Saturday, March 29, 2014

Usine Hollyhock

I'm ambivalent in regards to Usine Hollyhock while I found it to have a lot of interesting options and a lot of the stock standard filters and tools, the poor usability was a huge distraction. Often, there are random panels and buttons with arrows, the buttons don't even highlight when you hover over them. I rarely knew what I was actually doing.

That said, as an experimental tool for generating sound (I particularly enjoyed the random sound clip generator), it is fun. As a professional development tool to be used in a live performance, I'd really caution against using it. It lacks control and polish that professional software more typically has. Ableton Live may be complex, but it has rhyme and reason. Usine Hollyhock is complex, and also confusing.

1 comment:

Nathaniel Litvintchouk said...

Not bad despite being your first time with Usine Hollyhock. I didn't even figure out how to use the random sound generator.I agree with you when it comes to ableton having rhyme and reason when it comes to being used as a development tool.

It's really strange how something that sounds so random can sound so harmonious. The sounds fit and go well together, since they all sound like chimes and bells. However, some of the sounds used sound like they end too abruptly (for example, the long distant chime around 1:30). Besides that, this isn't a bad first Usine Hollyhock pass.