24 Hour Guardian Drone Radio - Test [Work in Progress]

Part of the Guardian Hack Day project: http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/developer-blog/2012/feb/02/guardian-hack-day-1

An experiment in what a 24 hour ambient background news headline internet radio station would sound like.

Python code polls the Guardian API for new headlines and puts the Section, Headline and "Standfirst" into a new text file that's then automatically detected and piped through Mac OS X's text-to-speech engine and then into Ableton Live, the voice has some filters (Chorus, Guitar Rig, Female Vocals & Vocal Nuance) just to take the edge off it (but sadly doesn't make it any easier to understand).

Background soundscape supplied by SpaceDrone from Reaktor Factory Selection, pushed through Guitar Rig (again) and some beat filling filters in Live. The vocal is side-chained into the soundscape to knock the background back a bit when she speaks.

And then throw in a couple of Kicks.

In theory this would broadcast 24 hours a day.

TODO:

Delay the headlines being read out for a minute and then have some evolving pads in the background that change their parameters based on the news headline that's *about* to be read, to change the mood based on the news sections (Politics, Sport, Film and so on)