Code after the jump.

import processing.opengl.*;
import oscP5.*;

OscP5 oscP5;

float xrot = 0;
float zrot = 0;

float xrot_targ = 0;
float zrot_targ = 0;
float orientation = 0;

float dampSpeed = 5;

void setup() {
  size(400,400, OPENGL);
  oscP5 = new OscP5(this,8000);
  smooth();
}

void draw() {
  camera(  0, 0, 300,
         0, 0, 0,
         0.0, 1.0, 0.0
     );
  background(0); 

  // Basic value smoothing

  if (xrot_targ > xrot) {
    xrot = xrot + ((xrot_targ - xrot) / dampSpeed);
  } else {
    xrot = xrot - ((xrot - xrot_targ) / dampSpeed);
  }

  if (zrot_targ > zrot) {
    zrot = zrot + ((zrot_targ - zrot) / dampSpeed);
  } else {
    zrot = zrot - ((zrot - zrot_targ) / dampSpeed);
  }

 // Detection for if the iPhone is upsidedown or not

  if (orientation < 0) {
    fill(255,0,0);
    rotateX(radians(xrot));
    rotateZ(radians(zrot));
  } else {
    fill(255,255,0);
    rotateX(radians(xrot*-1));
    rotateZ(radians(zrot*-1));
  }
  box(130,10,60);

}

void oscEvent(OscMessage theOscMessage) {
  if(theOscMessage.checkAddrPattern("/accxyz")==true) {
      xrot_targ = (theOscMessage.get(0).floatValue()*90);
      zrot_targ = (theOscMessage.get(1).floatValue()*90)*-1;
      orientation = theOscMessage.get(2).floatValue();
  }
}

Absolutely loving the latest work from Frederik that popped up on my Flickr Processing Group feed. The neon colour scheme is almost 80’s in feel but it really works for me.

…to my mate Marc for letting him down royally and not doing his website for him when I said I probably could I thought I’d at least let you know that his site is up and full of yummy graphic design that he’s done.

To make this work you’ll need a few bits from around the internets. First up is the FFTOctaveAnalyser class from Dave Bollinger which you need to put in the root of your sketch directory, then you’ll need to download the Ess library.

Finally you’ll need something like Audacity to split an audio file into it’s left and right channels.  Save them as two mono wav files (for some reason AIFF seems to upset it) called <audiofile>.L and <audiofile>.R and pop them in the sketch data directory.

Assuming all this has gone to plan all you need to do is edit the source code on line 4 so the audioFilename variable is the same as the <audiofile> referenced above and click the play button. Give it a second or two (depending on the length of the audio file) and you should see the Audio DNA displayed and find a TIFF version sitting in a folder called ‘out’ in your sketch folder.

Onto the source.  The key to this is it’s not real time.  It scans the audio file chunk by chunk so in this instance it’s faster than real-time.  With some tweaks a similar technique can be used to render out audio reactive Processing sketches that run slower than real-time if that’s your bag.

import krister.Ess.*;

String audioFilename = "md";
String audioFilenameL = audioFilename+".L";
String audioFilenameR = audioFilename+".R";

int imgSize = 500;

// SinCos Lookup tables from Toxi (i think via flight404...) He's a clever chap, look him up.
public static final float sinLUT[];
public static final float cosLUT[];
public static final float SINCOS_PRECISION=1f;
public static final int SINCOS_LENGTH= (int) (360f/SINCOS_PRECISION);
static {
  sinLUT=new float[SINCOS_LENGTH];
  cosLUT=new float[SINCOS_LENGTH];
  for (int i=0; i<SINCOS_LENGTH; i++) {
    sinLUT[i]= (float)Math.sin(i*DEG_TO_RAD*SINCOS_PRECISION);
    cosLUT[i]= (float)Math.cos(i*DEG_TO_RAD*SINCOS_PRECISION);
  }
}

AudioChannel chnL;
AudioChannel chnR;
FFT fftL;
FFT fftR;
FFTOctaveAnalyzer octL;
FFTOctaveAnalyzer octR;
int bufferSize = 1024;
int samplingRate = 44100;

int frameL = 0;
int frameR = 360; 

int samplesPerDegree;
int section;

float[] limits = new float[9];
float[] radii = new float[9];
float[] linethick = new float[9];

float radStep;

void setup() {
  size(imgSize, imgSize, P3D);
  noStroke();
  Ess.start(this);
  chnL = new AudioChannel(dataPath(audioFilenameL));
  chnR = new AudioChannel(dataPath(audioFilenameR));
  samplesPerDegree = chnL.size/181;
  fftL = new FFT(bufferSize*2);
  fftR = new FFT(bufferSize*2);
  fftL.limits();
  fftR.limits();
  fftL.damp(.5);
  fftR.damp(.5);
  octL = new FFTOctaveAnalyzer(fftL, samplingRate, 1);
  octR = new FFTOctaveAnalyzer(fftR, samplingRate, 1);
  octL.peakHoldTime = 10; // hold longer
  octL.peakDecayRate = 3; // decay slower
  octL.linearEQIntercept = 0.7; // reduced gain at lowest frequency
  octL.linearEQSlope = 0.02; // increasing gain at higher frequencies
  octR.peakHoldTime = 10; // hold longer
  octR.peakDecayRate = 3; // decay slower
  octR.linearEQIntercept = 0.7; // reduced gain at lowest frequency
  octR.linearEQSlope = 0.02; // increasing gain at higher frequencies
  background(255);
  fill(0);
  noLoop();
}

void draw() {
    limits[0] = 0.3;
    limits[1] = 0.6;
    limits[2] = 0.5;
    limits[3] = 0.4;
    limits[4] = 0.4;
    limits[5] = 0.4;
    limits[6] = 0.3;
    limits[7] = 0.3;
    limits[8] = 0.3;

    float radStart = imgSize/10;
    float radEnd = imgSize*0.9;
    radStep = (radEnd-radStart)/9;
    float radCurrent = radStart;

    for (int r = 0; r < 9; r++) {
      radii[r] = radCurrent/2;
      radCurrent = radCurrent+radStep;
    }

  for (int frm = 0; frm < 181; frm++) {
    analyze();
    render();
    advance();
  }
  saveFrame("out/"+audioFilename+".tif");
} 

void analyze() {
  section = (int)(frameL * samplesPerDegree);
  fftL.getSpectrum(chnL.samples, section);
  fftR.getSpectrum(chnR.samples, section);
  octL.calculate();
  octR.calculate();
} 

void render() {
  for (int i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
    if (octL.averages[i]>limits[i]) myArc(width/2,height/2,frameL,frameL+2,radii[i],radStep/2.5,.5);
    if (octR.averages[i]>limits[i]) myArc(width/2,height/2,frameR,frameR+2,radii[i],radStep/2.5,.5);
  }
}

void advance() {
    frameL ++;
    frameR --;
} 

public void stop() {
  Ess.stop();
  super.stop();
}

void arc(float x,float y,float degS,float degE,float rad,float w) {
  int start=(int)min (degS/SINCOS_PRECISION,SINCOS_LENGTH-1);
  int end=(int)min (degE/SINCOS_PRECISION,SINCOS_LENGTH-1);
  beginShape(QUAD_STRIP);
  for(int i=start; i<end; i++) {
    vertex(cosLUT[i]*(rad)+x,sinLUT[i]*(rad)+y);
    vertex(cosLUT[i]*(rad+w)+x,sinLUT[i]*(rad+w)+y);
  }
  endShape();
}

void myArc(float x,float y,float degS,float degE,float rad,float w, float step) {
  beginShape(QUAD_STRIP);
  noStroke();
  for (float i = degS; i < degE; i=i+step) {
    vertex(rad*cos(radians(i))+x,rad*sin(radians(i))+y);
    vertex((rad+w)*cos(radians(i))+x,(rad+w)*sin(radians(i))+y);
  }
  endShape();
}

I’ve been tinkering with audio visualisations in Processing for a few years now. The three animated ones I was happy enough with to show I have been adding to Vimeo but the still versions had never seen the light of day apart from glimpses as part of the audio player on this site.

I finally signed up to Flickr and added a few higher res artifacts of the experiments over there as Marc Bessant had posted about them on his blog recently so thought I should out the rest myself. There are two kinds that I’ve done. The ‘Fingerprint’ and the ‘DNA’ styles are very closely linked in terms of back end code but produce very different results.

‘Fingerprint’ was the first one chronologically I wanted to get something organic feeling and at higher resolutions and with the right colour palette they can look almost watercolour like. ‘DNA’ was the offshoot. The result of a conversation with the aforementioned Marc Bessent about creating something to etch onto the empty side of a 12” single release. The release happened, but the band in question didn’t go for the designs. Not sure what was used in it’s place.

Over tonight the audio files and some images may well be missing as they upload on my terrible connection so apologies if things are missing. Hopefully as things calm down I’m actually gonna start putting some posts up but in the meantime you could always look at some of the photos I’ve taken recently and read the occasional tweet I post.

—update—

Content should all be up now and it should be fairly un-borked in IE7. If you use IE6 then to be honest you’ve only got yourselves (or your stalinist IT dept) to blame. Firefox and recent webkit browsers get the rounded corner love, which means I’ve chucked CSS validation out the window and I’ve got a stray p tag that’s appearing as part of the audio players that is breaking HTML validation. Despite this the world turns still upon it’s axis.

I will track it down eventually and squish that little bugger. But not tonight.

• Still (Stefan Goodchild Mix)

A remix continuing in my current leftfield direction for the mighty Sound of Habib label. The original track is a collaboration between the label head honcho Johan SOH and Canadian breakbeat wonderkid Myagi.

Originally conceived in a basement flat in Hackney (owned by my adopted bruv Bobafat) on a pair of lovely custom speakers owned by his flatmate this remix has a dirty edge and scratchy beats underpinning the floating vocals of Sandra Nagano.

My new home at Jiva is a startup company building web services to help people find other people who can help. The first product is a website called Beanbag Learning and it’s purpose is to help parents find tutors in their local area for their children. Moving the ‘word of mouth’ culture onto the Internet in short if you will.

I’m excited to find out that my first project is an Adobe AIR application built round communication. This is something very interesting to both design and build as the technologies and UI paradigms involved are pretty well defined these days so the basics of the interaction are pretty much in stone and assumed so that leaves all the fun stuff. The details.

You can see a simplified applet and get the source code here.

If you have any feedback or suggestions to how to improve them please get in touch.

Resonate is taking over the Masonic Hall in Frome on Wednesday 9th of July as part of the 2008 Frome Festival. This promises to be the biggest and best Resonate so far this year.

My second ever performance of my wonky downtempo live show with added spicy visuals… If you are in the area it would be great to see you there.

More Info Here

Real World Records - Website / Backend Design and Development

I had the majority of the site built and working locally before the server theft but with no design or UI in place. The design came together very quickly and was designed from the ground up to be easily improved upon.

This is a temporary site and as such there are some rough edges but I think for only a few days work on the UI and design it holds up pretty well with a simple and clean design, free from Web 2.0 clichés, a full search, clean URLs and sound samples for every track in the Realworld catalogue so in many ways is a vast improvement on the original site.

www.realworldrecords.com

WOMAD - Website / Backend Design and Development

The replacement WOMAD site following our decision to drop the old Lasso site after the server theft. A new OO based forum code is the main new feature on the code front.

Nothing really new up front as yet in terms of features but - like Real World Records - the site has been designed to be extended easily over the coming months with plenty of scope for custom areas.

Standards based, with proper separation and where possible semantic markup this is the final Real World site to move to PHP from Lasso and the final missing site after the theft.

www.womad.org

• Habibe (Stefan Goodchild Mix)

Another remix for Real World of a track taken from the Big Blue Ball album that was initially started at the legendary Real World recording weeks nearly eighteen years ago by Peter Gabriel and Karl Wallinger and featuring a huge range of artists from around the world.

Habibe features vocals from Natacha Atlas from Transglobal Underground

The remix is available as a bonus track on the Big Blue Ball download from iTunes.

Finally managed to get the replacement Realworld Records website online last friday. It was the website that along with WOMAD’s website that was based on a very old version of Lasso that we decided to finally put out to pasture so this new version is based on a LAMP backend.

I had the majority of the site built and working locally before the server theft but with no design or UI in place. The design came together very quickly and was designed from the ground up to be easily improved upon.

This is a temporary site and as such there are some rough edges but I think for only a few days work on the UI and design it holds up pretty well with a simple and clean design, free from Web 2.0 clichés, a full search, clean URLs and sound samples for every track in the Realworld catalogue so in many ways is a vast improvement on the original site.

None of this would have been possible however without the hard work of the Records staff who have spent some of the last year on data entry of the catalogue information into the new discography system, so many thanks to Jon!

• Circle Demo Tune

Been doing a little testing and preset design for the FAW guys for their new synth, Circle.

I have to say it’s been a delight to use. Very intuitive and lovely sounding with some very unique features that make getting oddness out of this synth a breeze.

Came up with this track in a few evenings and it’s 100% Circle. The only other bits are a touch of Reverence (Audio Damage reverb plug in) and the built in Ableton Live compressors and EQs.

Amazing piece of HTML/CSS/jQuery hackery by Cameron Adams that just begs to be played with. It looks like my future will mainly involve creating nostalgic Q-Bert landscapes.

Cubescape

Stolen.

So a note to all you admins out there in charge of sites. Have a think about what your strategy is in case on not just hardware failure, but total loss. Not something you think about too often.

We are mainly back after 4 days of frantic work, but have made some harsh decisions about the very old sites based on some archaic tech that we have just cut free and plan to remake. The only main one missing as of now is Real World Records which we are planning to get online in a new form this week.

Alongside the restore we moved hosts, and switched to a hosted system rather than a co-located server so had to get elbow deep to reconfigure most of the sites to get them working on the new server so this wasn’t just a simple backup restore.

The only missing thing are the video assets. We will be re-encoding and re-uploading those over time to take advantage of the new flash based video player we switched to earlier this year.

As ever having Peter’s name attached gives it legs in the blog world and here is some of the reporting.

Techcrunch | Wall Street Journal | Slashdot | The Register

Always interesting to read the comments (apart from the endless Sledgehammer jokes) and see what people on the outside think our setup is like. Most appear to assume a large enterprise type setup with a team of devs, designers and editors. The reality is much more modest.

Big Blue Ball - Website / Backend Design and Development

A microsite (but a big one!) for the new release from Real World Records. Features custom flash audio and video players and pulls data from the custom Real World CMS.

 bigblueball.realworldrecords.com

WOMAD Shop - Website / Backend Design and Development

Brand new replacement shop for Real World which currently has a 7 figure turnover thanks to the exclusive stocking of WOMAD tickets.

Front and back end rebuilt from the ground up to enable products to be grouped in dynamic ways so digital downloads can be incorporated in the next phase with lots of work done to make the front end as simple as possible to create a higher conversion rate despite the relatively high amount of information required on-screen.

www.womadshop.com

Anaïs Pin- Website Design and Development

A “Moonlance” job outside of my full time Real World duties this site is for an up and coming female writer to publish her new voice. The brief was feminine but editorial so I went with the obvious paper / courier combo to reflect the kind of thing a 50’s copy editor might see on his desk. Sometimes the obvious design choice I would ordinarily avoid is the right one for a particular client.

Custom admin screen and simple CMS system was developed to enable the client to update her own stories.

www.anaispin.com

It’s not often you get to meet a legend, but working at Real World you get more than your fair share.

Not long ago I was scared half to death by Robert Plant when he excused a sneeze in my office when I thought I was alone and obsorbed with code and today I got to meet (again) one of the kingpin producers in my world, Adrian Sherwood.

Adrian is at Real World Studios mixing a project for Little Axe - one of my favourite Real World artists - and I was there trying to capture some moments on video for the forthcoming EPK but during some downtime we chatted for a moment about music production and he offered up some top tips and my boss, York Tillyer, captured the moment when Sherwood laid down the knowledge.

Also I’ve remembered that there is a fully functioning URL based search function that I’ve not got round to creating a form for. Simply stick search/searchterm on the root URL and it’ll work fine and dandy. Try it out here.

• Le Hop Du Hip

Been off work sick over last week and so finally get round to doing a proper version of this mashup (ugh!) I used to do live when I was a DJ.

2 Serge Gainsbourg tracks (Initial BB and Bonnie & Clyde), a Royce Da 5”9 Vocal from a bit of vinyl I bought a few years back, two little audio surprises at the end and a dollop of boom bap.

Annoyed Kylie has nicked the same B&C loop I’ve been using for years but hey ho - Life, as they say, sucks.

Preview it above in the flash player and if you like you can get the 320k DL below.

Download 320kbps MP3 Version

“Hey, I think this track needs some percussion.” Sigh. Nobody but percussionists can actually play percussion worth a shit. See #3. If you own a studio, and you want to increase your hourly billing, just leave some maracas and a tambo lying about the control room.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

I love this photo. Only drum machine geeks need apply mind as that’s Roger Linn.

Blatantly nicked from Create Digital Music

• Alphatool

Not sure when this one came out but it is now finally out on vinyl. It may have been out for weeks or even months but no one told me. I love record labels. Not.

Available from Juno.co.uk and possibly a few others in other countries as well, who knows.

Maybe one day I’ll find a label that releases stuff when they say they will and tell me about it.

Taken a while and there were some last minute hitches - namely Media Temple’s lack of a set_charset() command and the Grid Server performance problems but I’ve finally uploaded most of my new home.

Portfolio section is ready but waiting on content so that shouldn’t take too long hopefully.

• The Warning Real World Mix by Stefan Goodchild (featuring Doudou N’Diaye Rose)

Real World Records was asked to commission a remix of ‘The Warning’ by Nine Inch Nails to appear on the Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D remix album and I was delighted when they asked me to do it as I was a big fan of NiN back in the day and the chance to remix your heroes is always a treat.

Mixing African drumming from Doudou N’Diaye Rose’s amazing Rose Rhythm and the source Nine Inch Nails multitrack was more a case of not messing up what was already great about the two songs and injecting just enough of my touches to make it feel like mine again.

It appears (though I’ve not confirmed it) that this remix has been licensed into the game Need For Speed: Undercover which would be pretty cool had the game not been universally panned for it’s inherent flaws.

A post from long time tech writer Jim Aikin on Create Digital Music contains this interesting ine of text…

As a huge fan of the software this seemed like one of two things. The article was written last year, or there really is a new version of Live on the way as I can’t see a book being written about Live 6 LE.

Even if it’s a while away I’m looking forward to the next version as I’m one of those tech musicians who thrive on learning new features and the ideas that spring from them to make my music.