Artist performances, maker demonstrations and practical lessons. Each selection gives you something to listen for and a small experiment to take away.
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The vendor’s introduction to the experimental RNBO Takeover workflow on Move. Watch alongside the current setup documentation, since the video describes an alpha.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
An official Office Hours session exploring RNBO Move Takeover with Alex Norman and Sam Tarakajian. A longer companion to the concise walkthrough.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
Schwung’s creator demonstrates RNBO and Move running together through the project. This is the unofficial Schwung workflow; distinguish it from Cycling ’74’s separate Takeover mode.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
A creator introduction selected by the Schwung project for its demonstration collection. Use it to orient yourself, then check shortcuts against the current manual.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
A recording-focused demonstration included in Schwung’s official project video collection. Pair it with the current manual’s explanation of master recordings, stems and resampling routes.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
The official companion to Takumi Ogata’s plugdata tutorial: build a keyboard-played synthesizer and deploy it to Daisy Pod. The source article supplies the project files and flashing instructions.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
Roger Linn demonstrates expressive playing gestures on LinnStrument. A useful reference for listening to articulation, slides and vibrato before designing a complex MPE mapping.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
Josh Madoff demonstrates sensitivity, aftertouch, pitch movement, the MPE arpeggiator, pressure glide and pedal use in Expressive E’s creative tutorial series.
Choose one technique from the demonstration. Make a short recording with it, then change only one parameter and compare the result.
The vendor’s version 2 introduction to Magic’s modular visual workflow. Start with a small audio-reactive patch and build a visual instrument; menu details belong to the version shown.
Build one shape with one audio-driven parameter. Record the same phrase twice: first driving scale, then brightness. Keep the version that leaves the most room for musical contrast.
Hydra creator Olivia Jack presents live-coded visuals in the browser. An introduction to a video-synthesis language that can be performed and changed in public.
Make a three-operation Hydra patch: one source, one geometric transformation and one modulation. Perform for one minute by changing only a single number, then save the code beside the recording.
Naoto Hieda’s second advanced Hydra feedback tutorial. A focused companion to the introductory talk for studying how an image can become material for its own next frame.
Create a restrained feedback patch. Compare a slow scale change with a slow rotation, keeping the input unchanged. Find a setting where traces persist without filling the whole image.
Bileam Tschepe explains how audio data and CHOPs can animate an existing TouchDesigner sketch. The creator also points out that the control source can be MIDI or another channel rather than audio.
Map one smoothed control channel to a single visual property. Compare recorded audio with a manually played MIDI control, and choose which gives you clearer phrasing.
Torin Blankensmith builds audio analysis and beat-driven visual controls in TouchDesigner, including animation, colour, displacement and blending. A practical way to turn a running visual into a response to music.
Give slow movement to overall energy and reserve one short visual accent for onsets. Compare with an unsmoothed amplitude mapping and note which is less tiring over a full track.
Part three of Nick Hwang’s RNBO-to-web series focuses on exporting a patch for the browser. Use it as a worked example alongside current RNBO web-export documentation.
Export the smallest working RNBO patch you can: one oscillator and one level parameter. Make it audible from an explicit Start button before adding MIDI, presets or animation.
Nick Hwang continues the RNBO-to-web series with JavaScript functionality. The next step after a successful export is making a browser interface control the audio patch.
Connect one HTML control to one exported parameter and display its value. Test the minimum, middle and maximum, then reload to check that the starting value matches the sound.
Ben Morss and Hongchan Choi discuss creating music on the web. The speaker’s project page places the talk around WebAssembly, AudioWorklet and browser audio processing.
Draw your instrument as two columns: interface work and audio-thread work. Move animation, file handling and text updates out of the audio column; identify one parameter that needs sample-timed control.
A Web Audio Conference workshop on collaboration through Max, the web and Collab-Hub, linked by Nick Hwang from his own site. A view of browser instruments as shared performance systems.
Design a two-player patch where one person changes note density and the other changes timbre. Write down who owns each control and how either player can restore a known state.
Colin Benders interprets Jon Hopkins’s Open Eye Signal on a modular synthesizer. Listen as an arrangement study: repetition can carry a piece while texture and intensity supply movement.
Make a four-minute study from one short pattern. Keep its notes unchanged and plan only three large changes: one in register, one in density and one in brightness.
ann annie’s modular reflection on Debussy’s Clair de Lune offers a contrasting study in melodic space and electronic timbre. Listen for the relationship between a recognisable phrase and its surrounding texture.
Choose a four-note phrase and play it once with a dry sound, then with a long tail. Leave enough silence for the second version to finish speaking before adding another note.
Suzanne Ciani’s Café Oto performance, published by NTS and linked from the artist’s site. Ciani notes that the original performance was quadraphonic; this recording is a stereo reduction.
Listen to five minutes without watching. Sketch when a sound seems to approach, recede or move, then make a 60-second stereo piece using only level and panning for its structure.
Hainbach demonstrates sound-on-sound looping using tape echoes and recorders, then explores different machines and their artefacts. The useful compositional idea is accumulation with audible imperfection.
Use a digital looper to add one short gesture per pass for six passes, lowering the retained level slightly each time. Stop adding material and listen to the newest gesture against its history.
Roger Linn shows how to create Surge XT sounds that respond musically to LinnStrument and other MPE controllers. A sound-design companion to the gesture lesson, treating controller response as part of the instrument.
Start with an initial patch. Assign pressure to level and timbre to a modest filter change. Hold two notes and reshape only one; add effects after the independent response feels reliable.
Josh Madoff explains MPE for Expressive E through playing examples, software and hardware setups, and different instruments. The MIDI Association also features this manufacturer-produced tutorial.
Record the same two-note phrase twice: first with fixed articulation, then with independent pressure and pitch movement. Describe the musical difference without using the word expressive.
thoughtForm Max builds an initial MPE patch in Surge XT. Roger Linn links the lesson from his official Surge support page and credits thoughtForm’s contributions to the LinnStrument MPE library.
Create a patch with only three performance destinations. Write one sentence explaining what strike, pressure and vertical movement each do, then remove any mapping you cannot hear clearly.
Moritz Klein explains and builds the core of an analogue voltage-controlled oscillator. The lesson connects basic circuit behaviour to a playable sound rather than beginning with a complete synthesizer schematic.
Draw the oscillator’s repeating charge-and-reset cycle in your own words. Before building, use a circuit simulator or the supplied explanation to predict what happens when its timing component changes.
Sound Simulator demonstrates creating an effects pedal or unit with Daisy Pod. A practical bridge between a software audio process and an instrument with a small, physical control surface.
Design a two-knob effect before writing it: one control for the main transformation and one for wet/dry balance. Decide the startup values and how to hear the untouched input while testing.
Share a changed device, a patch, a performance or a useful failure. Add your own photograph or a video link and explain what made the difference. Contributions are reviewed before publication.
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