Screenshot of SoundSpace, showing SpaceNodes, Asteroids and Orbital sound toys.

SoundSpace released

22nd February 2008

SoundSpace is now available to download. I've fairly pleased with how it went, although I feel it's a bit rough round the edges.

I've also uploaded a short documentation video about it as well as a short paper on the project.

Have a look.

Tags: soundspace

Comments (0)

SoundSpace quick update

9th February 2008

I've been working on some major developments on the SoundSpace project today (see news item below for an introduction on the project)

Firstly, SoundControl has been given a lot of attention. For starters it now has a much nicer look, but more importantly users can drop custom wave files into the program to add them to the engine. SoundControl has also made room for an instrument control interface: each sound toy has two events to create sound, so users can now choose which wave files are played for each of event. A list of wave files is determined by the contents of an assets folder.

Secondly, Lewis Linehan has once again helped me with some graphics work, by creating a beautiful space scene backdrop for the main interface. Thanks again, Lewis!

Tags: soundspace

Comments (0)

SoundSpace preview

8th February 2008

As promised, some screenshots of the project I'm doing for the Sound Practice module.

SoundSpace is an environment with nine 'cells' that can be used to load a copy of any one of four 'sound toys' or 'instruments'. The difference between this application and other sound toy examples is that not only can multiple toys be played at the same time, but they can also interact with each other.

The four sound toys planned are Orbital (which periodically plays sounds based on the relative positions of planets), SpaceNodes (a customisable path of notes that a spaceship follows), Asteroids (which sound when hit by each other or by spaceship lasers) and SpaceStrings (the frequency of which is determined by the length of each string).

The pitch of the sounds produced by SoundSpace is controlled by a separate program dubbed SoundControl. This controller broadcasts chord information to each of the instruments in SoundSpace every time it is updated. With SoundControl, users can control the probabilities that each note of a twelve note scale is played. They can also select from preset chords using the drop-down lists. There are also plans for the program itself to change chords at will.

This project is nearly finished. The instrument SpaceStrings still needs to be developed, a few more note-picking algorithms also need to be written and the graphics should really be given some more attention.

I'm also toying with the idea of letting users drop in their own sound files for the program to play. To make this work efficiently I might need more time than I first thought, but it is very possible to do.

I will be demoing the project to my peers on Thursday, 14 February and uploading it here the following week.

Tags: soundspace

Comments (0)

Electroplankton

29th January 2008

As research for my sound project and final year project, I've been playing sound artist Toshio Iwai's Electroplankton for the DS.

With Electoplankton the player can choose one of ten sound toy environments to make music in, and then tap and drag objects in the play area to manipulate music. There is also some basic microphone recording in the game.

Electroplankton is a fun pickup-and-play music toy that I'd recommend to anyone. The following is a short critique of the game, where I outline it's strengths and weaknesses:

Short critique of Electroplankton

The game has been designed so that resulting music sounds aesthetically pleasing regardless of the player's actions. They can quite happily randomly tap on the screen wherever and whenever, or with their Master's Degree in composition they can carefully choose what they do. Both these methods will create fairly pleasing soundscapes, more often than not. This isn't a bad thing; It allows the game to be accessible to everyone, not just musicians and in fact it's probably aimed more at the musically-challenged, who don't have much experience in creating music. I suppose Electroplankton could even spark a child's interest in music and encourage them to learn an instrument.

However, this feature leaves the game without any challenge whatsoever. So perhaps calling it a game isn't quite accurate. The term 'game' is a vague word that people tend to have different definitions for. In my eyes, a game is an organised enjoyable activity, with rules, objectives, interactivity and challenge. Electroplankton doesn't have challenge, so in my opinion it's not a game, it's a toy. I'll probably refer to Electroplankton as a game anyway, as that's how Nintendo have marketed the product.

I've analysed each of the ten environments in Electroplankton. Here are my thoughts on a few of them:

(3) Luminaria - possibly my favourite of the ten environments. This level comprises of a 6x6 grid of 'notes' in the natural G minor scale (no sharpened 7th). The scale is obvious when each note is tapped in order. There are also four 'plankton', acting as instruments that navigate the grid and sound the note of the corresponding grid reference when they touch it. The plankton move at different speeds too, but in time with each other (ie on the beat). The player only really controls the directions the plankton move in, by rotating the facing direction of each note. The effect is like four people playing random notes of the Gm scale with different sounding vibraphones, but because they all play in time it doesn't sound quite as bad as I thought it should.

(5) Rec Rec - a very simple multi-tracking environment where players can use the microphone to record their voice onto one of four tracks, which loops every bar and is played simultaneously with the other tracks. Good fun, but in this unusual case, is only as creative as the player. A drum beat is played over the top to enhance the music, else it would sound very dry.

(7) Lumiloop - Just five notes that players can activate. The notes are of a pentatonic scale (C D E G A), so most combinations of them don't sound too bad. The hook in this game is the circular spinning gestures the player has to use; if a note is spun fast enough, an overtone of an octave can be heard.

(8) Marine Snow - It seems to me that Toshio Iwai was running out of ideas when he created this environment. Like Luminaria, there's a grid of notes, this time in the Natural F Minor scale. Tapping a grid reference sounds the note, which then swaps positions with the last note tapped. The only way to make a tune, is to randomly squiggle the touch screen. Very dull, and musically not as strong as the others.

Overall I was surprised at the lack of composition algorithms were used, I assumed there would need to be some in order to make the music sound aesthetically pleasing. Instead, the game uses very basic music theory (simple time, instruments and scales) to produce surprisingly pleasant-sounding results. I was hoping for something more musically clever to research though.

Electroplankton doesn't let players save the state of each environment to return to later. This can be quite annoying if a player has worked hard to mould the environment to something they really like. For example, using Rec Rec players can record samples at specific times in the loop. As soon as they exit the Rec Rec environment, their samples are lost.

Also, each environment is only designed to be played on its own. A player cannot use multiple environments together, without running a copy of the game on another DS. It would have been nice to at least be able to minimise an environment and leave it running in the background while you play with another one. (That's not to say they'd all work together - looking at the scales used I wouldn't recommend it! But they could have been designed to work well with each other.)

You can see Luminaria, Lumiloop and a few other environments in action in this YouTube video.

Tags: music, games, soundspace, MOSAIC, dissertation

Comments (0)

Independent, but affective

24th January 2008

I was in a meeting with my tutor today, struggling to explain my ideas for the sound project to him, when I came up with a great idea. I've always wanted for the player to be able to play multiple mini-game simultaneously, but it would be even better if they affected one another, whilst still working independently.

For example, a spaceship in one instance can shoot its LASERs to blow up asteroids in another instance.

In this way I can label each of the individual toys 'instrument' instances. A player primarily playing one instrument can also play other instruments at the same time!

I've started programming now, so expect some screenshots soon.

Tags: soundspace, sound

Comments (0)

Sound project update

17th January 2008

I've decided on a space theme for my sound toy mini-games.

The theme will affect the type of music players can make. For example, the instruments will be stereotypical cartoon 'spacy' samples.

I've been researching other sound toys. The popular DS game Electroplankton designed by Toshio Iwai is great fun, but is missing a few features. For example, you can only play one game at a time and there's no way to save your creations. I'd like to make my project to improve upon Electroplankton by introducing these features, although I doubt it will be as graphically impressive!

One game I've thought of so far is an asteroid field that plays notes whenever asteroids collide. A collision also blows up the asteroids into fragments, which can in turn collide with other asteroids.

Another game idea is based on a spaceship orbiting various planets, where each planet plays a note of a velocity based on the proximity of the ship.

Confused? I'll post some screenshots when I start programming.

Tags: soundspace, sound

Comments (0)

Sound Project

13th January 2008

For my final year project I'm exploring autonomous composition within computer games.

To push me in the right direction, I plan to make some sound toys for my last project in the Sound Practice module.

A sound toy is a small application or web applet that gives users an interface to play with sounds, which allows them to compose in real time. Sound toys usually focus on and develop one or two ideas to do with interaction and computer music.

Tags: soundspace, sound

Comments (0)