Endless Series v3 released!

I am very happy to announce the release of Endless Series version 3, my new VST and AudioUnit plugin.

see http://www.olilarkin.co.uk

blurb: "A unique synthesis and effect plugin based on the Shepard Tone auditory illusion. It generates mind bending infinite scales, psychedelic drones and fascinating sonic textures. Endless Series v3 works as a tone generator, a ring modulator, phaser, flanger or resonant filter bank effect."

I have been working on this for what seems like forever. It's totally rewritten in C++ and is a vast improvement on previous versions. Hopefully future plugins will be quicker to put out, since much of the work involved improving my C++ skills and improving the iplug framework to have the features that I wanted.

Final key feature list:

• VST2/AudioUnit plugin based on the Shepard Tone auditory illusion
• Additive tone generator with up to 40 partials
• Circular pitch ring modulator, flanger, filter and 24 stage phaser FX
• Glissando, auto-stepped and MIDI stepped modes
• Many options to tweak harmonicity and timbre
• Stereo detune, phase offset and auto-panning
• Quantise pitches to 14 different scales
• Soft clipping, extra harmonics and noise modulation
• Fast ASR amplitude envelope in MIDI stepped mode
• MIDI reset-able for repeatable output
• Integrated help system
• 32 high quality factory presets

I have redone my website, and have temporarily withdrawn my old products from sale. These are being rewritten too, but they need more work.

max web control v0-1

I've been working a patch and glue code to control maxmsp patches from the web browser using net.loadbang.web and jqueryui

https://github.com/olilarkin/maxwebcontrol

Bang Goes the Theory on Shepard Tones

Povray Knobs

I've been working on some python scripts to make it easier to use povray for rendering gui elements (knobs, sliders, buttons) for plugins. It renders a stitched png automatically, with a transparent background. Stitching and compositing is thanks to imagemagick and this tutorial by Christoph Hormann. Windows users are spoilt having the excellent knobman, but afaik, there aren't any helper tools for mac to do it.

The script has options for number of frames, output dimensions and render dimensions. Also it can stitch horizontally or vertically. Here is a picture of a render. It's work in progress!

The scripts and povray files are available at github with some basic instructions in the python file. It should work on OSX and Linux (with a little tweaking). On OSX you can install imagemagick and povray via macports.

https://github.com/olilarkin/guiutilities/

SCI-style knob

The real thing

Plugin Jams #2 - Stepcomb

Some sounds from a plugin i made in 2004 - Stepcomb. This is a stereo step sequenced combfilter + resonant filter effect. The sequencer is pretty funky with swing and glissandos.

Still available here:

http://www.olilarkin.co.uk/ 

(windows vst only)

I made several other versions with Max which had a slightly different sound. The synthedit version was the best though.


Stepcomb Jam by olilarkin

Suck (2010)

Suck (2010) by olilarkin

15 minute long shepard tone work out. Featuring mostly Endless Series Version 3 and Valhalla DSP plugins. This is a 2 channel mix of a 3 channel composition, that was meant to be experienced loud and was premierd @ Strange Vibrations, Music Research Centre, York UK on 01/12/2010.

Automatics Group @ Music Research Centre Feb 2011

The Automatics Group, MediaMix, 18/02/11 from mrcyork on Vimeo.

From a recent gig at the Music Research Centre