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After some time, I decided to head on down one flight of stairs and pick up my college degree.
I graduated with honors on June 14, 2008 from Portland State University with Bachelors of Science in Physics. The proof is pictured above. That little squiggle says “Physics”.
This baby cost me a sweet five figures.
Here is my initial version of the Glass Armanica VSTi. It is a sample based recreation of Benjamin Franklin’s rubbed glass instrument known as the Glass Harmonica, Armonium, Hydrocrystalophone, or Armonica (whew!). I ended up changing the name to be more in line with the official name of Ben Franklin’s invention.
I originally planned to recreate all three octaves of the real instrument, but I ran out of sufficiently large wine glasses. If I come across any enormous goblets in the future I may release an enhanced version of the Glass Armanica.
The samples were created by filling wine glasses with water and tuning them with a chromatic tuner to the appropriate pitches (drop by drop). I used an Oktava MC-012 cardioid condenser microphone running into a Seventh Circle C84 Preamp.
The VSTi has:
A single octave octave of samples running from MIDI note 72 to 84 (Octave 6)
Amplitude ADSR controls
Velocity sensitivity
Reverb with width, size and mix controls
Hi-Cut and Master Volume controls
Listen to the Glass Armanica VSTi:
Download the .zip file for the Glass Armanica VSTi:
Click here to download!
~10mb
Windows PC only (sorry Mac people).
The Veteran’s Day holiday provided me with a nice chunk of time to devote to tracking the final pieces of the song “Atlantis”. I had a few guitar lines to track and a couple of new vocal lines to throw in … I even managed to patch up a couple of vocal spots that needed work.
All and all it was a pretty successful day.
The Armanium is coming along nicely. I had to change wave players inside Synthedit in order to make it a self contained VSTi. Long story, but the short of it is that the install will be easier.
Look for a Beta release SOON!
I made my first test build of the Armanium VST instrument. It has ADSR controls, a high-cut filter and a master level. Pretty basic. I think I’ll throw in a reverb module and call it good.
I’m also considering contacting the creator of vsthost and seeing if he will allow me to package his free host application with my downloads. This would enable non-audio people to play with my virtual instruments on a PC and get some kind of idea about how this all works.
Anyway …
Here is an audio sample from the newly sort-of-completed Armanium VSTi.
Sounds kind of scary ….
I purchased some more wine glasses today in order to complete the Beta version of the Armanium Vsti. I now have a complete octave of discrete samples running from MIDI not C 72 to C 84. I think I will release the single octave Beta soon. I have most of the basics completed inside of Synthedit.
I have yet to locate and tag the loop points inside the sample and that is an art in and of itself. Bad loop points can make a sample sound even more like a sample.
I don’t know if I will be able to reproduce the full range of three octaves. It may be hard to find Conan sized glass goblets to create the low tones. Nevertheless, this project will come to some form of completion soon.
I will also be heading back and pulling my previous three VST instruments out of Beta status and fixing a few little things.
if you look closely at my post from yesterday, you may see some similarities here. As the “No Escape!” music video production moves forward, I have to figure out a way to connect the two worlds contained in the movie.
I’m not changing the resolution, color depth or look at all as the video shifts focus, so I hope the viewer doesn’t get lost. I’m sure this doesn’t make sense to anyone except for me (and Liz) right now … but it will make sense in a few months when the video is finished.
(The above scene was created in the passenger seat of our car, on my Lenovo S10.)
I started sketching out the scope of the final confrontation in the “No Escape!” animated music video. In this scene, the “bad guy” is the player character at the bottom of the screen. His is shooting white fireballs at the “nasties” (the good guys of the story).
If you go back and search for more info on the “No Escape!” video, you’ll undoubtedly see some familiar faces above. I’m not so sure on the design of the player character at the bottom … but it’s a start.
I need to fill in many more “nasties” at the top. They get blasted away by the player character and disintegrate. Which reminds me … I have worked out an interesting way to simulate the Atari super fuzz that was used in many of the early games to simulate disintegration, death, and just plain old Yars’ Revenge noise.
But that is the subject of another post all together.
