VJ Heaven

Masaya Matsurra’s Musika bridges the gap between music visualizer and game, bringing a unique experience to Apple’s iPod. Matsurra, best known as the original creator of the wonderful game PaRappa the Rapper for PlayStation, has used Apple’s tools as a means for creative expression.

The iPod is a natural device for interactive music visualization. The iPod revolutionized music and it is now poised to be a progressive gaming platform. Masaya Matsuura, President of NanaOn-Sha, says “Many years ago Apple’s tools first opened my eyes to the power of music and multimedia, so it’s exciting to release my first game for this device.”

Musika uses your own music library as the basis for the game. It can be a passive experience (just sit back and enjoy the visuals) or an active one in which you can use the iPod’s center button as letters in the song’s title. As you score and advance through levels, you are awarded with additional visuals.

Musika is very easy to play. But if it wasn’t for the fantastic, it would get boring very quickly. The iPod isn’t much of a gaming platform but as a quick conversion, it’s pretty good. Its played with a single button and the use of your own music library is a nice touch. Musika is available for purchase and download from the iTunes Music Store for USD$5.

You have all heard about splicing film. Now you can splice music online at splicemusic.com, which runs a website that allows users to remix music live on the Web with online virtual instruments in a Web Inerface. Real-time music and effects in a Web browser? Sounds amazing? It is! Not only this but you can network with other members in and share your music. Whats interesting is that Splice can do things that was once only possible in dedicated software. You can collect samples from around the site and then privately store drafts online until it is finished. Check it out here

The new MOTU MachFive Sampler has been released in the last few days. It is an overlooked VJ option for both Mac and Windows users. The sampler market is crowded but MachFive does have some very cool features and a clean interface. Loop Lab is probably my favorite feature as it makes a nice transition between its very good looping capabilities and other stretching features found in the sampler. You can also put a Roland S-700 disc into your computer and load samples from it. Some the latest features include:

. 32 GB of sounds

. Multi-platform

. Tons of new effects

. Layers and ‘Layer Rules’

. Integrated new sound features

Is the future of digital artists a merging of designers, programmers, VJs, filmmakers and musicians? Just like Scratch Film, Scratch Video is not new but it is still being used in interesting and diverse ways. The following is a Scratch Live 1.8 demo.

ArKaos offers VJs, installation and event artists the ability to work with their own image and movie files along with loads of different effect types and sequences to make great live VJ performance. In other words, ArKaos will help you visualize your music. This is a professional VJ tool for just about anyone - VJs, installation or events artists etc - that allows you to work with still and motion pictures, as well as a seeming endless array of effects and sequences. ArKaos is created by the same company that created visuals for artists like Daft Punk, M People and U2. Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers have also used visuals created directly from ArKaos software.

Arkaos supports QuickTime movies (.MOV), Windows Video (.AVI), MPEG and Flash animation (.SWF). This program is very easy to use. Its ‘drag and drop’ capabilities allow the user to quickly select clips and effects from the main interface, with instant results. There’s a bank of movie clips and stills for you to use, called demosynths, which can come in quite handy if you forget your DV camcorder. But the real fun to be had with ArKaos is through real-time effects control. This is as simple to use as clicking a box and, when activated, triggers your images to move to the preview window in time with the percussion and bass of the music that is playing. It’s a very cool feature. The best way to imagine ArKaos is that you’re using a music sequencer, but now arranging and manipulating video.

External MIDI devices can be used to trigger patches of images, movies or effects. This can be from a MIDI keyboard, giving you more hands-on flexibility (and up to 128 patches), or from any MIDI sequencing device or sequencing software. Overall, ArKaos is a great semi-professional program, particularly useful with VJ demanding real-time video. That’s not to say a novice can’t get just as much enjoyment from it, because the software is very simple and intuitive to use.

You can find more about ArKaos here

The Mawzer Modular Control was first announced over two years ago. And just when you thought that it had become vapourware, its finally on sale. I’m not complaining. Modular controllers are the ultimate idea and are almost on the ‘wet your pants’ level. I just hope the modules don’t become all loose and wiggly.

You can find more about the Mawzer here

With an increasing need to create integrated hardware/software solutions, VJs are beginning to connect input devices with wii remote controls. In this video the controller is assigned to audio filters on the computer and controls some cool visuals. Wii may not have the control interface perfected yet so these early performances may seem a bit limited. But in the near future we should be seeing some interesting Wii VJ performances.

Jefferson Han of Perceptive Pixel presents his amazing new interface at TED 2007….

Quartz Composer is arguably a groundbreaking graphics development environment that allows you to explore the incredible power of the graphics stack within Mac OS X. I have a terrible head for programming languages like C++ so I’ve been wondering if a node-based environment may be easier for me to grasp. Quartz Composer is, and I quote, “a node based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in Mac OS X v10.4 ‘Tiger’ for processing and rendering graphical data.” Without getting too technical, I would describe it as MaxMSP/Jitter with a splash of Isadora thrown in. Okay, so why is it like these programs? Because you can drag wires between various boxes and eventually you create something that runs.

Its easy to make something distractingly beautiful. Within minutes, I was able to take live webcam input, apply it to a particle processor, throw in a textured rotating object, and I had something unique and original. With Quartz Composer, you can easily combine the capabilities of Cocoa, Quartz 2D, Core Image, OpenGL, and QuickTime, all using an approachable visual programming paradigm. Use Quartz Composer to prototype Core Image filters, build engaging screen savers, create custom user-interface widgets, make data-driven visual effects, and even perform live performance animations. The only downside is that your work can soon look like a mess of jumbled cords…