Tweet A Sound { sound + software }

13Apr09

UPDATE available: Tweet A Sound v1.1. Read about it here.
Tweet A Sound

Tweet A Sound is a desktop application that uses Twitter as a platform for sharing sonic tweets. Pushing the idea of “social sound design”, Tweet A Sound allows you to design a sound and share it in a community of like-minded folks. It is an opportunity for fun interaction with sound.

Here is an introductory video showing you how to get started with Tweet A Sound. But remember you don’t need to know sound to do this, half the fun is tweaking the settings without knowing what they do! Just tweak and tweet!


Tweet A Sound: getting started tutorial from Andrew Spitz on Vimeo.

Tweet A Sound has been built in Max/MSP. You do not need Max/MSP to run it, but for now you do need to be on Mac OS. I hope to have a Windows version out soon.

DOWNLOAD Tweet A Sound v1.0 (Mac)
UPDATE: DOWNLOAD Tweet A Sound v1.1 (Mac)
Tweet A Sound {home}Tweet A Sound {make}Tweet A Sound {recieve}

The sound engine is based on FM Synthesis and has a waveshaper, a delay, feedback and a flanger. You can get a ton of interesting sounds out of these.

The basics for making your tweet

In “Monitoring”, choose your audio driver.

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Switch on the audio (it should be on from opening).

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Design your sound.

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Log in and send your tweet. For peace of mind, you will see the sent results. If for some reason you can’t send your tweet directly from Tweet A Sound, you can hit “copy tweet” and copy it to Twitter yourself.

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The basics for receiving a tweet

In Twitter, either search for #tas (easy to remember, it’s the acronym for Tweet A Sound) or just get them through the people you’re following.

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Copy the tweet.

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Paste it into the receive text box of Tweet A Sound.

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Press the button and hear the sound.

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DOWNLOAD Tweet A Sound v1.0 (Mac)
UPDATE: DOWNLOAD Tweet A Sound v1.1 (Mac)

For bug reports, questions, ideas, or suggestions, you can reach me at andrew [at] soundplusdesign [dot] com

Can’t wait to hear your tweets! Follow me on Twitter

If anybody is into designing icons, I would really appreciate a new take on the current one. It’s my first attempt at designing an icon and it’s very far from ideal.

Filed under: Max/MSP/Jitter, hack, software   |  49 Comments

49 Responses to “Tweet A Sound { sound + software }”  

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  1. 1 themelissard on Apr 13th, 2009 said:

    I don’t know anything about sound, but Tweet a Sound is super fun. Making random sounds is entertaining.

    Follow me at twitter/themelissard!

  2. 2 Kyle Studstill on Apr 13th, 2009 said:

    This is a stellar idea, Andrew. Rock on. Curious to see if the copy-then-paste-back-into-application method is any kind of barrier but otherwise great execution. (gotta wait until I get back home to try fully on mac…)

  3. 3 Andrew Spitz on Apr 13th, 2009 said:

    Thank you Kyle! Yeah, I agree about the copy and paste option not being the best. Part of the next update is to get a live update directly from Tweet A Sound. Cheers for the feedback.

  4. 4 Mark on Apr 13th, 2009 said:

    Love it! The only thing I had trouble with was when copying a tweet into the app, I didn’t realize I had to keep the #tas at the beginning. Once I figured that out it was pretty great.

  5. 5 Andrew Spitz on Apr 13th, 2009 said:

    Hi Mark, I’m happy you figured it out because your tweet sounds great!

  6. 6 Srikanth AD on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    Hi, Thanks for sharing

  7. 7 Yann Seznec on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    Looks really great Andrew, I can’t wait to try it out. I’ll try and spread the word, I’m sure tons of people would be really interested in this!

  8. 8 Andrew Spitz on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    Hey Yann, great you’re getting involved. Looking forward to hearing some of your tweets. Especially after your cool ‘chicken box’!

  9. 9 Julian on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    Great stuff! This could be the basis for an awesome sound installation – maybe collect all #tas tagged tweets and then perform some algorithmic processing on them… already thought about that?

  10. 10 Andrew Spitz on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    ooh, I like the sounds of that.

  11. 11 muzik 4 machines on Apr 14th, 2009 said:

    add me to your list for new sounds :)
    (muzik4machines)

  12. 12 Rusuden on Apr 15th, 2009 said:

    Nice… This looks super cool.
    I’ll be using it on my twittttterrrrrrrrr
    http://twitter.com/Rusuden

  13. 13 Josh Wilken on Apr 15th, 2009 said:

    You sir…. are a genius. This is awesome fun! Thank you!

  14. 14 Robert Luna on Apr 16th, 2009 said:

    This is rock solid. Nice work.

  15. 15 Andrew Spitz on Apr 17th, 2009 said:

    Thanks to everyone for the kind words of support! Some great sounding tweets out there.

  16. 16 Torley on Apr 19th, 2009 said:

    REALLY innovative, Andrew. Combines 2 of my fave things: synthesis and social media. I hope to give this a go soon.

  17. 17 J. Simon van der Walt on Apr 20th, 2009 said:

    So, could this be ported to Pd?

  18. 18 Andrew Spitz on Apr 20th, 2009 said:

    It was only built using Max/MSP. Tweet A Sound itself is a standalone application which requires neither Max nor Pd. As long as you are on a Mac it should work.

  19. 19 lematt on Apr 21st, 2009 said:

    why not sharing the max patch ? ;)

  20. 20 Andrew Spitz on Apr 22nd, 2009 said:

    hehe. Of course! Will share the subpatch for sending a tweet from Max, Just busy busy at the moment. The rest is just insane logic that I don’t think would be of any use to anyone.

  21. 21 lematt on Apr 22nd, 2009 said:

    thanks. the tweet sending subpatch would be really useful to imagine sharing data via twitter …

  22. 22 lematt on Apr 22nd, 2009 said:

    http://twitter.com/lematt

  23. 23 Sample Of The Day on Apr 22nd, 2009 said:

    This is awesome. Thanks for a terrific tool :)

  24. 24 roy on Apr 22nd, 2009 said:

    This is truly awesome, good work!
    What about just coding a patch from scratch(random)?
    Think I shall go try that out now.

  25. 25 James Haskin on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    This is a great app to play with. There seems to be a bug though. Sometimes the tone just keeps playing. Not a big deal but I thought you’d like to know.

    James

  26. 26 Andrew Spitz on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    Hi James, thanks for letting me know. Could it be when you play with the amplitude envelope? If the last break point is anything but zero, it will keep playing that note. Do you think it could be that? Thanks for letting me know!

  27. 27 Chuck on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    Cool app! I’d love to see this come to the iPhone/iPod touch.

    One problem I’m having: none of the tweets I paste into the receive window seem to work. I can make sounds, but that’s it.

    Any suggestions on getting this working?

    Thanks.

  28. 28 Andrew Spitz on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    Thanks Chuck.
    When you copy the tweet, are you sure you are including #tas? You need to in order for the tweet to be decoded… hope this is it. If not, let me know.

  29. 29 Nicklaus Deyring on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    Brilliant work, great way to approach social sound design. Props!

  30. 30 mads hobye on Apr 23rd, 2009 said:

    Cool idea and app! We have been working on sort of same technical concept about turning barcodes into music pieces. Look at the website. I think the potential is there for making whole songs that can be encoded in a tweet.

  31. 31 the lloyd-tones on Apr 24th, 2009 said:

    very cool indeed. thanks for helping distract me from the arduous task of mixing down my ep :)

  32. 32 Andrew Spitz on Apr 24th, 2009 said:

    Hey Mads, I checked out your site and video. It’s a very cool concept and it seems to be working like a charm. nice one!

  33. 33 Dan on Apr 24th, 2009 said:

    Ha that’s sweet. A bit like the SuperCollider tweets people are making (tho that’s the whole language rather than a single patch?) http://tinyurl.com/sctweets

  34. 34 Andrew Spitz on Apr 24th, 2009 said:

    Yes, I saw that! Very cool indeed. Thanks for the link.

  35. 35 Joe on Apr 25th, 2009 said:

    would it be hard to read a Twitter search results feed in the Tweet a Sound app? It seems like it would be easy, unless MAX is totally ignorant of the internet. I am totally ignorant of MAX, beyond the very basics (and that’s years ago…).

  36. 36 Andrew Spitz on Apr 25th, 2009 said:

    You’re right Joe, it’s totally doable. It just involves time. I’m going to try have it for the next update.

  37. 37 eleona on Apr 26th, 2009 said:

    I wish Tweet a Sound could send recorded sounds from own environment instead of only synthesized ones from the presets. How cool would that be?

  38. 38 Andrew Spitz on Apr 26th, 2009 said:

    It would be very cool, it does mean sending a whole lot more information then just a string of numbers though… Keep the suggestions coming!

  39. 39 t.Bot MerKaTroiD on May 7th, 2009 said:

    Having some ish when trying to ‘paste’ the #tas code into the app to hear the tweets.. anyone else having this ish? im using v.1.0

  40. 40 Andrew Spitz on May 7th, 2009 said:

    Hi, make sure you include #tas when you paste the code in. That should do it.

  41. 41 Amado Cruz Hermida on May 15th, 2009 said:

    Wondering if your still planning on releasing the Windows version for us that are Mac illiterate? I’m really interested in using this for an interactive art project I’m working on. Ciao!

  42. 42 Andrew Spitz on May 16th, 2009 said:

    I am, sorry for the delay. I had issues when trying to compile it and I have been incredibly busy. I decided to first get a Mac update out and then releasing the Windows version. Hope it will be ready on time for you to integrate it into your project.

  43. 43 downloads on May 30th, 2009 said:

    Hi, found your blog while searching in google for downloads and your posts are relevant and interesting.

  44. 44 lizi on Jun 16th, 2009 said:

    hey this looks super cool!!! plz can u do a windows version?! :-) i would be really keen!!

  45. 45 Andrew Spitz on Jun 16th, 2009 said:

    Thanks for the interest Lizi. I keep meaning to try build a windows version, but somehow can’t find the time or the Windows machine to do build it. I tried before ad had a to of problems. I will be trying again soon.

  46. 46 jas on Jul 12th, 2009 said:

    hmm quits on launch. Macpro running 10.5.7

    just fyi

    & a bummer

  47. 47 Andrew Spitz on Jul 12th, 2009 said:

    Hi Jas, I’m sorry that its quitting on launch. I’m runnng the same system as you and it works fine. I haven’t heard anyone else with that issue. Which version are you using? Maybe try an other version of TAS.

  48. 48 ader on Jul 16th, 2009 said:

    cool sound

  49. 49 zed on Jul 26th, 2009 said:

    http://www.twitter.com/drzvook

    this is fantastic. works perfectly for me.

    if anyone wants to exchange sounds then add me!

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