What can you do with a button? What circuits can you bend? What software and hardware can you construct? Want to meet up with myself and fellow makers from the DIY music and visualist communities? I’m touring and looking for new works, we have one call for one-button objects that (if you can ship it) can come from anywhere in the world, plus upcoming events in New York, San Francisco, and — this month, Amsterdam at the planetary music tech hub that is STEIM.

STEIM + Handmade Music Amsterdam (Netherlands, February)

Handmade Music is beginning in Amsterdam. To kick things off, I’ll be visiting the legendary STEIM research center. The event will be open to anyone with inventions and self-built hardware and software you’d like to share. We’ll plug in and make a raucous noise. I’m really quite looking forward to meeting folks from this area.

When: Wednesday, February 17, 8p – ?
Where: Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Cost: FREE
STEIM Hotspot Lab Event Page

I’ll also do a short presentation of some work TBD; more on this next week.

If you’re attending and want to share what you’re bringing in advance or make sure you see me, use the CDM contact form.

One-Button Objects Call (SF + World, March)

What can you do with one button? In an age of ever-more-complex touch interfaces, we’d like to imagine what a single, tangible, hardware button can mean for a design. To celebrate the arrival of their Gamma game event in San Francisco, art game collective Kokoromi is teaming up with Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion to launch a call for ONE-BUTTON OBJECTS.

So, sorry monome — too many buttons (unless you want to make a one-button monome, that is). The one-button game objects will incorporate a single-button-centered design and inspiration from the world of gaming into unique creations. Read up more on our sister site:

Call for Works: One-Button Game Objects
Then send your submissions for the gallery show in San Francisco to onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org
(see also Kokoromi
Receipt deadline: March 1

If you’re in the NYC or San Francisco, we’re looking to do some informal hackdays to play with buttons, HID interfaces, Arduino and microcontroller platforms, and the like — we just need a hackerspace to host us. And if you’d like to do that elsewhere in the world, let us know and we’ll promote it.

And of course, be sure to attend Friday, March 12 at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts if you’re in the Bay Area or attending the Game Developer Conference.

Handmade Music Brooklyn Returns; Your Inventions, Live Artists Wanted (NYC, March)

Handmade Music in its hometown of New York is being rebooted. We’re launching new workshops, new hacking, and a new quarterly performance series at a proper performance venue, Galapagos.

That means we need you.

For the quarterly party, we’re continuing to look for people to bring in your own creations. If it runs on a netbook, if you have headphones you can bring, if it’s made out of wood and you can play it, if you can plug into a portable amp and make some noise, if it’s a circuit-bent toy with built-in speakers, it’s a welcome guest.

But we’re also looking for live artists in the greater New York area who incorporate DIY instruments, hardware, software (and even wearable interactive costumes, if you’ve got them) into your act. We’d like to hear who’s out there. We can’t invite everyone to play, but that’s all the more reason to hear about what people are doing.

If you have a project or act to consider, send them here:
Official 2010 Handmade Music NYC Call for Works

The first event is Monday, March 8. Doors open 7p, live acts start 8p.

“Okay,” you say to the Web geeks, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want another little app that looks at my iTunes collection and tells me that if I like Lady Gaga, I probably also like Madonna. I want to listen in new ways and, most importantly, make music. What have you got, Web 2.0… 3.0… whatever we’re on now, that I can actually use. I want some of the deliciousness of the future, now.”

“Oh, and another thing – can I patch this Android phone of mine in absurd ways?”

Wish granted.

The latest Music Hackday in Stockholm was filled with the usual simple, first-draft hacks – as it should be; the whole idea is to do something quickly and start something real. But among them were some really strong ideas about how connecting music makers to the Web could do intelligent, new things.

Here are some of the best. Themes emerging:

There is a “there” there. Use proximity, and make location start to help people share musical tastes (and, by the same token, music making).

Put music creation in the browser – without Flash. New JavaScript-based tools can do live synthesis. There’s even a Nanoloop-style sequencer, built entirely with JavaScript and HTML. While these won’t be replacing dedicated music software any time soon, they can have the inverse effect, which is bringing musical creativity to more online apps. (Trust me, it’s more fun than most of what’s on Facebook.)

Make musicians’ online lives easier. Thanks to open APIs, all your gig info, tour info, and music uploads can finally come together.

Get physical. Hacks involving everything from big robotic visualizers to physical radio controls connect open hardware platforms like Arduino and Android.

(And yes, there were a lot of new Android apps, early proof that open mobile development could make a splash.)

Here’s a look at some of the coolest individual projects:

AlbexOne
Data as connected, kinetic sculpture

It’s one thing to talk to a Web API and put the results on the screen. It’s quite another to turn that feedback into a massive, mechanical sculpture.

Ingredients:
One Web API (Echo Nest Java API, for song analysis)
One Google NexusOne phone, running Android, receiving data on wifi and sending on bluetooth
One microcontroller, receiving signals from the Android and rotating a giant, mechanical arm to make a drawing

Here’s hoping co-creators Albin Karlsson and Alex Olwal can send us video of the project working in action.

ProximRadio + Blobble
Making software and hardware proximity-aware

The work by Michael Coffey (github | @eartle) and Jonty Wareing (github | @jonty) may seem at first like more of the usual social song-playing stuff. But it’s really a clever use of Bluetooth and proximity that could have significant implications for listening to and making music with other people in the same room.

Using new clients and servers, Michael and Jonty change the experience of listening to music. As people enter and leave a room, radio feeds respond accordingly. And the experience of “scrobbling” — writing a piece of music played on your computer to the Web — changes from solo to ensemble experience. If you and a few friends listen to Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz, now all of your Last.fm accounts respond accordingly.

Note, too, that by using the open-source GUI framework Qt4, what looks like a native Mac UI is actually portable across (cough) platforms.

Let’s say you’d rather make music than play it. Well, good news: developed could use these same tricks to build Bluetooth-enabled musical instruments that respond to proximity, not only for social interactions but better-integrated
hardware.

Radio Free Hackday
Virtual radio meets the physical radio object

Simon Hohberg and Robert Böhnke (aka @ceterum_censeo) had a brilliant, simple hardware hack: put the soul of an Arduino mini into a friendly-looking Panasonic FM radio. Result: physical controls for virtual radio, and an actual, local FM stream transmitted back from the computer into the stream.

With some minor upgrades (like a beefier, non-Arduino minicomputer), this could be a self-contained Internet radio. But it’s a reminder that making physical controls for software can be fun, frivolous, and novel. After all, it’s really the way we interact with real-world objects that makes them meaningful.

Webloop
Game Boy mainstay Nanoloop, reimagined as JavaScript

Start with Nanoloop, the unique, elegantly-designed music creation software for the Game Boy. Now imagine it as a browser application – no Flash, no standalone app, but all JavaScript, even down to the audio output.

That’s what Jan Krutisch did with his Webloop, now in its second iteration. It’s a testament to the universality of Oliver Wittchow’s design for Nanoloop, and the growing power of the browser and JavaScript as an open platform on which to make music software.

Synthism
Patching synthesis in online browser modules

This is a bit hard to see in action, so we’ll have to take their word for it. But the idea is compelling – and is another example of the action that could take place in the browser (in this case, with the actual sound work done elsewhere in a more traditional fashion):

Synthism.com our frontend to the powerful BrainBeat compiler, which is also built by the synthism.com team. This gives you the possibility to export synthesizers from synthism.com to different platforms, e.g. as a VST instrument. The flexibility of the BrainBeat compiler allows us to add support for exotic hardware such as FPGAs or special purpose built DSPs found in different hardware synthesizers, making export to such platforms available.

And yes, all of this is meant to be “collaborative,” which could add more dimension to it.

Songkick On Tour from Matt Biddulph on Vimeo.

Songkick on Tour
A Web service that adds information to your trip

It may be technologically less impressive, but part of what I think will make the Web more useful is the use of open Web APIs to reduce the amount of work you have to do to get information. Songkick on Tour is a great example of that: it figures out your travel itinerary from the awesome Dopplr and lets you know what gigs are happening when you’re traveling. I’m a big fan of Dopplr and feel it’s underused; this demonstrates the sort of thing that could be done.

Of course, this quick hack is only the start – it could make it easier for touring musicians to stay on top of information when they’re on the road.

Along the same lines, and on a grander scale…

Holodeck
One place on the Web, all your artist stuff – automatically

“A tool for artists to create their own website with music from SoundCloud, gigs from Songkick or Last.fm, news/posts from Tumblr.”

That says it all, doesn’t it? Instead of adding yet another Web service to keep track of, another dimension of complexity in your life, this mashes together information you’ve already put elsewhere.

Imagine if every time you made a note of something, you scattered it in a different part of the house. Imagine how complex your life would be.

Oh, wait. I don’t have to imagine that. I do that. Anyway, yeah, let’s have the Web not work that way so it pays for the time, electricity, and money it consumes, ‘kay?

Echonest Midi Player

A Web-to-MIDI converter

Internet comes in, music goes out. Connect an Ethernet cable to one side of this gadget (via the Arduino Ethernet Shield), connect the other to a MIDI instrument, and Bertrand Gondouin’s creation plays MIDI music automatically.

Of course, this has other creative implications, like the ability to pipe your own music or musical events to installations, remote players, to rig up an Ethernet- (or wifi-) powered MIDI band, or whatever you might imagine.

And bless the presence of simple, free Web servers, like the one on which this site runs. (Actually, CDM is LXMP – Linux nginx MySQL PHP – not LAMP with Apache, but I digress.)

More cool projects

Tired of embedding a whole Flash-powered player? the hackable SoundCloud JS player is customizable and lightweight. (It’s not Flash-free – you still need Flash as the back-end to decode the audio, as sadly HTML5 still doesn’t mean consistent MP3 and OGG codec support across browsers, at least so far.)

HacKey asks a fascinating question, which is whether people’s musical tastes are related to key.

BuddyJ for iPhone adds a dead-simple, cueable music output. Now, true, this may not look like an all-powerful DJ app, but that’s not the point: it makes the iPhone or iPod touch into a cueable “deck” you could connect to a mixer, etc.

SleepApp is a simple Android demo app, but it also demonstrates – with all the code on Google Code – how to do basic UIs and stream Internet radio, meaning it could be a good starting point if you’re dabbling in Android music development.

More coverage

Five music hacks from the future [Pocket-lint]

New Echo Nest APIs demoed at the Stockholm Music Hackday [Music Machinery, where you can also follow the Echo Nest APIs]

Hacking in Stockholm [A report from Last.fm's LAST.HQ]

48 Hours, 31 Hacks – Stockholm Music Hack Day [Programmable Web]

And here is some rough mobile video of the presentations:

New York?

NYCers, I’d really love to help host a Music Hackday here (I missed the nearby Boston event, but we have some specific folks in NY who would be great to involve.) The only remaining challenge: a venue that can host 100 or 200 people, free. Suggestions?

http://musichackday.org/

All the Stockholm hacks

Wherever you live, you can enjoy the DIY and open hardware inventions coming out of Texas. Or, as the famous song goes: “That’s right, you’re not from Texas / Texas wants you anyway.”

Austin, Texas may be associated with the strum of guitars. But it’s also populated by some of our favorite electronic music hardware inventors on the planet, led by the likes of Bleep Labs, 4ms, Eric Archer, and more. They’ve taken the idea of a “Handmade Music” and come up with the best formula for building a community around DIY hardware I’ve seen yet:

1. Get beginners – even if they’ve never soldered before – making noises with a beginning kit workshop.
2. Do an advanced workshop that pushes the envelope with new hardware.
3. Turn that noise into a performance/party: i.e., “After all the kits were built, we plugged in to the PA and partied until the amp overheated.”
4. Provide your specs and software freely.
5. Make a kit available for people to buy.

Notice that it’s possible to make “free hardware” (open sourcing part or all of the code, publishing specs and circuits) and still sell a product. And it’s possible to act locally (workshops in Austin), and sell globally (sharing documentation online, and shipping kits everywhere else).

And notice that it’s possible to make events beginner-friendly. In fact, this isn’t just to teach experienced musicians how to solder. I find that many people who are too shy to make music via traditional means find there’s a freedom to a glitchy, blippy electronic thing that makes noise. After all, through the ages music was never intended to be exclusively the domain of professional specialists.

Here’s the latest on their activities – and a chance to meet the hardware that has come out of their series.

For more, stay glued to handmademusic@noisepages.

First, let’s meet the devices:

Meet the Beasties

Thingamagoop 2

Bleep Labs’ Thingamagoop seems as much electronic creature as electronic instrument; its sounds seem like the vocalizations of an alien and, yes, it’s darned cute. The new Thingamagoop 2 is more usable (easier-to-access battery), sounds better, and has more features. But it’s also more open in every way. CV in and out lets it interface with analog gear. A programmer jack lets you reprogram it with your Arduino, if you so choose (the Arduino isn’t required, but it does let you reprogram the sounds on your Thingamagoop). And now the sonic effects — sample and hold, arpeggios, noise, and bit crush — all use open-sourced code. That makes what was already an ingenious soundmaker more open to hacking by advanced users.

The Thingamagoop 2 debuted to the world at Austin’s Handmade Music. Now, perhaps we need some hack sessions to get people working on reprogramming this and other sonic oddities.

Full info on the Thingamagoop 2
Arduino code
Circuit diagram

I expect to get one of these soon, so expect a hands-on.

Nebulophone

Nebulophone is a coming kit that builds on the Arduino platform to create a playable, DIY Stylophone-style instrument. Having debuted at Handmade Music Austin #4, the instrument features “adjustable waveforms, a light controlled analog filter, LFO, and arpeggiator that can be clocked over IR.” Yes, you read that last bit right: it’s all part of the new wireless, infrared sync revolution these guys are leading.

Official site has code, schematics, instructions – so you can actually make your own – plus sound and advance info on the coming kit. I expect a video and more on the kit soon.

SimSam

The SimSam is a noisy, glitchtastic product.

It’s also the subject of a beginners’ workshop, a chance to get people working with electronics for the very first time.

And its cost – a tiny $8 in parts.

It’s also a brilliant use of the ATTINY85, an ultra-compact, 8-pin AVR chip. (AVR chips also live at the heart of the Arduino platform.)

And the SimSam debuted at – you guessed it – a workshop at Handmade Music Austin #4.

Tons of info and everything you need to build your own:
SimSam

There are actually some details that could use improving, so have a look and see if you can do an updated version.

Autonomous Bassline Generator + Andromeda Space Rocker + MIDI-IR Sync

The Autonomous Bassline Generator…

…can sync up with drum modules like this Andromeda Mk-4 by Eric Archer:

…and sync together via infrared, wirelessly, connecting to each other or slaving to a MIDI clock signal generated by Wooster Audio’s MIDI-IR.

Together, you get the Andromeda Space Rockers: a whole little galaxy of wirelessly-synced sonic gadgets. And all of the above are available as kits, so you can sooth your soul by assembling them yourself.

The creators have debuted and jammed with these gadgets through Handmade Music, and presented workshops on the technologies and concepts that underly their creation.

Arduino, Sound Libraries, and Resources

I asked Dr. Bleep himself (John-Mike) about what resources might be useful for working with the Arduino platform (and similar architectures) and sound. The main secret is, use Pulse Width Modulation to accomplish sounds with a minimum of code:

Here are a few of the pages I used when designing the code for it:
http://www.cs.mun.ca/~rod/Winter2007/4723/notes/timer0/timer0.html
http://arcfn.com/2009/07/secrets-of-arduino-pwm.html
http://blog.wingedvictorydesign.com/2009/05/29/generate-real-time-audio-on-the-arduino-using-pulse-code-modulation/2/

http://little-scale.blogspot.com/ is a fantastic source for “Oh man why didn’t i do that/ this guy is incredible!” projects.

I’m also not the first to mate the stylophone with arduino
http://hackaday.com/2009/08/25/arduino-based-synthesizer/

The two biggest/ earliest arduino synths were :
http://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wiki/Auduinohttp://www.critterandguitari.com/home/store/arduino-piano.php

One difference with the Nebulophone is that it is very low part count. No multipexers or DACs. Just PWM out to an two opamp analog filter. This does limit the number of keys and controls but makes for a tiny, simple pcb.

Handmade Music Austin, in Videos

How do these events go down? Here’s a look at some of the sonic mayhem.

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Handmade #4 lacks a video, but we’ll watch for #5 when it happens.

The next Handmade Music Austin is on February 28. Details aren’t up yet, but I’m told you can expect an advanced workshop on building a digital delay by Nathan/Wooster Audio, plus a simple, light-controlled noisemaker for beginners. Stay tuned to:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com

Handmade Music is spreading. Toronto’s InterAccess has been a hub of terrific DIY activity in sound and other fields, otherwise known as a General Gravity Well of Awesomeness, and they’re now doing their own Handmade Music, kicking off this month.

Full call below, but as with other events, there is an open call for work (and some nice thoughts on why now is a wonderful time for DIY).

Even if you’re not in Toronto, it’s nice to read their take on why this stuff matters. I’m gratified they’ve found this inspiring. I’ve certainly been inspired by … well, all of you!

.

Friday, February 19th, 10PM
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
9 Ossington Ave.

Organized by Stephen McLeod, Andrew Lovett-Barron, and Alex Snukal.

InterAccess is hosting a party where DIY/handmade/experimental music performers and makers get together and show off their stuff. Haven’t made anything yet? Doesn’t matter, just come out and see what people are up to. We already have some confirmed performers but we want MORE!

We want your circuit bent speak ‘n spell!

We want your home made theremin!

We want your gigantic modular!

We want your trash can drum kit!

We want your insane Max/MSP (or PD) patch!

We want your monome!

If you’ve built something and you make music with it, we want to hear it! Doesn’t work? Bring it anyways! The night starts out with a show and tell, and aside from this initial event we will be holding regular workshops and get-togethers, that anyone regardless of skill level are welcome to attend and share ideas. In fact, we want to make Interaccess a space where people doing interesting things with electronic music can regularly gather, learn, and perform.

To participate, please email Alex Snukal at alex.snukal at interaccess dot org.

Great Time to Make Electronic Music

There has never been a better time to make electronic music, and here’s a few of the reasons why:

Monome (http://monome.org/about) adopted an open hardware/software approach and this has led to a creative and prolific DIY community, committed to finding new and interesting ways of interacting/performing/experimenting with the device. Users are encouraged to make it their own, either through writing/modifying their own software or building their own ‘version’ through a kit, or even sourcing the parts themselves and making something completely new.

In fact, many intrepid DIYers have build monome clones (called Arduinomes) using the Arduino! If you haven’t heard of the Arduino, it’s an amazing open source piece of electronics that lets you connect sensors and control things from your computer. Like the swiss army knife of the DIY electronic world, Arduinos have been involved in countless projects and we can teach you all about them.

This all leads directly to the software that is run on many a monome or Arduino: Over the last decade, Max/MSP and Pure data, both created by Miller Puckette, have been adopted by the international music and multimedia community as programming languages of choice for innovative musical and visual composition. As visual node based programming environments, they differ from the more familiar text based languages by having their roots in electronic musical synthesis using virtual patch cables to route messages to objects which stand in for synthesis modules, a style of creation more in line with Wendy Carlos than Alan Turing. With relatively recent addition of Jitter for Max/MSP and Gem for PureData, these techniques and tools are making there way into the visual realm as well, rounding themselves off as key tools for the modern musician, visualist, and multi-media artist.

And of course, we have been heavily inspired by the excellent Handmade Music events in New York and elsewhere!

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/galleries-videos/handmade-music-nyc-videos/
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/01/11/like-a-diy-namm-handmade-music-preview-with-gestural-gadgets-mannequin-parts-more/

Here’s an amazing guy who makes all his own strange electronic instruments: http://vimeo.com/3099287

Some videos of the monome in action.

tehn: http://vimeo.com/295006

making the noise: http://www.vimeo.com/1860696

Official Post by snukal

More details soon, and we’ll definitely be sharing the best projects from Handmade Music worldwide.

As always, we won’t cover every last bit of news, just the stuff we really find important. And in a twist, we’re also looking to volunteer participants to help us cover the community around music technology, not just the big industry-driven stuff.

Where and when to get your tech news

At 10:00 or 11:00 am tomorrow, January 14, Pacific Time (GMT-8), embargoes begin lifting on most NAMM news.

You can follow CDM’s coverage in two places: here on CDM, of course, but also at:

namm.noisepages.com

On CDM, we’ll have our own editorial look at the show. For the latest, round-the-clock news, videos, and clips, dispatches from our contributors, as well as unedited press clippings, watch namm.noisepages.com. We’ll take the best bits of the noisepages site and round them up on CDM.

We’ll be covering official and unofficial news this week. So, yes, we expect to cover big names like Roland. We’ll also be picking up on tech in hotel rooms, open-source oddities at the party Friday, and hardware that can’t afford NAMM booths – you know, just like we always do. Every day is a news day around here.

Friday night in Los Angeles, I’ll be part of the big, unofficial Wham Bam Thank You NAMM party. We’ll have video, sound, and feature coverage both of the artists and of the discussion we hope to kick off about the future of music tech. So watch for bits of that over the coming days.

What to expect

Our most anticipated news:

Ableton and Serato have already teased ableton-serato.com. So, obviously, if you were to tune into CDM at 11am California time tomorrow, I’m sure there won’t be any news whatsoever. Got that? Do not, by any means, expect any news Thursday around 11am.

I’ve been looking forward to talking to Teenage Engineering about their gorgeous-looking, Casio-inspired, FM radio and FM synthesis-equipped OP-1 synthesizer for months now; NAMM had always been the timeframe. Whatever isn’t ready, I should be able to catch when I’m in Stockholm in February. I’m imagining their studio looks something like the Wonka Chocolate Factory. If you’re there, you can find them on the floor.

I expect lots more controller hardware from lots more makers, and, whether it’s at NAMM or Messe or (for many manufacturers) completely independent of any trade show, I think 2010 will see more integrated hardware-software products.

No LinnDrum. There won’t be a LinnDrum announcement this year. That’s actually not a rumor. I think it’s best to diffuse any potential disappointment early. Dave Smith Instruments, though, have promised an announcement, so we’ll see what Dave’s been up to and I hope to catch up with Roger (Linn) later this year.

I could make more predictions, except I already know a lot about what’s coming out, so the predicting is somewhat less fun. Let’s see, let’s see, something I don’t know — I predict that the panelists I assembled on Friday will propose something so ludicrous and absurd for futuristic music tech that we’ll all be forced to make it.

And protests of major guitar manufacturers. On a more sobering note, the Korean workers who make major US brands like Fender, Ibanez, and Gibson are assembling a protest of the whole show, as reported by MusicRadar. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello is even involved. It’s guitars, which strictly speaking isn’t NAMM news – but nearly everything we make (even the inner circuits of a US-assembled monome) is built with Asian labor. If anyone can get the scoop on this protest, I’m happy to hear it.

Big 2010 NAMM news that’s… not at the NAMM show

A lot of the big news in 2010 may happen outside NAMM:

• Big makers skipping trade shows: Native Instruments, for instance, is skipping pricey trade shows to talk directly to would-be customers on the Web. So if there’s an announcement from NI – among ranks of manufacturers I expect will gradually grow – it’ll be elsewhere. I hear this Web thing is going to be huge.
• Renoise 2.5, 2.6: The underground tracker is adding some unique features. The 2.5 upgrades, like its unique matrix view, look cool enough, but it’s the 2.6 version, with full-blown scripting and OSC support, that gets even more interesting. We should know more about each as the year goes on. (There’s no NAMM announcement, but you can catch Renoise at the Indamixx booth on the show floor.)



• Ruin & Wesen’s magic box: The techno geniuses of Ruin & Wesen have been hard at work on their MiniCommand, plus the open Miduino library – built on Arduino – that powers it. This deserves a lot more attention for things like algorithmic musical programming, but the short version: expect magical music-programming capabilities that bridge hardware and software.
• OpenSoundControl/OSC: Yeah, I know: OSC has been waiting for its big breakout year for some time. But don’t forget, OSC already has new traction, from becoming a standard in live visual/VJ apps almost overnight to inclusion on new hardware. There’s some big news as far as better hardware and software implementation in the pipeline. Oh, and because it’s open, we’ll get to just talk about this, and actually make it happen. OSC won’t be at NAMM because that’s not where it belongs: it’s a way of implementing Internet standards as much as it is a way of creating music-specific protocols, and a lot of its future lies directly in your hands.
• Open hardware: It won’t be on the NAMM floor, but there is a convergence of monome users, alternative developers, and even (at the party Friday night) open-hardware Arduinomes. DIY tech is something we’ll be watching in Anaheim and all year long.
• …and the suitcase brigade: Technically, NAMM doesn’t allow “suitcase” behavior – that is, people showing stuff who don’t have a booth. But I have at least one product demo booked offsite at a hotel room I think you’ll like. (Whoa, that sounds way more illicit than it is.)

How to Send Us News Tips

Are you a manufacturer with a product? An attendee with photos, video, sound, or words on anything cool — even that late-night jam back in the hotel room with friends? We’d love to have you get it to us. Directions on the namm.noisepages blog:

Community-driven coverage: Help Us Cover The Stuff Everyone Misses

In Anaheim this week, the music manufacturer trade gather to show their wares. But 8pm – 4am Friday night, we party.

“Wham Bam Thank You NAMM” has become an annual tradition, an unofficial afterparty of sorts for the first two days of the trade show.

This year’s lineup: John Tejada, Richard Devine, Flashbulb, Deru, Laura Escude, Scott Pagano, CPU, DJ Kero, Acid Circus, Derek Michael, Baseck, Eezir, Trifonic, DJ G Ov, Moldover, Henry Strange, and myself, among others.

Escaping from the Anaheim Convention Center doldrums, the event is held in the lovely, artistically-blossoming Los Angeles downtown. The Downtown Independent is a gorgeous space with a movie theater and rooftop for full audiovisual-party immersion. This year, we have a couple of new features with which I’m assisting on behalf of CDM. There’s a VIP lounge / “industry room” which will be filled with music toys. You need a NAMM badge to get in, but inside you’ll find some unusual sonic toys you can’t find on the NAMM floor.

Also in the spirit of going beyond NAMM, I’m moderating a panel on how people are using computers in performance, and how we can all make the future of music tech shinier, sooner. When you’re living in a cool-sounding year like “2010,” there’s really no excuse not to take matters into your own hands (oh, yeah, and maybe I want to make sure I’m on the same side as the evil robots when the bad s*** starts going down):

2010: It’s gonna be the future soon
A conversation on live electronic performance technique, and how to make music tech better

There’s no need to dream of futuristic, expressive live performance on computers. It’s here. And there’s no reason to wait for technology to improve: let’s talk about how to make it happen. Moderated by Create Digital Music’s PETER KIRN, this conversation with some of the artists at the edge of sound and live electronic music provides a glimpse into the ways people are working in 2010, and an open discussion about what we can do this year to extend our technique and make technology work better.

JUSTIN BORETA and edIT (Glitch Mob, etc.)
RICHARD DEVINE (Schematic/Warp), DSP mad scientist and composer
LAURA ESCUDE, violinist and music technologist
FLIPMU, the duo of Owen Vallis and Jordan Hochenbaum
MOLDOVER, Mojo controller creator, musical supervillian
DERU, composer and musician (Ghostly, etc.), recent Paris Opera Ballet score
BRIAN TRIFON (TRIFONIC), electronic musician and sound designer (Avatar)

and other guests

Hands-on "snap" demos of live rigs + topics of discussion:

Unusual interfaces, including graphical, touch, gestural, and multi-touch interfaces
Monome, Arduinome, MidiDuino and the Minicommand
Max/Max for Live, Reaktor, Pd, Processing, and other tools
Collaboration, synchronization, and open control
New Year’s Resolutions for making technology and performance practice better
…topics to be continued online
Followed by live performances kicking off a night-long party

Presented by Electronic Creatives, Dubspot and Create Digital Music

When: Friday, January 15, 2010, 8pm – 4am

Where: The Downtown Independent, downtownindependent.com

251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 [Map]

What: Wham Bam Thank You NAMM [official site/artist bios]

Cost: $20; $10 discounted (21+)

RSVP: droidbehavior@gmail.com Information: 213-915-6120 Facebook: Event page

Note on NAMM badges: the NAMM badge gets you into the “industry room” and a discount on admission, but you do NOT need a NAMM badge to get into this party! It is 21+, though – sorry about that.

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Major kudos to the wizards of Electronic Creatives who’ve been a huge part of making the whole evening happen (whereas I largely get to just show up). That includes in particular the talented violinist, composer, technologist, educator, and creative mind Laura Escudé, who has worked with everyone from Cirque du Soleil to Carmen Rizzo; I hope we get to introduce more of her work.

Electronic Creatives “produces events centered around Ableton Live and new music technology coupled with envelope-pushing performances.” (I’m going to try to make sure not to interpret that last phrase as “making my laptop crash onstage,” okay?)

So, your human drummer can’t bang out the elaborate breakcore beats you’ve composed, huh? Build your own robotic replacement, putting the magic of positronics into rhythm.

That’s what the folks of Texas Central Positronics and the David Crowder Band have done with Steve_3po, the robotic drummer. It brings new meaning to “drum machine,” blending acoustic sound with programmed rhythms.

The secret to controlling this machine with MIDI is none other than one of our favorite kits, Highly Liquid’s MIDI Decoder. For more on that side of things, see the recent story by Mike Una here on CDM:

DIY MIDI In, MIDI Out For Your Gear: New Kits from HighlyLiquid

The challenging part, of course, is building the robotics. The talented creators at Texas State Technical College, including mechanical engineers Josh Caldwell and Eli Hernandez, worked with “bwack” (the father and son Bwack team) to create Steve. You can read the complete story at Texas Central Positronics, in a post from October:

Introducing – Steve

“bwack” has done other terrific work in the past, including a 760-pound, large-format MPC that stands seven feet tall. And they say drum machines have no soul.

Thanks to Richard Devine for finding this, and Simon Stansfield for bringing it to our attention.

This instrument is not alone among robotic drummers, of course; here are a couple of other top picks:

Glastonbury Festival 2008 was host to this fantastic-looking robotic drummer with four arms and a combination of hydraulics and servos. Sadly, as often happens at these festivals, the credits for who created this lovely invention appear to be lost. Anyone out there know the origins of the work?

Another fine example of robotic drumming comes in the form of Haile, by Georgia Tech’s Gil Weinberg and Scott Driscoll. Haile not only plays the drums, but responds intelligently (via computer) to “heard” sounds and rhythmic patterns. A very early CDM story talked to the creators about how they pulled off the trick.

But wait — there’s more! There are robots responding to plants and playing bamboo and Chinese instruments, an all-robotic band, robotic Theremins, robotic knives, Taiko drummers, robots that play Guitar Hero for you, Game Boy-controller robotic drum machines, Roombas controlled by MIDI, robotic Ballet Mechanique instruments, and, for the holidays, Robotic sleigh ride-playing chimes.

For ensembles filled with unique and creative robotic-powered instruments, look no further than the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, which recently relocated from here in NYC to tech capital Pittsburgh. One of the most exquisite recent creations from a residency with this group is Zemi17’s wonderful Gamelatron, which, as the name implies, robotifies the Indonesian gamelan ensemble. That instrument visited Handmade Music; here it is at Galapagos in Brooklyn from earlier this year:

Also in the robotic gamelan category, here is Rui Penha’s own contribution (independent of the other project, believe it or not):

Robotic Gamelan from Rui Penha on Vimeo.

A network of several independent robots play some of the javanese gamelan instruments: 2 bonangs, 2 demungs, 3 kenongs, 1 saron, 2 peking and 1 slentem, some gongs and an additional slentem in the near future. This network is controlled by a computer sending serial information using Max/MSP.

In this specific case, all the robots are being played using custom controllers made out of an Ikea salad bowl, an Arduino and two ultrasonic distance sensors.

Best of all, here is Processing-based software for arranging sequences gamelan-style, which can be used to control this instrument (or others). It’s funny, as I had built a similar circular sequencer which I showed briefly in Dublin at the DEAF fest – so perhaps the age of circular, cyclical sequencers is here, to replace all these rectangular step sequencers we’ve had so long. (Similar notation is sometimes used in the analysis of gamelan cycles.)

GameLan from Rui Penha on Vimeo.

To me, most beautiful of all is a set of work called “Felix’s Machines”:

From the description — thanks to opuswerk in comments for reminding me of this:

The Artist, Felix Thorn created this monster which was filmed by Tom Swindell, Directed by Tom Mansfield and edited by Chris Barnet.

Extract from composition: ‘Glide’ recorded and filmed at Gasworks winter 2008. www.felixsmachines.com

www.youtube/tomswindell

Chris Barnet the editor channel is here www.youtube.com/user/chrismicrofilm

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Updated: Still more wonderful creations…

Byeong Sam Joen’s “Telematic” Drum Circle, far from the more automated selections here, imagines robotics as a way of encouraging interaction in a group.

Telematic Drum Circle (The 9th Session) @ Siggraph Asia 2008 in Singapore from Byeong Sam Jeon on Vimeo.

Telematic Drum Circle (The 9th Session) @ Siggraph Asia 2008 in Singapore

Website: TelematicDrumCircle.net

Artist: Byeong Sam Jeon (BSJeon.net)

Period: 12/11/2008-12/13/2008

Siggraph Asia 2008: Suntec International Convention Centre (Singapore)

Robotic Installation: Darren Communication Center @ Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (USA)

It’s designed to be used interactively over the Web. Kyle McDonald has even hacked it for MIDI support:

Telematic Drum Circle (Hacked) from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Thanks to our friend, the resourceful and talented Memo Akten, for bringing this to our attention.

At the risk of becoming Create Digital Monomes, here are two things that make me very happy.

For anyone who thinks it’s too hard to get hold of a genuine monome, or any of those of you who got the kit and haven’t built a proper case for it, this is for you. FYXDESIGN has posted a terrific tutorial enclosing the monome 40h kit (8×8 grid) inside a custom case made from LEGO bricks. The project comes out of a group at New York University’s ITP digital tech school who saved money, beat the monome’s scarcity, and made lots of friends by group ordering a bunch of kits and then assembling them together as a group. The magic here comes courtesy of some smart design sense and a boon to prototypers everywhere, the LEGO Digital Designer software, free for Windows and Macs.

Xiaoyang Feng’s design work is in general worth checking out; if someone with his experience and skill is using LEGOs, you’ll want to take note.

Even if you’ve got a project that’s not a monome, this is clearly a fantastic way to whip up an enclosure in a hurry – and that “prototype” might be all you need. Bless you, LEGO!

With the step-by-step tutorial, this is child’s play, even for someone as tragically un-handy as me.

Build Monome LEGO Case Tutorial

In other news, here’s a lovely live video shot by duo elle p & iftah in, apparently, a bathroom (no reverb needed)! It’s a reminder that, even without velocity control, an array of buttons really can make a musical instrument. (In fact, making performance easier is part of the grand tradition of instrument design – see frets, the Autoharp, the piano, and so on.) In an age of overproduced music (sorry, Glee), it’s lovely to see the Internets striking back with live performance, warts and all, as a way of conveying authenticity and personality. Elle has in her lap another interesting DIY creation that’s not a monome. The duo describe it as a “pixiphone,” a “general purpose d.i.y grid controller based on an old siemens operator interfaced with arduino.” I’ll have to get more documentation on that.

Embedding is acting a wee bit screwy for me today, possibly on Vimeo’s end, but you can always go straight to the video.

candy for a 40h and a pixiphone from lp&i on Vimeo.

You know the grid craze is in full steam once ThinkGeek offers a $50 clone. The Bliptronic 5000 is somewhere between the Tenori-On and monome. It certainly looks like the monome, with an 8-by-8 grid of light-up pads in a square form factor. But like the Tenori-On, it has built-in sounds and speaker, it’s made of aluminum, and it runs on batteries. The Bliptronic also simplifies its user interface. Its 8×8 pads are simply an eight-note octave with eight steps. There’s a play button, and knobs for tempo and tone selector. There’s also the ability to link up devices and play them together – bonus points for that, as aside from basic MIDI function, the Tenori-On as shipped by Yamaha failed to deliver some of the original collaborative features promised by designer Toshio Iwai’s original proposal.

The “old-skool” sounds are pretty lo-fi-sounding from what I can tell, but this unit does have a certain charm. If you’ve got a monome and a Tenori-On and a Launchpad in every room, you can amuse your friends by keeping one of these in the lavatory. And who knows, someone might pick this thing up and do something terrific with it. (I sure can’t argue with the price.)

Mostly what it reminds me is that it would be really fantastic to pair a synth chip directly with the monome, for a standalone monome synth, perhaps even an Arduino-programmable model (particularly since the monome already speaks serial).

Updated: Wait, hold the presses — this isn’t the work of some anonymous creator; Ty Liotta is doing the gadget design. That means this could be an eminently hackable little device, which is a good thing. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Louis Muloka and everyone else who sent this in.

The specs from ThinkGeek:

Unusual retro synthesizer is played with a grid of glowing buttons
Create looping patterns and change them dynamically while playing
Chain multiple units together and create more complex melodies
One octave range. 8 notes can be played simultaneously
8 different old-skool synth sounding instruments to choose from
Sounds created using FM waveform synthesis
Set the BPM (beats per minute) from 60 to 180 in 20 BPM increments
Built in speaker with headphone jack and line-out jack
Front panel is constructed from brushed aluminum
Includes, manual and 2 link cables for connecting additional Bliptronic units
Requires 4 x AA batteries (not included)

Bliptronic 5000 Instrument

Stay tuned here for news of the Bliptronic 10000.

SevenUpLive 2.0 Preview from bar|none on Vimeo.

Planet monome is getting to be an exciting place. The biggest news: SevenUpLive, an extraordinary original application that melds the monome as controller with a set of Live functions, is getting a major rebuild and Max for Live support. Mapping the buttons of the monome to a set of Live sonic magic, SevenUp transforms the monome – and Live – into an interactive compositional instrument, with looping, sequencing, and melodic and rhythmic manipulation. With Max for Live integration, that will also allow people writing Max patches for Ableton to use their work as modules, and the simple grid controls of the monome as the interface.

For more on the existing 7up project:
SevenUpLive on the monome wiki
Google Code Project
SevenUp at makingthenoise

MakingTheNoise, the artist behind the project, is himself a terrific performer. I got to play with him last week at Boston’s Enormous Room, and he’s a wonderful guy and inventive artist. We’re both presenting in New York, so expect more on this soon (see the end of the story).

New monome kits, models: Okay, so you want the real thing, and you’re ready for a monome of your own. You have two ongoing opportunities from the source, in addition to the various emulators and DIY projects. Dogs not included (sadly).

First, monome production by Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain is getting rolling again. The grayscale sixty four has to be one of the prettiest of these I’ve seen yet. It’s US$500, but it’s also a domestically-produced, largely handmade beauty you may want to hang onto forever. There’s no preorder, but keep on the monome site in January if you want to buy one; I’m sure this will again sell out.

The DIY spirit is at the heart of the monome project, so to me an even better way to go is to make your own. There’s the Arduinome kit, which has readily-available parts and is brilliantly documented on the FlipMU site at Noisepages:
http://flipmu.com/work/arduinome/

But you can also get an even easier-to-build kit from the monome folks themselves. The students at NYU’s ITP program (a multi-disciplinary technology program in Manhattan) got a whole bunch of folks together, did a group buy on kits, and had more fun by putting them together with friends. Check out the growing Flickr pool for a sense of all the mayhem. Now, true, there are more would-be monome users in Manhattan than perhaps anywhere else on Earth, but the basic idea – make with friends – could absolutely be replicated.

If you’re interested, I can see if there is a way we can help coordinate such endeavors here on CDM and with Noisepages – shout out in comments.

Festival in NYC:

If you’d like to meet the creator of SevenUp, hear more about grids and OSC, and hear music and discussion from the creator of the monome, you’ll absolutely want to mark your calendars for December 12 in New York.

http://www.inoutfest.org/
Lineup Workshops

More details are coming; watch this space.

Got more monome news – or anything else? Do let us know.