Pugs Luv Beats, a music composition game for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, is now available on the App Store!
My company, Lucky Frame, has been working on this project for a while, it’s very exciting to have it out! We’ve even made a great promo video for it:
Focusing on musical creativity, Pugs Luv Beats offers a refreshing change from the standard karaoke-style music games currently on the market. Instead of forcing a player to accurately recreate an existing song, the game encourages exploration and musical composition – playing the game will create original music, different for every user.
In the game, the player controls an alien breed of pugs. Once the masters of a wondrous and highly advanced civilization, these pugs are the victims of their own greed. They loved nothing more than to collect beats, which they cultivated with their special brand of “luv”. But an ill-advised scheme to grow the biggest beat of all time spun wildly out of control, and their home planet was destroyed. The player must help the pugs to grow more beats so they can rediscover new planets, build houses, and recover their lost technology.
Head over to the Pugs Luv Beats website to see lots of videos, screenshots, and information. Give it a download and let me know what you think!
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 12:43 pm. Add a comment
I’m posting this from the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens, where I’m busy installing my latest installation, The Secret Sounds of Spores. Followers of this blog and my twitter feed will no doubt be aware of this project, as I can’t seem to stop talking about it! In a nutshell, I’m working with mycologist Patrick Hickey to make a musical installation using mushrooms.
I’ve made yet another video about it all, this time going into more detail about how the software works:
The installation is part of a whole show about mushrooms – From Another Kingdom: The Amazing World of Fungi. It is opening tonight at the John Hope Gateway of the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens.
Maybe I will see you there! Don’t worry if you can’t make it, the installation will be up for a few weeks at least, and it’s free. Let me know if you happen to find any mushrooms that you want to stick in the installation, we’re going to need a lot of them in the coming weeks!
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 12:46 pm. Add a comment
For the past few weeks Patrick Hickey and I have been working more and more on our Secret Sounds of Spores project, which is coming together nicely. For those of you just joining us, we are building an installation for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh which will create music from falling mushroom spores. You can see these spores if you shine a laser underneath a live (or recently deceased) mushroom, and I’m building custom software that will analyze them and trigger a series of strange musical instruments that Patrick and I are building. My previous post explains the concept a bit more, and here’s a new video that shows some of the instruments in action:
Patrick and I will be giving a demonstration and explanation tomorrow night, the 15th of July, at the Apple Store in Glasgow. The event is free and begins at 6pm. We will be showing off a few of the instruments, I’ll be explaining how I’ve approached the software, and if this rain continues we shouldn’t have any trouble finding some mushrooms!
edit: as I’ve said in the comments, thanks to all who came by! I’ll post photos as soon as I get them from the Apple Store, in the mean time here is one of the mushrooms set up with the laser:
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 1:53 pm. 3 comments
A few weeks ago I got to attend the astounding TEI Conference at the equally astounding MIT Media Lab. It was awesome for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was because I got to present some great work. I was working on a project by Sarah Kettley and Martha Glazzard of Nottingham Trent University, who have been developing custom built knitted stretch sensors which can be embedded into clothing, a project they call “Aeolia”. It’s pretty sweet.
Working with Sarah and Peter Gregson, cellist extraordinaire, I developed some custom software (using Arduino, Max/MSP, and Ableton Live) which allowed Peter to manipulate his own playing through his movements in real time. Here’s a video we made during rehearsals:
I don’t have a video of us showing it off at the conference, unfortunately…it was just too busy! But I think it went really well and if all goes well we’ll be developing this project further.
This trip was possible thanks to support from the Scottish Arts Council and New Media Scotland.
The rest of the conference was absolutely fantastic, the highlight for me being an incredible “bodyhack” studio workshop with Daito Manabe + company. The TEI folk made a great little end-of-conference video about the studio workshops (featuring music by yours truly!):
Posted 1 year, 11 months ago at 7:56 pm. Add a comment
Hooray! Mujik Classik, the free version of our critically acclaimed (and very popular in Germany) musical iPhone app Mujik, is now available on the iTunes Store!
Mujik Classik is a free introduction into the wonderful world of Mujik, where fireflies inhabit a musical library full of books and balloons…a curious world which you can explore to make your own music in a fun and lovely way! Mujik is brought to you by Lucky Frame, which is made up of myself, Jonathan Brodsky, and Mike Greer.
Go and download now! It’s free! And lovely!
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:01 pm. Add a comment
Hooray! After weeks of waiting, I’m happy to announce the release of Mujik 1.1. This update has all sorts of awesome new things, such as three brand new loop packs by the wonderful Nick Janaway, Surachai, and Dave Meckin (aka Dave the Machine). Other new features include the ability to save your creations, and the appropriately named AutoMujik function!
This update is once again the result of lots of hard work by the Lucky Frame team – myself, Jon Brodsky, and Mike Greer. If you already own Mujik the update should be available in your iTunes account now…if you don’t already own it you can go now and get it for yourself!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 5:22 pm. Add a comment
The other day I got a lovely email from Mack Si, a Czech producer, musician, and sound guru based in Prague. His band “Je Chante” used Mujik as the basis for their latest track, entitled Hvězdička. It’s absolutely epic and awesome, have a listen!
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For those of you who don’t know, Mujik is an iPhone app that company recently released. We are now working on an update that should be available in a couple of weeks. Thanks to Mack for sending this in!
Posted 2 years, 5 months ago at 10:55 am. Add a comment
Wow, yesterday was an epic day. I just wanted to put a quick post up to mention three projects that all came together yesterday.
1. The iPhone app that I have been working on has been released! Click here to go to the official Mujik website to learn more. The response was absolutely overwhelming and amazing. Extra special thanks the the lovely reviews…Create Digital Music has described it as Interactive Musical Whimsy With Lightning Bugs (couldn’t have said it better myself!) and TUAW said “Every so often something hits the App Store that is interesting but difficult to explain. At the same time, it is enjoyable to use, and you tip your hat to the people who thought it up, even if it has no real practical use.” (who needs practical things anyhow?).
2. I had the final sound check with Gol, my Iranian electronic jazzfunk band, for our show today at the MELA Festival right here in Edinburgh. We’ve prepared a brand new specially commissioned set, full of awesome live audio/visual triggering and sampling and Santurs and percussion and other amazing stuff.
3. I went to the opening of Rough Cut Nation at the National Portrait Gallery. I was lucky enough to be a part of the show, having built some fun little UV LED contraptions that allowed people to interact with the artwork…the opening was absolutely phenomenal, and was a testament to the amazing work by all of the artists. I was extremely proud to be involved, I can’t say enough positive things about the whole experience.
I have tons more to say about all three of these projects (and even a few more coming up next week), so I will expand on them very soon. I’m now off to Pilrig Park for the Gol festivities. Wish me luck!
Posted 2 years, 5 months ago at 11:25 am. Add a comment
Many of you already know what I’ve been working on for the past few months with Jon and Mike – Mujik, a charming and fun music toy for the iPhone. We have submitted version 1.0 to Apple and we are just waiting for them to approve it and put it on the app store. In the mean time, here are two sneak peek videos that show what Mujik is all about…check back very soon for more details. Lots more to come!
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 1:38 pm. 2 comments
The Amazing Rolo is Edinburgh-based sound designer, musician, and digital artist Yann Seznec. He specializes in interactive installations, ragtime piano, custom music software creation, and sound art. He is founder of Lucky Frame Limited, a small company that makes fun digital things, and teaches occasionally at various universities.
For the past few weeks Patrick Hickey and I have been working more and more on our Secret Sounds of Spores project, which is coming together nicely. For those of you just joining us, we are building an installation for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh which will create music from falling mushroom spores. You can see these spores if you shine a laser underneath a live (or recently deceased) mushroom, and I’m building custom software that will analyze them and trigger a series of strange musical instruments that Patrick and I are building. 
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