ICE : Interactive Control Environment

ICE is a Digital Audio Workstation controller. It uses Kinect for hand-tracking.

It uses Quartz Composer and Obj-C as its core. It supports both OSC and MIDI.

Intended Usage : Kinect + Augmented Reality Glasses (I used a normal projector for demonstration purposes as I couldn’t buy video AR-glasses in Turkey).

Possible Usage Fields :

• Recording Studio, DAW – Recording
• Broadcast Studio, Signal Routing
• Concert Audio, Live Mixing
• Concert Lights, DMX / CUE Control

Click here to download my band’s “Another Day In Paradise” (by Phil Collins) cover, mixed using ICE.

OR Stream (Requires HTML5 compatible browser)

Functions List / How to use ICE

Left Hand – Channel Selected 

• Right hand Y Axis = Volume
• Right hand X Axis = Pan
• Right hand Z Axis = Reverb or Comp (Assignable & Only works in ICE Live)
• Rec Arm, Input Monitoring, Solo, Mute, EQ, Compressor, Reverb = Activated & Deactivated with right hand.

Left/Right Hand Modifier

• Level Protection (L/R Hand Modifier) (ex :

How I came up with the idea

I’m a Music Tech student, and a sound engineer. Just this summer I had a terrible illness called Perianal Fistula. Because of this illness, I couldn’t sit… Thus, recording my projects, and recording new songs became almost impossible. I had a surgery, and I spent almost 3 months in bed, recovering. I’m fine and I can sit normally now, but while I was in bed, I thought about alternative ways of controlling a computer. Standing was my best alternative. But again walking around in the studio, carrying a keyboard and a mouse was not the best way to control a Digital Audio Workstation in this situation.

I bought myself a kinect, a projector, and started coding in Objective-C & Quartz Composer. I’m an Apple Enthusiast, so I needed this to work with Logic Pro. Logic Pro has OSC support, so my app uses OSC to control Logic Pro.

I started noting down everything I do when I start an album project from scratch – fussing on what takes my time. I noted down every fader, potentiometer, switch and parameter I need the most, then added them into the interface.

ICE v1.0

The first design had the transport bar on the top. I don’t usually go back in the project that often, so I thought placing the transport bar higher wouldn’t be a big problem. I placed the channels on the left, and spread the function buttons.

The biggest problem was the “click” we’re all used to from the mouse. I don’t like clicking because I felt it’s not natural. In nature, you can’t just click and watch things happen, so I spent a lot of time thinking how I can use both hands, and reduce or even remove the “click”. I utilized a modifier-key system.

When the left hand is over channel 1, the right hand’s Y adjusts the volume and X adjusts panning. (A new experimental feature : Z adjusts the reverb) It feels extremely natural, because it’s lifelike. It’s just like you’re holding the source and moving left-right or moving it away from you so you start to hear the reverb/delay and the room effect.

I used the first prototype for a week to note down what worked and what did not. I found myself escaping from the transport bar, because it’s harder to reach. Channels did feel right, but because of the general sensitivity it was hard to hold my hand over a channel while I’m adjusting something with my right hand.

I changed the entire layout.

ICE v2.0

I removed the top bar, used a different channel-layout, made the function buttons a little bit smaller, and gained some space for the “concert feed” (possible future implementation, using AR-Glasses).

Now, I don’t have to reach up to the top bar and the transport buttons are in a less-tiring place. Channels 5/13 – 6/14 – 7/15 – 8/16 are not that high now, so I have happier left arm muscles now. I realized, I didn’t actually use the Bus Channels that much in the first rough/raw record – I removed the bus channels.

The second design feels natural, fast, and overall more efficient than the first one.
After using the first two prototypes a few times, ideas flooded my brain. I noticed that ICE feels better this way. Unlike a normal desktop DAW Controller, ICE didn’t require any special knowledge because it feels incredibly natural without ‘clicking’, and I’m physically involved; controlling the rough mix by pushing the sources away, or moving them left-right; focusing on the sound rather than focusing on faders/potentiometers. I can hear small details better with ICE than mixing with normal desktop controllers where I felt like a technician, left out, not a part of the mix. However, mixing with ICE, I feel like I’m a conductor, and I’m a part of the record/mix.

1. This system can also be used in concerts. With AR-Glasses, you can select the player with your left hand, and adjust the volume/pan/reverb with your right hand.
2. This system can also be used as a light-cue controller/DMX  in concerts or other events. With your left hand, you can select light-groups, and with your right hand you can turn them on/off or adjust their brightness. Even more, you can control a big intelligent light rig, like a DMX. You can select a light with your left hand, and move it with your right hand.

WHY : I – C – E  ?

Because ICE is not just a standard DAW Controller, and it can be used to control other things, I thought it won’t be a bad idea to add “Environment” to it’s name. So I named it : ICE.

( I ) nteractive ( C ) ontrol ( E ) nvironment.

And, well, I wanted the GUI to support the name, so it also has a icy look, and the logo is an ice cube.

Music – Brain Network is a community for eMotiv EPOC EEG owners. It’s goal is to gather crowd-sourced brainwave-music data in a single place for further researching which part of a song evokes emotions.

Currently the website is 100% functional. Right now, I’m coding the Mac OS X helper app. It gathers ‘artist-song-music-time’ data from iTunes, and active engagement, excitement, frustration data from Emotiv EPOC. Once I’m done coding the app, users will run the app in the background while they’re listening to music, and the app will upload collected data to the server. Much like last.fm scrobbler, only it uploads brainwave&emotion data too.

Possible Future Usage Fields of the Crowd-Sourced Music-Emotion Data

• Find out what changes between continents, cultures, ages etc.
• Checking specifically which parts of songs give goosebumps to listeners.
• Creating a new scale-chord-emotion relation.
• Testing if a song is going to be successful if released, by distributing the song to willing participants in the community, and checking their excitement/engagement.
• Statistically estimating if a composition can evoke the intended emotions.

An Open Sourced iPad Magazine Publishing Platform for designers who hate programming

This year, me and my visual designer friend, started working on an iPad Magazine project. (Scroll down for more info and videos of the magazine) We didn’t want to use Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite, and pay hundreds of dollars to a 3rd party company just to publish it. While we were working on the magazine, I noticed that he hated it when I spoke computer language/code, and I realized what exactly makes Adobe so successful in their business. Visual designers don’t like coding. So I decided to design my own publishing platform. After spending two weeks with my visual designer friend, I created a new platform for digital publishing. It’s not the first, nor the best. However I created a platform for my friend, and for visual designers like him.

Here’s how it works :

1. The designer, uses the “designer’s/editor’s app”. It’s basically an app which organizes the content in a designer-friendly way, and creates a special XML file.
2. The designer/or the webmaster, uploads the XML, all images, videos, and content to their webpage.
3. Reader downloads the “reader’s app” from iTunes App Store for free. It’s basically a mini-mag-store for this platform.
4. Finally, reader picks a magazine from the store, and starts reading.

The Designer’s App

I’ve tried my best to design the simplest app that’ll do the job, so that anyone who’s familiar with the basic visual design concepts, can design a magazine. The app has a Live iPad Preview window, and a design tools window. All you have to do is to drag-and-drop images into image-boxes, and the app does the rest. After saving the XML files, all you have to do is to upload them to your server. Later, the app registers the magazine to the main lobby on my server, and the magazine takes it’s place in the mini-magazine-store, ready to be downloaded by the reader.

The Reader’s App

The reader’s app is a mini-magazine-store. After finishing the app, I found out that the technical process of publishing an app to iTunes App Store, is also really hard for a visual designer. I had two options,

1. To open the app’s source code and let the designer compile, and publish to apple (and the designer still had to pay apple a yearly fee)
2. Create a reader app, which acts like a lobby, so that no designer has to compile the reader again.

I chose the second option. So all the designer has to do is to design the magazine, and the app/cloud does the rest.

Platform Features

• Left, Right, Center positioning
• Fixed background (including scrollable text over still background – using iScroll (c) 2010 Matteo Spinelli)
• Margins and Columns
• Custom Links to internal or external pages
• Audio & Video Support
• Swipes, Taps and Double Taps (opens the index page)
• Video Cover Page

These are the main features. There are many more to come, and I’ll improve the project as I have free time.

I’m still working on the documentation, I’ll upload the XCode files with an example page soon.

– HERE IS MY EXAMPLE MAGAZINE  –

And two videos, so you can see how it looks like once it’s published.

BIS : An iPad Magazine for Music Lovers

BIS is an iPad Magazine for Music & Concert lovers. Almost every magazine on the market features studio albums, and personally I love concerts more. With BIS, I changed the standardized magazine approach to Music, and I featured concerts, more than albums. My goal is to change the way we ‘read’ music. I don’t like ‘reading’ albums! In my opinion, reading articles about music is no different than a blind-born person talking about paintings. To fully understand what’s written on the page, to understand the artist, we need to ‘hear’ the album.

• In BIS, if there is an article about an album, you can ‘hear’ the album.
• If there is an article about an artist, you can watch their music videos, concerts, listen to their albums, check their photos, tour dates, and even buy tickets for their local show.
• If there is an article about a concert, you can watch the concert, see photos of the concert, and if available, see photos from different photographers.
• BIS is like the biggest festival in the country, bringing different musicians together. BIS features different genres and styles.

To me BIS is more than just a simple magazine. It brings artists’ webpages, concerts, albums, photos and sharing their music to your iPad.

Bis (Latin) : Encore : *a repeated or additional performance of an item at the end of a concert, as called for by an audience.

My band’s drummer Elijah, lives in New York, USA while the rest of the band lives in Izmir, Turkey. This caused somewhat of a problem because it was difficult sending tracks back and forth, and collaborating on ideas. To overcome this huge difference, I used current technology to bring us together, virtually.

To record this album, Coldest Fall Turkey Studios, Me & Serkan, needed to hear Elijah’s(NY) drums (processed) in almost real time, and Elijah needed to hear Me & Serkan (as a ‘talkback’). Turkey Studios shared the computer’s screen that was recording the drums in New York Studios using iChat and New York Studios streamed the final output including the ‘talkback’ to Turkey Studios using AUNetSend & AUNetReceive ( AAC  128kbps per channel ) with a max of 2 seconds delay. (with video if iChat Video Chat is also active) / (1/2 sec. w/o video)

This system made it easy to share ideas, and to get an “extra ear” when coming up with parts. Without this system, “Lines We Drew” would have taken much longer because we would have needed to send HUGE files (~500mb for one song, and ~50 tries = 25Gb.) back and forth to exchange ideas.

The drum sound you hear in the video, is the one I hear in Turkey. So it’s good and clear enough to collaborate, and work together.

Resonance, is the biggest problem with vocal booths in general. To avoid extreme-resonance I tried my best to avoid using parallel surfaces, and tried to create a sweet-spot for my recording needs. Also, I needed this in my living room, so it had to be space efficient. My band’s bassist plays double bass, and I wanted him to be able to play his double-bass in this room. Also in the 3D design, there is a glass window, however after running acoustic simulations, I decided to remove that.

Here are some photos:

If you want to hear the results, I recorded all vocal, guitar and double bass parts of my band’s album “Lines We Drew” in this room. You can click here to listen to the album.

My living room is where I spend most of my life. It has my computer, my recording equipment, all my instruments, and my recording-booth in it. I have always wanted a bar in my house, but prices were too high. So I made my own. I designed this using Google SketchUp. I used wood to match the overall interior design of my living room.

A year later, I added the winery. (I mounted 4 parallel metal pipes under the bar.) Approximately 6 months after that, I added a small shot-glass shelf under the hanging wine glasses.

Guitar Design

A year ago, right before the Imagine Music Video, I wanted to change my guitar pickups for a better sound. When I disassembled my guitar, I wanted to change the way it looks too.

So I called my painter neighbor Yıldız Ersağdıç, who is a well-known painter in Turkey, and a teacher/researcher in my university. She kindly agreed to help, and painted the guitar.

After the painting process, I finished the guitar, and reassembled it. Later, we decided not to use the guitar in the Imagine Music Video, but in the Time Music Video.

Open Studio Design

Almost every stage musician I’ve met in my life, complains that it’s hard being in the studio. Whether it’s the small, closed room, or tracking individually, not playing with the band etc. So I decided to design an open studio with my current knowledge. Of course it has flaws, but I had time in my hands, and I wanted to design a studio, in which musicians can enjoy recording, and feel comfortable. I’ve tried my best to use glasses to maintain eye-contact between musicians while keeping the resonance in mind. I used SketchUp to design the studio, because I started this as a hobby project. Later I exported the model, and calculated the inner acoustics using ODEON. I have to admit the results were not satisfying, but after a few quick material changes, I started getting decent results. ITD was better than I expected, and the LeDe design worked pretty well without a control room glass. I used different layers of obstacles to stop the drums and guitars from leaking to the control room. So far my tests sound good in software, but real-life results always change. Here are some SketchUp rendered photos.

Lines We Drew (with Coldest Fall)

Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, Compositions, Lyrics, Production, Tech : Can Özbay

Guitars & Experimental Instruments : Serkan Sandıkkaya

Drums, Tech : Elijah Wood

Artwork Photo : Elijah Wood

Coldest Fall Logo : Nurcan Durmaz

Band’s drummer Elijah, lives in New York, USA while the rest of the band lives in Izmir, Turkey. This caused somewhat of a problem because it was difficult sending tracks back and forth, and collaborating on ideas. To overcome this huge difference, I used current technology to bring us together, virtually.

To record this album, Coldest Fall Turkey Studios, Me & Serkan, needed to hear Elijah’s drums (processed) in almost real time, and Elijah needed to hear Me & Serkan (as a ‘talkback’). Turkey Studios shared the computer that was recording the drums in New York Studios and New York Studios streamed the final output including the ‘talkback’ to Turkey Studios, with a max of 2 seconds delay. (with video) / (1/2 sec. w/o video)

This system made it easy to share ideas, and to get an “extra ear” when coming up with parts. Without this system, “Lines We Drew” would have taken much longer because we would have needed to send HUGE files back and forth to exchange ideas.

Time Music Video :

Because Elijah (drummer) lives in NY, we used green-screen to shoot all the band members individually. With careful planning, and hours of video chatting, we made the entire video, without even being in the same location.

Imagine Music Video :

We wanted to celebrate John Lennon’s 70th birthday. We covered “Imagine”, and we wanted to show everyone, how people from distant countries can make stuff together too. Band’s drummer Elijah filmed his parts in NY, USA. Rest of the video was filmed in Izmir, Turkey. This video was featured in John Lennon’s official birthday channel on YouTube.

Click on the logo below to visit my band’s website.

Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Composition, Lyrics, Production : Can Özbay

Guitars : Serkan Sandıkkaya

Bass : Osman Yaldız

Artwork : Can Özbay

Coldest Fall Logo : Nurcan Durmaz

Click on the logo below to visit my band’s website.

Guitars, Piano, Compositions, Lyrics, Production : Can Özbay

Bass : Osman Yaldız

Artwork, Coldest Fall Logo : Nurcan Durmaz

Click on the logo below to visit my band’s website.