The Strange Agency » Space

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

Spacelift

lucas — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:27:20 +0000

Sound Scope Space for iPad just got a major facelift along with the addition of the number one user-requested feature: presets. You can now save and recall all settings and wave shapes. We hope this will help make Space more of a tool and less of a toy. Enjoy!

Space Love 1.5

lucas — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:10:36 +0000

We just submitted a new version of Space, coming to your iPad (extremely) soon. The touch interface was totally reworked, tossing the iPhone modal paradigm. The short of it: you can get all multi-freaky now: tweaking wave forms as you select notes, detune an oscillator, adjust the echo, set the modulator. We rarely wish we had more fingers, but this morning we’ve nearly deployed our toes. The new hold features do however make it a little easier on our overwrought digits.

• rewritten touch interface, now much more multi!
• fixed ultra-crashed arp
• fixed arp display sync issue
• hold now works with arp off, for a sustained single note
• hold now extra sticky, allowing you to add and alter arp notes while a touch is held in the note area

Oh, and as for that borken arp. For the nerds among ye: the compiler was wreaking voodoo when optimizing the app. Everything rocked hard on our debug iPad, but the release version was doing Alpha Centauri math we’re only beginning to understand. Making a function-local variable into a class variable fixed the bug. Free pizza to the first commenter who can explain this!

Time for Space on the iPad

lucas — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:28:47 +0000

I am very pleased to announce the first iteration of our first iPad app, Space for iPad. It was obvious that the iPad would be a boon to our audio apps, but I didn’t know it would be so much fun! Trying the iPhone apps on the iPad sent me straight to Xcode. This release is a fairly direct port of Sound Scope Space. More features are already implemented and coming your way soon!

Waves in Space

lucas — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Per your request, default waves are coming soon to Sound Scope Space. The holy trinity of Sine, Square, and Saw are included, along with a memory bank to allow you to toggle between a default wave and one you’ve made. For added thrills, the wave morphs into shape, with morph speed being determined by the master (ie arpeggiator) tempo.

Sixteen bits still sound too smooth? Missing your SID chip? Two LO-FI bit reduction modes are coming as well!

Added a quickstart guide to Space

lucas — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:08:52 +0000

Sure, the videos help a lot, and there is a detailed manual, but who has time for all that? For the Eager Among Thee, we’ve added a quick guide to Space you can digest within seconds!

Sound Scope Space released!

lucas — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:51:08 +0000

Building on the huge success of its free Sound Scope iPhone application, the Strange Agency LLC has just released the new Sound Scope Space, a unique audio-visual, multi-touch musical instrument for the iPhone.

With a completely rewritten audio engine, Space gives users the unique wave-sculpting touch interface of the original, but with added range and precision. Notes are now quantized to standard MIDI semitone values, allowing Space to play nicely with other instruments — on stage, in the studio or on the bus.

Unlike other mono-synths that let a user select from two or three basic waveforms, the Sound Scope series allows users to sculpt sound waves freely, giving its users an endless sonic palette. The now classic realtime Sound Scope display, an oscilloscope-like waveform rendering, lets users see their sound as well as hear it.

Rather than use a keyboard of fixed size, Space utilizes the potential of touch by allowing users to pan and zoom the pitch space. Using two fingers on the pitch ruler along each edge, the user can pinch or drag to quickly hone in on a given octave with great precision or to zoom out for maximum range.

The novel Kuzmoscillator™ provides two LFO controls in one unusual gestural interface. With a quick swipe of the finger, the user can set both pitch and volume modulation. Rather than using a “rate” and “depth” knob for each LFO, the Kuzmoscillator™ measures both the direction and the speed of a swipe, thus a fast vertical swipe creates a warbling vibrato while a slow horizontal swipe will gradually shift the volume up and down.

Capitalizing on the iPhone’s multi-touch capability, Space adds an arpeggiator thus allowing users to easily play patterns of notes. A synchronized echo effect adds even more sonic possibilities; with the arpeggiator disabled, a user can vary the length of the echo effect using the tempo control, packing a lot of variation into a simple interface.

Sound Scope Space preview

lucas — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:16:43 +0000

Looks like the attentive folks at wire to the ear have an ear to ground, for they beat us to the punch this morning! Thanks Oliver!

The release candidate of Sound Scope Space has been passed on to a certain sleeping giant for approval, so watch this space for the good word. Meanwhile feast your (wired) ears and eyes on the latest preview:

Sound Scope Space demo

Sound Scope Pro preview!

lucas — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:00:08 +0000

Sound Scope Pro video theremin from the strange on Vimeo.

A preview of the upcoming pro version of Sound Scope with completely rewritten audio engine, Kuzmoscillator™ modulator, more range, and higher resolution!