2CAudio Kaleidoscope | It's A Trip | Latest Update 1.1

[Andrew Souter]

I started reading that post then this happened;

The thing that amazes me most is, that Andrew actually understands all of this...

Thanks, but this is really nothing compared to what real mathematicians deal with (for the record, I am NOT one of them -- I am in awe of them). It's (semi-advanced) high-school level math. This is quite simple for any developers on this forum.

For anyone interested, a cool (reasonably understandable to beginners) book on music/sound math/physics is:

http://www.amazon.com/Musimathics-Mathe ... 0262516551

[Andrew Souter]

Hehe yes and according to him that was "not that bad" My head was spinning just a few sentence's in then it exploded

out of pure curiosity, where does it get confusing to most people? at the mention of "log"? or before that?

"intriguers" was supposed to be "integers" btw. I generally suck at spelling, and autocorrect sometimes makes it even worse, if I don't proof carefully...

[shroom81]

Hehe yes and according to him that was "not that bad" My head was spinning just a few sentence's in then it exploded

out of pure curiosity, where does it get confusing to most people? at the mention of "log"? or before that?

"intriguers" was supposed to be "integers" btw. I generally suck at spelling, and autocorrect sometimes makes it even worse, if I don't proof carefully...

Ehh math has never been my strong suite and to be honest with you I have no idea what log is even. Didn't get along with school and got expelled... from everything

I have an interest learning more about programming KS hence me trying to read your post but when I saw all the math I was like "where the hell is he getting those numbers from and how on earth are you supposed to remember those long ass numbers" But that's just me so I can't really speak for others sir.

[Andrew Souter]

well, you don't have to remember the "long numbers". They were just random examples. I picked "pi" and "e" since they tend to be favorites to (aspiring) math nerds like me. (sorry "phi", you know I will always love you! )

The only thing to remember about this topic (if it is interesting to you, and really it only needs to be interesting to you if you want to try to make your own tunings, or convert to cents tunings to work with other synths that only support cents) is:


to convert "cents" to "ratios" use:

ratio = 2 ^ (cents / 1200)

to convert "ratios" to "cents" use:

cents = (1200 * log(ratio)) / (log(2))

or equivalently:

cents = 1200 * log(ratio, 2)

[Andrew Souter]

Ehh math has never been my strong suite and to be honest with you I have no idea what log is even. Didn't get along with school and got expelled... from everything

I have an interest learning more about programming KS...

btw, this make me VERY happy... i.e. the fact that you didn't "fit" with "school" but KS makes you interested in learning more...

this is part of why I think KS is a special product. I think "the system" forces way too much "rote learning" and memorization in school. I hated history when I was a kid bc it basically had no application to me as a young child and I could not "do anything" with it. To me it was just memorization of random data. As I get older, I understand its importance, but now we have wikipedia and whatever other sources of knowledge/information at our fingertips on our cell phones anywhere in the world 24-7-365! Whatever knowledge you would like to learn is available to learn more or less for free these days.

The trick is to make it fun and interesting to learn and to apply it to something creative so that it "sticks". That makes learning more effective IMHO. I don't really find anything sexy about the word "log" for example or find the function overly interesting in isolation, but when I start to explore what can be done with it and how to use it in music, sound, design etc. and how it is a natural part of the unverise it becomes alive to me. After some time "math" becomes like a "musical instrument" that I simply know how to play. It becomes a language. It will be the same way for anyone who spends a lot of time with KS and wants to get deep into making their own content etc. It just leads you in that direction naturally, at whatever pace you like, and often without you even being aware of it. And at the same time you don't have to think about it when you prefer not to, and instead you can just go into "zen mode" and interact with beautiful images (which are themselves almost all mathematical in nature, but you can ignore this fact when you like.)

I believe "knowledge is power" and feel like we've done something good when we make something that helps making acquiring knowledge, and learning how to augment the process of applying knowledge creatively, more fun.

This is true to some degree for all music technology I guess. It's interesting to note that throughout most of history the "crowning jewel" of man's technological achievement, the most complex/ornate manmade engineering project was a musical instrument. (It was the pipe organ, for example, up to the time of the bell-labs telephone switching system.) Much nicer than weapons of war IMHO... And more edifying than our current obsession with fast/cheap/easy/simple/dumb etc. I'm a bit of a humanist, and I think technology is at its best when it enhances man's natural abilities, and helps him improve himself, especially in the cases where when we turn the technology OFF there is some lasting residual benefit. I.e. something was learned, some knowledge was obtained, some skill set was augmented, etc. Man was improved, not just the technology. This is very cool to me.

I would say for example KS, and before that my experiences with MetaSynth and creating the architecture content, has helped my solo piano composition and performance! Sounds strange, I know, but I am pretty sure it is true. (and more obviously it also helped my sound-design and music engineering abilities/understanding) Musically KS teaches my brain to accept different organizational principals/structures (rhythmic, harmonic, dynamic, etc) and these in turn become internalized over time and become part of my "performance repertoire" for improvisation which is part of the compositional process. It's not an overly conscious process, I just notice sometimes I improv things intuitively, and I don't understand analytically where they come from at first. So there is some lasting effect on my musical thought process, both subconsciously/intuitively as well as consciously/analytically. And before I know it I find myself "speaking math" semi-fluently as well. All because I had something that made the learning process fun, motivating, and engaging... (if only it could help my spelling! )

Anyway, the point is not "look at me, I'm special". The point is "look at YOU. YOU'RE special." I'm just a self-taught musician with some level of obsession about enjoying learning. I'm no different than you. With some time you can do the same...

Anyway, this topic is why I referred to KS as a "A crypto learning device" on the "manifesto" page of the KS text. Maybe it gets a little "over the top" or preachy for some, but to me this is very cool part of KS.

So thanks for your story, and please ask whatever questions you would like and I will try to help you learn whatever else you would like about KS and related topics of music theory, math, whatever...

//end sermon.

[shroom81]

Hi Andrew, you sure sound like a man after my own heart I couldn't agree with you more about education. It should be about inspiring young minds to want to learn and have fun doing it.

After all it is fun to acquire knowledge and I'm seriously thinking of picking up that book you pointed to. It's going to be all jibberish at first to me just like the manual of my first sampler back in the 90's. I remember reading through that thing like 4 times before it actually started making a little sense

I will for sure toss some questions your way sometime in the near future and would like to thank you in advance for offering to help sir

Well back to banging Techno making, have a good day

[zerocrossing]

I think a plug in like this is ripe for a DSP based version release. Any chance you'd do one for the Scope platform? I imagine you could get it working with next to no latency on one of their modern DSP boxes.

[Andrew Souter]

I think a plug in like this is ripe for a DSP based version release. Any chance you'd do one for the Scope platform? I imagine you could get it working with next to no latency on one of their modern DSP boxes.

We're looking into several different ways to make KS run faster/smoother, more real-time, more performance-oriented. It's definitely a goal and we did/do/will consider lots of different ways to accelerate it.

A large portion of the past year was spent thinking about these kind of topics.

[dayjob]

i would use it more if it didn't crush my CPU. all the glitches and having to stop/restart the transport gets cumbersome. i did get some nice percussive accents out of it on an EP i did a few months ago.

[Andrew Souter]

i would use it more if it didn't crush my CPU. all the glitches and having to stop/restart the transport gets cumbersome. i did get some nice percussive accents out of it on an EP i did a few months ago.

I understand completely. This is what we've spent most of the last year trying to improve. By nature, it is a (potentially) heavy algorithm on the CPU and does best on fast computers. It depends completely on the number of "Active Lines", but a high number of active lines it's generally computationally similar to a SEVERAL THOUSAND band EQ for example... So in 1.0 we advocated bouncing results quickly and often and not leaving multiple instances running live all day long. We've spent a lot of the past year trying to find ways to improve this. We will see shortly the results of this effort.

[dayjob]

i would use it more if it didn't crush my CPU. all the glitches and having to stop/restart the transport gets cumbersome. i did get some nice percussive accents out of it on an EP i did a few months ago.

I understand completely. This is what we've spent most of the last year trying to improve. By nature, it is a (potentially) heavy algorithm on the CPU and does best on fast computers. It depends completely on the number of "Active Lines", but a high number of active lines it's generally computationally similar to a SEVERAL THOUSAND band EQ for example... So in 1.0 we advocated bouncing results quickly and often and not leaving multiple instances running live all day long. We've spent a lot of the past year trying to find ways to improve this. We will see shortly the results of this effort.

oh i totally understand. it's intense. i only use on instance. i find any more than that becomes overwhelming, for my tastes, in a track anyways.

looking forward to the results of all the brain torture you all have been up to.

[zerocrossing]

I think a plug in like this is ripe for a DSP based version release. Any chance you'd do one for the Scope platform? I imagine you could get it working with next to no latency on one of their modern DSP boxes.

We're looking into several different ways to make KS run faster/smoother, more real-time, more performance-oriented. It's definitely a goal and we did/do/will consider lots of different ways to accelerate it.

A large portion of the past year was spent thinking about these kind of topics.

I don't know a huge amount about programming, but I know enough to realize that Kaleidoscope is going to be pretty hungry no matter what. I suggest the Sonic Core platform because the hardware is very solid and there hasn't been a lot of development for it in the past few years so you've got a bunch of owners who are hungry for new meat.

[Andrew Souter]

I think a plug in like this is ripe for a DSP based version release. Any chance you'd do one for the Scope platform? I imagine you could get it working with next to no latency on one of their modern DSP boxes.

We're looking into several different ways to make KS run faster/smoother, more real-time, more performance-oriented. It's definitely a goal and we did/do/will consider lots of different ways to accelerate it.

A large portion of the past year was spent thinking about these kind of topics.

I don't know a huge amount about programming, but I know enough to realize that Kaleidoscope is going to be pretty hungry no matter what. I suggest the Sonic Core platform because the hardware is very solid and there hasn't been a lot of development for it in the past few years so you've got a bunch of owners who are hungry for new meat.

Thanks for the suggestion. We appreciate it.

[extrajazz]

Hello,

I tested the new Falcon from UVI and it supports also scala tunings (but only up to 12 steps). But the format differs and one has to convert ratio values to cent values and vice versa. Andrew Souter sent me the formulas and I made conversion tables for Excel and Calc. One can use them also for other Synths, who only understand scala files with cent values like MPowerSynth or Aalto. Background washes from Kaleidoscope and leads from other synths are then in the same tuning and that fits often better together.

You find it here: http://www.buenasideas.de/wp-content/up ... ersion.zip

If You understand German You can read my review of Falcon here:

http://www.buenasideas.de/test/musikpro ... stbericht/

Greetings,

Stefan

[Michael L]

What computer specs (cpu cores & speed, gpu, L3) do you recommend to run Kaleidoscope to its full potential?