Alright no more dropouts! I just needed to increase the jack buffer size to 4096 I guess, but I still haven’t done any profiling so who knows. :-)

Here’s a bash one-liner simulating an external serial trigger sending an update message (with no actual message payload, the instrument is set up to respond to all update messages the same way for testing) to the pulsar test program, changing the frequency of the 20 oscillators every second.

It’s not terribly exciting, musically, but I’m really glad this is working so well. Getting to the fun stuff fairly soon: serial I/O, resonator design and even writing some notes…

rain is partly an excuse to play music with my uncle, who is a really great jazz sax player. I haven’t started writing the themes yet, but I want to include some simple fixed trumpet/sax duo passages along with sections that are improvisational & aleatoric for trombone & sax. I have some hope of improvising with the trombone. I’m finding that I really enjoy playing it? I don’t play very often, and until recently only for myself, just for fun. I’m looking forward to exploring the rain system and tip-toeing back into tromboning in the world again, though.

Update: I thought I’d do more plumbing, but just tried hooking the pulsar script up to the ADC again and now it actually feels kind of like something… just ring modulating the osc output with the mic input is already fun to play around with.

I haven’t figured out how pitch input is going to work. It’ll probably be some combination of pattern recall and freeform control. I’ll probably prototype with a MIDI keybaord at some point, but what I’d like to work out is refining the command inputs I’ve used with astrid in the past, and pairing that with some physical controls. Like a programmable keyboard, not-a-keyboard.

I was marveling at the timbre controls for the Electric Sackbutt the other day. I wonder if something like arcade buttons with capacitive touch surfaces for a second control dimension could be possible…? Donno.