Luigi Felici and the folks over at Nusofting have put the finishing touches on Broken Drum Machine- a VST synth that emulates quite well the sounds and function of a circuit-bent or otherwise broken drum machine.

As they describe it, “To the fact that the broken sound is desirable. Yes! Knobs turn for satisfaction defective!”

What is the sound of an invisible hand playing a MIDI controller?

Yes, in the latest evidence that the Interwebs really are Douglas Adams’ imagined Infinite Improbability Drive, a conversation from CDM’s humble forums about the economics of Radio Shack and MIDI jacks has led to a blog response from a non-musician defending the true legacy of Adam Smith.

I’m serious. I’m not just, you know, dumbing down CDM and pandering to the economist audience to pick up cute economist girls.

The blogger also feels our forum poster say “dude” too much. Like, whatever. Don’t have a cow, man.

It started with a thread about the ridiculous price of electronics. (Personally, I wouldn’t try to extrapolate any kind of larger economic theory from a chain run as badly as Radio Shack has been under recent management, but our posters did, and I digress.)

UK economic blogger Gavin Kennedy fires back:

The myths about the invisible hand are widespread and deep. It has been switched from supporting an argument of Adam Smith about risk-avoiding merchants contemplating the risks of foreign trade into an all purpose guide to individuals in markets …

The real wonder about markets is that there is no central direction; there are no invisible hands, feet, or disembodied parts, guiding anybody. There does not need to be! The relative prices of whatever is exchanged are the only guides needed. It’s called the price system. That’s what Adam Smith actually said.

And he compares the myth of the invisible hand to the myth of Santa Clau– hey, stop crying, Suzie. I’m only joking. The invisible guiding direction of market economics is real, and it’s going to bring you a MicroKORG next Christmas, but that’s not until December and your birthday isn’t even until October.

Ahem.

Of course, Gavin is right.

Image credits: gravestone of Adam Smith, Duncan; gravestone of Radio Shack, Куртис Перри.

HypnoSapien (aka Patrick Petro) loved the Zendrum, the cult-hit, ultra-sensitive, boutique drum controller. But he wanted something compact with a specific configuration. He writes:

Check out the new Zendrum ZAP desktop midi percussion controller, the first truly professional level instrument of its kind. I contacted Zendrum about custom building this particular model for me with this particular pad configuration. They loved it and made it a full production model.

The results: a Zendrum that costs less than the other models (US$999 list) and fits into tight spaces.

Of course, cool as this hardware may be, it’s easily upstaged by the ridiculously dexterous finger-drumming chops of Maestro Petro, as seen in this demo video:

As Patrick says, “Good stuff! My ZAP is my monome 256’s new best friend. Mmm…wood.”

Actually, that’s not a bad coupling at all — one of my criticisms of monome way back before all the Web buzz when it was released was that its buttons lack velocity sensitivity. With monome handling button-pressing duties and ZAP responding more as an instrument, your fingers should be very happy indeed.

Zendrum ZAP Product Page [Zendrum Catalog]

We live in an age of disposable electronics. iPod battery wears out or new prettier iPod arrives, and old iPod gets tossed. Or, if you’re Norwegian sound artist and musician Espen Sommer Eide, your iPod could live a second life far more interesting than its first.

The Slåttberg is a custom musical instrument fashioned from an iPod running Linux, pdPod, the iPod-ready version of open-source multimedia patching software Pure Data, a 60s-era loudspeaker cabinet, an internal amp, and, most importantly, a big crank. Plugged into a Moogerfooger FreqBox, the resulting instrument feels like a reimagined analog Hurdy-Gurdy. Espen says he was inspired by deconstructing Norwegian fiddle music, and it comes out in the instrument not only in the sound but in the sense this creation is something Norwegian ethnomusicologists might collect, alongside ancient Scandinavian flutes.

Those of you in Norway, let us know how the premiere goes, and what else happens at the festival — sounds terrific. Espen writes:

Hi being a regular reader of your site, and since your article about the pdpod a while back inspired me to use my old ipod for this project - I thought you might be interested to check it out. A preview video of a custom built musical instrument by Espen Sommer Eide, artist and member of Alog and Phonophani. The Slåttberg will premiere at the Borealis Festival for contemporary music Bergen, Norway late february 2008.

alog.net

Alog, by the way, is the acclaimed duo of which Espen is one half. And anyone who makes use of Duck-Rabbits (the “famous gestalt psychological figure representing both a duck and a rabbit depending upon the point of view”) wins still more bonus points.

… so I’ll make this a two-minute post. Yes, it seems the Monome 64, the cute, new, and improved 8×8 Monome, sold out its short initial run in one hundred twenty seconds and fried the order system. I’m guessing the low price, growing Web buzz, and attractive compact design with wooden edges all contributed. The Monome will be getting another 100 units soon, though, so I think if you’re looking for Monome love, you won’t be disappointed in the long run.

That raises an important question, though: with hunger for alternative music-making devices, why was so much new tech at the NAMM show (and elsewhere) so conservative — and, speaking of designs that do look different, can we dare to hope for a worldwide launch of Yamaha’s Tenori-On? (I promised I wouldn’t compare Tenori-On to Monome again, but let’s put it this way: creative designs sells, and both designs count as creative design.) Things you’ll notice the Monome doesn’t have: giant decals of its logo, or a logo, period, weird acronyms for included technology (OSC! VAST! V.LINK! AWSUM! MUSIQCK! MLFY039! is not tattooed anywhere), there’s no unreadable LED screen, no input for a mouse … I’ll stop. Apologies to the major music manufacturers, but you’ll notice even among the products from the Big 3 (Yamaha, Roland, Korg), it’s often the small and simple devices that people love over the long haul — things that are beloved rather than disposable. Sure, 100 units to those guys is nothing, but I think the point still holds.

So, let’s ask you: what’s the favorite music-making gadget you own that you can pick up in one hand? Tuners and metronomes count.

We’ve heard from DJ Chinkial — and via several of you — that he’s working on a way of turning Korg’s KP3 KAOSS Pad into a step sequencer, by way of Reaktor. Each step lights up, causing him and others to use the phrase “Monome-like.” Monome as an adjective? Congrats to the Monome designers for that! The KP3 is a cool device on its own, so it looks fascinating to me.

Just be prepared to try to read chinkial’s massive run-on sentence describing the project. He writes:

just thought id let youse know im making a reaktor ensemble at the moment to utilize the korg kp3s 8×8 grid as a seq its going pretty well managed to get the kp3 to trigger the steps on an 8×8 event table and ouput them im also getting visual feed back from the kp3 aswell so u can make beats and not look at the screen just like the monome this is just a test to c if it could b done as i plan on porting it to a vst plugin in sythedit somehow that was my initial idea as not everybody uses reaktor that has a kp3 u know so let me know what youse think about my project

More power to you, man — I think you’ve learned to speak better to the Reaktor than to us, but keep on rocking the KP3. The project looks really cool, from what I can see through blurry cameraphone footage. Anyone in the UK who wants to go shoot this with a real camera, let us know!

It’s like a spy video. And 69 views, plus two tips from CDMers, which means basically you guys see everything before the rest of the universe, even if it’s barely capable of being seen.

chinkial also wins bonus points for plastering his MySpace page with marijuana leaves, being the first and only person to create a stoner mystique for Reaktor. (As opposed to, you know, basement club in Berlin and Red Bull or, maybe more like a lineup of espressos and cigarettes.)

The project looks great, though, so you can bet we’ll stay tuned to the chinkial YouTube channel.

CDM contributor, mic flag fabricator, beat bicyclist, and sound artist extraordinaire Michael Una has been up to more sonic magic-making in Chicago. He showed two recent creations at MGFest 2008 — that’s MG as in “Motion Graphics”, not, sadly, the car, though I think sound art would also go deliciously with MG automobiles.

On display in Chi-town: giant pods to fill rooms with sound, and a man in a sound-induced, hypnotic blizzard of milk. (Yes, they have winter in northern Illinois.)

Snowy Day at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Octophonopod at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Behind-the-scenes commentary is available on Mike’s site, not to be confused with the domain-squatting personals site that you get if you leave out the hyphen. (Will, someday, an entire romantic community be devoted to Una Love? I wouldn’t rule it out.)

One lesson learned: milk can be incompatible with electronics.

Aud is either a “Music Industy insider with a finger on the pulse of more than BPM” or “consummate psuedonisticmusictechnophilosoph” or both. I got hip to his music through a friend who may soon be publicly identified, and have heard some really terrific productions (some not yet on the MySpace page yet). But I bring Aud to everyone’s attention in this case for his run-on rant poetry about the relative value of certain technological acheivements. If you could condense everything you feel about music technology into a 60-second speech in the local pub, it might come out something like this.

audnoyz - 36 - Male - UK [MySpace.com]

I submit in this age of “in the box” for some, where all is manipulatable and nothing is beyond reproach, the same holds true for noise found or contrived. All is art, all is beauty. ode to aud :-/ More Musings: The pub landlord rules! -Pro Tools: the mix bus sounds great through my Neve -Steinberg: what the fuck happened to you? -Sonar: time has been good to you -Live: awesome, awesome, awesome -DP: don’t get the respect it deserves- -Props for props- -Dangerous: now that’s some good noise- -Korg: CHAOS rules! -Adams: the best!- -Saxonia: German precision- Go SPL before play with your big knob- Liquid channel:too much- Duende:the sound is classic the UI could use some modernization- -RME: worth the extra quid- -64bit don’t mean shit on the dance floor- -Wavelab rules- Focusrite: RED!- TOFT: great stuff- Apogee:little brittle w/o nuts- Benchmark:solid-*** Wedlock is like a dongle*** +Mac still got it over PC+ Macbooks awesome, and you can you warm your tea on them too–Windows: why can’t you remember I already installed via that USB port already!- Mac towers: what you say I did not catch that, the fan is ON…- Robin Trower deserves more!- Jobs: Brilliant! Create a culture that hates Gates, that pays a premium for superior technology? while YOU profit from the biggest proprietary scheme ever devised…. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my mac, I just hate Apple!– Ipod: freepass on this one… wait a minute, I got rid of my vinal for cassette because it was better, then to CD cuz it sounds better, now you want me to drop my CDs for inferior sound quality… BRILLIANT!

“Wedlock is like a dongle”, appearing on a t-shirt near you. (Perhaps for some it’s more like challenge-response authorization. Well, unless you pirated your significant other.)

The convergence of visuals and sound on virtual vinyl has been a long time coming, but it’s awaited the perfect tool for controlling both. Serato’s VIDEO-SL promised to be that tool. We’ve gotten the crossfader in the capable hands of dj rndm and Robotkid to find out for Create Digital Motion. Here’s what the results look like, mixing:

… and scratching:

The review isn’t without the odd caveat: for one, you’ll need to pluck down a couple grand to get the complete setup because the Rane mixer employed is required, though rndm ultimately says that’s worth it for the integration payoff. And available transitions and effects are limited in range and prefer to run on dedicated GPUs (think MacBook Pro, or a PC laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA or ATI card). But as you can see, the results are incredibly slick, and there’s no question video on vinyl now has a tool to beat. Check out the complete review and technical details on our visualist sister site:

Hands-on Review: Serato’s VIDEO-SL for Visual Vinyl Turntablism

We like to push the outer envelope of music technology geekdom. But what if you’re also an obsessed web geek? Then you start playing the data encoded in a Website design like nytimes.com as a musical instrument.

A new patching environment called Lily, inspired by tools like Max/MSP, works its magic using JavaScript inside a browser. So turning your browser into a music tool becomes more practical. And Lily supports the network-savvy OpenSoundControl (motto: “it’s not MIDI!”), so you can hook up an OSC controller like the Monome and jam with Firefox and the New York Times.

Finally found a use for the NY Times from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

How does it work? Get prepared for some Web technospeak, kids!

When the patch starts, the browser enters a DOM inspection mode and mousing over a DOM element highlights the node. Clicking on a node writes the element’s data (its innerHTML value if it’s a text element or the binary data if it’s an image) as a sound file and the file is then loaded in a quicktime player in the patch. The sounds can then be triggered using OSC messages.

Hey, where’d everyone go?

If DOM models don’t exactly get your pulse racing, here’s a strange and elegant physics-based sequencer hooked up to Reaktor. Fans of Processing, that environment is also capable of similar stuff; this is even modeled on the Processing-compatible traer physics library.

SVG Midi Sequencer from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

Ready to get going with this yourself? Lily is now in public beta, ready to run for free on Mac, Windows, or Linux. Browser not included.

Lily Public Beta 1

Gobs more examples and documentation on the blog

Previously: Browser Beatboxes and the Rebirth of Max-Like Patching