Coconut – Step-Sequenced Mbiras
Posted on December 3, 2012
After many sleepless nights and a few lost hairs I’m chuffed to announce the completion of Coconut: a self contained music sequencing tool made within the MaxMSP visual programming environment.
At the heart of Coconut is a multisampled toy Mbira (a small finger piano made from the shell of a coconut) that was given to me as a gift some years ago. Since then it’s been bitterly starring at me from my shelf collecting dust, but now it’s woody sonic-spirit has been immortalised in the digital realm as ones and zeros! If you’re a Mac, download her and give her a whirl! I’d love to hear how you get on. 
Video Demo
Here’s a video of Coconut doing her thing, so you can see how she operates:
Under The Hood
Aaaaand here’s a MaxMSP screenshot for those interested in checking out what Coconuts wire jungle looks like beneath the bonnet:
Click Here to Download Coconut for Mac OSX
Really incredible sounds!!! indeed..
download isn’t working for me and i’m interested in giving this thing a whirl. i’m getting a “page not found.” tips?
Sorry Devin! Please try the link again now – it’s all fixed! Thanks for your interest – I hope Coconut gives you 5 minutes of fun!
Many apologies my musical brethren! WordPress is playing silly buggers with my zip upload – I’ve uploaded Coconut to my public dropbox instead for now and updated the link above. Should all be working!
As a quick side note, this is my first maxMSP project and I’d very much appreciate any feedback for improvements or potential expansion if anyone has any ideas! Cheers dudes!
Peace out,
Lee
Iove it.
Rats – no sound output for me on 10.8.2… any ideas?
Heya! If you’re using an external audio device, is it possible to switch your system settings to ‘internal speakers’ to see if you’re getting sound that way? I’m going to add a dsp object to coconuts menu in an update so that users can configure their output settings from the app to prevent this kind of problem. I’ll let you know when the update is uploaded!
No joy – running it through the headphones port – thought it might be Soundflower, so I uninstalled that (and restarted) – still no luck. MacBook Pro.
Doesn’t open on 10.6.8?
Awesome idea. Beautifil look. Thanks for sharin. Nice little toy