randy's Recent Posts

Clearly it's counterintuitive. I'll have a rethink.

Metadata would be a nice idea. I'm going to do a lot more work around patches, usability and workflow in the future.

I'm attaching a screen shot of the directory of patches synth_NYC sent. The ones with numerical names got renamed but any of the patches using those partials files (now in /synthetic/tidbits) are by him.

http://madronalabs.com/media/forums/randy/nyc-patches.png

They are very high quality patches! I especially appreciate his clever use of the space module.

(This already went out via the mailing list. I'm posting here for people who are just joining us.)

Sumu update.

Hi folks, thanks all of you who have purchased the Early Access release of Sumu or the Studio Bundle! Though I’m still deep in Sumu work, I’m also looking ahead to the updates of the other instruments, and to future projects I want to get started on. I couldn’t even imagine doing some of these future projects without full time to devote to Madrona Labs work. Based on the success of the Sumu launch so far, it looks like I’ll be able to have that time. This is huge for me.

So, the release got out, but not without hiccups. There are a few bugs that I created in my last week of work and as such, evaded beta testing:

• crashes on load on Windows, in DAWs including FL Studio and Cubase
• window too big on launch, preventing easy resize
• distorted sound coming from oscillators mod osc output

I am going to get a release out ASAP to address these—but also take the time to beta test everything properly. I have already fixed two out of three of these issues here, so I think June 3 is a realistic date for the next update. Other fixes will be in it also.

Sumu FAQ.
The scales menu is grayed out. Is it unimplemented?
Yes, everything grayed out is that way on purpose because it is not implemented yet.

I'm not finding the popup menus for patches and partials.
These need a right-click (Windows) or ctrl+click or two-finger click (Mac). This is confusing a lot of folks so I'm going to change it in a future release.

When will the 1.0 release come out?
Given a reasonable pace of three or four betas, I’m shooting for 8–10 weeks from now.

I’m trying to import my own partials but it’s not working.
The documentation is not complete but please look at this topic on our forums: https://madronalabs.com/topics/9253-sumo-preset-and-partials-maps-menu-selection
See also this Vutu quickstart, which is a little behind the current Vutu but a good intro:
https://youtu.be/crvpsnbLtt0

I can’t find the global settings […] menu described in the manual.
The manual has it wrong—I removed that one after telling George it would be there, because it wasn’t done yet. Please look forward to more menus in the future.

Is the Vutu / Sumu partials format proprietary?
No. Vutu exports partials as editable JSON text files with a .vutu extension. When Sumu imports the .vutu files it does two things: compresses them and moves them into the Sumu/Partials directory where they are saved as .utu.

Feature X is not working, is this a demo restriction?
The only demo restrictions are as follows:

• saving patches is not allowed
• a soft “demo wave” sound plays every two minutes Anything else that seems wrong is either a bug, or a weird synthesizer working properly.

The window size is too big, how can I change it?
To change the window size, you need to drag the triangle in the lower right corner. But this is impossible if it's offscreen! You can work around this in the meantime by setting your display resolution high enough to see the resizer in the lower right, resizing Sumu to a reasonable size, and saving that state in your DAW. On opening the saved patch Sumu should start with the saved size.

Thanks for the clear report! This is bad! I'll fix for 1.0.1. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm going to add an option to change scroll direction because I don't think any one choice works for everyone, considering the different possible input devices.

I'll be doing lots more work on performance, thanks for the info. I'll definitely check out why those two presents might be particularly worse. Is it possible we left the number of voices higher on those? FYI, any preset pretty much should use the same amount of CPU, and uses an amount proportional to the number of voices set in the input module. So if we left one of those presets on 8 voices or something that would explain it.

*** updated with latest Mac and Windows links ***

I've just posted a public beta of Vutu for MacOS (edit: and now for WIndows!). Vutu is the sound analysis program for the upcoming Sumu synthesizer.

links:

Mac: http://madronalabs.com/media/vutu/Vutu%200.9.9.dmg
Windows: http://madronalabs.com/media/vutu/VutuWin0.9.10.zip

A Vutu quickstart video is also online now. I haven't had a chance to write any better documentation yet, and I"m not sure I will before I get the Sumu beta out. However, Vutu in its current form is pretty simple anyway, and most of what you need to know you can find out by fooling around with the dials and listening and looking.

Vutu analyzes sounds using Loris, developed by Kelly Fitz and Lippold Haken at the CERL Sound Group. A detailed intro to Loris is available on Hakenaudio.com: Current Research in Real-time Sound Morphing More publications are also linked from the CERL Sound Group Loris page. Loris is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and thus, Vutu is also. Vutu's source is available on Github.

Vutu is built on a cross-platform GUI framework I developed called mlvg. Compiling it for Windows and Linux should therefore be a reasonably easy task, but I know there will be a bunch of details to iron out, so I'm not taking that on until after I can make a Sumu beta.

That was a lot of info and links. Why would you want to play with Vutu right now? Some reasons might be:

• You want to get started making your own sound bank for Sumu.
• You have to try out the newest audio software, whatever it is, and this was just released today.
• You enjoy looking at bandwidth-enhanced partials and hearing odd noises.

Each voice of Sumu will be able to play back 64 bandwidth-enhanced partials simultaneously. A bandwidth-enhanced partial is basically a single sine wave, modulated with noise. So at any given instant of time, in addition to frequency, amplitude and phase, it also has a bandwidth, or noisiness. Making sounds out of such partials is a very powerful technique, and I think it's pretty easy to grasp. What's been difficult about additive synthesis is the large amount of control data that's needed. How do you generate it all? My answer in Sumu is to use the familiar patchable interface, but extended so that each patch cord carries separate signals for each partial. This allows sound design in a playful, exploratory way that should be familiar to any modular user. Honestly I think it will be fun as hell.

Thanks to Kelly Fitz and Lippold Haken for creating and sharing Loris. Thanks also to Greg Wuller for helping me get going with the Loris source code, and for utu, which became Vutu. Utu is a Finnish word for "mist" or "fog", like Sumu. Vutu is short for visual utu.

Vutu requirements

A Metal-capable Mac running MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) or greater.
Vutu is native for Intel and Apple Silicon.
Since it's an analyzer and not a real-time program (except for playing the results), CPU doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the report, I could reproduce immediately. I look forward to fixing this for 1.0.1.

Thanks for the feedback and feature requests. I'm always improving workflow things and Sumu is very new so I'll definitely be fine-tuning these things.

I'm surprised that the volume ever goes above 1.0 with clipping on. It should hard limit everything to 0dB. inter-sample peaks or downstream processing, possibly? If you can give me detailed instructions I'll try to reproduce.

I don't really understand what you are seeing here with performance. It was bad, but mysteriously got better in Cubase? You can try closing the plugin window to see if that affects things—different DAWs handle it very differently. Your computer should be fine, I think.

Version 2 may be free or discounted if you have bought version 1 recently. Other details I don't know yet, because the software is not even done yet. But I guess this makes you want me to finish it sooner!

Hmm, this is new to me. However, I've never tried any of these hosts.

One way to test your hypothesis would be to turn down Sumu to 1 voice (save that setup if needed so it will come up with 1 voice immediately) - then CPU use will be low. You can find out if it still gets cut off by your DAWs after that change.

After a brief break here I'll be working to fix any compatibility issues. In particular the whole NI ecosystem is kind of a separate thing I have not had time to approach yet. Thanks for your patience and please keep us posted if you find more info.

Hi again, answered on the other thread, the short answer is that's unexpected, please email support! Thanks.

This is working as intended. It has caused confusion though, so I either need to change the way it works or explain it better.

Another way to explain it is: choose your Vutu partials folder to import. All the Sumu partials files in the directory Sumu/Partials and its subdirectories will be replaced with the partials files in the folder you select and its subdirectories.

So, the assumption is you have a directory of utu files (possibly with subdirectories) you have orgainzed somewhere, and you're picking the root of that tree.

Now that I have shipped Sumu 1.0 I'm going to turn my attention to this and hopefully get out an update soon. I have a new WIndows machine in the studio and I can hopefully reproduce this now. If not, I can use the newer licensing code I made for Sumu. Thanks for your patience.

When I open Sumu the window only shows the upper left part of the gui and cannot pull it bigger to show the full interface. Am I missing something?

That is unusual—please send a screen capture of this with your DAW and OS details to support @ madronalabs — I'll check it out!

Thanks for the clear report. Sorry about the links issue!

I made a GitHub issue: https://github.com/madronalabs/plugin-issues/issues/44

I have pasted your links into the Github issue and it fixed them up. Cool! I took a quick listen, but please keep them online in Dropbox for now if you are able to.

Thanks again, I'll try to address this for the next Kaivo update.

Hi, thanks for writing. I need it too! This is the first major thing on the list for after 1.0, so hopefully very soon.

Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can make it not get rid of the Scales.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion about online storage for patches. I'll make a note to try this and make changes if necessary to support it. In general, the 1.0 release is very focused on stability and sound quality. I'll be paying much more attention to workflow improvements and features after the 1.0 release.

We're very much active but not updating the website very often. For more frequent updates, please follow us on Instagram or sign up for the mailing list.

Hi, thanks for the report—what do you men by uninstall? Are you on Windows using the innoSetup installer? Honestly I wasn't even aware it provided the option to uninstall. So I guess it removed the scale files, that makes sense if it just tries to remove all the files Sumu might be installing.

I'll see if I can remove this possibility for confusion in the fuure.

I'll send out another Discord signup link in the next newsletter.

I'm working on this.

Nice, thanks!

I think SoX is what I have used also. I tend to just look this stuff up every time so I didn't take good notes unfortunately. I found some scripts here: https://superuser.com/questions/483625/script-to-run-sox-to-combine-multiple-mono-tracks-to-stereo

Four channels is the maximum we can use in Kaivo.

As far as other software to make multi-channel files, I have only used Audacity, and command-line tools to stich mono / stereo files together.

How can i export a .sumu file from Vutu?

I'm sorry I missed your post! Here's the flow:

• Vutu exports .utu files
• Sumu imports .utu files and writes .sumu files.

This is so .utu files can be in a text-based, non-compressed format. Vutu doesn't even know about Sumu for GPL-related reasons but we may be able to make this more seamless in the future after the 1.0 release.

I think this answers the next question from @zef36 also—just open the .utu file in a text editor and all should be clear. Also, the code that reads and writes the .utu files is available in https://github.com/madronalabs/vutu/tree/main .

Oh I see what you mean now. At some point, I could add a "default size" setting that controls how a plugin window appears before you resize it. Thanks for the suggestion.

I've thought about this for a long time. It might happen!

Each instance of the plugin remembers the size you drag it to in your DAW document. Newly created plugins get made at the default size. If this doesn't seem to be working in some DAW, let me know which one!

Domenica Diavoleria: Forever Your Dark-Ambient Woman
by Dave Segal
October 17, 2024

Domenica Diavoleria got a relatively late start producing electronic music, but the Olympia, Washington musician/DJ is making up for lost time with three excellent dark ambient albums and an EP this decade, plus a forthcoming live score to Neil Jordan's 1984 gothic horror film, The Company Of Wolves. You can experience that event on October 30 at the Olympia Timberland Library, which happens to be the bookish Diavoleria's favorite place.

The road to this rarefied realm of musical creation began with a deep love of the Doctor Who theme, which Diavoleria (government name: Domenica Clark) heard on PBS in the '80s— "peak Tom Baker era," as she notes in an interview we conducted over email.

That theme "altered my brain forever," Diavoleria says. "I am definitely not alone in getting one’s first exposure to electronic music through hearing that Delia Derbyshire composition.

I also have to shout out the use of Isao Tomita on PBS’s Star Hustler program. I clearly had a penchant for those [synthesizer] sounds early on."

In addition, Diavoleria loved pop music, but began exploring “alternative” music in the '90s, particularly Radiohead, Bauhaus, and Belle and Sebastian, among others. Although she lived in the cultural desert of suburban south Florida in the '90s, Diavoleria "ravenously devoured music and underground culture as much as I could. It was very hard to access any sort of underground music that wasn’t in SPIN or Rolling Stone or on MTV’s 120 Minutes."

At 16, she moved to Washington and made connections with the underground-music scene. She was reading The Rocket and The Stranger and listening to KCMU (now KEXP), and shortly after enrolling at Evergreen State College, scored a DJ slot at the Olympia college radio station KAOS in Olympia.

"I was hungry for every type of music there was, no matter when it came out," Diavoleria says. "I listened to everything I could, and found myself becoming increasingly interested in noise and experimental music in my 20s. I became a devotee of the freeform radio format, an approach that I embraced in all my future radio endeavors. I was perpetually excited by having genres played next to each that didn’t obviously go together. This also manifested in things like when I helped organize Ladyfest 2005 in Olympia and the Olympia Experimental Music Festival."

Attending Seattle's Decibel Festival and Debacle Records' MOTOR nights, plus other niche electronic events in the 2010s accelerated Diavoleria's interest in electronic and dance-oriented music. "I was still DJing then on Hollow Earth Radio, for 10 years, and was showcasing my preferred genres at the time—ambient, '60s girl groups, '80s R&B and femme pop, eurodisco, and experimental stuff, among other things. "It was a heady time of being 'on the scene,' sadly DJing to mixed success, including my esoteric Gentlemen Take Polaroids night. I also learned how to DJ dance music properly on vinyl at the Spread Thick night, which focused on boogie and disco. Either way, much of this music was drawn together by my overarching love of electronic music."

The artists who especially inspired Diavoleria to make her own music form an impressive pantheon: Panabrite, Donato Dozzy, Conrad Schnitzler, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Sarah Davachi, Christina Vantzou, Chuck Johnson, and Pinkcourtesyphone (Richard Chartier).

As mentioned, Diavoleria, 41, was a late bloomer compared to most electronic musicians. Her first release, the night is my world, arrived in 2021. As it turns out, there are good reasons for this delay: self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. "I had wanted to do music for most of my life, outside of all the childhood training I had in piano, cello, and guitar playing in various youth orchestras and recitals, etc. I dabbled in bands in my teens and 20s, but nothing really went anywhere and everything I did I felt like it was definitely never good enough. In retrospect, it was clear I was dealing with very serious untreated depression.

"It wasn’t until I was really effectively treated for depression and anxiety in my mid 30s that I felt ready and had the capacity to make my own music. Before that, it felt hard to see how I could possibly make anything worthwhile that anyone would want to listen to. It is definitely kind of sad and I still feel like I am trying to make up for lost time.

"There was also the technical and financial aspect—I assumed it would be expensive to make the electronic music I wanted to make. I kind of couldn’t afford it until that age! I use Ableton as my digital audio workstation and that alone is not cheap. Add on top of that my desire to use synthesizers, much like my electronic music heroes Norm Chambers (Panabrite), Christina Vantzou, and Richard Chartier, and it just isn’t cheap.

"Now that I know Ableton and am familiar with tools like Madrona Labs products, I realize there is a way to make electronic music that doesn’t necessarily involve a wall of synths, like I am in TONTO's Expanding Head Band or something. But to get some of the sounds I love, synthesizers and modular synthesizers are still necessary."

The ambient music that Diavoleria creates skews toward the desolate, minimal, and dark end of the spectrum. Does she view her studio work as therapeutic/cathartic? Did the pandemic lockdown color the tone of her first few recordings? Or does it go deeper than that? "I think the pandemic affected me making music in a way, because it led to me being more depressed than I had ever been. I was really unwell, and after I got treatment, it was then I felt I could finally make the music I heard in my head.

"There were a few months where I was unemployed between my extremely stressful job working directly with government beneficiaries in 2020 and getting a graduate fellowship for public administration work. I dedicated all my free time to learning how to make electronic music.

"Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure of what music I wanted to make when I started. I even thought it was maybe going to be more dancey, in the minimal-techno/ambient-techno vein. I especially loved the romanticism of Fort Romeau. "I took lessons in how to make dance music with an Ableton instructor and I found myself making ‘Domenica Diavoleria’ type music more and more, despite [the instructor] losing the battle in trying to get me to make modern house music. I found I was most inspired by abstract sounds and telling stories through unusual sounds. It was the most exciting for me!

"Anyway, even though I am a certified depressive, I don’t think the music has ever served as therapeutic or cathartic. I think the way in which it is therapeutic is [that it's one of] the most fulfilling things I have ever done. I have been frustrated by trying to express myself for decades. I was also concentrating on creative writing for most of my 20s and then DJing for most of my 30s. Neither of which felt quite right as far as spilling the contents of my brain in a satisfying way."

Forever Your Salesgirl (released in 2022 on Seattle label Obscure & Terrible) was partially inspired by Diavoleria's unsatisfying stints working retail and also a dream about an "extremely eerie, multi-storied department store. [I]n it, I was visiting all of these eerie tableaus in the building, and that showed me what the album was going to be about. And I knew it was also about my experience working in retail for most of my adult life in mostly incredibly depressing settings."

For four stultifying years, she worked at FedEx Office (aka Kinkos) in a mini-mall. "So I tried to wrench any kind of artistic endeavor I could from it. One of my favorite songs, 'Mirror Room Vacuum,' was about being entranced by a vacuum store across from the Kinkos. I have always found such spaces strangely beautiful, which I attribute to growing up in the suburbs, but the suburbs of Florida, so I am also perpetually inspired by the encroaching morass of the Everglades. Mini-malls can be swallowed up at any time!

"I devised a loose story of sorts about early-20th-century shop girls haunting a department store. I am also an avid reader of academic history books, and I was inspired by books I had about the lives of young women working in early- to mid-20th-century retail and how their leisure time was spent. This also aligned with my underlying mission to bring my experience of feeling alienated as a woman in electronic music and music in general, so I was like

'yes, this noisy album is going to be about women stuck behind a counter.' I wanted to also do something unconventional as far as the premise of the album."

That she did. Forever Your Salesgirl is as haunting as a stroll through an abandoned mall in a sparsely populated town. With the most wispy elements—vaporous synth drones, sampled mutters, fragile percussion touches, blurred, poignant melodies—Diavoleria captivates with an unsettling chillness. The Caretaker sounds bombastic by comparison.

Orange Clearing (released this year by Seattle imprint Eiderdown) is a more fuller-sounding record than Salesgirl and has a more varied sonic palette. That evolution occurred through practice and refining her craft, plus taking two classes with Olympia composer Ben Kamen at the Evergreen State College and an online course with Sarah Belle Reid. "It was just time, practice, and knowledge building."

Promoted as a children's album, Orange Clearing was written and mixed while Diavoleria was pregnant with her first child. Let's be clear, though: most children will have trouble processing the record's melancholy moods and desolate atmospheres. "Whirligig" may be named after a cherished fairground ride, but in Diavoleria's hands it becomes a conduit into a realm of microcosmic mystery. Named after a long-gone Seattle Center attraction, "Fun Forest" contrasts a soothing drone with subliminal strains of discomfort beneath the salubrious tones. The track exemplifies her knack for imbuing her ambient music with a crucial tension.

Diavoleria speaks highly of the role that Madrona Labs instruments and software play in the creation of her music. "Madrona Labs has been incredibly helpful and I often use their software for my music. At first, when I didn’t understand synthesis that well, I virtually turned random knobs and buttons until I found a sound I like. As my understanding of synthesis deepened, I have come to understand how exactly Madrona Labs products like Kaivo and Aalto work. I also think they are helpful tools for visualizing how synthesis works, especially for someone like me who struggles with technical aspects of production. I also love their Aaltoverb tool, I would love more reverb-y stuff from them, please.

"I also use Ableton and love it so much. If I got tattoos maybe I would get one of the Monolake guy [Robert Henke], because I just adore it.

"To make my music, I use samples, based on random sounds I collect, my cello, vocals, my modular setup, my other synths and various plug-ins like the Madrona Labs ones, which are my favorite of the plug-ins I have.

Plug-ins kind of get a bad rap, but I am not a sound snob. I will take whatever sound."

Looking to the future, Diavoleria is working on her next album, which she projects will come out in 2025. Her immediate goals are to "become a better musician and become more well-known (within reason, of course!). I am aware my music is still missing some element that will take it to the next level, but I am not sure what that is yet. I also am still fighting feeling like I am not good enough, so there is a battle between trying to let things be and trying to be 'better,' whatever that means for me."

Right now, she is most excited about composing a new score for Neil Jordan’s The Company Of Wolves. "There is already a soundtrack for it, but I am doing an altogether new one specifically for the Timberland Regional Library live performance series. It is a lot of work and it will be entirely composed and performed by me. That movie is one of my favorites and it perfectly suits my music thematically. It is about girlhood, sexuality, and it is an eerie yet playful film. Just like my music!"

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your questions!

Sumu doesn't have the ability to morph between two sounds. It seems to me like this was a path explored the most in other additive environments, and I designed Sumu not around morphing but around modulating the individual partial time offsets, which other environments don't do. I would like to add morphing / blending of sounds as a capability of Vutu at some point.

Vutu supports importing .wav and .aiff, and exporting .wav sounds and .sumu partials files.

I'm very interested in adding other acoustic spaces besides rooms to the space module and will definitely expand the collection after the 1.0 is released. These will probably be, like the existing rooms, "classic" reverbs with filters and reflections. Adding impulse responses is a cool idea that would take more time to investigate.