This isn’t like any Hurdy-Gurdy you’ve seen or heard before.

Derek Holzer’s optoelectronic Tonewheels Hurdy-Gurdy is a combination of mechanical, optical, and electronic elements, part sculpture and part instrument. It recalls vintage mechanical and optical instruments, but with a sound that is decidedly modern and strange.

In the translation, something wonderful happens: this becomes a serious punk instrument, producing surprising, hard-edged sounds. The wheels turn, and the gizmo rocks.

Combining disciplines in this sort of design also means merging different skill sets, so it’s telling that input for the instrument has come from other artists, including friend-of-the-site circuit designer Eric Archer, who has been involved in our Handmade Music series (now MusicMakers). Coming full circle (ahem), I’m thrilled that Mr. Holzer will be organizing MusicMakers at CTM here in Berlin. We have a call out now to participate in the hacklab for that event; I’ll share more details on that event here in the coming days.

I’m a great fan of Derek’s work; there’s plenty to explore below and I hope we cover more soon.

TONEWHEELS HURDY-GURDY(VIELLE A ROUE OPTOÉLECTRONIQUE) from macumbista on Vimeo.

This optoelectronic hurdy-gurdy was commission by the Acces(s) Festival, Pau France in October 2012.
TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions, such as the Light-Tone Organ (Edwin Emil Welte, 1936 Germany), the ANS Synthesizer (Evgeny Murzin, 1958 USSR), and the Oramics system (Daphne Oram, 1959 UK). Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry similar to that used in 16 & 35mm motion picture projectors to produce sound.
The TONEWHEELS Hurdy-Gurdy presented at Acces(s) is not an “interactive” artwork in the common sense. While it does not reward the impatient museum visitor with flashing lights and noises at the simple touch of the button, it does invite participation in the process of technological music creation. Although it first appears to be a very traditional instrument known to many folk-music cultures, it functions in a very different way which can only be discovered by playing it.
The artist would like to thank Tobias Traub of Oroborus Customs e.K. and Carlo Crovato for their invaluable assistance in creating this instrument. Circuits designed by Jessica Rylan and Eric Archer are also used within the system.
More information on this project can be found at macumbista.net/?p=3020

This is just one piece out of the Tonewheels project, all working with this medium of physical, optical discs. Here’s a beautiful video from another iteration:

cuT 30[draft]-TONEWHEELS filmed by Eyes_For_Ears from macumbista on Vimeo.

The over-arching project has its own page:
http://umatic.nl/tonewheels.html

The Hurdy-Gurdy is described on Derek’s blog:
http://macumbista.net/?p=3020

And lots of other projects, including his new Solstice Soundboxes, are detailed there, as well:
http://macumbista.net/

Hope some of you get to see Derek and me in person in Berlin next month, and for everyone else, we’ll see you on the Internet.

All photos courtesy the artist.

Handheld controller from Argentina – brewed entirely with open source tools, shared as an open source tool. Images courtesy the artist.

Knowledge on how to build dazzling new interfaces for music is spreading. And because musical performance depends on sharing knowledge and practice, that could have a transformative effect. Literally as I’m walking out the door to leave for a showcase of gestural performance in Berlin, I get a chance to look at this team from Argentina. They’re purposely giving away the plans for their open source live performance instrument, built in turn with open source hardware (Arduino) and software (free graphical development environment Pd).

It’s nice to see a sympathy with American artist (residing in Germany) Onyx Ashanti, since Onyx has described a performance idiom that embraces more of this improvisatory gestural music in electronics (calling it things like “beatjazz,” though I believe he’s searching for new nomenclature). See, previously:
Way Out From Behind The Laptop: Onyx Ashanti’s Beatjazz-Augmented Body Keeps Mutating

Here, that continues to develop, in a system with hardware and software that’s fairly understandable. Take input from a joystick and gyro sensors, and use your hands to fly through loops and sounds. You can check out all the schematics and software from this team and make your own – or modify it, and share those modifications, evolution-style.

Lovely work by Agustin Augustinoy and Urias Montanaro, studying at FAUD – UNC – Córdoba Argentina.

Full project files and the like, plus a community:
http://muditmusic.wix.com/mudit

Sometimes, an idea is so beautifully elegant, it just seems obvious.

That’s the feeling I get from Koma’s newest prototype. The Kontrol Surface is a touch controller device. In its Light version, it’s an X/Y touch controller with CV output. The Pro version adds MIDI so it works with both analog and digital gear, and ups the ante to three-axis X/Y/Z capacitive touch.

Folks with MIDI gear will wait for the Pro version, but the Light edition already appears like it’ll become a must-have for analog/modular owners. Specs:

• 1 x CV output
• 1 x inverted CV output
• Manual gate output (so you can use it as a trigger)
• Hold function, per-channel, including a momentary hold
• …and you can clock the momentary hold. (Oh, yeah – so you can do rhythmic effects with the hold feature. It’s subtle how they’re doing this; see their post for a full explanation of what they’re planning.)

Watch a first video demo:

We’ve seen the occasional X/Y touch controller, but typically MIDI-only – KORG’s KAOSS Pad being the only one I can think of off-hand that got wide distribution. Maybe you don’t care about such a thing in the Age of the iPad, but for hardware lovers, it seems perfect – jack in CV to some analog goodies, play.

You’ll see the final versions, they say, at NAMM 2013 at the end of January in California, with shipping end of Q1 2013.

More:
New development: Kontrol Surface CV Controller! [Koma Elektronik]

A fully-functioning QuNexus prototype. It may look like the pads on the QuNeo, but Keith McMillen tells us new sensor tech should be more friendly to keyboard technique. And the fact that this is real hardware is important – Kickstarter has recently revised its rules. A look at the new hardware – and actually delivering on Kickstarter – as CDM talks to Keith McMillen.

Can a compact controller not only shrink the conventional music keyboard, but transform it, too? The layout on the just-announced QuNexus is something familiar to keyboard players. But the QuNexus assumes some new ways of playing, with keys that sense pressure and an instrument that you can tilt. Following in the footsteps (fingertaps?) of Keith McMillen’s QuNeo, the QuNexus is built around a custom-engineered set of pressure-detecting, touch-sensitive pads. But whereas previous hardware used USB for MIDI and high-resolution OSC (OpenSoundControl), the QuNexus adds Control Voltage for modular and vintage lovers, too.

The QuNexus returns to Kickstarter for crowd-funding production, a technique that raised quite a lot of money last time – and a desire to ship more quickly has even sent KMI staff to China to check suppliers first-hand – but more on that in a moment. First, a look at the hardware:

25 LED-lit “Smart Sensor” Keys with Pressure, Tilt, and Velocity
Polyphonic Aftertouch
6 Octave range
Pitch Bend Pad
2 CV/Gate Inputs
3 CV/Gate Outputs (16-bit)
Blue and White LED Illumination
14 oz, 3.5″ x 10″ x .5 ”
USB-powered, no drivers needed (Mac, PC, Android and iOS)

At first glance, this all looks just like another QuNeo with a different layout. But the QuNexus, says its makers, features new sensor technology specific to this method of playing, and the addition of Control Voltage could reshape the target audience. I also know that everyone who plays with their QuNeo and SoftStep products is impressed by just how thin, light, and compact this gear is, which could set it apart from some alternatives. The challenge for QuNexus could be competition both from KMI’s own QuNeo (and its more-capacious control layout), and ever-affordable conventional MIDI keyboards. While old-fashioned keyboards are bigger and lack the cooler features here, keyboardists are of course quite comfortable playing them. But there’s some potential here for people wanting something ultra-compact and with some different sensors; Keith McMillen himself talks about what that might be, and you can get a basic feel in the video.

The test of that market is now, as KMI again uses crowd funding to launch the project.

Kickstarter, Take Two

Keith McMillen today is both announcing the QuNexus and an accompanying Kickstarter campaign. That will likely rekindle a discussion of crowd funding as a model, for KMI and beyond. For all the exploding popularity of Kickstarter, the fundamental model – backers providing money before a product ships – has caused some friction. Specifically, KMI faced backer backlash when production of the QuNeo was heavily delayed by a supplier problem.

DJ Tech Tools published a must-read article on the history of QuNeo’s bumpy crowd-funded ride, in an in-depth story by veteran music tech writer Kylee Swenson:
Creating DJ Hardware With Kickstarter: The Right Move For KMI’s QuNeo?

The tale of that one supplier breakdown is one that hits close to home for me, as CDM collaborates with engineer James Grahame on the MeeBlip. [Full disclosure: CDM is now readying a Kickstarter campaign, unrelated to hardware, and ... yes, we're also a manufacturer.] I liked this quote by Keith in Kylee’s article:

It brings into question the ethics of manufacturing in China. “It’s a land of great expansion,” McMillen says:

“It’s like the Wild West, and you’re gonna run into problems. Some of the stuff that goes into the QuNeo can only be built there because they have the most sophisticated machinery. If I tried to build this stuff in North America, it’s not even possible. So as a nation, we got ourselves into this, and there are pluses and minuses.”

MeeBlip is produced by a Canadian business and a German business, but this relationship to China still holds. And even simple parts like knob caps are often available in flexible quantities, greater varieties, and significantly lower costs in China. Dealing with China means dealing with suppliers over great distances and across language barriers, and quality and reliability can be wildly variable.

In China or locally, suppliers can break down, ship parts with flaws, and ship late: this is simply part of the reality of manufacturing. (I’ve gotten a crash course in that phenomenon with my first two years of involvement in custom manufacturing on MeeBlip. Ask me over a drink some time, or stick around – at some point, I hope we’ll get to talk more about our experience.)

The challenge with Kickstarter is that your relationship to the project isn’t as a buyer, but an investor. When you buy a product, any supply chain wrinkles have been absorbed in advance. Even most preorders will not take your money until they ship. When you’re a Kickstarter backer, you’re investing in a product, which means sharing some of the risk. QuNeo isn’t alone by any means. Kickstarter recently updated its terms of service, including changes like requiring imagery of actual prototypes and not mock-ups, and requiring projects to detail challenges they might face. From their blog:

Kickstarter Is Not a Store

The payoff is, by getting backers from the market for a product, it’s possible to take risks on products that otherwise might be impossible. QuNeo was and is something different, with original engineering from a small maker. You need some sort of capital to do that, regardless; in this case, the investor is you. And investment involves risk.

CDM talked to Keith McMillen himself about the project, to understand his design goals and what he’s learned as he takes Kickstarter for a second go-around.

Interview

CDM: Is there a pricing model in place for this?

We are thinking $200 list and ~ $150 street. This is similar model as we did for QuNeo and everyone was happy with it.

The QuNeo Kickstarter campaign was a success from a funding standpoint. But it also came under some criticism for shipping delays – which, in turn, have been an issue with Kickstarter campaigns more generally. How are you responding to new Kickstarter guidelines in terms of deliverables?

Here are the answers we gave to Kickstarter on this exact topic – many address your questions:

This is our second Kickstarter project and here are some of the things we have learned from our past experience, and feel that we have improved for this campaign.
1. We have identified a strong set of vendors for our components. We’ve sent KMI personnel to our Chinese factories in order to supervise and oversee production. These relationships are functioning smoothly and provide us with high quality products on a regular basis.
2. We have structured our reward levels to better track foreign and domestic backers.
3. We’ve established a system for improved communication with backers. This includes more regular updates and better monitoring of messages and comments.
4. This project is far enough along in design and realization where we feel confident we can deliver in a timely manner, even with potential bumps in the road.

Are you able to assure people that you’ll be able to ship product more quickly in this case than with QuNeo?

Yes. The delay for QuNeo came from one component supplier who would not admit they had made faulty product. Since we were talking 350,000 parts they were very slow to respond, and it took us a while to find a new supplier that could source in quantity. We now buy all of our components from approved, known-good vendors, and all of the components in the QuNexus have good second sources. I am confident we will hit our schedule.

You spoke about some of the challenges of hardware vendors in China. But given that unpredictability, does that simply weaken the incentive for doing preorders? That is, if you’re buying an already-manufactured product, then quality and availability concerns remain in the hands of the manufacturer, not the buyer, right? Or, is there an incentive here to fund a product that wouldn’t exist otherwise?

I think there are several incentives to back new projects. We made a lot of decisions on QuNeo’s behavior based on user input and suggestions. Kickstarter supporters are a pretty savvy group, and caused us to include functionality and compatibility we probably would not have been able to consider without their help. Backers get to have input at a really ideal time. The basics are in place so it is not a pie in the sky discussion, but the firmware and support software is not set. People can imagine what they want to do with the new instrument and can communicate that to a receptive design group.

And we are a small company doing original and, I feel, important work in the nascent field of musician – computer interface. Ideally we would be supported by a benevolent monarchy or an eccentric millionaire, but we are doing this out of our personal need for better and more responsive instruments. Kickstarter is a fantastic way for people to express their support and enable new musical modes.

Apart from CV input and output, what’s the advantage of this versus the QuNeo – that is, might some people simply map pitch to the QuNeo and be happier with that, given more controls?

First of all, the sensor pads are different from QuNeo. The QuNexus keys have grip while the QuNeo keys slide. This grip transfers the player’s gesture to the sensors in a more piano like manner. Even though the keys are not conventional, all of the players have said QuNexus plays faster, and with more certainty, than any of their other controllers. It is a different instrument for different purposes.

Secondly, I have made a lot of violins, but never felt that one of them could substitute for a guitar. If you have keyboard skills already or want to learn to play, the QuNexus is satisfying and inviting.

Speaking of QuNeo – what’s the state of this project? At this point, there’s no backlog of hardware? Is demand still high, and do you anticipate it will remain so with this new launch?

Demand is strong and growing. We have shipped several thousand QuNeos after sending out units to our Kickstarter backers. Reviews are coming in and have been positive to rave level in response. From one of the articles: “There’s a new level of control available through this device which we feel is the start of a new era in digital music control.”

Most people have never seen or played a QuNeo. When they do, the take-up is very fast, and people get their lights flipped on when they can use a single gesture and get a complex response. After a few minutes they wouldn’t want it any other way—it feels sensible.

I expect the new Kickstarter campaign to appeal to a wider range of players and shine a light on the possibilities of all of our new generation of musical instruments.

Thanks, Keith. We’ll be watching.

QuNexus Smart Sensor Keyboard Controller

http://www.keithmcmillen.com/

Endeavour’s evo keyboard closely resembles a conventional music keyboard controller. But its piano-style keys and high-performance internals are custom engineered from the ground up for additional expression. High-speed connections mean lower latency than is possible with MIDI, and touch- and pressure-sensitive keys allow additional ways of adding to a performance, all in an aluminum case hand-built in Germany.

I was impressed playing the keyboard at Musikmesse earlier this year, but cost put this innovative instrument out of reach of many would-be experimenters. Now, as the product matures, pricing is coming down to Earth. A 24-key version – perhaps just fine, given this novel input approach – starts at a reasonable 499 € (VAT included). That’s not an impulse buy, but it’s less than many mass-manufactured keyboards, and this is something quite different.

introducing the evo from endeavour on Vimeo.

We get to take a look at the beautiful, new half-sized keyboard in the gallery here. It’s otherwise got the same guts as the original 48-key model, which is now at 999 €. Endeavour tells CDM they’re still working on hardware research, so we might expect new things in the future; consider this the beginning.

Half the width now also means half the price of the bigger sibling, opening up the hand-built Endeavour to keyboard experimentation. All images courtesy Endeavour.

In the meantime, they’ve significantly overhauled the software that comes with the evo. If you really want, you can take all that low-latency, high-resolution data and then dump it as MIDI on a conventional soft synth. But to fully exploit all the additional expression data, you need custom software. Endeavour has worked with Max/MSP to make that happen. (See videos of the “dump it to MIDI” and “use a custom synth” approaches, below.)

Plug and play an Ethernet cable, and you can now work directly with the evo on Mac or Windows. (Previously, software was Mac-only; most of the software is out for Windows now and the MIDI support and standalone synth will be available within two months, says Endeavour.) Endeavour’s own evosizer synth works standalone, via ReWire, or in Ableton Live via Max for Live. If you do use Max/MSP standalone or Max for Live, you can also work directly with the externals in your own patches. The software is free and open source. (I’d love to see a Pd port, for embedded and Linux applications. Just need to get a talented Pd coder one of those evo keyboards, I think.)

If you’re interested in learning more about the technology here, there’s now an overhauled website to explore. It’s an interesting read even if you really aren’t in the market: there’s an extraordinary amount of engineering behind this design. (Okay, yes, the phrase “over-engineered” did come to mind – but for an instrument, that can lead to some fascinating places. Over-engineered in a good way.)

http://www.endeavour.de/

evo and Max/MSP:

the evo – Native Max/MSP Support from endeavour on Vimeo.

And more conventional MIDI:

Standard MIDI Synthesizers and The evo from endeavour on Vimeo.

Endeavour’s evo keyboard closely resembles a conventional music keyboard controller. But its piano-style keys and high-performance internals are custom engineered from the ground up for additional expression. High-speed connections mean lower latency than is possible with MIDI, and touch- and pressure-sensitive keys allow additional ways of adding to a performance, all in an aluminum case hand-built in Germany.

I was impressed playing the keyboard at Musikmesse earlier this year, but cost put this innovative instrument out of reach of many would-be experimenters. Now, as the product matures, pricing is coming down to Earth. A 24-key version – perhaps just fine, given this novel input approach – starts at a reasonable 499 € (VAT included). That’s not an impulse buy, but it’s less than many mass-manufactured keyboards, and this is something quite different.

introducing the evo from endeavour on Vimeo.

We get to take a look at the beautiful, new half-sized keyboard in the gallery here. It’s otherwise got the same guts as the original 48-key model, which is now at 999 €. Endeavour tells CDM they’re still working on hardware research, so we might expect new things in the future; consider this the beginning.

Half the width now also means half the price of the bigger sibling, opening up the hand-built Endeavour to keyboard experimentation. All images courtesy Endeavour.

In the meantime, they’ve significantly overhauled the software that comes with the evo. If you really want, you can take all that low-latency, high-resolution data and then dump it as MIDI on a conventional soft synth. But to fully exploit all the additional expression data, you need custom software. Endeavour has worked with Max/MSP to make that happen. (See videos of the “dump it to MIDI” and “use a custom synth” approaches, below.)

Plug and play an Ethernet cable, and you can now work directly with the evo on Mac or Windows. (Previously, software was Mac-only; most of the software is out for Windows now and the MIDI support and standalone synth will be available within two months, says Endeavour.) Endeavour’s own evosizer synth works standalone, via ReWire, or in Ableton Live via Max for Live. If you do use Max/MSP standalone or Max for Live, you can also work directly with the externals in your own patches. The software is free and open source. (I’d love to see a Pd port, for embedded and Linux applications. Just need to get a talented Pd coder one of those evo keyboards, I think.)

If you’re interested in learning more about the technology here, there’s now an overhauled website to explore. It’s an interesting read even if you really aren’t in the market: there’s an extraordinary amount of engineering behind this design. (Okay, yes, the phrase “over-engineered” did come to mind – but for an instrument, that can lead to some fascinating places. Over-engineered in a good way.)

http://www.endeavour.de/

evo and Max/MSP:

the evo – Native Max/MSP Support from endeavour on Vimeo.

And more conventional MIDI:

Standard MIDI Synthesizers and The evo from endeavour on Vimeo.

Let’s do the Time Warp again. As far as synthesizers making spooky sounds are concerned, I’m pleased to party every day like it’s Halloween. (After all, what is the point of music electronics if not to scare small children, animals, and… adults?)

But I want to take us back to 2007, when our friends at Bleep Labs produced this great series of limited-edition Halloween mods to their fantastic Thingamagoop. It’s an excuse to just point you to Bleep Labs’ site – they remain one of the world’s great vendors for genuinely-fun sonic electronics for everyone. They’re gadgets you can use as unique instruments — or teach even non-musicians who haven’t a clue about circuitry about the magic of electricity. No, this isn’t a sponsored post. Some music inventions are like your favorite Halloween candy: you can only say positive things. (Sorry, candy corn. It’s all about the Tootsie Pop.)

http://bleeplabs.com/

Heck, some of you may be too young to remember reading CDM that long half-decade ago, before the iPhone had apps and when some music artists were still on MySpace. So – let’s turn back the clock and enjoy.

Engineering a production instrument is a kind of study in compromise. For mass-produced musical instruments, it’s a fusion of practicality and economics, made affordable by a mass-market supply chain.

What makes the monome creations special isn’t just that they look beautiful; the art isn’t aesthetic only. They are uncommonly uncompromising. They’re designed in such a way that tells a story about materials, one that weaves connections between suppliers – many of them local suppliers – and focuses the experience of the device on the interface. They have the kind of obsessive attention to detail associated with the finest acoustic musical instruments, but they demonstrate digital design can be similarly exacting.

They don’t just add more. Some controllers are expensive just because they have a ridiculous number of knobs and switches, for instance; these are passionately minimal. But they reach a level of total commitment in design.

The beauty you’ll see, but understanding why it’s musically important to have this interface or just why these devices are costly can take more investigation. So, here, we get to look closer behind the scenes with the designer.

The second-generation arc, a controller built around lit encoders encased in glass, metal, and wood, reaches a whole new level of uncompromising design. It might, you could argue, be too much. These are just a set of round encoders, no more; even a previous button-press mechanism is gone, so you instead have either two or four continuous controllers with light feedback. The edition was limited to 50, and sold out as I was preparing this article. But, on the other hand, think about the simplicity of the mechanism of a piano key. It’s “just” a lever. Execution makes it into the instrument we know and love.

And here, execution cuts absolutely no corners. From monome’s self-described specifications – the latest episode in the arc saga we first covered with Brian at the beginning of 2011:

higher resolution: 1024 ticks per revolution. incredibly precise gestural capturing.
custom engineered shaft and bushing, produced by an american scientific instrumentation company. very tight tolerances. no wobble, perfect smoothness.
etched steel light shaper. acid-etched glass. sixty four crisp variable-brightness LEDs per encoder.
low profile walnut enclosure, exposed aluminum sides matching the 2012 edition grids. recessed rubber feet.
there is one change that’s important to note however—encoders no longer support a keypress. this was a long-discussed design compromise and while we appreciate the capabilities of the original edition, we’re very excited for this new incarnation. further discussion on the forum.

Pricing ran (past tense, since they’ve sold out) at $500-800 depending on number of encoders, with additional costs for shipping.

A nice window into what it means to have local suppliers and collaborate with someone like a glass cutter is this message from Brian Crabtree, posted to the monome forums. In this case, their unique supply chain both creates – and simultaneously solves – the problem.

The walnut enclosures are nearly done being finished, they look wonderful.

the fancy bushings and encoder shafts are here in bulk and feel better than we ever hoped.

somehow our circuit assembler mixed up a reel of orange LEDs from 2011 with our 2012 yellow variety. luckily only a dozen or so (i think) are the wrong color. we do order overage and hope these won’t interfere with the last few orders. will have a full inventory soon once i flash firmwares onto 300 boards.

our glass cutter (yes, real glass, water cut) switched suppliers from sandblasted to acid-etched glass. these just arrived and the thickness of the glass is not to specification, hence won’t fit our assembly. the good news is that our supplier took back the parts immediately and is re-grinding them to thickness. hopefully they’ll be back here soon, as it’s holding up production. but the fact that the parts will be turned around quickly after showing up wrong is one of the big advantages of using a local supplier.

as usual our machine shop is behind schedule, but we expect to see shipments arriving within a week.

this is all to say that we regret we’ll miss our oct 12 goal to begin shipping. i’ll post updates here and i very much appreciate your patience and understanding.

in other news i’ve just about completed a big summer project– building out a proper workshop in the barn where all of monome will be moved completely. it’s fully insulated though it’s about to be winter-tested. this edition of the arc may be the first monome edition in six years that hasn’t taken over our dining table at some point.

http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=15264

Tomorrow, November 1, was the expected ship date, though I imagine that will be slightly delayed by Tropical Storm Sandy. As those units start arriving in the hands of arc artists, I wanted to step back and talk to monome’s Brian Crabtree about what makes this creation special. And there’s nowhere better to start than asking about just why people need this sort of encoder expression, musically speaking, in the first place.

CDM: What are some of the works that for you were most compelling on the first arc, in terms of applications?

Rodrigo Constanzo’s Party Van:

Rodrigo’s approach is precisely the approach I imagined using the device myself. The grid allows fast-access manipulation and exploration, the arc for fine-tuning. The arc’s ability to show clear visual feedback follows the same decoupled input/output paradigm introduced with the original monome grid controllers, but with continuous control rather than discrete events.

Matthew Davidson’s Electric Dharma Wheels:

holocene from stretta on Vimeo.

Stretta is one of the few people to share a truly successful arc-only software instrument. It’s a joy to use and sounds outstanding. The high resolution of the arc is particularly well-suited for manipulation of the FM synth he’s created.

I often have to remind myself that there are only 100 units of each size arc (two and four) out in the world. The uses for the device are subtle, and I expect more surprises to emerge with time.

Can you describe the engineering goals of arc two? What was the experience like designing this stuff yourself from scratch? It clearly goes well beyond what a lot of us (my own projects included) do, in that we tend to work more with off-the-shelf components.

The primary component with the arc is a very high-quality encoder; the feel of the device is very important given its hyper-minimalism. We felt we could improve on the original by not using an OEM component and, as a result, began delving into unfamiliar engineering territory.

An optical encoder has no electrical contacts– it’s a code wheel attached to a rotating shaft which is read by a reflected LED. There’s no noise, even at incredible resolutions. We sourced higher-resolution discs and designed a circuit board with some strict mechanical parameters.

We didn’t want any play in the knob, which meant we had to design a shaft and bushing pair with much better tolerances than those typical of machine shops — we ended up using a precision scientific instrumentation company in New Jersey. After a few more technical discoveries, we’re very satisfied with the results.

We’re again using cut glass. We discovered another company which acid-etches sheet steel, which we used for shaping the LED rings. The walnut is still from Pennsylvania, and the overall design matches our recent edition of grids.

The entire process turned out not to be so financially reasonable. I don’t expect to make a lot of these devices (we’re made just 50 of each this time around), but I feel a very strong commitment to making the best work we can manage.

I’ve spent some time talking to [serialosc engineer] William Light about this – can you share a bit of what you’ve done making OSC [OpenSoundControl] find and work with multiple devices?

Our main progress over the last years has been dealing with OSC discovery. [Ed.: this is the process of how to find devices communicating over OSC automatically, rather than having to key in IP addresses manually and the like. It's important that it work with multiple devices, as someone might use a monome and an arc, or a couple of monomes.]

Initially we found a lot of promise in [zero-configuration / auto-discovery protocol] zeroconf/[Apple] Bonjour given it’s built-in to Mac and Linux. Windows gave us a lot of trouble: it works, but any number of setups can interfere with its operation, and tracking down these tiny problems can be tricky. The other major issue is that most audio-visual environments just barely adopted OSC; zeroconf is probably asking too much. we adapted a Max/MSP external that works well, but that’s the only option outside traditional programming languages like C or Python. Furthermore, zeroconf has no official support in the OSC spec and developer community.

A way around this was to have serialosc (our device-OSC router) spawn its own information server, a port where messages can be exchanged to query the current setup. It works in place of zeroconf (though zeroconf is still built in), where an application can subscribe to future updates in device configuration changes, for example.

I see this as a first experiment in friendlier auto-routing of OSC data. Even for non-device-centric OSC data, it’s an interesting model for parameter auto-discovery and cross-application awareness. Of course, we haven’t created a standard, so there’s not something to directly hook into, but the ideas are there to explore. We’re excited to see where it goes from here.

So, anticipating the question of people impressed by arc, when might we see another edition?

As with all of our editions, we determine demand as we go. If enough people are seeking these devices, we’ll certainly make more.

monome.org

You can dream of something, you can complain about it on forums, or you can do it.

Sneak-Thief, aka Michel Morin, is a doer. And what’s great about him is that he doesn’t just produce geeky, obsessive hardware – he has the musical chops to match. He can wrangle his own hardware, coding in C, but he can also make people dance. Designing hardware isn’t just an exercise in doing something because he can – it’s part of his musical expression, the line between his ideas and reality. Talking to Michel about what he’s done, he really focuses on his musical needs.

I’m thrilled to host Michel’s performance this Saturday at Open Source Music in Berlin, as part of Retune Conference. For all of you out in CDM-land, though, we get to groove to his musical mix and get some insight into his MIDIbox-based hardware. Let’s start out with some music – a live mix in Rio, and an original track Michel says is a “joke” (but I like jokes):

Here’s how Michel sums up the aptly-named Sneaquencer:

For years I’ve been dreaming of a live-performance sequencer that would give me the power and flexibility to perform music with a perfect balance between the ability to control, improvise & automate. Drawing heavily on sequencing paradigms developed at Yamaha (16 sections with multiple tracks per section), I built and programmed my own.

Specs:
Developed using MIDIbox boards
and programmed in C.
2 independent sequencers, one of which can be slaved to the other.
Each sequencer will be able to load one “song” at a time. A song is chosen by the push-button rotary encoder.
16 sections per song
6 tracks per section that can be muted or unmuted with the track-mute buttons
256 measures per track – this is where this really differs from the Midibox Seq

So, that’s the technical side. But what’s this about musically? As Michel tells it, it was designing around his own conception of how musical performance could work. Since it’s not immediately obvious from all those buttons and knobs, Michel tells CDM how he goes about preparing a set:

It’s a pretty straightforward system: I break down my finished songs into up to 6 stems, eg. drums, bass, melodies, vox, fx.

Then each song is divided into up to 16 sections. All samples are loaded into any sampler, hardware or software. I use NI Kontakt because of its great scripting language and direct-from-disk streaming.

This lets me pick any part of any song and be able to play it immediately with no load time or latency. So I could choose, for example, the drums from the chorus of one song (on Song A of the Sneaquencer) and play melodies from another track on Song B. All mixed and matched on the fly, and tempo-synced using a simple but effective Kontakt script that changes the pitch of the song to keep in time…. because I hate what almost all realtime time-stretching algorithms do to drum transients.

The Sneaquencer does for his live sets what software like Ableton Live does, but with his own twist. Michel elaborates:

When it comes to being able to randomly playback material from a large sample set, Ableton Live has suffers from a linear sequencing paradigm. In other words, if you have a lot of material grouped into “songs” and you want to be able to instantly select and play clips, you’re screwed. I see my friends regularly banging their heads against these limitations: you either have to line up all your clips groups beforehand or stop everything to load new material.

The Sneaquencer solution is extremely elegant. It consists of two independent midi pattern sequencers, each with up to 16 sections and 6 tracks – including track mutes, tempo controls and knobs for controlling effects.

When I prepare a song for live performance, I divide it into up to 6 stems for kick, percussion, bass, melodies, vocals and effects. These 6 stems are all split in up to 16 sections, e.g. intro/verse1/chorus1/verse2/chorus2/break/chorus3/outro and so forth.

I chose Native Instruments Kontakt as my main sampler because it has direct-from-disk streaming and a nice scripting language. Each song is made up of samples that are grouped as an “instrument” which can be instantly loaded with a midi program-change command. I currently have about 60 songs loaded in Kontakt with a whopping 10gb of samples. All have midi-controlled effects mapped to the various stems, e.g. low and hi-pass filters, chorus, delay, phaser, flanger, bitcrusher.

On the Sneaquencer, I can choose any song and it will instantly begin playing. Since it has two independent sequencers, I can mix and match everything on the fly: “Oh how about the drums from this song mixed with the melodies from this one? Or the vocals from this other track mixed in with this track’s bassline?”

It’s a live performer’s paradise – I can change directions any time and mix and match material to create unique and reactive live sets. The best part is that the laptop running Kontakt stays closed the whole time since Kontakt is loaded automatically on boot.

Everything is tempo-sync’d thanks to some nifty Kontakt scripting which matches everything using simple pitch-bend commands… like when you beat-match a vinyl record. These is great because you don’t have any nasty realtime time-stretching artifacts that turn percussive transients into a stuttering mush.

The “open source” part of this is that the code is all available for your perusal. If you’re learning C programming for hardware, you can gain some lessons from Michel’s creation – or, even if your knowledge is limited, you can have a quick glance. The code is available below. You can also read up on the process that led to Sneaquencer’s creation:

LivePA forum

SneaQuencer:
sneak-thief.com/sneakyseq/

Stay tuned; after the event Saturday, I will follow up with the artists.

If you’re in Berlin… our Open Source Music party/performance is:

Saturday
27.10.2012
19h-23h
at Krach Studios: http://krach-studio.com/studio/
Part of Retune: http://retune.de/programm/

Retune Conference runs from 26th to 28th October.

Open to all (not just Retune attendees); 5 EUR suggested donation.

RSVP on Facebook event

Now that DJ tools do a lot of the same things, part of what would prompt you to use one is what you see. And what you see is a lot of what a DJ tool offers.

Serato announced earlier this month that it was overhauling its somewhat fragmented offerings and replacing them with one next-generation alternative: Serato DJ. But the one thing we couldn’t do was see it. We could see the Pioneer hardware designed to go with it, but not the new UI.

That change today, as Serato releases a slew of images of the software, which is due at the beginning of November.

This isn’t just a skin-deep overhaul: the new UI reflects what the software is now about. In fact, it looks like a viable challenger for some of the things Native Instruments’ Traktor offers, presented in a more – well, Serato-y way. And one thing it looks like you’ll get is a lot of control over what you see, with any combination of decks, the library, and effects.

Among your display options:

• Virtual decks with track information
• Cue points and loops, in combination, with looping controls
• Effects controls, for the new iZotope effects
• Improved beatgrid editing
• SP-6 sample player
• Reworked layout, with extended library and deck views (best illustrated by the screens here)

It all looks quite lovely. In fact, with Serato looking so nice, my one and only plea is that it seems Serato desperately needs to offer a solution for people who want to use the software without plugging in the controller hardware. There are countless times I’ve watched DJs prep a set sitting on an airplane or train (in fact, every time I travel now, it seems I spot Ableton or Traktor somewhere), to say nothing of the times you have to squeeze into a small booth. With the software getting a lovely refresh like this, it seems the time is near to unlock the software. (I know, piracy, etc., but… that doesn’t change the need.)

It also occurs to me how nice it’d be to have some of these cue points and waveform views in Ableton Live – not only for doing Live DJ sets, but because having that kind of control and visual feedback is generally useful when playing with sound.

Serato users will see this early next year, unless they spring for the new Pioneer hardware next month. I hope we’ll have a closer look at the new hardware/software combination soon; stay tuned.

Serato DJ with some of those new effects at the ready.

If you want to focus on the library, you can.

You can even run in four-deck mode with waveforms and decks collapsed, and the library still in focus.

The SP-6 module also looks compelling.

Try two decks with vertical waveforms instead of horizontal, if you so choose.

More four-deck action.

Previously:
Scratch That, ITCH: Serato DJ the Future of Serato, First Integrated Hardware from Pioneer [Gallery]

http://serato.com/

Designer Roger Linn is beloved by producers for drum machines like the MPC, beloved by guitarists for AdrenaLinn, and now newly respected for the Tempest with Dave Smith. But for anyone who imagines design is a direct line from idea to product, it’s not. Whether Roger Linn or Apple, the process leaves the way littered with discarded creations.

Of course, that doesn’t mean these are bad ideas. Now that we live in a world of DIY, some intrepid musical souls will make products for an audience of one. And where designs are discarded, ideas often survive.

Roger Linn writes CDM to let us know he’s posted a selection of shelved products. Disclosure: I’ve seen some of these before, and even spent time talking to Roger about his dreams of an integrated drum machine computer. It’s interesting to see modular ideas – something DIYers (and recently, maker Livid) have taken on. Here, that covers not only traditional tabletop controllers with knobs, pads, and faders, but guitar foot controllers, as well – something I hope someone tries.

There are also various stabs at new drum pad controller layouts, including a computer dock, though if anything, these suggest to me that a blank slate is now the best beginning point – perhaps MPC-style controllers are best left to Akai, and it’s time for new ideas. Of course, that means the one product here you might still want is the one you still don’t get – the LinnStrument touch controller. Perhaps the controllers of the future will look different altogether. Just be prepared for a lot more scrapped ideas along the way. Happily, that’s half the fun.

Some of those ideas did make it into shipping products: in both ideas saved and tossed, you can trace the evolution of the Tempest.

Enjoy the gallery, and let us know if you can glean any lessons from what Roger threw out.

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/shelved-products.html

3D printing can not only replicate existing forms – it can produce new ones. The Atom Guitar, from Odd Guitars. Courtesy the manufacturer.

3D printing has quickly risen to buzzword, from a technology initially of interest primarily to hobbyists to one that is catching mainstream business and consumer attention. But the actual substance continues to catch up with potential and expectations.

Here are six examples of musical instruments that have taken on 3D printing as a challenge. They may not yet compete entirely with wood and other conventional materials. But they do actually play music, and by pushing against the limitations of the technology, they both reveal what’s possible and refine printing’s usefulness.

Arvid Jense, Create Digital Music’s summer intern and himself both an industrial designer and musician, shares his favorite instruments from his research and talks about where all of this might go.

Guitar body by Odd

The only commercial-available instrument on this list, the Odd guitar sold for US$3500, including a hard case, assembled as a complete guitar.

http://www.odd.org.nz/

Details:

The Atom 3D printed guitar: A Les Paul inspired guitar with an internal atom with spinning electrons. The bodies are printed, using Selective Laser Sintering, by 3D Systems in the USA, on an sPro 230 SLS system. The material being used for these guitars is Duraform PA which is a very strong form of Nylon. The resolution for the prints was 0.1mm (which means that each layer that makes up the guitar body is 0.1mm thick). The guitars feature a wooden inner core (choices of Mahogany or Maple, etc.) that links the neck to the bridge, which allows us to customize the sustain and tone of the instrument to suit the musician, and a number of options for hardware, etc.

Working Flute by Amit Zoran at MIT Media Lab

Zoran’s flute is printed in one piece, including valves (excluding springs). It uses multiple materials.

While an interesting (and functional experiment), it had its flaws – before you run out to get a 3D-printed flute. From the YouTube description:

This isn’t a perfect instrument, some of the keys didn’t close well and Seth had to improvise, and to use some fingers to close keys that didn’t seal well. This is the reason – as some of you have noticed – the fingering seems odd.

That said, Zoran’s instrument design work could be a topic in itself, a futuristic, fanciful cornucopia of wacky guitars and other instruments:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~amitz/Amit_Zoran_home_page/Works.html

Violin by EOS

The Economist covers these 3D-printed violin bodies – and spares no hyperbolae in the headline:

Print me a Stradivarius: How a new manufacturing technology will change the world

The EOS violins feature a printed body, but employ traditional parts for the other components (bridge, strings, etc.).

Zaggo Whistle

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1046 (133 prints documented on thingiverse)

It might not be as sexy as printing a Strad, but sometimes simple is effective. This whistle is the epitome of DIY printed instruments – you print it, and it works perfectly.

Produced by Zaggo in 2009, the design has been featured on Thingiverse and is designed such that it can be printed on the Makerbots popular with hobbyists and hacklabs.

Saxophone mouthpieces by TUDelft students

Leo van Oostrum test Mondstuken from Titus Wybenga on Vimeo.

Components – as we saw with the synth parts last week – could ultimately have a place as much as entire instruments. In Delft, in the South Netherlands, students tried to accomplish such a thing, experimenting with replicating a Meyer mouthpiece. They used different materials, different machines, and small variations including internal ‘wings’.

http://sax2011.weblog.tudelft.nl/

This Just In: 3D-Printed Acoustic Guitar

As we were completing this article, yet another 3D-printed musical instrument surfaced. While electric guitars with 3D-printed bodies have been done before (see above), this instrument is acoustic. It’s the work of Scott Summit, who has already made an impact on the 3D printing community by suggesting new prosthetic applications.

The World’s First 3D-Printed Acoustic Guitar [Business Week]

Arvid’s Thoughts

Ed.: Arvid also sent along some examples of his work, pictured below. He notes that none of these made satisfactory sounds. Upcoming: a temple block experiment that fared better. You can expect similar frustrations, printing your own instruments – but, then, challenges are half the fun of design, if you have the stomach for them.

While all of these things are cool, they’re all replications of existing traditional instruments, and aren’t touching the new geometrical and structural possibilities of 3d printing. (Though, this quite mirrors early electronic instruments, which were mostly trying to emulate existing instruments in sound.) Ed.: Not to argue with Arvid here, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true of electronic instruments, though it did mirror the early commercial experience of the synthesizer.

Some of the advantages 3D printing has for musical instruments is, firstly, that there is no skilled/trained instrument maker needed to manufacture the instrument, which could make these replicated instruments more accessible to beginning musicians. Secondly, that instrument designers from around the world can easily collaborate over the Internet (which might ease the initial disadvantages of printing). And thirdly, this could, over time, turn into a more economical and environmentally-friendly method of producing instruments, in which instruments are made on demand, and the only transportation is your trip to your local Fablab.

Current disadvantages are that printing on commercial machines is expensive and that printing on DIY machines is often inaccurate. Also, there is not much of an instrument-making community yet, which makes most printed instruments one-offs.

As I said before, I feel like current projects aren’t making full use of the possibilities 3D printing offers: control over (internal) geometry and structure which isn’t possible with traditional methods. This is why I started a research project trying to make a start in figuring out what exactly we can do with these possibilities. My pre-research can be found on 3dprintedinstruments.wikidot.com. At the moment, I’m using three repraps at the ArtEZ ArTechlab to experiment with three directions:

1. Getting a simple pan flute to make musical sounds.

2. Experimenting with what kind of timbral changes the infill patern makes in the sound of a simple temple-block.

3. Making spiral and folded up tubes to try to get something interesting out of internal structures.

I really welcome people to comment and criticize my and fellow 3D instrument printers’ work, and I welcome people to collaborate on my site and to derive my instruments (once they’re on thingiverse).

Ed.: There you have it. If you thought we were just going to copy-and-paste some cool 3D-printed things and be done, not here – nope, I hope this actually starts some practical collaboration and experimentation to find out what 3D printing can, and can’t do. And I welcome discussion of other new instrument making techniques, too.

Stay tuned to CDM and MeeBlip.com for more of what Arvid did this summer – and continues to do, back in Holland. Arvid, we miss you here in Berlin. -PK

http://www.arvidjense.com/

Take it from one now immersed in manufacturing – making things is an epic process of production, delays, shipping, customs… 3D printing is the latest DIY technology to promise to get around that, armed by the seemingly-magical translation of digital files into objects in a way other machines cannot. We’ll be looking in depth at what 3D printing can mean for music starting next week, as interest in this technology reaches fever pitch, but here are a couple of revealing case studies.

For Teenage Engineering, makers of the OP-1 synthesizer, 3D printing seems to be a real breakthrough. Their line of accessories was a clever line of mechanical cranks and LEGO Mindstorms attachments, ingenious applications of little pieces of plastic. There was just one problem: shipping costs made these accessories too expensive, and customers complained. TE responded by posting CAD files. Head to Shapeways, and you can print these parts on a 3D printer for a small price. TE has gotten plenty of attention from the media as perhaps the first to go this route. [See Wired] (I suspect replacement parts are not something new – but going the 3D printing route perhaps is, a sign of just how new this medium is as far as mainstream adoption.)

In fact, the results are so clever, I can imagine small manufacturers now looking for ways of replicating the success – considering designs they might not have otherwise.

Clever, small accessories proved to be too small – racking up shipping costs – until TE experimented with letting users 3D-print their own accessories and replacement parts.

3D printing isn’t always a panacea, however: it could be both exciting and maddening at once.

Teague Labs suggests a far more ambitious project: printable headphones.

After all, headphones are largely about the physical construction; the actual sound-producing transducer element is reasonably simple. The Teague headphones are special on a number of levels. They are a complete pair of headphones with a nice-looking design, a complete product that needs only a small amount of electronics and prints the rest on a 3D printer. But even more compelling is the breakthrough application of a pro design to a hobbyist printer. Teague began with a professional ABS FDM machine, but adapted the same design to the far more-accessible Makerbot Replicator.

Prototype as Product: 13:30 Printable Headphones [Teague Labs]
13:30 Headphones at Thingiverse
via PSFK

Just don’t get too excited, too fast. Traditional materials still offer potential that the actual substance of a 3D printer can’t match. Hobbyist printers pose their own challenges: I spoke to a 3D printing marketplace rep this week who explained to me that the fact that 3D printers aren’t running all the time in hobbyist environments causes clogs and breakdowns to become far more frequent, something you probably don’t think about. (Turns out, your inkjet printer suffers from the same problem; it’s just that ink is an easier problem to fix.)

And be prepared to wait – not only for the advancement of 3D printing, but for the model itself. These headphones take over 13 hours. That means, for instance, on the Fab Café printer you can rent at Berlin’s Betahaus, your headphones just skyrocketed to over 800 €. Oops. That almost makes Beats headphones look like a good idea. (Sorry, couldn’t resist. Apologies.)

Now, you can become your own headphones maker – and 3D print complex forms, easily. Just be prepared to wait about half a day on the printer.

At the same time, I love the way Teague articulates the underlying idea here:

With 3D printers becoming more accessible we decided to have a think around the concept “life in beta” as a future scenario. What if printed prototypes could become actual products? Meaning, once off the print bed an object could be assembled without any tools and be made functional by readily attainable components. I decided to stress test the premise with the challenge of making electronically simple yet functionally complex headphones.

There’s plenty to explore here, even without waiting for costs to come down and printers to get better and more affordable. (Oh, yeah, and – those things don’t just happen magically. They represent an engineering challenge a lot of people are tackling. So it’s best, I think, to look at what’s possible right now. And that turns out to be a lot.)

After all, the fact that Teenage Engineering made some clever accessories more affordable demonstrates that this doesn’t have to be a dream, after all.

Join us next week and in the near future as we look more at 3D printing advances with our summer industrial design intern and other experts in the field. Have a good weekend, and see you Monday.

Making connections with people – creators and audience alike – sometimes means going beyond the virtual, and actually getting people together in the same room. For MusicMakers, Create Digital Music teamed up with curators and artists in Berlin to make some of those connections across disciplines, to get closer to the processes of design and music creation. Making and listening in the age of overabundance could feel diluted. But as makers keep making, and really listening, they can find their music comes to mean more, not less.

With support from Moog Music, on the 14th of September we launched our first event, in the heart of Berlin’s creative scene, at the formerly-a-swimming-pool Kreuzberg club Prince Charles. Now, we can share what happened, and some of the people we’ve gotten to know – and where it might lead next.

Mixing club events with art or exhibition is nothing new. But “nothing new” is part of the idea. It seems to me that there’s an opportunity in this moment to bring together people who make things via a variety of techniques, both traditional and new, digital media but also old media – analog, wood, paper. We can create a new environment for audiences to have a broader experience of music and its resonance in other media, and a space in which these artists can connect their techniques to one another. For those of us who believe in growing through connections to others, whatever the result, that environment is a necessity.

MusicMakers actually began in March 2007, as part of a collaboration between myself, Make Magazine, and Etsy (and hosted by Etsy at their Brooklyn offices). It later evolved into something we called Handmade Music, and people have picked up on the idea of bringing musical DIYers together in cities worldwide. For the Berlin relaunch, though, I wanted to come back to the original name, because for me it gets at the broader sense of creation.

The team behind MusicMakers brought together CDM with creative organizations SemiDomesticated (curator Anette K Hansen) and PLATform (curators Alex Sebag, Iohanna Nicenboim, and Raquel Chaves). We also worked on a new visualization of musical patterns in Organized Sound: The Synthesizer, Visualized, a collaboration between myself, Hansen, and Caroline Blind that resulted in the hand-printed artwork you see here. (More on that in a separate story.)

The MusicMakers team for Berlin, September: from left to right, Nicenboim, Chaves, Kirn (duh), Hansen, Sebag.

We got to work with a range of musicians, from a synth jam with a Berghain resident to a Dutch duo, playing everything from a Sarod to hand-built electronics to analog modulars. And with our curators, we found designs ranging from an electroacoustic bass kalimba built by a furniture designer to hands-on interactive RFID installation.

To start sharing what we did do in the real world (meatspace?) with the rest of the planet (non-Berlin-space, which frankly often has better weather), here’s an introduction to the artists we got to know at the event.

We do want to hear from you. If an artist strikes your fancy (installation or live act) and you’d like to know more, we’ll be doing additional coverage, so don’t be shy.

Takeshi Nishimoto

Composer and guitarist Takeshi Nishimoto is known for collaborative electronic projects such as “I’m Not A Gun” with John Tejada, as well as solo work. Among his diverse output, here’s an illustrative collaboration with Strand:

For MusicMakers, Takeshi played a rare set on the sarod.

http://www.takeshinishimoto.com/

Phoebe Kiddo

Phoebe we of course profiled this week:
Listening, Behind the Scenes: Phoebe Kiddo, Traveling Through Earth and Space

Blanton/Jasper/Stencil

Mixing analog video and analog audio with digital tech, this unique live setup included Wouter Jaspers, founder of boutique Neukölln-based analog maker Koma Elektronik.

Stencil – Ezdanitoff Komeet from Stencil on Vimeo.

http://wouterjaspers.com/
http://www.stanstencil.com/

Kaap de Goede Hoop

From Utrecht, Holland, this duo can really bring alive a dance floor – but also excel at producing exquisite, hand-crafted tracks. Lots more on our musicmake.rs site.

Barker, Easton West, Owen Roberts, Koe Kkoee, Lando Kal

This massed set of artists and vintage gear produced strikingly-crisp dance music in real-time, to visualizations of MIDI events by myself (collaborating with designers Anette K Hansen and Caroline Blind). We called it the “Megajam” – they had never played before, but I loved what happened when they came together. I hope to document this band separately, but in the meantime, I’ll give you a taste of just one artist – Sam Barker, who works now on a duo with nd_baumecker we’ve covered here on CDM.

Sneak-Thief

We’ll be seeing more of Michel’s work soon, but suffice to say, Sneak-Thief is one of the craziest hardware builders I’ve met, and… well, you read this site. More on his sequencing monster later this month.

http://sneak-thief.com/

Lando Kal

Lando Kal is perhaps best known as part of Lazer Sword, but his solo act is deserving of attention. He held down an extended live set and a prominent role in The Megajam. I hope we get closer with Antaeus and his work shortly, but in the meantime, it appears he just posted this to SoundCloud, so let’s have a listen, shall we?

Installation Artists

Jo Hamilton – Alive, Alive from Poseidon on Vimeo.

Our installation artists included two instruments the audience could play: an amplified bass marímbula made from a garden rake by designers Pastperfekt, and the futuristic AirPiano (above) with visualizations by Florian Schulz. They also included shimmering and responsive audiovisual installations by Kasper Vang and Kasper Vang, and a giant, lumbering stuffed object that used RFIDs to trigger musical playback in a shining array of CDs (seen at the beginning of the video) by artists Birgitta Cappelen and Fredrik Olofsson (MusicalFieldsForever).

Florian Schulz

MusicalFieldsForever

PASTPERFEKT

Kasper Vang

Yannick Sebag

More to Come, Berlin and Beyond

MusicMakers in September was the first step of a new chapter for these collaborations on this site. We’ll be back in a short while in Berlin – and hope to spread these ideas to events elsewhere.

Stay tuned, as well, for more of the products that came from these collaborations.

Or keep an eye on our official MusicMakers minisite:

http://musicmake.rs/

Thanks to Moog Music for their support.

Epilogue

…a brief comment on angst and the Internet.

I do read and appreciate comments on this site, even negative ones. I notice when I post music, and sometimes even technology, there’s very often a sense of angst. “It’s all been done,” “this isn’t new,” and the like.

I hadn’t remembered the last two lines of the poem from which this event draws its name, but then I read them:

For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

I suppose it fits blogs, too.

Live does lighting. Mattijs and Michel working on lighting compositions in Ableton Live. All photos courtesy Mattijs Kneppers.

Spectacular spaceship showmanship, or actually synchronizing live electronic dance music performances? For Feed Me, aka Englishman Jon Gooch, the show had to be both. Software developer Mattijs Kneppers harnessed Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and Max for Live to make it all work. You may have seen the video; Mattijs gives CDM a unique look even further into how this is working, sharing a gallery of the stage rig and some of the technical details.

CDM: So, of course, this was the summer that brought “press-play” performances into the public eye – and we’re actually I think indebted to deadmau5 for blowing open the discussion and talking about what’s really happening. One point that came up was that people are concerned that you can’t do this sort of big show with lots of visuals and keep everything running smoothly. deadmau5 specifically mentioned SMPTE [the clock signal or timecode standard often used with visual elements]. How did things work here?

Mattijs: “We all hit play”; this is exactly the problem that we wanted to solve. Jon builds his performances live, with separate audio tracks and segments, with live effects, free improvisation, etc., so every gig is different. As an example, he is completely free to change the tempo and the show tempo will change too, which is pretty much impossible if you use timecode or SMPTE.

In case you’re interested, I found a (grimy) recording of Feed Me changing the tempo live:

This didn’t come easy, of course. Both technically and conceptually, it required some serious software development. The lighting controller and video server are both developed from scratch with continuous real-time synchronization in mind. There is no lighting desk involved: the system runs on MacBook Pros connected via Ethernet that drive video, LED, and lighting fixtures, using breakout boxes for DMX. [DMX512 is a lighting protocol somewhat similar to MIDI.]

Especially the concept of mixing layers of lighting composition in real-time was quite new for us. Video layers can be blended easily, but for lighting, we spent some time finding an approach to be able to mix in a meaningful way.

The system is built around Max For Live and OSC [OpenSoundControl]; we didn’t want to juggle with MIDI data and equipment, and also, an audio performer shouldn’t have to worry about triggering lighting or video patterns alongside his audio clips. Basically, there are a few devices in his live set that send everything he does on stage to the computers in the Front of House and the sync software then matches video and lighting to what he is playing at any given moment. The MFL devices are a bit like LiveGrabber (livegrabber.sourceforge.net), only with extra tricks for low-latency synchronisation rather than direct event based control.

To be honest, we did need some creative hacks to overcome limitations in these early versions of Max For Live, but luckily, we had great support from the folks at Cycling ’74.

So yeah, people in the show industry tend to believe that live performing and synchronized shows don’t go well together, but I believe that’s because so far we don’t have the right tools. Build new tools, and the game changes. Obviously, I’d love to exchange thoughts about this with deadmau5, I have the impression that he has a great sense of the evolving emotions in a crowd and it must be frustrating not be able to adjust his set when he feels they need it. I think performances like these where music is only one aspect of the experience can be much more intense if they would be synced in real-time rather than pre-composed. So in the future I hope we can change that

Thanks, Mattijs. We’re definitely lucky to get to learn from this stuff as a community of artists, and I remain hopeful that the quality and expressiveness of our work continues to improve. Congrats on this show; hope we get to see it soon! -PK

More details on the video from Future Music Magazine:

Feed Me recently cooperated with Sober Industries and Studio Rewind to produce a remarkable Live show, displaying innovative lighting and video concepts and most notably a giant set of synchronized Teeth.

Learn about Feed Me as a character, and get a peek into the artistic and technological challenges solved in the process of developing this show from a sketch to a fully realized concept. This includes designing the giant custom LED teeth, creating the beat-accurate video and lighting content and building software to synchronize all show systems to Feed Me’s Live stage performance.

Concept
Feed Me

Creative Direction
Jon Gooch
Auke Kruithof
Tim Boin
Basto Elbers

Production
Studio Rewind www.studiorewind.tv
Sober Industries www.sober-industries.com

Software Development
Mattijs Kneppers www.arttech.nl

Animation
Auke Kruithof
Alain Maessen – www.brutesque.nl
Daniel Bruning – www.danielbruning.com
Casper Sormani – www.nosuchthing.nl

Lighting Design
Michel Suk – www.michelsuk.nl

Camera
Daniel Bruning

Montage:
Thijs Albers – www.marathonworks.com

Special thanks to:
Three Six Zero management
Ampco/Flashlight

Animator Auke Kruithof works with Live and ESP Vision. (ESP Vision, previously Windows-only, is now available for the Mac; it’s lighting pre-visualization software.)

Using Ableton Live to control lighting.

The whole rig is run in software. Spotted: APC40 controller from Akai.

Software developer Mattijs checks the setup.

The rig, in action.

System test in the rehearsal studio.

Final tech check.