Category: Tutorials

The Soundboard App

Here’s a little how-to for a project I started doing this year with my advanced classes. It’s a bit more complex than just the patch, but the soundboard is the most interesting part of the project.

Soundboard apps are one of the more common gimmick apps on the iPhone, so many students already understand what it’s supposed to do: You hit a button, it plays a sound. Simple, right?


Figure one: the thing that makes the noise

THE THING THAT MAKES THE NOISE
In PD, “tilde” objects are the ones that deal with sound. In our soundboard patch, the only two objects that directly deal with sound are tabplay~ (reads the sound buffer as audio) and dac~ (the final output to speakers). The button you see above tabplay~ is called a “bang” and it does what you think it does.


Figure two: the array, where sounds live

WHERE THE SOUND LIVES
In PD, sound lives in buffers called “arrays”. You have to both make the array, and tell PD to read the audio file into it. To get the sound into the array so that each time you load the patch it will be there is kind of dodgy – you have to hard code it. Meaning, you will ask PD to look in a specific location for the sound. I’ve noticed that some versions of PD hate filenames and folders with spaces in them, so try to avoid those if possible. Also, sound must be in an uncompressed format like wav or aif.


The sound loading routine – the “read” message is the only part of this patch that feels like actual programming.

You must get the read message box right or else your sound will not load. It goes like this: read is the command. “-resize” tells the array to be the same length as the sound file. Then, the file path. Finally the name of the array it’s going to land in. Make sense? Good.

Soundfiler takes the read message in as a command and makes it happen. You don’t need to connect it to anything.

Assuming you got this to work, you may have gotten your soundboard to work!

NEXT STEPS
Making the soundboard useful is another task. In lieu of having a video game that’s interactive hook into the patch (a holy grail goal of mine for this project) I opted for an alternative. Live but digital foley.

Here’s how it works. I use a 2-3 minute video clip from a video game. The students make sound that are needed for that clip (jump, door opening, lasers, etc.) They make a PD soundboard that uses those sounds.

Then we use JACK to route the PD audio back into GarageBand where it can be recorded. I play the clip on my projector so the whole class can see it at once and they “perform” their clips from the patch into GB. Then, they take a low res version of the video and re-sync it so they can export it as a project. Possible extensions might be writing some BGM for it as well, but that might make the project take a bit too long.

Wormhole

The problem: DAW files are notoriously not portable, and audio scrub bars are terribly boring to watch during playback. I want to get my students’ projects up on the big screen and speakers so I can hear and see the projects as they do at their station, with very few “oh well that didn’t work today” moments.

This is totally possible in software. This nifty trick is usually handled by a pricey piece of hardware (I’m looking at you…and you…and you). That’s not how I roll though – I like to do things MacGuyver style.

First you need some twine, a match, and silly putty a regular DAW that can host plugins. If you’re reading this blog you probably have that. (hint: GarageBand will work just fine). Now, go here yesterday and get Wormhole. It’s free. Go here and get Chicken of the VNC too (I’m assuming you’re on a Mac. If you don’t…wait I just checked my site logs – about 80% chance you do.)

OK, so the end goal is going to be grabbing any student computer’s audio and video and throwing it up on the projector and the big room speakers.

Before reading how I use it, you might want to read the Wormhole manual. Download the plugin, follow the install instructions and you can continue. (Protip: you can install audio plugins on a non-privileged machine. Just do it in the ~/user/library/audio/plugins/components folder. DAW’s look in there as well as in the root library folder. *Ahem*

SETTING IT UP
In GarageBand (or your DAW of choice) have a file set up that uses Wormhole as an insert, has a small blank audio clip, and loops a very short section continuously. The audio clip is there for a bug that Plasq never patched, and the loop is to make sure you don’t miss any of the student’s audio once they hit play.

On the student’s machine, have them add Wormhole to a master track. Have them type their name in the box and hit enter. That’s it on their end.

At the teacher desk, open your premade project, open the Wormhole plugin, and select the student you want to hear. Hit play on your machine. Ask the student to hit play on theirs (or just do it through VNC for them). Voila – student audio coming through the teacher’s computer and sending out to the big speakers!

Chicken of the VNC is another no-brainer. This lets you see and control each students’ desktop. Not only is it useful for fixing a problem without walking across the room, it’s worth seeing the look on their face the first time you take over their computer. Love it.

Between VNC and Wormhole, we have a solution to virtualize all the output from a student station so everyone can see everyone’s projects on sharing day (you do sharing day right?) on the big screen with the big speakers.

Now doesn’t that make you feel all 21st century?

How to chroma key using only iMovie and a green screen

Materials:
-Chroma key background (muslin cloth or even green posterboard works)
-Video loop or picture (find some here)
-iMovie 09 (it came with your Mac if you bought after Jan 2009)

Before you begin read a tutorial or two about chroma key backgrounds. There are issues with the lighting and such you should be aware of before you expect perfect results. That being said, iMovie is rather forgiving when it comes to the range of chroma it’s keying out.

STEP ONE
Enable iMovie’s advanced controls. You can find this in the Preferences.

STEP TWO
Throw your video loop into a new project. Make sure the loop is long enough to go all the way through your greenscreen footage. (For our 5 minutes announcements, I have a 10 min. loop “just in case”)

STEP THREE
Drag your greenscreen footage on top of the video loop. Try to line it up with the very edge of where you want it to start. A little menu will pop up – select “Green Screen”

STEP FOUR
If you want to add overlays or any other video “tracks”, you will need to export the unedited greenscreen + loop and reimport it into iMovie. Then, edit the movie and do all your other titles, overlays, etc.

Voila! iMovie 09 is very generously (and somewhat secretly given that these are not default “on” features) giving away a feature that I’m sure sold many copies of Final Cut Express.

Despite the obvious limitation of multiple tracks (that can be worked around), adding 10 minutes to post production can make the announcements look significantly better and is totally worth it.

How to force Logic Pro to have an arpeggiator

Seriously, this should just be a plugin…and seriously Ableton Live & Reason do this better.  I still feel like this is a magic voodoo trick to have to do to get this in Logic, but I want everyone to know it’s possible.  Let’s begin:

1: MAKE YOUR INSTRUMENT

No further explanation needed.  I picked ES1 if you need a suggestion.  I’m going for something like the arpeg found in “Ayo Technology”.  Yes I listen to fiddy.  Next!

2: CLICK ON WINDOW -> ENVIRONMENT

Or just hit command-8.

3: GO TO THE “CLICK & PORTS” TAB

Located in the top left of the environment window.

4: TURN ON YOUR CAPS LOCK KEYBOARD

Play some notes to see how the MIDI signal path that you see is working.

5: CLICK “NEW” THEN CHOOSE “ARPEGGIATOR”

Also, take a moment to send Apple feedback reminding them that everyone else just makes this an included plugin and doesn’t require Max/MSP -style patching to accomplish this.  Moving on.

6: PATCHING

Connect the output of “Input View” into the Arpeggiator.  Connect the outlet of Arpeggiator into “Sequencer Input”

7: IT STILL DOESN’T ARPEGGIATE

Until you hit play.  Go to the Environment window to change the note values, etc.  (setting both note values to 64ths will get you that Timbaland sound that’s so popular with the kids these days).

(p.s. to preempt all of the Logic defenders out there, I’m one of you.  I just wish this one feature were packaged in an easy to turn on/automate plugin rather than using the environment.  I realize the advantages of keeping the environment around but also that most non-MIDI-guru users aren’t going to realize it exists at first.)