OTTO: Beautiful, Original Hardware for Beat Slicing in Circles
Design in music in a digital world can be about the object as the sound – musical ideas translate from one medium to many others. And just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone comes up with a new visual metaphor, a new creation for manipulating music.
OTTO is a functioning prototype combining interactive hardware and computer software, the invention of Luca De Rosso. He produced the design as a thesis project for his masters’ degree in Visual and Multimedia Communications at IUAV University of Venice. It uses the Arduino open source hardware platform and Cycling ’74’s Max/MSP software, and Luca accordingly is quick to credit the assistance of those two communities. In that sense, two, I think it points to lots of new design in the field of integrated hardware and software – not just standalone hardware or standalone software or generic controllers for anything, but hardware that itself behaves like software.
All photos here courtesy Luca and used by permission; see his Flickr account.
OTTO ~ demo.01 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.
Luca sends along some more details of the behind-the-scenes workings just for us. (Thanks, mate!)
Luca actually had assistance from his father working on the case. (I love that – father-son collaboration!) All the electronics are on a single Arduino board, and the patch works in Max. (Max has features that make it well worth using, but it’d be nice to see a Pd port, too, making the whole setup open source – and giving you an easy way to run it on Linux.)
OTTO ~ Getting Started from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.
Luca sends us a view of the innards of this device – you saw it here first:
The first prototype is done, says Luca, with three more coming in coming days as he heads to a festival in Croatia. Plans for the future: no commercial availability yet, but Luca says he’d be happy to hear from anyone interested in manufacturing. (Capital remains the big challenge, even as fabrication gets easier.)
I also love the way he’s designed the documentation. Music tech industry, please, this is how it should be done – with all due respect and without naming names, we really would love if you just showed us your gear and didn’t have some swarmy dude gushing about lots of hype. In fact, we’d be equally happy to buy your gear if the design spoke for itself rather than having your name and circuit diagrams and random text plastered all over it.
But this is really visually inspiring, creative work. And to top it off, it looks insanely fun to play. Putting the beats in a circle opens up all kinds of other possibilities, and suggests thinking in terms of cycles rather than the grids we see on other hardware. As with the monome, you can imagine other software applications that would hook into this basic, minimal hardware design. I hope we see more of this design and concept.
http://www.lucaderosso.com/otto/otto
More videos:
OTTO ~ demo.02 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.
OTTO ~ demo.03 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.
38 Comments
Leave a CommentDas Kraftfuttermischwerk » Wie unsere Kinder mal musizieren werden: OTTO
[...] Ich werde zu alt für diesen Shice. Direktlink, via Create Digital Music) [...]
June 29, 2009 @ 11:31 am
OTTO, beat slicing interface - Hack a Day
[...] they truly need. You can find more pictures of the device on Flickr and a picture of the guts on CDM. Embedded below is the ‘Getting Started’ video that shows it in [...]
June 29, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
KeyOfGrey
Love it! I’m still not sure I understand the controls, but maybe if I got my hands on one. Where do I sign up to buy one? :)
June 29, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
josh@firestorm
awesome!
June 29, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
tobamai
I think I need a kleenex.
June 29, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
Gruss Loops Volume II, PCM 70 Ver 2 & Ver 3 SysEx, SX-150 synth mod, more free samples by Kent Williams, Luca de Rosso OTTO, Mini-paper-Moog, Low-Bit Gamelan Compilation
[...] Link via CDM [...]
June 29, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
rhowaldt
i want to buy this.
June 29, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
gbsr
sexy indeed.
June 29, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
Mudo
…
Cool Design
…
June 30, 2009 @ 1:10 am
CPRoth
Be still my heart!
June 30, 2009 @ 3:06 am
Got a CDM review « OTTO
[...] Article’s link [...]
June 30, 2009 @ 3:38 am
Mike
absolutely gorgeous
June 30, 2009 @ 5:04 am
Pat Omar
NEAT!
June 30, 2009 @ 5:07 am
Michael Una
Totally awesome. This really opens itself up to performance, rather than parameter-adjustment.
June 30, 2009 @ 5:39 am
CNek
It reminds me Audio Damage’s Replicant interface
http://fr.440tv.com/video.php/v/1709/Audio-Damage-Replicant
June 30, 2009 @ 7:28 am
23fx23
excellent
June 30, 2009 @ 8:09 am
corporation
very neat!!
June 30, 2009 @ 8:13 am
Johnny Horizon
Looks more like Spiral Loops than Replicant:
http://www.pawfal.org/SpiralLoops/
June 30, 2009 @ 11:22 am
sunny
So awesome.
Still not quite understanding the controls. Maybe a picture of the Max patch?
June 30, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
ian
wow that thing looks sick, and since it’s max it’d be nice to have an hradio set up onscreen to switch between different samples… really opens up a whole world of possibilities and i’m surprised there’s not more circular sequencers like this because it seems more visually logical
June 30, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Mudo
…
Do it opensource!
…
June 30, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Create Digital Music » OTTO: Beautiful, Original Hardware for Beat … | Rachna
[...] More: Create Digital Music » OTTO: Beautiful, Original Hardware for Beat … [...]
June 30, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
runagate
You couldn’t have said it better:
music tech industry, this is exactly how things should be done!
Of all the things to marvel at I think what strikes me the most is the sheer number of controls within reach – such a brilliantly-designed performance space on that piece of kit!
July 1, 2009 @ 3:28 am
Damon
I have just been owned. Beautiful in concept, brilliant in execution, and staggering in (his) performance. Talk about getting it all the way there. Never mind the quality of the track he build on it. E is for envy.
July 1, 2009 @ 3:34 am
Fractal
i want it !!!!!!!!!!!!
where when how much ??!?
July 1, 2009 @ 7:54 am
hexatron
KORG! make this plz
July 1, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Beat-slicing with OTTO - machine quotidien
[...] CDM points out this very sweet beat manipulator interface by Luca De Rosso. The project, better known as OTTO, makes use of an Arduino board, MAX/MSP software, and an array of LEDs + switches to create a very intuitive and approachable experience for musicians. – [...]
July 2, 2009 @ 3:21 am
Beat-slicing with OTTO | SquareCows
[...] CDM points out this very sweet beat manipulator interface by Luca De Rosso. The project, better known as OTTO, makes use of an Arduino board, MAX/MSP software, and an array of LEDs + switches to create a very intuitive and approachable experience for musicians. – [...]
July 2, 2009 @ 6:58 am
Audio
Fantastic piece of hardware – Won’t be long untill Korg are knocking on Luca’s door :)
OTTO + Kaosillator = Happy Days!
July 3, 2009 @ 4:45 am
stutter
beautiful.
Seems like there’s a lot of space in the centre awaiting a purpose.
July 4, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Cort3x
Great tunes, especially the first one.
July 5, 2009 @ 6:13 am
Ambient Guy
Nicest interface I have seen for a long time. I will keep an eye on this baby :O)
July 14, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
Hardware for Beat Slicing in Circles at Philipps Blog
[...] create digital music [...]
July 25, 2009 @ 6:59 am
the music of sound » Controllerism: Otto
[...] More techncial info on the hardware & software driving it via CDM [...]
September 6, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
OTTO: Beat Slicing « Hikikomorianimals
[...] found on CDM [...]
September 21, 2009 @ 12:48 am
OTTO: Beat Slicing « research
[...] found on CDM [...]
October 24, 2009 @ 11:12 am
Musical Geekery « …got brain?
[...] I am not only a code nerd, but also very fond of modern music and music making. There are a lot of great new instruments and devices to make and manipulate sound – among those for example the monome (http://monome.org/) and the concept of the themerin. All very geeky and interesting. Today, I discovered a new work by Luca De Rosso. For a thesis project he designed “OTTO”. It’s pure awesomeness. See/listen for yourself: It is based on the great arduino platform (http://www.arduino.cc/) and Max. I’d love to play around with this, but as it is, it is neither being produced nor sold commercially. Read more about it on http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/06/29/otto-beautiful-original-hardware-for-beat-slicing-in-circle... [...]
October 26, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Intervista con Luca De Rosso | sounDesign
[...] circolare) possiamo intuire come OTTO abbia fatto saltare in aria le cuffie di gente come Peter Kirn di Create Digital [...]
January 19, 2010 @ 7:16 pm
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