ndc Plugs release Fragmental VST plugin (now v1.02)

[rlahalla]

Very cool plug, thanks for taking the time to develop it. Much appreciated,

[EkleipSiS]

hmm...very creative,interesting and very simple to use...very unique..love the simplicity of the gui too..(took me just a couple of seconds to understand)
nice work...

[engine]

Thank you!

[Lance]

[ToneCarver]

Really digging the UI on this plug. Quite unlike any I have seen before. Very intuitive. Moving the dice across the columns to enable and configure routings is pure genius. I totally understand your frustration and motivation for moving to Linux. Thanks for your contributions, the PC world will miss you.

[NiallM]

Excellent effect, but wouldn't load in FLS 7.0.2 unless loaded through ext (FLS would freeze at 'loading fruity wrapper' and i'd have to shut it down from task manager).

Edit: It's being tempremental. Sometimes it will load, other times it will freeze.

Sorry. I was kind of hoping (naively, I'll admit) it wouldn't have any of those weird kind of bugs. I'll track down an FL demo and see if I can fix it.

For anyone interested in such things, I've written a semi-elaborate history of the development of Fragmental, mostly because I'm always fascinated by the design process and the gestation of an idea, and thought it would be fun to document this.

Available on my blog:

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?q=node/150

Wow, it's great to have this documented. I'm never organised enough to keep track of my working process myself .



My Linux plans:

My host of choice is Tracktion. It's still the environment I'm most comfortable making music in, and anything else just feels like a step backwards to me (which is why I can't see myself ever working with something like XT2). So initially my app will probably be quite similar to Tracktion. However, I'm not interested in just creating a Tracktion clone for Linux. One of the things that I've realised from my PhD is that there isn't any software out there that allows you to work with audio-visual connections in any meaningful way. You can either build everything yourself with something like Max/MSP/Jitter/PD/Gem (or c++ etc.), or you can try and make do with one of the various commercial apps that offers some meagre support for multimedia. I want something that'll let me make a gesture (with the mouse or a custom interface or whatever), and define how that gesture affects or creates sound and visuals, and how the sound and visuals relate to each other. And I want to be able to setup these relationships with the minimum of mouse gestures, and be able to manipulate them on the fly. I want the program's interface to be a performable instrument, in a way that I just haven't seen done yet (though I am aware of people with similar goals in the academic world). You can see some of these ideas in Fragmental's interface, and the idea that the user shouldn't have to make complex sequences of gestures just to alter simple characteristics of the sound.

I wouldn't get too excited about these plans though - I'd imagine it'll take me at least 5 years before I get something vaguely workable (and I'll probably never realise all my ridiculously ambitious plans for it). I will release it (eventually), because I think these kind of things should be shared, and available to everyone. As you can probably guess, it'll be licensed under the GPL.

As far as dev tools go, I'm pretty comfortable working in both Linux and Windows. You have to do a bit more editing of text files on Linux, but other than that there's not much difference as far as my working methods are concerned.

- Niall.

[Mighty Pea]

A good day for musicians in the short term, a sad day for us windows-using musicians in the long run. I'm really loving the interface on this thing, the pie-charts are a blessing to use, especially when doing things live (as in: realtime. The thought of me on a stage is preposterous)

[shamann]

Wow, it's great to have this documented. I'm never organised enough to keep track of my working process myself .

Haha, I even had more stuff, but kept it to the good bits to keep things short(ish). I'm sure I have every build of the plugin you ever sent me (but for those last few that were gobbled by my ISP), including every early standalone build of the delay and granulator.

One file I omitted from the blog was this initial black GUI mockup (only left it out because I didn't have saved in the same place as the other pics, so wasn't on hand when I typed that out this afternoon, maybe I should do an edit):

[runagate]

shamann - very cool!

Mr. Moody - what a great thing that you're plotting!.

A fine day to be on KVR

[JerGoertz]

Thanks for this plug NiallM!

Looks like something right up my alley.

[_oswald]

Holy shit. This makes me wish I had a decent host with rewire support.

[tetraplan]

All I can say is w00t.
Just in time to come in handy for the project I'm about to start tomorrow.
Thanks, and thanks for all the cool plugins (only just started to use -and love- The Modulator).
I'll be following your adventures in the land of Tux.

Groet, Erik

[dalor]

It doesn't work in Renoise, it makes Renoise all jumpy: the cursor is flashing insanely, the play and stopbutton do weird things. Closing the plugin brings Renoise back to normal.

[Download SOphist]

very nice...

[jivamukti]

Thanks for sharing Fragmental!