Ravenscroft
Banned
If your machine runs Windows, there's some cool wares that can still be had. (I haven't tried them with W10 yet but they work well in my old XP laptop.)
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The first would be Gbloink!, which is difficult to describe & easy to use, a "sound toy" that looks somewhat like a pinball machine game. Three balls bounce around the screen at about 45-degree angle, running into various smallish rectangular obstables; when they contact a block or a wall, this triggers a MIDI note from the soundcard, pitch dependent on height in the frame.
download page
home page
revew page + pointers to other reviews & similar experiments
The user controls each ball's speed, volume, & which MIDI voice it uses. There are six choices as to the scale (including chromatic) from which the tones are chosen.
But the sounds evolve & change: when a ball contacts a block, a small "crumb" disappears from the edge... well, usually, anyway: once in a rare while, a ball can sort of burrow its way into a corner & get stuck. I discovered that changing its velocity has some tiny effect on bounce angle, & allows it to wriggle free. On the other side, the user can place blocks wherever desired, albeit of somewhat random size & dimension.
I originally found it because someone told me Brian Eno mentioned it in an interview. I now can't substantiate that, but I wouldn't be surprised: I'll sometimes leave it running as I browse on the PC or work around the house, & enjoy being surprised to hear shards of melody or even short riffs.
Originally released in 1997, the creator has made few upgrade attempts, finding that the desire to "improve" it only undermines its naive charm. One partial success would be Gbloink! ... in the browser! which requires no download & works (moderately well) with some of the more common browsers. Blocks can be placed or removed with a click. The control set is greatly reduced, & the only voice is piano. The blocks don't degrade when struck. Sometimes a ball will produce a lower note up high than mid-screen; a regular contact point might seem to produce a different note each time.
On the upside, there are now nine scales available. I have one set to "Debussy" & have done some tweaking of blocks; now it's producing a very interesting sort of Debussy/Satie, & I pause it but can't quite bring myself to close it. And for the purposes of this article, I launched a new one, & the random setup (in Major, yet) is surprisingly well-behaved, turning out something that has shades of upbeat Ravel meets Mussorgsky as Guaraldi looks for a melody.
________________
The first would be Gbloink!, which is difficult to describe & easy to use, a "sound toy" that looks somewhat like a pinball machine game. Three balls bounce around the screen at about 45-degree angle, running into various smallish rectangular obstables; when they contact a block or a wall, this triggers a MIDI note from the soundcard, pitch dependent on height in the frame.
download page
home page
revew page + pointers to other reviews & similar experiments
The user controls each ball's speed, volume, & which MIDI voice it uses. There are six choices as to the scale (including chromatic) from which the tones are chosen.
But the sounds evolve & change: when a ball contacts a block, a small "crumb" disappears from the edge... well, usually, anyway: once in a rare while, a ball can sort of burrow its way into a corner & get stuck. I discovered that changing its velocity has some tiny effect on bounce angle, & allows it to wriggle free. On the other side, the user can place blocks wherever desired, albeit of somewhat random size & dimension.
I originally found it because someone told me Brian Eno mentioned it in an interview. I now can't substantiate that, but I wouldn't be surprised: I'll sometimes leave it running as I browse on the PC or work around the house, & enjoy being surprised to hear shards of melody or even short riffs.
Originally released in 1997, the creator has made few upgrade attempts, finding that the desire to "improve" it only undermines its naive charm. One partial success would be Gbloink! ... in the browser! which requires no download & works (moderately well) with some of the more common browsers. Blocks can be placed or removed with a click. The control set is greatly reduced, & the only voice is piano. The blocks don't degrade when struck. Sometimes a ball will produce a lower note up high than mid-screen; a regular contact point might seem to produce a different note each time.
On the upside, there are now nine scales available. I have one set to "Debussy" & have done some tweaking of blocks; now it's producing a very interesting sort of Debussy/Satie, & I pause it but can't quite bring myself to close it. And for the purposes of this article, I launched a new one, & the random setup (in Major, yet) is surprisingly well-behaved, turning out something that has shades of upbeat Ravel meets Mussorgsky as Guaraldi looks for a melody.