The Strange Agency » Curtis

Strange Solstice

lucas — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 02:30:46 +0000

In desperate love with our iPads, we left the iPhone apps languishing unmaintained. They don’t copy or paste, they don’t play well with others, they’re all still rocking 3G. Yet, they still tweak sounds quite strangely, and so gentle(ladies and)men, we will rebuild them!

This holiday season we’re cooking up a whole new series of strange toys for the iPhone, and when we launch in the months to come, the current crop will have to go. As of today, the free sample versions of our paid iPhone apps have been axed.

How can you get some strange samples, you ask? We’ve made the paid apps free!

Slice beat-juggling freakout is free!
Curtis Heavy granular glitchfest is free!
Sound Scope Space wave sculpting is free!
Spoke rhythm massage is free!

See you next year

Happy Tweaking

lucas — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:45:29 +0000

All new versions of Curtis and CP 1919 have hit the app store. These include stability improvements for Curtis along with Dropbox support for CP 1919. Update away!

Supreme Harmony Voyage

lucas — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:50:22 +0000

After a long trek through Asia and a still longer period of post-travel decompression we’re back in the saddle with a bunch of announcements.

The addition of our Comlink interface which provides Copy/Paste and now Dropbox support to Curtis introduced some memory issues which lead to frequent crashes. These have been addressed in a new build submitted to Apple today. Look for the update soon!

The Comlink has been added to CP 1919 as well, so that means in the next update you’ll not only get Copy/Paste and Dropbox support but also a CP 1919 manual. Check the link to sneak a peek at the new interface design! It’s on the way through the app approval process now. Also, to ease your wait, the price has been lowered to $9.99.

Up next, Donut improvements.

And finally, thanks Steve

Curtis is down with ACP

lucas — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:15:46 +0000

We’re traveling a lot this summer, so development is a trickle, but we do have quite a lot brewing. We’ve finally added Intua-style Audio Copy/Paste to Curtis. It’s the top-ranked feature request, so this update should please a lot of users! We also worked in a browser, allowing you to view the user manual right from within the app.

At the same time CP 1919 got some orientation tweaks. The upcoming release defaults to standard app behavior and flips the whole screen around when you rotate your iPad. If you prefer the old style, it’s available via application settings, as is a new reverse mode if your iPad case if different from mine. Cool!?

Both app updates will be ported to their respective other.

In other news, we’re steadily porting Slice to iPad as well as exploring some future possibilities, like neural network sequencing.

So that’s what that does!

lucas — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:56:57 +0000

Today the long-missing manual for Curtis for iPad has finally found its way to our site. Hopefully this clarifies any obscurities in the interface. We’ve long wondered about all those buttons and sliders.

Terrible .2′s

lucas — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:36:43 +0000

Performance recording just got released with Curtis for iPad 2.2, and it’s queued up and awaiting approval with CP 1919 version 1.2 along with a slew of nifty additions and the odd bug fix. We’re eagerly awaiting the release, but in the meantime, here’s a preview:

Curtis Control

lucas — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 01:28:53 +0000

New in 2011, Curtis 2.1 adds a keyboard along with XY pads for even better touch control! Turn any recorded sound into a synthesizer!

The keyboard controls the grain cycle length to match standard twelve-tone tuning. However, the content of the source sound file at the current time point along with other parameters will determine the pitchiness of the sound heard. When the time point is static, Curtis behaves like a wavetable synth. When you pinch to create a grain range or apply the time LFO, things get.. stranger.

Two new XY pads control pitch and time LFO’s for still more wonk. The horizontal axis controls LFO frequency, while the vertical controls its depth. One wiggles the source point in the audio file, the other wiggles grain size, which in many cases corresponds to pitch.

We also gave the interface a twice-over, greatly improving multi-touch performance. Now you can apply all kinds of fingers and toes to the sound mangling craft.

We hope you’ll enjoy these new additions!

• keyboard control for chromatic mode
• pitch and position LFO modulation
• much multi-touchier
• improved pitch slew behavior

Curtis turns 2.0

lucas — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:43:13 +0000

We’re eminently pleased to announce the 2.0 release of Curtis today, with some great new features:

• All new user interface
• Amplitude envelope
• Scratch mode
• Chromatic pitch quantize

We think this edition is a great improvement over the last. It’s far more musical, with chromatic quantize snapping the grain pitch to actual notes. A fantastic idea from Sleazy! The new amplitude envelope greatly extends usability and expressivity, so Curtis doesn’t perpetually sound, but can now be played like a more traditional instrument. Controls have all been surfaced, so there is no longer a need to flip down a hidden panel. The scratch mode we were playing around with some months ago has been incorporated as well. A big thanks to the users who wrote with suggestions, ideas, and demands!

Curtis updates big and small

lucas — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 20:49:00 +0000

A couple Curtis updates just appeared on the App Store. On the iPhone, Curtis Heavy now uses file sharing through iTunes, ditching the peculiar browser upload. It still uses the first four seconds of your WAV file. Curtis on the iPad has had some major memory fixes, so it handles large files far better than before. Great news, finally enabling crash-free access to the awesome included library by Richard Devine. Sorry it took so long! Enjoy the grains.

Curtis gets Devine

lucas — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:57:03 +0000

The latest installment of Curtis, version 1.1, is up on the iTunes Store. We’re extra excited about this one, as Richard Devine has been kind enough to create an incredible sound scape for the app. We could hardly think of a better way to glitch bliss on Curtis!

New in this release:

exclusive Richard Devine sound set
pitch control
echo effect
volume control
mp3 import