Latest projects by Igor Zinken
Returning to the portable Nintendo Written on original Nintendo Game Boy hardware* using LSDj. While classic table tricks (such as applying L-R pan right after the transient) were applied to create stereo sound on the Game Boy itself, each instrument channel was recorded separately and further processed in post-production to achieve a wider soundstage. The track's name is a reference to a sudden…
All eyes on the browser Having been tempted to test the WebAudio API's capabilities beyond the initial WebAudio experiment, this experiment builds upon parts of the audio engine created for MikroWave by porting the C++ code to JavaScript so it can run inside a web browser. A very peculiar synth... Rather than (re)creating a "modern" synthesizer, this experiment pays homage to the Commodore 64's…
Hands-on music making Efflux is a Progressive Web Application allowing you to create music within your browser, either on- or offline on anything from a phone to desktop computer. Efflux uses both a tracker*-type approach as well as a more intuitive graphical UI to create patterns. Separate patterns have independent timelines; a complete song thus consists of a master list of repeated and…
Photoshop in the browser? Photoshop ? Flattering, but it's not quite the same. BitMappery does however allow you to import photos (and Photoshop files), draw images, apply transformations, create freeform selections, tweak filters and mask content in a non-destructive manner. It has some overlap in functionality but is definitely a more simple product. A BitMappery document allows you to work with…
A dark cabaret Gyne contains fourteen dark collages consisting of electronic, digital and acoustic ambiances which present the rise and downfall of... some undisclosed entity. Contrary to the preceding album Exuvia, the focus is now fully on the individual. Production notes Gyne leans heavily on multi-layered acoustic instrumentation, with mandolin, cello and violin playing recurring roles.…
"Did you forget my name?" Watashi no namae o wasuremashita ka is the third release under the ゴアクロウ (goakurou) moniker. Production notes All music was written on a Polyend Tracker Mini, using the built-in synthesizers and sound shaping capabilities. Vocal whisper was added in post-production. The cover art is a collage assembled from Pixelizer output. You can follow goakurou on Instagram for…
"I cannot see anything when I close my eyes" Mewotojiru to nani mo mienaku naru is the second release under the ゴアクロウ (goakurou) moniker. Written while travelling Japan, the track is equally minimal but considerably harsher than its predecessor 剥がしてください, both in the relentless pounding and crisp high frequency pecussion. Production notes All music was written on a Polyend Tracker Mini,…
"Please peel off" Hagashite Kudasai is the first release under the ゴアクロウ (goakurou) moniker. Written using portable hardware trackers while travelling Japan, the track is an electronic lament executed as an industrial mantra. Production notes All music was written on a Polyend Tracker Mini, using the built-in synthesizers and sound shaping capabilities. The cover art is a collage assembled from…
A sampled toy piano Aimed at those who seek to inject some spiky toy piano sounds into their compositions. The timbre of the instrument can be best described as "thin" or "shrill" (as opposed to toy pianos with a more metallic resonance), but the instrument is tuned to work within the context of other instruments in order to provide less jarring clashes.The piano has been recorded completely dry,…
The Albatross Nanitic marks a difficult birth. Its release (along with the planned followup Gyne) would end up being postponed multiple times due to private matters. Eventually returning to the project proved to be an emotional drain, requiring immense effort to finish an abandoned work written from a mindset already outgrown. The four tracks now seem emotionally distant but recount a tale akin to…
Coming full circle Single Instar is an instrumental piece that completes the second trilogy of Drosophelia releases, which was started by 6581 on the Moult EP. The overall sound is atmospheric, as long as the atmosphere is reminiscent to that of a hospital scene in a science fiction movie. Production notes Instar continues the trilogy's sonic signature, defined on Exuvia by heavy use of the Yamaha…
Browser based composition tool The Molecular Music Generator (MMG) is a small application in which a set of variables can be defined. These describe the rules for a musical composition, which will be written into a MIDI file. This MIDI file can subsequently be opened in a DAW or be fed to instruments to create music. The variables are deterministic and will generate the same fixed outcome.…
MIDI messaging in the browser zMIDI is a JavaScript library that allows you to receive messages from connected musical equipment (supporting the MIDI protocol) and making it available inside the web browser. zMIDI uses the Web MIDI API and while currently supported in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox and Opera, it remains a niche functionality though support could grow over time. Who / what…
An Android project MWEngine is an audio engine for Android. Its purpose is to sequence audio in a musical context : offering sample accurate scheduling and playback of timed audio events, digital signal processing (DSP) for applying effects, real time synthesis, sample playback and recording. Out of the box MWEngine comes with templates for basic instruments (such as sample players and…
Iterating upon earlier work Efflux is built upon the code written for the earlier Chrome Experiments WebSID and Touch Synthesizer where it is now used within a complete music making application. Whereas the aforementioned applications could not be open sourced (due to use of a third party library for the UI), Efflux has been made with the ethos to be fully open source and public from day one.…
The VST plugins listed on this site's audio plugins page are all open source software. The plugins are either built on top of Steinbergs VST SDK or the JUCE framework and can be built for Windows, MacOS and Linux platforms. The plugins run in any VST3 compliant host/DAW with the macOS versions also offering support for the Audio Unit format. The plugins built using Steinberg VST SDK can also be…
Shifting focus towards Android After having found that Google Play didn't offer as much in the way of actual sound synthesizers (rather than sample-based apps!) as were available to iOS users, I took on the experiment of writing a sequenced synthesizer without having any "how to"-guides at my disposal. The goal of the application quickly became clear after a few prototypes: as it is highly…
Example zCanvas game The horribly titled "Weltkriegsimulator" (WKS) is a an hommage to Toaplan shoot 'em ups. It's not exactly a full-on multi level gaming experience meant for entertainment purposes (though it does contain multiple levels, power ups, bosses and high scores). Instead the game serves as a showcase of igorski's open source zCanvas gaming capabilities, able to update/render a massive…
Example zCanvas game The "aptly" titled Pinball Schminball (PS) is a an hommage to 80's and 90's 2D vertical scrolling pinball video games (think Pinball Fantasies, not that thing that shipped with Windows '95). The game serves as a showcase of igorski's open source zCanvas gaming capabilities, enriched with the use of Matter JS as a physics engine. Pinball Schminball promises rapid, vertically…
Generating music using a set of rules Algorithmic composition is an automated process where given a set of particular inputs, a unique compositions can be created. The algorithm is deterministic, which implies that the same input will always generate the same output. The Molecular Music Generator (MMG) can be used to generate musical patterns which can in turn be fed to hardware or software…
VST Instrument plugin VSTSID, as its name implies, is the VST equivalent of WebSID, ported by popular request of those who wish to use the arpeggiated Commodore 64 sound within the comforts of their DAW. The instrument features: Full ADSR envelope control Controllable filter cutoff and resonance LFO to modulate the filter Configurable pitch bend and portamento Ring modulator for more abstract…
VST effects plugin Regrader provides a delay effect in which the repeats degrade in various ways to provide a malevolent twist on the ears. Echoes disintegrate, are decimated, piercingly oscillate and are finally mangled into a sound reminiscent of a jet engine choking on gravel. Think industrial or dark sound design to find a purpose for the plugin. For inspiration, it has been featured all over…
VST effects plugin FogPad is a multichannel reverb effect with a little twist: instead of aiming to recreate a large amount of acoustic spaces, FogPad provides a murky nebula of frozen thoughts, recollecting long forgotten events. The reflections can be bent and transformed through use of its fully automatable parameters. FogPad has been used extensively on the Exuvia and Moult records by…
VST effects plugin HomeCorrupter provides an effect that harks back to a period in which computers weren't actually that good at handling audio. The plugin can degrade the resolution of any incoming audio signal by reducing the sampling rate and bit depth. Further lo-fi quality is achieved by reducing the "computers clock speed" which slows down the playback of the input, all on the fly. All…
An online platform that for six years revolved around community driven participation in a daily music quiz....
Music inspired by obsolete audio technologies, a love for darker tones, cross-cultural influences and sounds consumed over a lifetime....
WebSID put a Commodore 64 inside your browser. Not to play games on, but to make music with! So how it was made?...
When an electronic combo is unable to reproduce all audio tracks live, how can their stage performance become interesting?...
A game that brings space fairing technologies to the ancient Mayans, calling for an adaptive soundtrack rooted in South American history....
Soundtrack creation for a remake of Unreal Tournament targeted at the Atari 2600, roughly 40 years after its release....
Musicparrot was an up and coming platform aimed at changing the way music could be taught over the internet....
In the year 2010, rich media on the web is restricted to video and gaming with the making of music restricted to the offline world. Or... ?...
VST Effects plugin Darvaza is a multichannel gate with a twist : whenever the gate closes on your input signal, you get a perversion of your source spat back at you. It can however work as a time synchronized classic tremolo too. The gate uses different waveforms and its individually tunable oscillators are synchronized to the host tempo and time signature. When the gate closes and you have…
Down tuned and packing a punch A collaboration with The Munchies, an Amsterdam based stoner rock project combining sludgy riffs with unexpected rhythmical complexity and a dose of humour on the side. Third EP "Swing Low and You'll Never Miss" features two tracks of gargantuan, low-tuned riffage, distorted bass and frenetic drumming (all with a swing feel!) which made it challenging to maintain…
"Staring contest simulator" Meneer Eend (Mister Duck) is a very simple game. The purpose of the game is to tap the duck whenever he is looking at you directly. Should he be looking away while you tap him, you lose immediately. Sounds simple enough, but beware his distractive manoeuvres and blazing eye movement speeds as the game progresses! Meneer Eend was initially created as a Flash game (around…
Music for a dead computer system Slocum Tracker is a utility that enables people to write musical compositions for the Atari 2600 using a tracker-style interface, directly from their web browser. The real star is Slocum's Sequencer Kit (where the application derives its name from), a music driver that is very efficient on the Atari 2600's CPU providing plenty of resources for doing other tasks…
Tuning Spork! Tuning Spork! is a simple utility aimed at guitarists: The application allows selection of a plethora of scales, ranging from the usual suspects (major, minor, pentatonic...) to the more esoteric types (Hungarian minor, Han Kumoi, Hatakambari...).Upon selection, all notes of the scale are visualized on the on-screen fretboard, showing either note names or fret numbers. Further more,…
Another retro mish mash The soundtrack for table 2 "Rollerball".Pinball Schminball is a retro-style 2D vertical scrolling pinball game that you can play directly in your browser, it is available right here on igorski.nl. Tables in the game feature hidden ramps, unlockable bonuses / multiball play and sometimes a "secret area". Users can compete with each other in the highscore list. The soundtrack…
A retro mishmash The soundtrack for table 1 "Endless August".Pinball Schminball is a retro-style 2D vertical scrolling pinball game that you can play directly in your browser, it is available right here on igorski.nl. Tables in the game feature hidden ramps, unlockable bonuses / multiball play and sometimes a "secret area". Users can compete with each other in the highscore list. The soundtrack is…
Image glitcher Pixelizer is a browser based utility that allows you to create glitchy images. Pixelizer works by analyzing the pixel content of a source image and resorting the content according to a variety of algorithms. Depending on the input image and the tweaked properties, the output can satisfy those looking for some creative source material. The majority of record covers on this site have…
Blitting pixels zCanvas is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a solution for working with HTML Canvas "drawables" as if they were tangible / interactive, separate objects. Where the children in an HTMLElements "display list" are nicely visible as stacked separate tags, the pixels on a canvas-element remain out of bounds. zCanvas provides a means to work with a similarly stacked display…
Browser based image editing BitMappery is a web application that allows users to work with image content without requiring installation or download of any other utilities. With the initial application created over the course of a month, BitMappery started as an exercise in reusing knowledge to create a custom application to "quickly edit images" or "a tool to draw infantile content" with. Open…
VST effects plugin Transformant provides a multichannel formant filter effect that is tailored to provide gritty, honking, nasal grunts rather than pristine angelic choirs. The sounds can be shaped across the stereo field with separate oscillators and vowel controls while the sound can be routed through a distortion chain to really accent the odd harmonics. Transformant works best on spectrally…
VST Effects plugin Rechoir is a delay effect where all the echoes can either harmonize with the source signal or be pitch shifted manually. Harmonic changes can be synced to the tempo and time signature of your sequencer, keeping both the echoes as well as their pitch modulations strictly timed to your composition. All of Rechoirs parameters can be automated or linked to hardware controllers for…
VST Effects plugin Delirion is in essence a Doppler shifter that works across three different frequency bands. Each band can work across multiple channels, allowing you to tweak the input signal to something reminiscent of a fever dream. All of Delirions parameters can be automated for maximum control and flexibility. Controls There are quite some elements within Delirion's UI and while they will…
VST Effects plugin Phlegetron is a multi-distortion effect that works across dual bands, with the bands either separated by a crossover filter or split into separate harmonic "bins". By adjusting the frequency of the split, you can emphasize different harmonic frequencies and carefully tune the effect to target a deliciously nasty zone inside your mix. All of Phlegetrons parameters can be…
What is it ? A small JavaScript library that provides pseudo-threading for leveraging resources during long, CPU intensive operations. ... Yes. While more low level languages allow threading to separate a program into individually scheduled chunks where all chunks are ensured to receive an equal amount of resources, JavaScript sadly operates on a single thread. (note: while Node 10.5 introduced…