed3: Having played the game extensively and listened to the feedback of other gamers, it seems to be the general consensus that the lack of a save function is very restrictive. Was there any particular reason why this was left out?
Toshio Iwai: We have discussed a save function many times, and finally concluded not to included it. There are following 2 reasons:
● The first reason is that I wanted players to enjoy Electroplankton extemporarily and viscerally, and I thought if the save function was added, the software would become more like a tool. I did not want a play style where players have to open additional menus or windows, or have to input file names to save.
● The second reason is that it would require large volume of flush ROM and it would take a lot of time to save and read the data in order to save many voice files for Volvoice and Rec-Rec. I thought players could play the software without stress if I got rid of the save function, rather than incorporating the save function and letting players wait for a long time before it’s saved or being told that only little amount can be saved.
Which to me makes a lot of sense. Of course, in my ideal world Electroplankton would have a save function so that indepth programming and using it as instrumentation would be more feasible, but I can respect the concept of the design.
Also covered briefly, and I would LOVE to see this, is the concept of a Toshio Iwai title for the upcoming Nintendo Wii. Very interesting concept, and gathering by the response Electroplankton has had, I'm sure there would be a market for it.
Check out the whole Cubed3 Interview with Toshio Iwai it's rather nice.
Related:
How to Make Electroplankton Rock - A Wishlist
Toshio Iwai has a blog
Toshio Iwai performing at Futuresonic
I'm just about ready to open up a Toshio Iwai section for this website! There is now a blog for the Tenori-On development team. There's a bunch of great photos, and information directly from Toshio as well.
Of special interest to fans of Toshio's work is SOUND-LENS. A grid array of leds, that triggers as the arm moves in front of it. It reminds me a little bit of Laser Harps I geuss, but basically any grid based trigger system would probably more analogous.
Because the player moves the arm in the air, it looks like playing Theremin a little. So I may say this is like "Theremin of Light."
Visit the tenori-on blog.
After the jump you can see some clips from Sonar 2006. If anyone has video for the Naoaki Kojima performance with SOUND-LENS at Sonar, please let me know!
Thanks to some kind commentors on my CDM Article I have the 3 (count em' three!) Tenori-On videos to share.
The first is from Artfutura 05
2 more clips from Siggraph 2005 after the jump!
I have added a new video category, as the trend for youtubin' and google videoin' cannot be denied. So expect a few more video links in the posts to come. It's the way of the web (2.0) *insert winky eye smiley face*
Also I extended and rewrote my electoplankton wishlist as well as wrote a short peice about Toshio Iwai's collaboration with Yamaha to create the Tenori-On, and they're on Create Digital Music. This is cool because CDM gets about 10 squillion more viewers than I get in a given day. So anyway, you can read my guest posts on CDM here:
I've had Electroplankton for a while now, and I feel the need to document my experience. Reviews of Electroplankton in general are redundant, people either get it or they don't. If you're a music nerd and enjoy experimental music you'll love it. Enough said.
Hence, this exposition, or perhaps exposé - you choose. For anyone who came in late, Electroplankton is a title for Nintendo DS that basically has a set of 10 "minigames" that revolve around music creation.
Electroplankton is one of those titles that you hear about and assume that will never surface with an English translation. Lots of interesting titles come out in Asia and never see the western market. But then again, there's very little to Electroplankton and translation of the game itself would have taken all of about, say, 10 minutes. The manual is a work of art though, and well worth a look in it's own right. These days most games don't really have printed manuals of any description. Thanks be to the folks at Nintendo who have chosen to release this game and documentation in such a complete way to the western market.
What's fascinating about this title is not so much the fact that Nintendo have released a music title for their hand held, but the crossbreeding of music creation and art interaction could be so compelling and commercially successful.
Hopefully that's everyone up to speed. Electroplankton is a music toy. You could conceivably use it as a tool in your musical arsenal, but right now, it's just not suited to that, at least not in a regular performance sense. However. With some changes it could be absolutely mind bending. So lets call this the...
Or how to make Electroplankton ROCK...
I'm sort of the in the middle on writing a peice about Electroplankton for Nintendo DS, but I saw this and I just had to share. It's a demo from e3 of the Nintendo Wii's motion controller being used in a drum demo.
Looks and sounds like absolutely fantastic fun, and if Nintendo were to develop titles like this, it would be amazing. Of the 3 next gen console platforms to come out, the Wii really looks pretty amazing.
Over on the shiny new CDM forums I came across this comment from Thomas from Milezero.org
Actually, I recently finished a sketch of an electroplankton song, in case anyone wants to hear.
And here's the link.
Basically. It's absolutely fantastic. Its a electroplankton composition, which is a blues song about HP Lovecraft's 'The Shadow over Innsmmouth'. What's not to love? This song rocks. Featuring lyrics such as "Yeah a whole lotta time till the shugga starts to roam!" it's got nerd cred in bags. It combines all sorts of pop-sub-culture references into a rather catchy tune. I dig it, and so will you (if you are a certified music nerd). Get it now!
I'm perhaps a little too excited about this. I've been very keen to see music software evolve for the Nintendo DS - I have recently purchased Electroplankton which is lovely fun, but pretty much just that - lovely fun.
But what I'm really into as a concept, is independent music software for portable devices. I think there's plenty of potential for these powerful gaming and processing devices to be used as the logical successor to some of the music hardware out there.
Without further ado: Tobias Weyand has released a tracker for Nintendo DS. You're going to need a Nintendo DS that can run homebrew - that basically means a flash card adapter for the GBA cartridge slot, and passme or passme 2 for the DS slot. That'll set you back around $100AUD delivered (or $71.50 USD or $781.64 Mexican Pesos). I'm very excited about this, it seems like a fantastic extension of the Nintendo DS's strengths.
What Nitrotracker can do is pretty impressive. First up it makes use of the touch screen, allowing you to input using the touchscreen - and as well as that, you can swap around screens so that both main screens can utilize touchscreen input. This includes selecting, copying and pasting using the stylus. Yum.
Nitrotracker can load samples off your flash cart (in WAV format in any sampling rate as well as 8 or 16bit quality). In addition to this, it allows sampling via the inbuilt microphone which is logical and along with the touchscreen vindicates Nintendo for their wacky product design. The quality might not be astounding, but good enough for jazz. Regardless the ugly duckling of portable gaming is looking pretty compelling these days.
It allows you to view samples, 16 hardware channels, automatic standby when the lid is closed - very nice. Just like a normal DS cartridge, and a really good feature to have for the musician on the go.
Planned/Upcoming features include 32 or even more channels, and excitingly sample post processing - effects basically. Excellent. It's already looking really polished, and I cannot wait to see this develop. I can certainly see this unit attaining a cult following of the like that nanoloop and little sound dj currently enjoy. And the potential here is clearly beyond chiptunes and appeal to a wider music making audience is also clear.
I received my Supercard in the post last night which is a pretty good coincidence, however I'm waiting on a Superpass2 so that I can actually run this, but the moment it arrives in the post, I will post up my thoughts on Nitrotracker.
You can download Nitro Tracker v0.11 and read more about it here. via Create Digital Music - check out the comments as Tobias comments on his recommended flash kits for the DS.
Related Portable Music:
PSP Seq 1.00
Phoenix Studio
little sound dj homepage
nanoloop homepage
