Jazz concert with OpenBSD synths

Everybody's favourite audio hacker Alexandre Ratchov (ratchov@) is inviting you to a concert in Grenoble (France). Read on to find out how this relates to OpenBSD:

Announcing a jazz concert here might sound off-topic, but for this oneall synthesizers will run on a OpenBSD box. Unfortunately there are nosample recordings available on the web,onlythis site (in French).

For non-French speakers, the concert takes place at "the Hexagone" inthe Grenoble area, Feb 27, 2015. You're welcome.

The music is experimental jazz using micro-tonal instruments, playedby great jazz musicians: virtuoso flutist Magic Malik, Maxime Zampierion the drums and Jean-Luc Lehr on the bass. We use acousticinstruments (fretless bass, drums) and synthesizers (flute-like synths, pads, and percussions). All synths and corresponding effect processors runon a OpenBSD/amd64 box.

There're few inputmidi(4) devices:a keyboard,a flute-like wind controller,a kit of drum pads,and control surface (bunch of knobs).They send short messages (aka midi events)whenever a key is pressed on the keyboard, the breath pressure changeson the wind controller, or a pad is hit with the stick. Thesynthesizer is a program (not published yet) that listens on asndio(7)midithru port, calculates the wave corresponding to inputmidi events in real-time then sends the result for audio playback to aenvy(4) based card. Then, the resulting analog signal is mixed withother analog sources (bass and microphones) and amplified. Everythingis configured to have few milliseconds of latency between the moment amidi message arrives and the corresponding signal hits the amplifier.

The music is based on a theory developed by Frederic Faure which istoo long to explain here, but it brings a unique sound by carefullychoosing note pitches. So we use an additional program to calculatethe pitch of each note submitted to the synth and to visualize variousaspects of the theory to assist musicians, it also runs on the samebox.

There will be a masterclass on this music presented by Malik, Fredericand me on Feb. 25, 2015. We'll discuss practical and theoreticalaspects of this music, and if there's interest internals of thesynths and the setup.

Maybe see you at the masterclass and/or for a beer after the concert.

So, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood, make sure to stop by. Thanks to Alexandre for his story!