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Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt1

By , on March 9th, 2009

lvptThis week we speak with Marc Nostromo, the creator of the excellent Little Gamepark Tracker, a LSDJ style sequencer for various handhelds like the PSP and OS’s. He also records music under the name M-.-n, and blogs about electronic music at NoisePages. Today is part I of a two part interview, where we get into Marc’s background, his LSDJ based music, and what it was like playing the Blip Festival.

LB: First off thanks very much for agreeing to the interview

Marc: My pleasure.

LB: Were you a programmer first then a musician or the other way around?

Marc: I actually have still some trouble to consider myself as a musician.

LB: I will talk about this a little later but I think most people would say you manage to do both pretty well. What sort of computers were about when you became interested in programming?

Marc: My first programmable unit was a TI-98. Not really anything fancy but it got me hooked. Then I went Sinclair ZX-81 (my first assembly code), Vic 20, C64, Amiga and finally PC. I got really sad at the time to drop the Amiga since it took ages for the pc to even reach the level of sound flexibility of the Amiga but I had to keep with times I guess.

LB: Why did you switch to the Vic20 after the ZX81 rather than staying with Sinclair?

Marc: I don’t think there was a specific reason. Either it came out before or it looked more sturdy. The Sinclair experience was good but to be properly set-up the ZX-81 looked like a cobweb of wires and extensions all over the place. Compared to that, the all-in-one and proper keyboard of the VIC looked like heaven sent. I think I said to my mum at the time ‘this is the computer I well ever need’.. which was a little naive I guess

LB: The ZX81 PSU got REALLY hot if I remember rightly too.

Marc: yeah, and if you wiggled the extension a little too much you would easily loose everything

LB: I had that happen a time or two myself. Which model Amiga did you have?

Marc: A simple A500. I loved that machine. It’s been the playground of a lot of my first explorations.. sound, 3D.. multi-process environment. It was a truly amazing machine for the times
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Interviews • software

Interview with PSPSEQ Dev Ethan Bordeaux pt2

By , on February 11th, 2009

In part 2 of yesterday’s interview, We discussed the PSPSEQ developer, Ethan Bordeaux, background. Today we get more into the meat of the program, how its varied methods of synthesis works, and where the project is heading.

LB: Moving on a little then, were there any specific interesting parts of the port to a hand-held device?

ECB: Not really. The development environment on the PSP is pretty good so I can have a version that runs on my PC and one that runs on my PSP that share 95%+ of the same code. Made debugging a whole lot easier. The one thing I had to figure out early on was whether or not the C compiler would be good enough to allow for the level of polyphony required to make music. I wish the PSP had enough power that it could run any 16 generator and effect tracks and not have to worry about overloading the system, but I think the level of polyphony and complexity of music you can make on the PSP is pretty impressive. Generally speaking you can get between 12-16 tracks going at the same time, which is definitely good enough to make some cool tunes.

LB: I agree, I was really surprised at how complex PSPseq is, could you give us a quick run-down of the available synths?
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Interviews • software

Interview with PSPSEQ Dev Ethan Bordeaux pt1

By , on February 10th, 2009

pspseq300In order to bring you more in depth coverage on how the tools behind the blips and bleeps are made, we asked musician Lazerbeat to sit down and chat with some of  the innovators and creators of the scene.  Here is part one of his two part interview with PSPSEQ developer Ethan Bordeaux. PSPSEQ is a “a free homebrew application for composing music on the Sony PSP handheld game system. PSPSeq contains both realtime synthesis and sample playback capability, along with multiple FX modules of widely varying types for modifying instruments in countless ways.”

LB: So, Hello Ethan, thanks very much for doing this.

ECB: You’re welcome. Happy to get the good word out on PSPSeq.

LB: Before we get into the details of PSPSeq, tell us a little about your background with programming.

ECB: Sure no problem… my day job is as an embedded systems programmer. I was hired by a company called Analog Devices where I first started off supporting their DSPs and then later on was transferred to a group where I wrote software algorithms for them, specifically for cell phones. Been doing that for the past 8 years or so. Mostly I work on speech and audio processing algorithms. It’s fun but when you’re doing that kind of work you are only writing a very small piece of the overall system. I wanted to do something where I owned the entire project; audio, UI, documentation, etc etc.

LB: Did you start programing as a hobby or was it something you learned specifically with a view to a career?
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