I’ve started working again on my Gestural Music Sequencer after putting it down at end of the quarter for grading and paperwork. The main task that I’m working on is managing the timing so that it’s no longer tied to the frame rate. To do this I’m using Java’s Thread class in Processing.org to drive the tempo independently from the frame rate. Thanks to toxi over at PostSpectacular.com and his response to a question on precise timing, I learned what was necessary to set note durations based on tempo created from Java’s System.nanoTime() method. So far I have enabled eleven durations, from a whole note down to a sixty-fourth note.
While implementing this feature I inadvertently created a bug that set the time interval to zero. I quickly fixed the bug, but not before hearing some pretty amazing sounding glitches out of Reason as it received a stream – make that a tsunami – of note on data as fast as the processor could send it. Here’s how it sounds when Reason is flooded with note on information. The high pitch ringing is caused by the frequency of notes being sent, which turns out to be about 739 Hertz, in other words, seven hundred thirty-nine notes a second. Not even Ingvay Malmsteen can play that fast.
GMS: Super Fast Notes
To create this sound I used a large hollow letter G and slid it along a Formica table top. 
There were dozens of great things to record at the 
I made this recording of an old Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter recently at the my good friends interactive company 
The long cold Winter of 2008 and 2009 is not over yet. Anything can happen, but most of the snow in Minneapolis has melted. I imagine that my sentiments are shared by most Minnesotans when I say that I am ready to move on to the next season. Hopefully this will be the last of my winter themed field recordings for a few months anyway. I recorded these footsteps while trekking through fresh snow near Lake Superior. It was a very still night, so the crunching of the wet snow came through well with very little wind noise interfering.