When I published version 1.4 of the table of Animoog presets and timbres last May, I wasn’t expecting a new version coming this fast. Rejoice, today I’m announcing 352 new free Animoog presets, and they’re excellent!  This expansion packs table lists third-party presets and timbres that you won’t find anywhere else.

352 new Animoog presets are now available as part of this update. There’s now a total of 2,576 presets and over 4,500 timbres available for Animoog, lots of them free!

Version 1.5 brings presets from two sound designers, ‘analogue, I wish you were’ and Rust(i)k. The table’s page includes the links to download/purchase the presets and timbres. The full changelog is available at the bottom of the expansion packs page. Since the v1.4 announcement, I also published step-by-step instructions to install third-party Animoog presets and timbres.

analogue I wish you were

Sound designer named ‘analogue I wish you were’ contacted me to share with you not one, but two packs of free Animoog presets. I’ve been playing with them the past few weeks and I can confirm that these are great presets! I’m amazed at the quality of what the sound designers amongst us are able to create for us, the players, to play with!
analogue I wish you were provided a preview for its Retro Futurism pack:

But never stop yourself at a preview, download and install the free presets for you to explore their capabilities. Next is “À la rescousse”, an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘analogue I wish you were’ preset named ‘PAD ramp pur’ from the ‘Retro Futurism’ presets.

“La vue” is an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘analogue, I wish you were’ preset named ‘FM PAD – no way back’ from the ‘RPG Fantasy Sounds’ free Animoog presets pack. ‘RPG Fantasy Sounds’ is now one of my favorite pack of presets.

You can get the free presets directly on analogue, I wish you were’s Bandcamp page. That’s also an opportunity for you to support the sound designer with a contribution, he deserves it!

Rust(i)k

After the nice presets we got from him last May, sound designer Rust(i)k offers us a second pack of free Animoog presets! Nothing less than 169 new and free presets which are, once again, of pretty good quality :-) Rust(i)k informed me that some of the presets’ timbres might be missing and may simply be replaced with Basic Sine.

Click here to download the free presets.

Here’s one of the numerous tracks I recorded with these presets, “Japon turquoise” is an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘Rust(i)k’ preset named ‘Keys Iluminati’ from the ‘RePrison’ free Animoog presets pack.

Timbre requirements

During an online discussion with another Animoog player, we came to the topic of which timbres are required for a pack of third-party presets to sound as intended. With this information available, an Animoog player can know in advance if he has all the required timbres before downloading and installing a new third-party pack. The table version 1.5 now includes the list of official In-App-Purchase packs you need installed for the third-party presets to sound as designed without any [missing] timbres.

If you’re a sound designer that contributed one of those packs, please contact me to let me know which timbres are required for your presets and I’ll add the info for the next version.

YouTube Channels and an Improvisation

Remember that I provide a list of Animoog-focused YouTube channels?  Here’s an Animoog improvisation played by Subconscience. I’m amazed at the variety of sounds and styles that can be played with Animoog.

Enjoy summertime — Animoog can be played anywhere, like shown on this photo from Lukas Gec (thanks Lucas!).

Big thanks to ‘analogue I wish you were’ and Rust(i)k. Hope you’ll enjoy their presets as much as I do :-) Don’t hesitate to share this announcement with other Animoog players, the intention here is to ensure that as many players as possible are benefiting from those excellent presets! Cheers — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

1. New Free Packs: 2,224 Animoog Presets Now Available — Major Update
2. 1,713 Presets: a Major Update to List of Animoog Expansion Packs
3. Altermoog – 30 New Free Presets for Animoog and Version 1.1 of the List of 3rd-Party Presets

A great day for synth players! Moog Music has launched a new musical instrument for the iPad, the app named ‘Model 15’, replicating the actual Model 15 modular synthesizer from the same company. It’s my pleasure to release my ‘Model 15’ album of improvised solos played live on the ‘Model 15’ app and provided raw, without any mastering, sequencing, overdubbing or external effects — Model 15 allows us to play amazing tracks live.

It’s the very first album entirely created with the Model 15 app simply because I’ve been lucky to be selected as a beta tester for the ‘Model 15’ app. My previous experience was with the musical instrument Animoog, for which I published two freely available albums of improvised solos, ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music‘ and ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY‘, I had no experience with a modular synthesizer, and now I do! Over a period of a few weeks during late sessions once my girls were in bed, I’ve been able to explore the Model 15 app and discover the richness of its built-in presets.

The ‘Model 15’ app brings a classic modular synthesizer to the masses . An amateur like myself can have lots of fun playing this musical instrument live without any prior experience with modular synths — that was my case!

The album is filled with freetronica tracks: electronic music played live without any part of the track pre-recorded. No excuses and no preparation required: pick the instrument and play! Just like for Animoog, quality headphones are required to fully enjoy the depth of those sounds.

Despite being used to the diversity of presets available for Animoog, I was surprised when I found the ‘Polynoise’ preset from sound designer Drew Neumann, a preset sounding like the wind! I found myself happily smiling “I am the wind!”. The album smoothly begins with two tracks of blowing air :-) Then at some point I started messing with the Model 15 knobs while playing and wonderful sound modulations reached my ears. Understanding the what the knobs and wires do is not a requirement, but it’s certainly an asset. The track ‘Constrained nonetheless’ is such a track where I turn knobs while playing live.

Some presets offer repeating patterns thanks to Model 15’s embedded arpeggiator which provided a different inspiration to me, such as this track ‘There will be more’:

This short 30-minutes album presents 13 tracks offered in chronological order. The various presets I leveraged are listed in the table below. Sound designers are able to do magic with the Model 15 app. My freetronica albums are brought forward by the Apptronica label, a warm and welcoming home for several ‘iOS musicians’. The album is freely available on Bandcamp and soon available in many other places online. Like my previous ones, it is available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, use and transform.

Get this Model 15 album for free on BandcampI’m impressed with the sound quality of the presets available for this musical instrument, and this is only day one of Moog Music’s Model 15 app which officially launched today!

It’s incredibly fun to play such tracks live: instant freetronica gratification for lots of us! I still have lots to learn and to improve, especially that there’s now many more presets available than what was available during the beta testing phase. I expect musicians to start creating surprising new music thanks to the expressiveness capabilities of apps like Animoog and this new Model 15 app.

I’d like to thank Animoog.org readers for their patience since the time spent preparing this album significantly delayed other Animoog-related content I want to, and will, share with you. I hope you’ll like my new album and that it will inspire you to create in your own way! — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

1. Announcing ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’, Free MIDI-Controlled Animoog Solos
2. Animoog solos: free ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’ album
3. Satri’s Animoog solo ‘And back to space’ video

Inspired by maps that attempt to show what’s across the ocean when you look out from the shore (like this one and this one), Andy Woodruff applies a bit more rigour (and some geometry) to ask what’s across the ocean when you look out in a straight line perpendicular from the shore. (The other maps simply followed parallels of latitude.) Follow a straight line perpendicular from a point on the shore of Newfoundland and you get to Australia (via great circle), not France.

Here it is! And here’s the full dramatic nightmare story on what it was like to do a TED Talk.

The post My TED Talk appeared first on Wait But Why.

[ en français ici ]

Welcome! I’m one of many who thinks that we’re experiencing new levels of ‘live music creation’ thanks to the recent advances in computing. Even though their existence mainly consists of computer algorithms, today’s music creation apps really are ‘new musical instruments’ and are progressively gaining greater widespread recognition. One of these popular new musical instruments is the award-winning Animoog app by Moog Music. I happen to be a enamored of Animoog! :-)

Animoog allows us to play the synthesizer like never before. I sincerely hope more musicians will discover its amazing expressiveness capabilities

It’s my pleasure to present to you my second album of improvised Animoog solos named ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’. This time these improvised single-preset solos leverage a classic external MIDI piano controller to create Animoog tracks. They are provided raw, no sequencing or external effects applied in any way — what you hear is how it sounded played live. Anyone with the Animoog app and an affordable MIDI controller can play similar tracks live.

Don’t expect perfect execution ~~ it’s live single-take improvisations! What’s great about it is you can play similar tracks yourself by launching Animoog and selecting the same preset. This genre of music is named ‘freetronica’: electronic music played live without any part of the track pre-recorded. No excuses and no preparation required: pick the instrument and have fun exploring sounds!

You don’t have to like all of the album. The list of presets I played is provided and helps you identify sounds and melodies you can play yourself on Animoog even with little or no previous experience with this novel musical instrument

Next is the ‘Recording decades’ video, 10th out of 29 tracks on the album. The track leverages the ‘Apocalead’ preset from Alba Ecstasy, and yes, it’s monophonic: a single note played at a time for the whole track.

An affordable M-Audio KeyRig 49 was used on the first track and I then continued on my old Roland RD-300SX MIDI keyboard. No sustain or expression pedals were used, just the raw Animoog app played from the MIDI keyboard. For the ‘Retenue’ track, I played one hand on the Roland and the other on the iPad. Tracks are offered in chronological order, the listener being able to appreciate the evolution in my discovery of playing Animoog from a MIDI controller within the 5 months it took me to put to record the tracks during spare time. Credit is given to the sound designers for each preset I used.

The main drawbacks of using a classic MIDI controller are the loss of precise polypressure control, one of the best expressive capabilities of Animoog , and the loss of the sliding finger gesture. The use of an alternative MIDI controller may alleviate these shortcomings.

Next is ‘A beginner’s demo’ video. This track leverages the ‘4072 – Finger Detune’ preset from Vintage Vibe collection. It’s another monophonic track, one note at a time for the whole track, but this time I modified some of the preset’s parameters while playing, showcasing how a preset can sound different by tweaking it live. 

By watching the ‘I dream of wires’ documentary I understood where Animoog comes from and its roots in modular synthesizer, and in the process came to believe that Animoog’s potential has much remaining to be explored.

My previous album, ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’, featured raw improvised Animoog solos played live directly on the iPad. I was deeply honoured by the kind words of encouragement from many listeners and music publications, some nice strangers paid up to 15$ for it while is it available for free. I also felt privileged when Moog Music featured the album on their front page. I confirm all of this motivated me and I’m delighted to offer you this third album.

Next video is for ‘Le secret du nucléaire’. This track leverages the ‘WhereUpress’ preset from Daemian. It’s a melodic polyphonic track.

The ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’ album is ‘unmastered’, the sound levels of the raw tracks have not been corrected and no adjustments were done to convey an enhanced listening experience. These types of sounds and performances are best enjoyed by listening with quality headphones. The visuals for the tracks have been so far created using the amazing Uzu app. My two Animoog albums are brought forward by the Apptronica label, a warm and welcoming home for several ‘iOS musicians’. The album is freely available on Bandcampand available in many other places online. Tracks are available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, use and transform.

Thank you for your interest in my musical projects, I hope you enjoy Animoog as much as I do! — Alex / Satri

Info and links:

• Listen and get the album: http://animoog.org/satri/pianimoog
• Animoog on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animoog
• Creative Commons CC-BY license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Apptronica Label: http://apptronica.co.uk