Hidden Quartz Composer Patches Redux

In a famous blogpost from summer 2005, ClockSkew poked around inside Quartz Composer and discovered some fairly-complete-looking patches that aren’t available through the interface. ClockSkew also made a cool patch plugin that made these available through the interface. Unfortunately this plugin was written when Intel Macs didn’t exist, and it isn’t a Universal Binary.

Having myself somewhat of an obscurity-obsession, I decided to investigate how ClockSkew did this, and insodoing discovered a few new hidden patches.

the sound of the curtain of erich zann

Several hours into the night in which the door was locked, the curtain of erich zann began producing a most disturbing klanking noise. It was a regular, rhythmic beating – like that of a monstrous dumpster being emptied into a monstrous garbagetruck.

When we arose, we discovered that someone – or something – had unlocked the door in the night.

stop. motion.

I think I’m going to use this space to try to loosely chronicle ruori happenings over the next week-and-a-half as things progress toward the (all-too-rapidly) upcoming show in Philadelphia.

I frantically cleaned the house (i.e., emptied two entire rooms, half-into-dumpster, half-into-car-to-unexpectedly-drop-upon-my-grandparents). I drove to Akron-Canton Airport to pick up Ashley and Ryan. Akron-Canton Airport is amazingly small. Small, as in, most of the primary roads on campus are single-lane, and they actually allow cars to stop near the passenger-pickup-area. Also small, as in, they can get away with a huge flash thing in the middle of their website. Altogether uncanny.

We were planning to record my grandfather doing some narration (voiceovers to be used during some film-based segments of the show) but an unidentified individual forgot to bring the camera battery. So we shall meet him sometime in the next few days.

We arrived back in Columbus. Ashley and Ryan went out to retrieve some essentials such as Meijer Bulk Gummibears, Dinner Rolls, and Myriad Caffeinated Substances.

While they were gone, I searched for software with which to turn the fancy new videocamera into a bolex, and came across iStopMotion. I played with it a bit and decided to buy a copy.

Somehow I managed to destroy one of the three mac minis already. It’s giving me the flashy-folder thing and doesn’t start loading OS X at all..

Tina’s back in Columbus now, too. She’s planning to be here most of Monday to hopefully finish script stuff and start working on blocking and storyboards. Speaking of things that should have been done a year ago, I really need to start writing the score.

Ashley, Ryan, and I then spent the next few hours assembling and becoming familiar with the animation rig. And rediscovering how touching a small part of an object causes the whole room to move (taking the frame out of registration and requiring a few minutes to reposition everything). Having realtime onionskin capabilities in software is so helpful.

We ended up with about 25 seconds of potentially-usable footage @ 12 frames per second.

Causality

This morning I awoke to the alarm, showered, and tried to exit my home.

The doorknob broke off the frontdoor.

I disassembled the door in order to get out.

I then reassembled it discourage other people from entering while I am away.

So, I thought, “You know, today’s a good day to resume this blog.”

So I did.

Nord Modular Wishlist

This list was compiled from various mailinglist postings.

From Wout Blommers:

During the start of the V4 developments Clavia asked some NM‘ers to write a user report and a wishlist. This was done [in late 2001].
http://home.wanadoo.nl/blommoo/WishList_Part02.html

Possible (?) With Current Hardware

Modules

  • Moog ladder filter - Grant Middleton
  • Linear slew module - Grant Middleton
  • Bus line from CVA back to PVA - Grant Middleton
  • 16x8 event sequencer - Steve Mokris
  • Sequencer input to control position with CV - Steve Mokris

Editor software

  • Use Windows Clipboard to cut and paste modules - Steve Mokris
  • The ability to type in values from the computer keyboard once a parameter is in focus. Seems easier to get an exact value quicker this way than “mousing around” - Les Mizzell
  • The ability to “freeze” the vocoder and save those settings as a stand-alone filter (transferred to the Filter Bank perhaps?). Better yet, the ability to save a number of “captured” settings (slices?), and then smoothly morph between them with adjustable time settings in-between.
    Consider the power of this. Trying to model the perfect cello? Capture the settings from the vocoder module at 0, .5, 1, 1.5 and 2 seconds and then be able to use those settings to either synthesize a cello, or apply those filter settings to another sound entirely. - Les Mizzell

New Hardware (The Fabled “NM2”)

Hardware

  • some sort of digital out [expansion option] - perhaps via a USB interface (which could double as the Editor connection rather than a 2nd midi port) [or an ADAT expansion board]. This would also be a good way to transfer in waveforms and samples, assuming they build that sort of functionality into the NM2. - trey at u.washington.edu
    • If people are going to dream about how cool all this data flying back and forth would be, then I strongly suggest that someone put a large flea in Clavia’s collective ear about skipping over USB entirely and shipping the next generation Nord Modular with FireWire ports. USB will handle tons of MIDI (once the various bugs are sorted out), but if people also want to be able to feed multiple audio signals to and from the Nord this way, then USB is knocked out of the running quickly and only FireWire is fast enough to do it all cleanly. Maybe Clavia should talk to Yamaha about getting on the mLAN train when it finally pulls out of the station. - Mike Metlay
  • more physical outputs/timbrality - or at least an expansion option. The polyphony expansion isnt nearly as useful to me as a timbrality/ output expansion would be. - trey at u.washington.edu
  • Make an “NM2” more “modular” for purchase — you can start out with less (though sufficient for, say, 6-8 voice polyphony, 4-channel timbrality) but build up to whopping Kyma-like expansions of DSP and RAM power. Although keep this within enough limits to keep the “NM2” coherent enough to function just fine as an entirely independent instrument; don’t get caught in the trap of forcing it to become a PC parasite, or a big, cumbersome, buggy piece of frustration. - Steven Wartofsky
  • multiple small LCD windows above all knobs that change dynamically to show knob-assignment at-a-glance, either that or a larger central LCD with a menu option to provide at-a-glance knob assignment clarification. Some way so you don’t have to think about which knob did what a month after you created a patch. - Steven Wartofsky
  • Move the keyboard over four inches, put in a Nord Lead style mod wheel and pitch stick (both routable to anything, of course), and put an aftertouch sensor under the keys (ditto). I’d buy one in a heartbeat. - Mike Metlay

Nord Modular Tempo Format

When the Nord Modular Editor writes patch files, the sequencer tempo is stored in an odd format, which packs the entire tempo range into a 7bit value. In beats per minute, the tempo ranges from 24 to 214. For values toward the ends of the spectrum, it skips by two.

  • 24bpm to 88bpm = by 2
  • 89bpm to 151bpm = by 1
  • 152bpm to 214bpm = by 2

The following C snippet should translate from BPM to nord-patch-file format and reverse.

unsigned char bpmToNordTempo(int b)
{
    if(b<24)
        return 0;
    else if(b<88)
        return (b-24)/2;
    else if(b<152)
        return b-88+32;
    else if(b<214)
        return (b-152)/2+96;
    else
        return 127;
}
 
int nordTempoToBpm(unsigned char t)
{
    if(t<32)
        return t*2+24;
    else if(t<96)
        return t-32+88;
    else if(t<128)
        return (t-96)*2+152;
    else
        return 214;
}