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- There is more detailed information about the Sound Loom GUI on its own Information page.
- The new Sound Loom has a new colour scheme suggested and mostly implemented by Dale Perkins of the Leeds College of Music.
- File extensions can now be set to be different, so that .ana, .frq, .for, .evl and .mix can be easily identified.
- There is now an editor for binary pitch data files (.frq). This has been developed especially for use with the new speech processing functions. This editor has octave and timeline display grids.
- There is a sound file editor in which sections can be blocked out and played, and amplitude or pan breakpoint files superimposed and edited.
- An important evolving feature is the MUSIC TESTBED, where a number of the more complex processes can be carried out in specially developed environments. For example, there is a Harmony Workshop where, in the Tonal section, pitches can be placed directly onto musical staves, and various operations completed at the touch of a button. Another is the Interpolation Workshop which handles the 'inbetweening' processes: creating multiple soundfiles that form intermediate states between 2 or more soundfiles. There are several more Workshops in the MUSIC TESTBED.
- Also note the other powerful features of the Sound Loom GUI:
- Bulk Processing: processing several soundfiles at once.
- the extensive Batchfile menu
- the Instruments function for creating batched operations.
- the Musical Calculator for handling all kinds of musical data conversions, such as the frequency value of a (microtonal) MIDI note.
- the amazing Table Editor fir a mind-boggling array of operations that can be made on columns of data (i.e., text and breakpoint files).
- Help information available throughout the GUI.
- The Sound Loom GUI provides a comprehensive set of facilities for the CDP software, designed with Trevor Wishart's usual originality and attention to detail. It comes into its own, perhaps not right away, but certainly as one grows more experienced and fluent with the CDP sound transformation processes and a working environment that emphasises an almost surgical precision in fine-tuning the sonic effects.
Some of the key features of the Update are listed below. For a full description of the new features and how to use them, see Updates.txt in the SOUNDSHAPER > Docs > Textdocs folder.
- There is more detailed information about the Soundshaper GUI on its own Information page.
- The main window of the Soundshaper GUI has been completely redesigned (as shown above). All the main functions are now available on a Toolbar.
- New FILE POOL: a textfile list of user project files which is saved on closing Soundshaper and loaded at startup. (If it does not exist, the Recent Files list is used instead.) You can edit the drop-down list on Main page and Load/Save pool files.
- The pool can be used to create and save a list of files such as those needed for JOIN (Splice). DirSF on the INFO page can be used to create a textfile of related files (e.g. those with a similar name such as junk*.* or all files in a project folder) for use as a Pool File. A similar Pool (Soundfiles only) has been added to the Mix Page.
- There is a new SCALE button on the main Parameter Pages. This scales current breakpoint data file displayed in memo to fit the current Infile-length (similar to OPEN-X option in GraphEd). It only works with time value files, not single column files. It assumes that the last time value is to be rescaled to file-length and all intermediate values by proportion. On the Texture page, files are rescaled to the proposed Outfile duration (Param 2).
- A revised Data Editor page (formerly Columns) now accepts breakpoint files for single-column processing (the default is processing of a 2nd column).
- Direct-Run – A new option "Skip Param.Page" permits certain processes to be run without visiting the parameter page. This is particularly useful for Info commands. 27 processes are "hard-wired" in this way: these either have no parameters or one which has a default value. The option is set by default but can be toggled using the shortcut Shift+F6: see the Options Menu.
- Several functions can now be directly accessed from the Main Page. These include facilities to Normalise, Gain and get Info about soundfiles, Analysis Windows, Cycle Counts (Wavecycle DISTORTION programs) and counts of grains in grainy sounds.
- Presets – As well as a new Overwrite facility, there is a new feature on the Main page) to list the contents of any Presetfile. List gives process Short Name (see below), Preset name and Preset description.
- Meanwhile, a major upgrade to Version 2.0 is in preparation, with many new facilities being implemented.
- New links to Soundshaper Help have been added to the main parameter pages.
- Cost of upgrade: free download from Robert Fraser's Website http://www.ensemble-software.co.uk.
- Cost new: £25.00
Last updated: 13 April 2005
