Tech Lounge
00:12:29 · Chris Chinchilla, Evan Mezeske
[00:12:29] S0: What are the bits at the top that look like buttons? [00:12:32] S1: Oh, yeah. So these are... These represent the macro knobs that are down here in the right. So, like, if I zoom in, if I turn the mute one, you can see it's turning that knob and the green line is kind of brightening and that means it's Yeah. It's doing something to that mass that it's connected to. [00:12:50] S0: It's only connected to that one mass. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Yep. I love this sort of degree of whimsy to it when you had one of the bodies disconnected and it had the little exclamation point. It made me think of, like, the the Sims or something. [00:13:06] S1: Yeah. Yeah. It's certainly, in some ways, borrowed from video game design. Yeah. Probably... Yeah. It probably should borrow more from video game design. Like, I could imagine if a video game designer created it, it'd be, like, all fun to use and exciting, and you'd click it and it'll do a little... Oh, you connected it. [00:13:24] S0: It sort of makes me think of my brief experiments with Unity. When you have these things just sort of floating. And you're like, how is this an object? And then, of course, you start to do magic with it. But until you do that, it's just like, what the it's just this thing floating in space. Is. Yeah. [00:13:41] S1: Exactly. [00:13:42] S0: It does talk about floating in space. We're in this sort of blue sky environment. Does the environment have any effect on the sound? [00:13:48] S1: The... No. The environment is purely visual. [00:13:50] S0: Okay.
00:13:50 · Chris Chinchilla, Evan Mezeske
[00:13:50] S0: Okay. [00:13:51] S1: And it's it's, like, quite customizable. There's all kinds of stuff. And, like, you can, you know, you can just have sort of like a gray background if that's what you're after. And the the three d models are also pretty customizable. [00:14:04] S0: Oh, really? [00:14:04] S1: Yeah. But... None of that... You know, people will be like, oh, you need to add a three d model that's like a wooden ball. And again, I have to sort of explain, like, the the balls aren't metal or wood or plastic. [00:14:15] S0: They're just balls. [00:14:16] S1: They're abstract points in space, basically. Yeah. But... Yeah. So then that's just sort of showing, you know, very simple thing. [00:14:24] S0: Oh, wow. [00:14:24] S1: But this is like a really fun demo. It's just grid. This started off as like a square grid of masses and springs, and then just stretch the corners out. And it sounds like but the most fun thing with this one is to go [00:14:49] S0: So just in case anyone is listening and not watching, this is like a sort of tight mesh of these balls, sort of stretched. It always makes me... It's gonna sound very horrible. It makes me think of Hellraiser. It's always like stretching this strange kind of distorted square. And as Evan is moving them around in a odd kind of like... Yeah. I don't even know how to describe it. It's... [00:15:21] S1: Yeah. It's like it's like kinda like taking a a tight drum head and maybe stretching it in some way.
00:15:21 · Evan Mezeske, Chris Chinchilla
[00:15:21] S1: Yeah. It's like it's like kinda like taking a a tight drum head and maybe stretching it in some way. [00:15:26] S0: Yeah. Actually, a bit like a weird... If a timpani had all these, like, tids on it or something. A tin penny. Hey. Yeah. [00:15:36] S1: So, yeah, a lot of the time kind of playing with the physics in that way is just a lot of fun. [00:15:43] S0: And some of the other videos I see on the website, you have things that are way more kind of abstract than this, like this one with a four up view, this alien one that looks more like some kind of warp from a sci fi film. Yeah. [00:16:01] S1: I like this thing. I mean, this is, like, very much in what I would call contraption territory. Right? Like, you look at it and it's not at all obvious what the heck is going on. But this one has a lot of fun sounds. Can make [00:16:25] S0: And and and behind the scenes, this... Is this is synthesis or is it samples? Or [00:16:31] S1: Yeah. It's all it's all synthesis and it's, you know, purely physical modeling, no samples whatsoever. [00:16:37] S0: Okay. [00:16:39] S1: But, yeah, this is contraption territory. All kinds of... You can see these little piston guys are LFOs driving different parameters. Like, some of those sounds are from moving the microphones around really rapidly. I think that's a... You know? And and everything in Anukari can be modulated at audio rate. Meaning, like, the low frequency oscillator is kind of a misnomer. Like, they can be 20 kilohertz. You get all kinds of weird sounds from doing that.
00:16:39 · Evan Mezeske, Chris Chinchilla
[00:16:39] S1: But, yeah, this is contraption territory. All kinds of... You can see these little piston guys are LFOs driving different parameters. Like, some of those sounds are from moving the microphones around really rapidly. I think that's a... You know? And and everything in Anukari can be modulated at audio rate. Meaning, like, the low frequency oscillator is kind of a misnomer. Like, they can be 20 kilohertz. You get all kinds of weird sounds from doing that. [00:17:05] S0: And I assume most of these parameters we're looking at could also be attached to MIDI signals as well. [00:17:10] S1: Yep. Anything. [00:17:11] S0: Yeah. [00:17:12] S1: Yep. Even even the thing where I was kinda stretching around the drum head, you could do that through MIDI. Although, you know, it's... With the mouse, it's a little bit easier usually. [00:17:21] S0: Yeah. I I mean, I don't think I have it here, but I do have like a travel keyboard that has one of those kind of XY drag like trackpad things. [00:17:32] S1: Yeah. It's perfect for that kind of stuff.
00:17:32 · Evan Mezeske, Chris Chinchilla
[00:17:32] S1: Yeah. It's perfect for that kind of stuff. [00:17:33] S0: I have an electric drum kit over here in the corner and in some respects, like hitting one of the cymbals, but actually the pads in those cymbals are more limited than they look. You kind of see this symbol shaped thing. But really the sensitivity is only in a couple of places rather disappointingly. A lot of it's kind of a prop to make you feel happy. But yeah, okay. Let's jump out of screen share again and talk a little bit more about how you made this. Well, actually, firstly, one question is, there's some wonderful sounds here. I think this would be very good in terms of sound design, but in terms of that crossover between sound design and music, you know, what what have people made with the plugin so far? [00:18:18] S1: Yeah. I mean, I think the the obviously sort of most famous thing that anybody's made is still this demo that Mick Gordon, who, among other things, is a composer for the last couple of Doom [00:18:29] S0: games. Okay.
00:18:29 · Chris Chinchilla, Evan Mezeske
[00:18:29] S0: games. Okay. [00:18:30] S1: And, like, the second day that the beta was out, he he made some kinda, like... I would describe it as, like, dubstep totally out there thing. And it was really amazing because, like, he... You know, it's incorporating other instruments from Anukari, but he he sort of took some presets and got the weird dissonant, you know, crazy sounds out of them that you can easily get. But then he heard, oh, this fits perfectly into this, like, super screaming loud dubstep track. And that's the kind of stuff that I love is like, you know, I hear people incorporating this into their music where they take sounds that I would consider a bit too weird or dissonant to be, like, musical. Mhmm. And then they bring in another instrument with it and suddenly make it this, like, incredibly musical thing. And, you know, it's like people hear how the weird sounds can fit into a musical context. Yeah. So that's the kind of stuff that I really love. I think it's been used a little bit for sound effects on like Star Trek, stuff like that. I think definitely for, like you said, sound design, like introducing weird sounds, it's it's obviously super good for that. [00:19:36] S0: Yeah. It's I keep scrolling down your website and just finding stranger and stranger things. You've got one here of an instrument built of old circuit boards. [00:19:46] S1: Oh yeah, Those are sort of like the effect processor objects.