The latest iPhone app by Brian Eno and his programming partner, Peter Chilvers, is Trope, a tactile music-making engine. Strokes of the finger create the lines and other visuals (five options total) seen below, each of which effect a different compositional element in one of 12 “moods.” The moods are named “Sodalis,” “Orenia,” and the like — that’s three more moods than in Bloom, the previous iPhone app developed by the duo.
If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can learn more at apple.com. More coverage at synthtopia.com. (Thanks to Brian Scott, of boondesign.com, who first drew my attention to it.)
There’s no need for a Zen koan about grounded and ungrounded wires. We know full well that an ungrounded wire will make a sound — a sound not unlike the earthy drone with which Geronymakis chose to open his recent release, Hupnos, on the Dark Winter label. It’s a heavy, warm drone, very much the sort of sound that suggests a parade of diesel trucks far off in the distance, or a hovering spacecraft just overhead, or a neighbor’s oddly noisy refrigerator all too close by. And like that refrigerator, the initial Hupnos drone brings with it, over time, an added level of detail and intensity. The detail is the internal character, the sounds within the sound, that makes itself clear during the drone’s extended duration.