lapfox

greenhouse - they found a complexity in me and cared so deeply

a collection of sketches, b-sides, alternate versions, etc that i like a lot

tāzī β (3:07)
seam (0:59)
reikä (2:18)
antimuro (1:48)
harvestman (3:10)
devastating (2:09)
näköalapaikka (1:20)
taceō (2:04)
place5+changes (1:43)

downloads are attached, will be on YT later as well, but not bandcamp. it'll be accessible publicly through the back catalog on my website as well.

work updates: end of starchild

i've been working mostly every day on "end of starchild" (previously known as time tripper circuit02) since the release of the k2 record. next week i'm expanding testing to a few more individuals, but most of the maps are in their final state. much of the actual zscript/ACS/decorate/etc has been refactored and i've engaged in heavy work in optimizing the project. currently i am working to remove most of the dynamic lighting and replace it with manually-created sector light gradients (see attatched image for the absolute torture). this isn't a necessary step, but will help with performance on slower machines. this will increase the storage required for the maps, as the plaintext compiled-at-runtime UDMF format needs quite a few characters to store all of those additional lines, but it should not be astronomical. the last test version of the project was thankfully just over 50mb, only a handful of which are textures, sprites, audio, and music. most of it is the maps.

the project has wound up containing a lot more text than i had initially planned, so it will ship with a CSV which will allow for easy-ish localization into other languages. i will do what i can to have it ship with a few languages included, but my resources are limited; and please understand that i'm not willing to pass the project out to just anybody to work on in advance.

i'll be continuing to work on this as much as possible for the time being; i do have a music project thing happening, and naturally end of starchild will come with a finalized soundtrack release. i have some plugin ideas kicking around, and will also be looking into making the k2 album multitracks available. those area a bit of a challenge as each channel is used more or less "whenever it is available", so they're all kind of a mess and not super useful to other musicians. but it is what it is.

that's all for now, cheers.

some new plugins: chorus, delay, hihat

CT-PC and CT-PD: chorus and delay pedals. the chorus is an extension of my previous "horus" plugin, a little more finely tuned. the delay is a generalized bucket brigade-ish delay that tends to clip pretty easily even at moderate levels, so the feedback can get very rowdy and washy, especially with modulation turned up. it also has a glitchy octave mode. both pedals' width controls go from mono, to stereo (50%) to phase inverted (100%). demo: https://msx.horse/patreon/20240605_130023.mp4

CT-P01H: a hihat. responds to F#3, G#3, and A#3 notes (as per midi drum standard for closed, pedal, and open hat). velocity sensitive, a few very tweakable parameters that will get you a lot of oldschool drum machine sounds. demo: https://msx.horse/patreon/20240605_130835.mp4

K² - Unrealistic Project Roadmap [ALBUM DOWNLOAD]

download for $4+ patrons: https://halleylabs.itch.io/upr/patreon-access

itch.io: https://halleylabs.itch.io/upr

bandcamp: https://halleylabs.com/album/unrealistic-project-roadmap

THANK YOU FOR WAITING!!!!!!!!

album release stream @ 7PM EST (~4 hours from now)

will be live at 6PM @ https://www.twitch.tv/msx2plus/ - album will debut at 7PM, and after that i'll get everything posted up for patrons, put it live on bandcamp, youtube, and so on. seeya soon!

may mentorship application last call

hey all, just an update on this: i'll be going through applications tomorrow. if you'd still like to sign up, please see this post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mentorship-open-103204153 - after that, applications will be closed until the start of june. cheers.

blog post: pop speedcore rhythm theory: something for everybody

what it says on the tin: a light dissection of modern speedcore and its immense accessibility, and how you can use it.

new album 2024/05/11

debut stream MAY 11 2024, 7PM EST @ https://www.twitch.tv/msx2plus/

album will be on bandcamp and itch.io immediately after, and will be available to patrons then as well. see you there, thanks for waiting.

4 new plugins available

all of them are available @ https://msx.horse/ct.php

for synths, it's just one, but it has been a labor of extensive love and research over the past few months:

- CT-FC01 pseudopolygon: reverse engineering of the Ricoh 2A03/2A07 triangle wave generator and its associated amplification and mixing circuitry. it has the ability to output the raw triangle wave (as you would hear when the chip is directly tapped), but more importantly, seeks to approximate the amp and mixing circuitry. this has a fairly extensive manual available on the plugins page

for effects, we have three:

- CT-U04 spplay: a playable steiner-parker filter that breaks up at high amplitudes. has an additional sine oscillator for reinforcement and detuning options. requires audio and MIDI input.

- CT-U05 pwmvol: a PWM encoder/decoder. strips the vast majority of the amplitude information from the input, reduces it to a user-defined bitrate, and then uses the input's amplitude as a PWM signal to reconstruct the amplitude changes. can get a bit loud, play safe.

- CT-U06 bitout: a bit reducer that outputs only the difference between the input and quantized signal, amplified enough for it to be audible even at high bit depths. includes quantization dither and an amplitude-tracking filter for additional sound sculpting. can get extremely loud, especially with the quantization dither.

mentorship applications open to patrons

hey folks, i've prepared an application form for the mentorships. please fill it out if you are interested, and please read the original post before applying: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mentorship-tier-102414691

i'll be going through these at the end of the week and picking a couple folks out to start, and will announce when i've done so as to not leave everybody hanging.

application form: https://msx.horse/patreon/intake/signup.php

i will be mostly unavailable from may 21st-29th, and we will work out fill time/date schedules once i contact you.

cheers and thanks so much

resources for "Sprung"

(minus vocals and most of the breaks, as per usual): https://msx.horse/storage/res.stems/_etc/Sprung%20%5B170BPM%5D.zip

as always, peep the license @ https://msx.horse/res.php

mentorship tier starting in may

hey folks, hope you're keeping well.

i am excited to announce that starting in may, i will be adding a mentoring tier to the patreon. i've been working over the past couple months to figure out how to best approach this and to try things out (as well as trialing it with some friends), and i think it's just about go time.

the tier will include two monthly one-on-one sessions over Discord: a two(ish) hour session on where we poke and prod at you and your work, and a shorter (half-hour-ish, maybe a bit longer) folllow-up a couple weeks later in which we go over any homework i'd given you during the previous session.

my goals with you might include:

- help you find the holistic throughline in your work
- play devil's advocate and get you chasing the increasingly challenging and atypical ideas
- explore the philosophy of arrangement in your work
- have fun with your "bad" ideas
- getting into the nitty-gritty of mixing, mastering, and so on
- ask you (potentially big) questions
- totally upend your workflow
- make decisions for you
- be extremely firm about you getting things done
- and so on...

once you sign up, i'll have you fill out a form with the necessary information, links to a couple of the pieces you're most proud of (if applicable), as well as pieces that you aren't (also if applicable), and so on. it is highly recommended that you at least know your way around your software a little bit. i am, unfortunately, not here to teach from zero, but i can be flexible in terms of what we actually do - if you want to strictly tackle the philosophy of your creations, we can do that. if you just want to go techincal, we can do that. none of what we do will be born from a template, we are focusing very directly on you and your wants.

my only real limitation is that i may not know your software super well - but will make an effort to know its basic functionality by the time we chat. as well, though i have some music theory knowledge, my approach may be hard to translate. we can paint in broad strokes in this field and i can recommend a number of resources.

i've been mulling pricing over pretty hard - i want it to be in the realm of affordability while acknowledging how much time it's going to take per client - but have settled on it being $200usd for the two sessions. you'll be free to come and go as you wish, you can do one month, you can do a few, whatever works best. if there are any issues with patreon payment timing lining up in weird ways (ie. paying mid-month but only wanting one month, so second session ends up in the next month), i'll handle it directly and make sure it's not an issue.

i will be opening for two spots to start in may, and i will be available most days from 2pm-9pm EST. we can work with whatever is best for you in that range.

naturally, you should have a microphone and be able to share your screen over discord. a quiet environment is best. i can't function when there's other talking, yelling, shouting, etc going on. no webcams, and contact will not be available between sessions aside from session rescheduling and similar issues. please remember that this is not for establishing a relationship or friendship.

thanks for your ongoing support and love, and don't worry - there's music coming very soon.

Emoticon & Rotteen - Sprung!

Emoticon & Rotteen - Sprung

took a break from a much more intense project to have some FUN!!! this is gonna be patron-only for a short bit and then will hit youtube. [EDIT - it's up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Ih8MPzMZo]

"i cannot write music."

two weeks ago, a strange thing began to happen. nearly every time i sat down to work, i felt repulsed by it. the sensation is hard to describe. constricting, claustrophobic, tense. i worked through it, churning out file after file of things i simply wasn't content with. with each new file, the sense of tightness grew, until i could feel it up the back of my spine. my creative thinking and problem solving skills became clouded by nothing. big, empty clouds, obscuring the thought process. eventually, these clouds filled with anxiety and doubt, and then a sinking sensation.

"i cannot write music."

this is an insane thought. since the beginning of the year, i've been writing what i consider some of my most melodically interesting work ever, and suddenly... no? you don't just forget an entire lifetime of learning and experience. i stepped away for a couple days to focus on other aspects of the job and hobby. utilities, archival work, website work, etc. things i had been putting off for similar reasons. they came quickly and easily, as the goal was clear.

so, that's it, i need a goal. i set one. "i would like to write a piece by the end of the day." but, wait, that's not a goal. there's no... direction? what is a piece? ok, brain. a piece that works for this project, with [details i won't disclose yet]. how about that?

"no."

why not? i know what i want, why isn't it happening? in all of these other fields, i can approach with a rule-based system that allows me to get from point A to B mechanically, why can't it happen here?

"because it can't."

my inability to find any reason behind what was happening was foolishly devastating. the clouds obscuring my thoughts became all-encompassing. months of habit building regarding my health started to fall by the wayside. it took twists and turns full of overworking to finally realize: i am in a period of depression. for the first time in some time, everything is difficult. in this moment it is uniquely frustrating and poorly timed, given how long it's taking me to get this project even close to done (or it feels like it's taking forever, anyways). this has coupled with my ongoing sensation of "i simply do not do enough," which has been soul crushing.

i know the wonderful people supporting what i do have said it before: i'm allowed to take my time. it really and genuinely seems like people are invested in what i do and how i do it as a very generalized thing, not just "end product." and that is a beautiful thing that i have immense gratitude for. i know this sensation of "not doing enough" is internal. i am fundamentally an overworker. if i do not put in well over full-time work hours every week, i feel a little empty. even if i do, i feel a little empty, which is something i really need to sit face-to-face with and try to understand better.

there is a great humor that i only just recently rolled out greenhouse - a way to have Fun with music again - and the expectations i give myself have so quickly gone back to being grotesque and unreasonable. i really and truly adore the project i'm currently working on, and need to see it through, but maybe it needs a little space, or a little more freedom to be... whatever. i've been thinking so restrictively about it.

acknowledging all of this isn't some kind of silver bullet; it's a first step in seeing this project through in a way that is spiritually fulfilling and holistic.

it is not that i cannot write music. it is that creating anything is hard, and never really gets easier. the process is always there, and it always requires your all. i've created a lot of things that i love, and the things i love the most came from the most free places. the first step in getting back to that place is going to be undoing a bit of the psychic damage i've been imposing on myself the past few months. i need to get back to Being rather than Thinking.

anyways, that's where i'm at.

thank you for waiting, thank you for your support, i will do everything i can to make it worthwhile for you. it's probably going to take a few days of getting my head straight, but i'll get there.

i do have some near-future plans for the patreon (probably within a couple months) but i'm needing to do a lot of preemptive work for that to figure out exactly how to execute on it, but... please stay tuned.

thank you so much.

some new tools: dvn8 & soup

available at https://msx.horse/tools.php

dvn8, a single-cycle waveform generator with some fun functions, and soup, a supersaw/square/sine sample generator. the former is great for funky chiptune-ish wave generation (and more) and the latter is just a bunch of fun in general, especially for machines that can't do realtime synthesis due to lack of processing power.

windows only, should run on most versions of windows.

back catalog updates & fixes

a couple backcat fixes and changes:

• fixed the era selector options, they no longer clear when using the page navigation

• added lots of cassette and vinyl releases. for cassettes, only MP3 is offered (there is nothing to gain from FLAC here lol), and for vinyl, i've only put up select records, and rather than recordings of them i'm offering the original digital masters. missing ones are either very close to their digital counterparts, or the digital counterparts are still for sale at my bandcamp. you can also elect to use "physical" as an era selector.

as well, i fixed the azimuth on a couple of the tape recordings, namely prismatic and fuckdest jams, since they were the weirdest

https://msx.horse/backcat.php

ecoWare+ [sndwrk β]

"ecoWare+" is an early version of "_SNDWORK/gh" and serves as an interesting snapshot of the record in a state i felt was "mostly done" early on. many revisions happened after this, most obvious of which is the tracklist. some versions of tracks here vary significantly from the final versions, while others are more or less the same minus the final mastering pass.

download is attached to the post.

current project update

hey all, hope you're keeping well.

my current project is moving along slowly but surely, i'm 13-ish tracks in, but that only accounts for just over 20 minutes of audio, since it's pretty dense in terms of sequencing, composition, all that stuff.

i have an additional few tracks started that i'm still very back and forth on, and i'm not sure exactly what the end point of this one will be. given that, i figured it was time for another update letting you know that A Thing Is Happening. as has been the case recently, to keep myself motivated (and the world surprised), i'm preferring not to say too much about it beyond that.

alongside that, i've been developing a few new, weirdly specialized plugins that should be available around the time the album is out.

i've also updated my ITI collection for modplug, which is over at my github along with some other things: https://github.com/msx2plus - i started working on a pentium 2 laptop and realized older versions of modplug couldn't read my instruments as i had saved them in the wrong format, so a legacy folder has been added for those cases, along with a bunch of other sounds.

more soon, thanks for waiting. <3

blog post: lots and lots of waves

https://msx.horse/blog.php?b=blog%2F2024_03_01.nfo 

weird tech is excellent

currently about 10 tracks into the next project. i'll keep you updated and all that... plenty more to do.

a couple small applications

hey all, been working on my current project and wound up cooking up a couple small command line applications in the process. they're both 32bit windows command line applications. 81mod is generally harmless but you can very quickly generate thousands - or millions - of garbage files with splunger, so please take care with it.

81mod: a modification of Damian Yerrick's DPCM tools. converts a WAV file into 1bit DPCM and decodes it at 2-8bits to a new WAV file. the amplitude and sampling rate options have been greatly expanded. will accept a file dragged onto it and then prompt for the necessary arguments.

splunger: reads any file as unsigned 8bit audio and pukes out WAV files every [x] bytes, designed to be used as looping waveforms. automatically tunes all samples to middle C. has options to repeat bytes for aliased waveforms. on files over a few kilobytes you will want to limit the number of output files and be conscious about making the split size lower than a few bytes. originally designed to automatically split sound ROMs from synthesizers and hardware using unsigned 8bit audio, but wound up being fun to use on lots of things. this doesn't accept drag & drop for the time being and some command line comfort is recommended before use.

i've also put these on my site's tools/toys page.

health update, getting back to work, etc

hey all, hope you're well. thanks for your patience the last few weeks.

my wrist is more or less better and i'll be getting back to work this week. another health issue has cropped up that may or may not become more urgent in the near future (a hernia) but i am keeping tabs on things and will be sure to let you all know if i'm stuck unable to work again.

i'm quite a ways into my current project, but won't be sharing any details until it's ready, hopefully for understandable reasons - secrecy, the need to stay excited over my own work until it's done, etc.

please look forwards to it, and thank you once again for the ongoing support.

hand nerve stuff

i seem to have done something to the nerves in my right hand - it feels like the beginning of a bad carpal tunnel flare-up, but i'm not 100% certain. i will continue working on my current project while i can (thankfully i can largely work via keyboard and can just left-hand a lot of things), but i absolutely have to take it easy for the next couple weeks.

thanks for the support and patience, really looking forward to getting back to 100%, i'm really having a lot of fun working lately.

update/non-update

not much to say - been working on a new musical project for most of the month. not sure what the ETA is, but i hope you will look forwards to it. i am having a lot of fun with it and i think you might also maybe find it fun.

been working on some fun plugins as well, which should hopefully be available soonish... stay tuned.

blog post: "passing of the pede"

warning: contains centipede photos/videos

openMPT ITI collection update

here's version 20240109 - 1067 instruments, 839 of which are unique, the rest are all stereo versions for openmpt/libopenmpt only (or anything supporting modplug's stereo sample hack). updates include lots of FM sounds, multisampled bontempi keyboards, a bunch of various other synths, choir sounds, etc.

website complete

please have fun exploring... it has been a ton of work, but i think it paid off.

of particular note to everybody here will be the halley labs section, which includes a searchable back catalog, bios, and more fun stuff,

thanks so much for waiting.

happy new year <3

internet

hey all, just a super quick update; been spending the past week or so working on redoing my website from the ground up so i can update it and share stuff more easily. will probably need a few more days, as it's taking mostly all of my brain power to get stuff organized, write all the php, rewrite info pages, migrate servers, and so on and so forth.

as always, i'll keep y'all in the loop.

blog post: much has transpired

i have a blog on my server that i update extremely irregularly, but i figure i should share it here so you're all kept in the loop.

lots of love, more stuff coming soon, as usual

plugin dump

beep beep boop boop
i have some plugins for you

these come without documentation, support, and so on for the time being, and are windows only. as always if you cannot get them working in your vst3 64bit daw try renaming the .vst3 file to .dll. 

basicBits is a binary wavetable synth. you can turn the bits on or off, or change how many of the bits you wish to use in the waveform. you can slew the waveform for sounds with more detail, and then introduce texture by slewing at a lower bit depth. it has a chorus, a glitch panel that can affect all sorts of stuff, lots of pitch options, and an ADSR with up to 8 bits of depth. this was inspired by the wavetable sounds of the Namco WSG, the Konami SCC, PC Engine's sound generation abilities, etc. which of course, led to:

wsg-ns is a very inexact emulation of the Namco WSG. every wave position must be plotted manually, inspired by Junko Ozawa's graph paper waveform sketches. the output is very close to the original waveforms if you reference and redraw them. this also has a chorus option as many titles utilizing WSG would double up for that "namco sound".

subBuddy is a bass synth designed exclusiviely to make subs. you can introduce three harmonics and manually adjust the phase offset, which can quickly change the overall character of the sound, and allow you to get a very loud and consistent waveform. care is taken here to make sure that the wave's bandwidth is use as efficiently as possible. it has a phase rotation setting for generating reese-style basses with minimal phase imbalance.

romchoir is a soundfont player and pretty boring, but the included soundfont is the exciting part: tons of brand new rompler-style choirs. these were created out of the voices of several friends and i by training RVC models on our voices, and then applying those voices to other choir sounds. the result is a new selection of choirs. three of them can be mixed and matched in this plugin, allowing for a fairly wide range of expression. enjoy cheesy fake choir sounds without using the same boring reified 90s crap.

enjoy, have fun, these will eventually be public with proper documentation and all that probably. a couple others will be on their way soon too, i think.

arc,regn resources now available

as usual, they're over on the resources page @ https://heckscaper.com/resources/ - cheers, and look forward to more goodies soon.