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webfoot [at] gersic [dot] com — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 05:51:25 GMT

Welcome to gersic.com, the online home for Tom Gersic's stuff. There are all sorts of things here, so have a look around.

ZuluPad is a notepad on crack. It's a place to jot down class notes, appointments, to-do lists, favorite websites, pretty much anything you can think of. The great thing about ZuluPad is that it combines the best parts of a notepad with the best parts of a wiki, a concept made popular by Wikipedia. Try it out!

The Giant Free Plugin Database

The Giant Free Plugin Database is a searchable database of free VST, DirectX, and AU audio plugins.

Atomic Cloud

Atomic Cloud takes an audio file as input, and generates a granular synthesis grain cloud in real time. Grain clouds are played back through your speakers, and can also be rendered direct to disk, while you listen, for further processing.

Sound Borb

Sound Borb is an audio ambience generating system. The generative nature of Sound Borb's audio engine means that once you hit play, the ambience you're listening to will never end. It will never go to the next track. It will never loop. If you want to listen to the ocean, you can listen to the ocean from now until your electricity goes out. Various ambiences are available for download on the download page, and you can also create your own and post them for download here, if you're so inclined.

Splat Sound Effects Database

I'd been wanting to write a sound effects database for awhile because I hadn't been able to find anything Windows-based that is reasonably priced (like under $50). I finally got around to writing my own, Splat.

Sector 13

Sector 13 is a game being developed by Reactor Interactive to be the first ever fully 3D space shooter that plays like a multiplayer first-person shooter. I've been working on some music for it. Click on the image to see a short video of the game along with one of the pieces that I've composed:

Check out my album, nViro:
(available on iTunes and CDBaby)

Download some free VST plugins

Try out the Tom Pad...it's free!

Listen to my demo reel (note: this is pretty old...):

Short Films / Sound Designs:

Paranoia

Chicago

Air

Music Programming:
SuperCollider 3 Resources

Regular Programming:
Email::MIME::Creator How-To

Some Things to Read:
Come To Daddy Analysis

The 1997 release of the music video for Aphex Twin�s Come to Daddy, Pappy mix had the effect of catapulting the director, Chris Cunningham, from relative obscurity into being a highly sought-after video director. Prior to this video�s release, Cunningham primarily worked on special effects for Hollywood productions, such as the movie AI, while it was under the direction of Stanley Kubrick. However, within a year, he had written and directed music videos for Madonna�s Frozen (at Madonna�s personal request), Portishead�s Only You, Leftfield�s Afrika Shox, Squarepusher�s Come on My Selector, Aphex Twin�s Windowlicker, and Bj�rk�s All Is Full of Love. When asked how she chose Cunningham to direct her video, Bj�rk�s response was, �This Aphex Twin video happened, and everybody knew, here comes a genius� (Brown 2003). While the video got somewhat minimal airplay in America, MTV executive James Hyman is quoted on Wikipedia as saying that it is �one of the most powerful, certainly the most disturbing I�ve ever seen� (Wikipedia). What made this video so powerful that it immediately grabbed the attention of artists like Madonna and Bj�rk, both known for having many excellent music videos? ...[read on]

Spectro-Morphology and the Musical Grammars

Music is an aural art. While many different compositional systems are possible, ignoring the listener is detrimental to any compositional process. This fact is at the root of arguments regarding the "cognitive opacity" of post-tonal music, because music is most naturally judged by what is heard, and what is heard is not always what the composer intends...[read on]

Capitalism and American Electronic Music

American electronic music in the '60s and '70s evolved to be distinct from Western European electronic music because of the unique cultural and economic climate in America. In America, "popular" music reigns supreme, and this is in large part due to our political policies of "supply-side economics, small government, and free trade"...[read on]

Technological Limitation and Innovation in Early Electronic Music

The early development of electronic / electroacoustic music had as much to do with research and philosophy as it did with composing. The proponents of this genre concentrated a great deal of effort toward understanding the physical properties of sound, and the characteristics of aural perception...[read on]

The Raven's Kiss

The Raven's Kiss, by Howard Fredrics is a relatively contemporary work of electroacoustic music, written in 1993. The piece is stunning to listen to, and the underlying concepts of the piece are strong. They are more artistically motivated than technologically motivated. The use of technology in this piece is a means to an end, and not an end in itself...[read on]

Image to Audio Converter

The idea behind converting a .jpg into a .wav lies in the fact that the color for each pixel of a jpeg is represented by a 24 bit number. Much like web colors, each component of a pixel (Red, Green, and Blue) is stored with 8 bits, and has a maximum value of 255 (2^8=256). By using these three 8 bit colors together to create one 24 bit number, we can create a 24 bit audio sample with each pixel. Since we need 44,100 samples for each second of audio, most of the .wav files you'll create will be pretty short, unless you use a particularly large image. [read on]

Jitter Reference

Jitter is a set of 135 brilliant video, matrix, and 3D graphics objects for the Max graphical programming environment.

Contact Tom Gersic

Got something to say? Send me an email by filling out the form...

Home for My Music, Yammering, and Some Other Stuff

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