Just in time for the presentation tommorrow the PunchKit website and promotional film has been put live. On the website you can download the latest release of the applet as well as watch the promotional video showing what PunchKit is all about! Presently the website is solely there for publicity but in the future, if the project gets carried on, it would be developed to provide more detailed information and support.

Just make the jump and leave a comment with your feedback: http://www.punchkit.co.uk/

Here’s the promotional video which proved to be a bit of fun in the making!

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A week or so ago I re-read the brief for the second part of the sound module to make sure I had fulfilled as much as possible in order to maximise possible marks. Obviously you don’t need to do everything listed but I thought It might help my cause if I do more than just one. Here’s the brief:

Part 3 (term2) 50% Project

Sound Practice, a negotiated project developing/extending part 2 Project working towards either a live performance ie Apollo performance, a downloadable applet for others to experiment with including examples of output as mp3 /streaming media, an integrated site (see altzero.com ) a collection of tracks with interactive element, webcast. Individual or collaborative.
4 page conference format documentation of your Negotiated project, this must contextualise (historically, culturally, practically) your project, discussing production approach, conceptual and practical strategies, ideas and inspirations with a short evaluation.

Originally I was just going to be doing a live performance on the day and handing in the documentation etc, but the more I rebuilt PunchKit and developed it I found the software also works quite nicely as an independent applet to be used/played with a USB keyboard instead of the Punchbag. To test this theory out I added the nessecary functionality and passed it around to my housemates to have a play with and amazingly it went down a great success with everyone enjoying it, although I cannot say much for the quality of their finished recording!

So now, as well as doing a live performance, I plan to officially release the software as a FREE downloadable applet for anyone to play with. It’s obviously only in a ‘Beta’ phase and is intended solely for fun, musical composition/mixing and cannot be guaranteed in terms of reliability and carries no official support or warranty.

I am in the process of finishing off the PunchKit website where the applet will be downloadable from – so watch this space as I’ll be uploading the link soon!

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So I know that in this second part of the sound module we are not marked on any of technology side of things, but I have taken the time to completely rebuild the software of PunchKit in MaxMSP. This is due to a number of reasons – the main of which is that in release 1 (v177) there was a syncing issue which meant after 30 seconds or so of recording everything had fully dropped out of sync – a major issue for a product that is meant to be a live compositional tool. In the latest release (R2V4) I have fully rebuilt the software now fixing the syncing issue. In a large part I have to thank the guys in the Cycling74 forum who posted this patch which gave me a starting point to sorting it out. This recording/playback patch uses the internal ~index and ~count objects, whereas before I had been using an external object ~fripp which I think may have been part of the cause to the sound dropping beats.

———-begin_max5_patcher———-
1160.3oc0YssihaCF9Z3ovhK6NK0GhygUUpuE8lppJShCS5jXiRB6LaWs7r2
DaCjv.CwAvoKWfiMFmu+u+i196ymsXk7Md0BvW.+IX1ruOe1L0PsCLyze1hB
1aw4rJ0zVDKKJ3h5EOo+sZ9a0pwK4axYwbvqY0OCpXEax4flQ91JV7K+99Ym
JE0UY+Ku8efvKglg2vpieNSr9uK4w0ZvfoM+J.4qahTMXzRH3uL+Gw1hLQNu
VgJjYvrDEVjq9mO6Q69RErB0KcwevKSXB1hiqhba89kA1N3OlOu8qmtQ9HoZ
i8RMAoDThmtAauTSbiTWKWuNmue8zKV821v0hwhrFB4.lOm1Mpqbhg6+d3xI
57xBZDxhf+ZyR9dEHKd2XragcjLOzGqAwuWxHQtQC9J6q7TYYwtKpDSykrF6
5O7g7rJU6QscNaEOWipKyRAZ0enV8S8aa785vRq1llxKOH84R4AuoUqik4xR
8BAWhepyWcI5VEYmYdb7r3WJXkuzaUHQXDM3oK7zwEsbaNurqv0ScRMCtma6
8Jh7hfJbd5CcA8WaQWO1qqog24U+9lQq34MLblTz68BUxR.l5EodWFA594n7
K6ZV1KZEUksVvxOZeXgqDraPBOO6ckFQvPzckWfKoO.hIRGuTmajhsmWvSJu
7ocO.NQGQAqoFBYI0VNAMobRlHg+1NP23b2SOISRIc0EgivhA5F14RESkyEq
aJqLS.p3wRQR0HJsB1oVCDx25RqvNJw7ErPXIwMwYeXQSP5bwTh87Rvj54rQ
9BuuiisAMLtEHZzGK6jyH69SpMwmdLVDHSY4DchW6CWfoSpIQijuC74GByXR
8pYFp86JE6MsLipBQY4N.9AZ2X1zNbD9SjoMOyu09A..MxjrLAHE+pLMcDaB
LvDSU2PQ1amf+4Xe7ztB5H1GOF5lnAnGWUUlso3EYsRFENoAChkaE0M6Q4gR
N5HkgQVmCAMskUTTUKaOEypqtYkCGGx3YIjtIbDlPin.D7cbKtMQ4gvkW4Hj
FOwnSnPCr25wQIRJ3UUr0726akyYkWjVFCiPnlrpZhQa2DYAkLsAapAofzgd
Tii2fIXP6++LNRNxOpQ9ZVjqyCqXh02TNoQVeJcRCmrojugKR.JY8d57XJIU
eqCgAVSKS6AIpOL7qb5P2toiorc8MuENhCH41rcTumE4YhSuOREVaGuOyUI2
VFuW52emPfivMgWUmIXsmGdmI0d8JclzyYIIbQWApHKYirot2p8WavY0iCES
sGb1vvD5LXBddLgoQsw2H5j.3PzgdNCsvgiVmfIhcX5DFD4c2XPxPPKxRzZv
Wf5jX7Udl85fCUWNRnZZpN2nXzV780ECnaMDFh6c6Ax4RLgGp5F4LLgGjtC6
TdBSFptyc7T6tuuNlniJvBlX1Wm2gd2JCRGBZINUqNnnDJLgsmA80gl87Nz6
VYPughVG5qNjjamXn9+B+hST8ObL0OzvGfI2o67GBM41zQngDl0sPZHgsPtM
r0fh6aGhH9pvTHrpTbbvwd2AirqY26V1ib+YudHpoyOl+e.3uLiK
———–end_max5_patcher———–

As well as sorting out the syncing issue I have also finished updating the sample libaries, now offering a total of 5 libraries comprising of 8 tracks each. The libraries are as follows:

1. RockKit
2. SciFi Kit
3. Guitar
4. Vocals
5. Scratches

There is also a new feature which really enhances the quality of sound feedback and this is a choice of an optional backing track; at the moment there are about 10 tracks to choose from ranging from guitar funk and bass funk to piano harmonies.

The final enhancement is a brand new, more detailed, user interface. Users can now control all the recording functionality from the UI whereas before it was soley controlled from the punchbag. There are also two new graphics which show the user where they are in the loop sequence and one waveform graphic which shows the user the current state of the recording buffer. Below is a screenshot of the new software.

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I have recently finished my first release (v1.1) of the Grooveshark Search extension for Expression Engine. This a little something I have been developing to aid and benefit my final year project – The ISDB (Internet Soundtrack Database) – making it easy for moderators to quickly add music to new database entries. The ‘Custom Field’ extension uses both the Expression Engine ‘Fieldtype’ API and Groovesharks’ ‘Tiny Song’ API to deliver upto 10 results from a ’song|artist|album’ query.

I am currently in discussion with developers at Grooveshark (which is quite exciting) over how I can further develop this plugin and release it to others. However – they did say they are in the progress of porting across the WordPress plugin which will soon make mine worthless in terms of an official release, but it will still be ideal for the purposes which I need it for!

Below are some screenshots of the extension in use:

Typing into the input field, with search status icon on the right:

Results listed. Just click to add song:

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So after my previous post and having talked to Dan about wanting to head in a new direction with PunchKit we kind of went full circle and agreed I sould solider on and continue developing it as a compositional instrument. With  little time to go to the hand-in it really isn’t feasible to start something else now so I just have to work with what I’ve got and try as hard as possible to make adjustments in order to improve the sound output.

One conern I raised with Dan was that it seemed hard for users to create a level of complexity/speed whilst interacting with PunchKit in a traditional ‘punching’ manner, mainly due to the limitation of only two inputs at one time. Talking this through Dan suggested I look into a number of martial arts and the techniques some use to create fluid motion. One such martial art is Wing Tsun led by Leung Ting. In this martial art (and many others) people train on a Mook Jong (Wooden Dummy) and doing so build up a fast, precise hitting technique. The video below shows you what I am referring to:

Now I am not proposing I step up and perform like this on the day – but I think it would help to take on board how you move your body in this technique, and how, although not demonstrated in the video above, you should sometimes use a flat hand instead of a fist as this gives more flexibility and makes it easier to move between pads as you can use either the palm or top side of your hand.

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For the second part of my sound module project, ‘PunchKit’, I was hoping (and trying) to develop the concept into more of a live installation/compositional instrument where a user could layer up a complex track, using the built in overdub functionality, to create detailed musical pieces.

The one major issue I faced following the live demonstration of ‘PunchKit’ was a minor syncing issue that occurred when recording and playing back the sound. Say I was sampling for 4 seconds, the computational time it took to register the end of the loop and jump back to the beginning meant that over a longer period of time (say 1 minute) the recording/playback would drop fully out of sync – meaning any  new layers would also be out of sync. At the beginning of this term I was working on trying to fix this issue and actually made some significant progress, almost completely eradicating the problem – meaning I could start composing, which i did!

Over the last couple of weeks I have been adding, editing, updating and enhancing the sample libraries available in PunchKit as well as experimenting with what recording length is best for creating a detailed track. Nevertheless, with all this done, every attempt at composing has just failed – miserably! The results from 3-5+ minutes of layering just make your ears want to bleed. I’ve begun to realize that PunchKit probably won’t fulfill my dreams of becoming a compositional instrument mainly because of the limitations of input (8 pads) and the fact you can only affect two sounds at anyone time as you’re limited with the number of fists you have!

Noting that the second part of this module is being marked solely on the quality of the sound output, I think, with just two weeks to go, I am best to switch directions and focus on a different aspect – maybe using PunchKit as a gaming sound interface or focus more on using it as a boxing training tool, by getting a user to repeat sound patterns. I plan on talking to my tutor this week so I can crack on with it – ASAP! :S

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