Notgames Forum

Hi,

My name is David Kanaga; I'm a musician and a beginner/amateur interaction designer/programmer. I'm really excited to have found this site (via edclef, whose project I'm working on), being a fan of notgames (specifically those with some musical component) myself.

Anyway, here's some applicable things I've done:

Website: http://www.davidkanaga.com (updated less regularly)
Music Blog: http://davidkanaga.blogspot.com (updated more regularly)

All of my music is released under a cc-by-nc-sa license, so if think it's appropriate, feel free to use it in any projects that use that same license :)

Undergraduate Thesis, "Time Structures in Interactive Media: Videogames as Musical Objects": http://www.davidkanaga.com/miscmusic/time_structures_thesis.pdf

This is a paper that I wrote about half a year ago, exploring the idea of videogames as a kind of musical play (even without the sound!)

And, finally, the one finished nongame (or game, for that matter) that I've worked on (with Josh Bothun, minornine.com): Ada (http://www.minornine.com/ada)

It's similar in form to Electroplankton, a sort of "album" of musical play-spaces, but perhaps more fiery/mysterious at times ;) Give it some time to start up--sometimes it takes the sound engine about a minute to load :P

I'd love to hear what you think of any of my projects! Looking forward to reading some threads here...

Welcome!

Ada is quite nice! (if a bit buggy)

The one with the two dots connected by a line is my favourite so far. Because some things happen that I don't seem to cause. So it's more of an interaction between the software and the player (as opposed to an instrument controlled by the player). Which I prefer.

Welcome David! I tried out Ada, and like it a lot: very interesting, innovative, and experimental. We definitely need to be doing more interesting things with sound in software, so its great to see things like this.

Looking forward to "seeing you around."

Jordan

Michael: Ada is, indeed, a bit buggy, on account of the hacked together SuperCollider audio engine we used. I'm currently looking into options for less buggy real-time synthesis that I can use for future projects...

I'm glad you liked the one you said you did-- I quite liked it myself, though it hasn't been as popular with most other players. Still, there's something about it that may yet change your opinion on the matter-- there's no randomness/independent decision-making by the software: everything that you see/hear is a procedural response to your actions :) So, while some things happen that you don't seem to cause, you are in fact causing them...

I am very interested in this distinction that you mention between "interaction between software and player" and "instrument controlled by player"; I think that, specifically with the piece you mentioned (but also with the others), I am trying to explore the ways in which these two ideas intersect and become indistinguishable from one another...

Jordan: I agree about more needing to be done with sound and software... I'll try to keep doing more myself :)

Thanks for the kind words, both of you!

I love that! :)
(it feels like... life ;) )

Interesting. I'd love doing more stuff with sound. I've done randomized MIDI notes as well as MIDI notes generated from images. Neither had any kind of music theory attached, though, so it all sounded horrible. I'd love doing something with a bit of theory behind it, or putting the user in more control. (The music theory part might be tricky, partly since I don't know anything about it myself.)

I've made a web app that could "sing" web pages (http://zuper.com/websinger/) a long time ago. :)

I think so, too! :) Also, I tried to play with your Zuper! singing app, but it wasn't working on my computer :( Sounds cool though!

Chainsawkitten: don't let a lack of music theory hold you back from programming musical interactions! About half of the toys/play-spaces in Ada just used raw frequency information, which I thought worked fine :) Still, if you're looking for just a tiny bit of music theory to help make pitches sound nice (harmonize) with one another, this could be useful for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale ... it seems to be a popular choice in most playful music software I've run into: basically all of the notes "work" with one another...

Yeah. It's ancient technology.
It still works in Firefox though. But I believe you need both Shockwave plugins (Director and Flash), whatever Adobe calls them these days.