ixi audio is an experimental project concerned with the creation of free digital musical instruments and environments for generative music.

ixiQuarks is a software environment designed for live improvisation that allows for user interaction on hardware, GUI and code level. The environment enables innumerable setups with flexible loading of tools and instruments. The ixiQuarks consist of different types of tools: basic utilities, instruments, effects, filters, spectral effects and generators.

This videoa above shows the ixiQuarks tools browser, opens up the AudioIn tool and a spectral view and wave view. Then a bufferPool is loaded (into RAM) and soundfiles viewed in a soundfile view. A live sound is then recorded into the bufferPool and played back. We then see an EQview (showing 31 bands). The sounds from the bufferPools are then manipulated in the SoundScratcher instrument which allows for warp (granular synthesis), buffer scratching, and various other methods of granular synthesis. We see how two windows can be used at the same time.

Here’s some more info on the ixi audio philosophy:

We are interested in the computer as a workshop for building non-conventional tools for musicians, i.e. not trying to imitate or copy the tools that we know from the world of acoustic instruments or studio technology. We currently work with open source software such as SuperCollider, ChucK and Pure Data, but our aim is to distribute our applications packaged in a way that allows everybody to use them. Simplicity and ease of use together with depth in interaction and expressive scope is the aim of our experimental music software.

We are interested in free and open music software in all senses. Free as in “free beer”, free as in “free speech” and free as in “free jazz”. The last “freedom” being the most important one. We acknowledge the constraints that software puts on the musician, the limits that the tool sets for the creative process and we therefore promote and try to disseminate technologies that open up the limits of software (or define new boundaries). We think it should be the artist that defines the scope of his or her instrument (and therefore music), not a commercial software company.

Our belief is that controlling musical structures graphically in screen-based instruments such as the ixi software, can be helpful and inspiring for the musician. We try to build “non-musical” interfaces, i.e. controllers that do not contain musical concepts from any tradition or cultureis can be liberating and open up for new directions. Visualising musical patterns is one of the main ideas here, but in a way that is open and not predefining the music. Intelligent interfaces is also one of our aims and we’d like to see instruments that understand and interact with the musician.

More videos area available at the ixi audio site.