Ed. Twisted Tools are a special breed of music software makers, concocting wild-sounding instruments, sequencers, and effects, all with a distinctively-colorful and graphical approach to interface design. And they do all of this in Reaktor, Native Instruments’ deep toolbox for visual development of soundmakers, a patching cousin to tools like Max/MSP, Pd, and Plogue Bidule. Various patchers take a DIY approach to building musical tools in such environments, but Twisted Tools have successfully turned those creations into a business.

That’s part of what makes this interview well worth a read, whether you’re an end user or a developer. Writer Markus Schroeder talked to Twisted Tools’ Igor and Josh for the German publication AMAZONA.de; you can read that translated interview in German. But the interview itself was originally conducted in English. Through the generous permission of Markus and AMAZONA.de, we reproduce that full English interview, edited in its entirety, for CDM.

In it, Markus asks some probing questions about designing and selling musical tools, with some insights into the Twisted Tools’ current catalog. And Twisted Tools share both praise and criticism for Reaktor as a tool – there’s some tough love in there. I’ll let Markus take it from here. -PK

Tell us a bit about the foundations of Twisted Tools and its team members.
IGOR: Josh and I started Twisted Tools about a year ago now. It’s basically the two of us with lots of encouragement and support from friends and fans. Several years back, Josh contacted me because he was a fan of my work. He wanted help building an idea of his, and we got to know each other well using Google Chat. At some point, we decided that it would be cool to start a business together selling such things. At University, I studied Linguistics and worked as an English interpreter, which in many ways comes in handy now with Twisted Tools. When I was studying, I began fooling around with DAWs, then discovered Reaktor and got hooked. The rest is history. As for Twisted Tools, it’s my full time gig now.

JOSH: I think we began thinking about starting a business together because we saw eye-to-eye on almost everything; at the same time, we bring unique ideas to the table. I’m an electronic musician and a teacher, so I think I tend to approach instrument design from a user’s perspective. Igor spends most of his time on the inside looking out, from a builder’s perspective, so the partnership works out nicely. We still use Google Chat as our primary means of communication. In fact, all our work is done using chat, which I also think helps us to focus. Lots of people ask me why we don’t ever use audio or video chat, but I really think we’d lose something in doing so.
Until recently, I was the Course Director of Computer Music Production at a digital arts college in the San Francisco area. Now Twisted Tools is my main occupation, too. I don’t perform at all. Once upon a time, I DJ’ed and produced electronic music. These days, Twisted Tools satisfies most of my creative urges, though I’d love to get back to music making, too.

How long you have been actively developing with Reaktor, and why did you get started?
JOSH: Igor has been building for about five or six years, and I’ve been doing some basic building on and off for several years, but I wouldn’t consider myself a true builder. I tinker and understand the basics, but nothing like Igor, who probably has 20 years’ experience if you’re counting by the hour.

As far as why I got started, I bought Reaktor 3 to basically just use the factory stuff. There are so many interesting and unique things about Reaktor that I can’t remember exactly what interested me most about it. When you crack it open and demo it for the first time, it is pretty jaw-dropping. Then you open up the structure and realize the potential. The urge to make modifications creeps up on you and before you know it, you’re building stuff for fun. It is like an addictive puzzle that makes sounds.

What were the reasons to take the step to commercially selling your Ensembles? And does it pay off, in one way another?
JOSH: Well, I think it came down to simply gaining enough confidence to try. I’d hired Igor to help me build stuff before and was super pleased with the results. So I was totally confident in the quality; I just wasn’t sure if people would buy Reaktor ensembles and/or how many people out there were even using Reaktor. Reaktor hadn’t been updated in years and seemed forgotten, so it seemed like an unlikely business idea. But, when I saw the first versions of Vortex that Igor had made, I was pretty confident that people would buy it and so was Igor. So we moved on that impulse…

IGOR: As far as it paying off, I suppose it depends on what kind of currency we’re talking about We spend a ton of time on Twisted Tools, more than most people would imagine. I would say that we spend at least four or five hours a day, usually six days a week on Twisted Tools. That’s a very conservative guess. The response has been incredible and as cliche as it sounds, I think that makes it worth it alone.

What was the reaction from the Community of the Reaktor User Library?
Were you worried about possibly sending some wrong signals out to them, since there are a lot of high quality Ensembles for free?

JOSH: To be honest, I’m not sure what the reaction was like for everyone. I’m sure some approved and some didn’t, but I think either way people respect the quality. The overwhelming majority of the things I’ve heard have been positive and I think that in many ways, selling Reaktor ensembles has been good for the Reaktor community. I don’t really see much difference between selling a VST/AU or selling a Reaktor patch. In fact, the only reason a VST/AU is better is because you can run it without owning Reaktor. Otherwise, having a Reaktor ensemble is so much more powerful than owning a VST/AU. You can open up our stuff, modify it, study it, make OSC routings, etc. Plus, our development process is faster and our updates/fixes come more frequently than most VST/AUs.

IGOR: In the end, the question is, do people find it useful and of value? If they do and want to pay for it, that’s great. If not, that’s fine too. There are still tons of amazing free instruments in the User Library and if someone finds what suits their needs there, that’s great. But we definitely don’t feel we’re sending the wrong signals. NI sells Reaktor ensembles too now in the Player format, so what’s the difference?

Was it difficult to suddenly deal with issues like online selling and customer support?
JOSH: Absolutely! Especially after our first launch. We didn’t expect that kind of traffic and the e-commerce cart we were using had a poorly-programmed PHP script that ended up crashing the server, due to traffic load. Our host didn’t like that, and not only shut us down in the middle of our first day, but locked us out and I couldn’t get to our files. Nightmare…but, we changed hosts and somehow managed to get things back up in a day or so. I learned quite a lot in those first days.

IGOR: It’s really a lot of work, still since we do everything ourselves — instrument design, GUI design, web design, support, marketing, documentation, videos, etc. At first it was very difficult, but it has definitely gotten a bit smoother. We are kind of lucky to be in two time zones because we take shifts which basically gives us a 24/7 customer support system. It’s rare that a customer sends in a request for help and more than several hours go by without a response. We’re happy about being able to provide that kind of support.

What was the reason of going Reaktor instead of making software on your own?
IGOR: Reaktor is a great platform to develop with. It has a great interface and many possibilities. All that I know about DSP and instrument design, I learned while working with Reaktor. Neither of us know any other programming languages, so there wasn’t really a choice. We’d love to do VSTs and AUs someday, though.

JOSH: If we do VST/AUs, we’d obviously be able to tap into a larger market, so it is something we are considering more seriously.

What did Reaktor already provide as building blocks, and how much did you have to invent by yourself in the form of Core programming or Macros?
IGOR: I use my personal macros and core library wherever it is possible. I trust these structures and know them inside and out, making it easy for me to tweak things and look for bugs. Building this library took years though. The initial steps were back-engineering the factory content of course. I think that this is a very good way to learn things in Reaktor when you are starting out. The documentation is only useful up until a point because there are so many variables involved in building.

If there was a lot of Core programming, can you tell us about the the process of working with it? Did you face any obstacles?
IGOR: Of course, Core is a great environment with lots of possibilities; however, it’s still pretty limited, and some very basic workflow features are lacking. For example, you can’t copy/paste input and output ports inside Core Cells, you can’t duplicate the selected structure preserving connections, as opposed to primary, etc. Then there is the lack of polyphony management, iteration issues, event loops, snap-able memory, the list goes on. Lets hope that the situation will improve in the future.
Ed.: NI engineers, I hope someone is taking notes. Core is incredibly powerful, and could be even more so… -PK

What were the hardest obstacles to overcome?
IGOR: I wish we had the ability to save in the Reaktor Player format, so we could share our work with more people, since it wouldn’t require that you own Reaktor.



Now let´s have a look at the catalog of Ensembles Twisted Tools have to offer, and get some insights on their inspiration.

Vortex

What was your initial conception behind Vortex?
IGOR: The vision behind Vortex was to create a flexible, sample-based groove box that is capable of simple yet powerful control over one-shot samples as well as loops. In Vortex, you can stretch short one-shot samples and create long textures, slice and chop loops, or create drum kits.

How you know when what you’ve got is a final product?
IGOR: Well, as they say, perfect is the enemy of good, so you need to stop at some point when developing instruments. It’s impossible to fulfill everybody’s needs, but I think we did our best and covered the most important areas.

JOSH: There certainly is always room to improve something, but we also run the chance of making it worse by adding too much. Our devices get pretty complex and we always end up having to leave things out, which is usually a good thing. Sometimes simple can be good, too, though, so I think we’ll be releasing a new line of tools that have fewer options, but are still powerful, in the very near future.

Colorflex

What were you ideas for Colorflex?
IGOR: The idea behind Colorflex was to take a simple, 16×16 note matrix and push it to the limit.

JOSH: We wanted to make a sequencer that could be used for both hardware and software, with lots of creative possibilities. The graphic layer approach makes it fun to look at and use.

How much of it have you achieved to get into the final product?
JOSH: I think we squeezed as much into Colorflex as possible. It is a very deep and complex device, with tons of options if you dig into it. It started out as a simple cell matrix based on colors and kept growing from there. If you want to sequence MIDI CC’s you can use it just for that — or you can use it to automate other Reaktor devices using IC Sends. Those were things we added and that took a long time to get working properly, but make the device do a lot more than we’d initially planned. In some ways, Twisted Tools devices are like improvisations that start out in one direction and end up somewhere totally new by the time they’re finished. I think the ability to basically improvise while you build is one of the things that makes Reaktor instruments interesting compared to building standard VSTs.

The Matrix Sequencer is very powerful, as are the editing options. How complicated was developing the different edit layers and make them work?
IGOR: It was pretty complicated, of course; we had to deal with Stacked Macros and it’s not the most pleasant part when working on GUI.

JOSH: Igor is putting it mildly. Reaktor is limited to a four-pixel resolution for moving graphics around on the interface, which makes finalizing the look a true pain.

Buffeater

What was the driving idea for Buffeater?
IGOR: Obviously, Buffeater is not the first effect of this kind, but it was a personal take. It’s also entirely focused on buffer based processing (no filters, lo-fi crushers etc).

JOSH: We definitely wanted everything to be automatable and we wanted it to have a great library of sounds and presets to get people started. That was important. Not only is everything automatable, but each parameter’s automation lane can be set to a unique speed so that patterns overlap and evolve in unique ways. Each effect has presets as well that store the automation. You can even record live automation into a lane by turning on record and twisting knobs.

How much of the original concept survived in the final product?
JOSH: We’re very happy with how Buffeater turned out. It’s a ton of fun and we’ve received a great response. There are a lot of buffer effects out there now, and they all do something interesting and unique. We had a similar effect brewing before we did Buffeater that’s also good for live mangling, but sounds and feels totally different. Perhaps we’ll end up putting that one out, as well … it’s never enough.

What do you think makes these six effects so popular, generally?
JOSH: Well, people like to mangle and twist up audio. Buffer effects are a good quick way to do that.

Scapes

Scapes is another way-out kind of thing. How did you get the inspiration for it?
IGOR: The initial inspiration was to create a multi-faced instrument that’s capable of creating rhythmic structures, soundscapes, process incoming sounds, etc., all with a unique twist.

JOSH: Again, this device was really something that took on a mind of its own. At first it was a soundscape generator, then it started to evolve into a percussive instrument and synth…then it morphed into an effects processor. Eventually we decided that it could do all of those things together in a neat way. Rather than making several devices, we put them together all in one, and the result is a very unique instrument. Whether you are a sound designer at Lucas Arts, a video game composer, musician, or an iPad enthusiast, Scapes is useful and fun.
We hadn’t really anticipated the iPad control potential until we hooked up with the guys from Konkreet Labs. They had just finished developing their Konkreet Performer iPad controller app right around when we were planning to launch Scapes. The two work brilliantly together. When I first set it up, I sat my wife down in front of it and she just started playing for about an hour. I swear I had to tear it out of her hands…she’s not an electronic music producer, but she had so much fun, anyways. This is a side of Scapes that we hadn’t anticipated.

Scapes is so versatile, is there still something that should be included?

JOSH: I think we truly created a unique device that we are both very proud of. The response has been amazing so far. So… no.

A short time ago, I honestly thought granular synthesis was mostly done, since only few products using the technique managed to produce their own distinct sounds or interesting sounds at all. Then, Curtis for iOS, from The Strange Agency , came along and rekindled my interest. What is your take on grains?
IGOR: I think Scapes itself answers this question

JOSH: The funny thing is, we kind of were worried that people would think like you, and we changed the name from Grainscapes to Scapes for this very reason. Scapes makes unique and complex sounds. The sounds can’t be used for everything, but they have their own place, as does granular synthesis.

Your products often revolve around the idea of chaotic and fractalized sequences. Do you see your work in terms of using data of stochastic, mathematic or physics sources as means to create musical events?
IGOR: I think Colorflex is capable of both – fractal, semi-random structures, and more day-to-day musical stuff. Though I wouldn’t place Colorflex in that area, entirely.
Right now, taking an academic approach to instrument development doesn’t excite me. There is definitely a place for this, but in our case, it’s all about music.

JOSH: The more important question for us is, is it going to be something that’s fun to use? Is it useful, simple enough to understand, but complex enough to grow into? What kind of sounds does it produce? Is it intuitive? Does that matter for this particular device?

Thank you very much for the interview Josh and Igor.
And also let´s have a big shout out to the Reaktor community. Without them, Reaktor could not be where it is today – one of the most sizzling music applications you can get.

This interview was conducted by Markus Schroeder and originally published by AMAZONA.de in German translation. This interview on CDM is the original English transcript, which is supplied in approval by the author, Twisted Tools and AMAZONA.de

 More information at:
Twisted Tools – http://twistedtools.com

In the words of Yogi Berra, the future ain’t what it used to be. Drawing from futurist philosophy and the machine aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk, the moment at which techno comes into the world is a seminal birth in the creation of the age in which we live. Its creative energy is focused a the nexus of technology and music, set against the impoverished landscape of Detroit as America’s industrial urban centers implode. And while we’ve lost the people who could tell the story of the creation of jazz, the people who created techno continue to play.

We’re fortunate to get a rich look at this story, and pioneering artists like Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May, from Wax Poetics, the terrific music lovers’ magazine. That publication devoted an issue to dance music, January/February 2011, issue 45, available as a back issue.

Wax Poetics 45

From that issue, Andy Thomas recounts the development of Detroit techno, through the eyes of the people who built it.

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ELECTRONIC ENIGMA: The myths and messages of Detroit techno
By Andy Thomas
Wax Poetics issue 45; reproduced by permission

“The music is just like Detroit, a complete mistake. It’s like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company,” Derrick May famously proclaims in the liner notes to the pivotal 1988 compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit.

Through a series of interviews during this time, May and Belleville High School friends Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson helped both codify and mystify the electronic music of ’80s Detroit. In the process, the Belleville Three—as they became known—created a manifesto that reached far beyond the postindustrial streets that had inspired them. In Stuart Cosgrove’s article “Seventh City Techno” in the U.K.’s The Face magazine in the same year, Juan Atkins rips up the deep musical roots of the city as he looks to the future of Detroit as a landmark in the sonic imagination: “Within the last five years or so, the Detroit underground has been experimenting with technology, stretching it rather than simply using it. As the price of sequencers and synthesizers has dropped, so the experimentation has become more intense. Basically, we’re tired of hearing about being in love or falling out, tired of the R&B system, so a new progressive sound has emerged. We call it techno!” It’s been thirty years since writer Alvin Toffler coined the term “techno rebels” in his study of postindustrial society, The Third Wave. An avid reader of Toffler, Atkins did not have to think too hard for a name for this futuristic music when the journalists arrived to intellectualize the scene. But looking back almost a quarter of a century on, how much was techno actually a break from America’s Black musical heritage? And how discrete was it from the sonic experimentations bursting out of neighboring underground dance scenes?

In a scene from the independent French documentary Universal Techno, Derrick May, surveying with camera in hand, snaps away at the worn grandeur of the disused Michigan Theatre like an inquisitive tourist. As his lens moves down the elegant arches, the image jolts as you witness the reality of the situation. “Inside this building was a theater, and they tore out the theater and they made a car park,” he laments. “So you are parking your car in a theater. And it’s fucking scary… I mean, look at these arches. They’ve been broken off, totally destroyed.” Visibly moved, he states with a quiet intensity: “Being a techno-electronic-futurist, high-tech musician, I totally believe in the future, but I also believe in a historic and well-kept past. I believe that there are some things that are important. Now maybe this is more important like this, because in this atmosphere, you can realize just how much people don’t care, how much they don’t respect—and it can make you realize how much you should respect.” This poignant scene from the documentary not only characterizes the planning decisions that have blighted Detroit but also typifies the devotion to the city by its musical futurists, who have sought sanctuary from the decimation through the soul of the machine.

“The general attitude here with the powers-that-be is that industry must die to make way for technology,” explains Juan Atkins, in the same film, sitting before a backdrop of empty buildings typical of inner-city Detroit. “The climate has definitely affected us, and I think that we probably wouldn’t have developed this sound in any other city in America… There is a certain atmosphere here that you can’t find in any other city that lends to the technological movement.” To feel the atmosphere of the city in the ’80s, you only have to look at some of the economics and the conditions that allowed a once prosperous town to crumble. No American city was as tied to one industry as Detroit was to car manufacturing. The realization of Henry Ford’s dream had led to a huge increase in industrial production. Between 1900 and 1930, Detroit’s population soared from less than 300,000 to over 1.5 million, the vast majority of the new workers employed in the car plants such as at Ford and General Motors. At the same time, under the direction of Albert Kahn, downtown Detroit became home to elegant structures like the art deco Fisher Building and cultural institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts. However, by the mid-’60s, just as the hits factory of Motown promised better times, the stark reality was that the automation of the car industry (from which the label took its name) and the movement of remaining plants outside of the city were ripping the heart out of Detroit’s center.The downturn became personal when Interstate 75 ripped apart the cultural hub of the Black Bottom neighborhood, Detroit’s own Harlem. With the economics compounded by increasing police oppression, the tensions boiled to the surface, and in July 1967, what be- came known as the Twelfth Street riots resulted in the death of forty-three people and the destruction of over 1,500 buildings. It was in Detroit’s Cobo Hall where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave an earlier version of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. But that dream seemed a long way off, and by the mid- ’70s, Detroit’s center had become a post-urban ghost town with boarded-up shops and crumbling buildings. This backdrop, though, would inspire an alternative culture whose influence would be felt far and wide—as new technology aroused a bold new vision of the future.

It’s a romantic image perhaps, but one that rang true for any young music lover brought up in the Detroit area in the early ’80s—teenagers hiding under the covers on a school night listening to the life-changing signals being transmitted by Charles Johnson, a DJ known as the Electrifying Mojo, whose Midnight Funk Association radio show can rightly claim to have shaped the social and cultural development of a generation of music lovers in southeastern Michigan. “Mojo’s show was monumental in every single way you can imagine,” reflects Derrick May nearly thirty years on. “It was unique. FM radio was still very, very new and in its experimental stage. It was free and open, and anyone could listen to it. And a guy like Mojo came on the radio to do what he wanted to do, how he wanted to do it.” The music he played was radical and far-reaching, mixing up Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, and Zapp with the alternative rock of the B-52s and Talking Heads, and importantly, the alien electronic music of Kraftwerk and other Euro- pean futurists like Telex and Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra. “He was more album orientated,” adds Juan Atkins. “You could hear him play half an hour of James Brown, and then after that, play half an hour of Peter Frampton. You know what I’m say- ing? He would go off on tangents like that.”

While the authorities did their best to break up the community, The Midnight Funk Association responded with music as a weapon, and a communal force. Harold Mansfield, whose Midnight Funk Association website is dedicated to the memory of the show, recalls how it united all those who listened: “At the top of the show, Mojo opened membership to the MFA, and members new and old were asked to stand up to show solidarity [with the immortal line: ‘Will the members of the Midnight Funk Association please rise’]. If you were driving, you were to flash your headlights. If you were at home, you turned on your porch light. If you were in bed listening to the show, you were required to dance on your back. And every night for years, people did it. To become a card-carrying member of the MFA, listeners wrote into the radio station and would receive their official ID card.”

Kevin Saunderson recalls how the friends eagerly consumed the music and messages from their radios in their suburban bedrooms: “It was kind of like a cult. We would listen to him religiously every night. He provided the youth with a positive direction and a new kind of energy.” From leafy Belleville, the three friends took a studious pleasure in analyzing the music. “We used to sit back and philosophize about what these people thought about when they made their music,” Derrick May says in Simon Reynolds’s book Generation Ecstasy. “We’d sit back with the lights off and listen to records by Kraftwerk and Funkadelic and Parliament and Bootsy and Yellow Magic Orchestra.” May now recalls, “We thought it was really cool and almost animated. We’d go to the record shops and look at the sleeves and be entranced by the artwork alone, and we’d just fantasize about what the records would sound like.”

Juan Atkins had already glimpsed the future when he heard the Mothership land over the airwaves with his music-loving grandmother who raised him: “I first heard Parliament-Funkadelic on the radio, tracks like ‘Funky Dollar Bill’ and the Mag- got Brain album… I think I was in elementary school when I first heard ‘Loose Booty’ [off the visionary 1972 LP America Eats Its Young]… The first time I actually saw anyone play a Minimoog or Korg MS-10 was Bernie Worrell.” While Detroit techno would stake a claim for a bold new future, it could be argued that it was also continuing a line of Afrofuturism that reached back to not only P-Funk but also to the other- worldly music of everyone from Sun Ra to Lee Perry. And rather than doing away with the “R&B system” under a post- soul future, cats like Juan Atkins were actually traveling the same progressive path as eminent voyagers like Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock; “Nobu” (a track from Herbie’s 1974 LP Dedication, recorded live in Tokyo nearly ten years before his prescient electro-jazz LP Future Shock) was “techno before the event that opens up a new plateau in today’s electronics,” according to Kodwo Eshun in his book More Brilliant than the Sun.

Despite acknowledging a great debt to this Black musical heritage, when Atkins bought his first piece of electronic equipment (a Korg MS-10 from the back room of a shop where his grandmother was having her Hammond B-3 organ repaired), it was to the mechanical soul of urban Germany that he looked. “I was really mesmerized by the precision of their music; everything was really robotic,” he explains on first hearing Kraftwerk. “Man—a light went on in my head.” While Kedwo Eshun recognizes techno’s debt to the Black futurism so evident in the progressive fusion of “Nobu,” he also notes in his book that for Atkins and his associates, “Kraftwerk are to techno what Muddy Waters is to the Rolling Stones, the authentic, the original, the real.” In truth, techno’s futuristic path probably began somewhere between Düsseldorf and
Detroit. In Dan Sicko’s book Techno Rebels, Kraftwerk’s Karl Bartos suggests as much when he explains the origins of their own influences: “We were all fans of American music: soul, the whole Tamla/Motown thing… We always tried to make an American rhythm feel, with a European approach to harmony and melody.”

The turn of the ’80s had seen kids in Detroit’s Black middle- class neighborhoods make up for the lack of cultural activi- ties in the city by creating their own network of parties, where aspirational fashions were the order of the day. “The scene was made up of lower-middle-class and upper-working-class Black people, basically preppy college kids wanting to be different,” remembers Saunderson. “They dressed a certain way and thought they were more important than they were.” Derrick May, whose first experience of clubbing was through the athletics club where he was a member, agrees: “It was really a highfalutin thing, really just for kids who lived in a certain community. Rich Black kids from places like Palmer Woods and Indian Village.” However pretentious and cliquey the scene might have been, it revolved around some forward-thinking music. “Although it was college based, the music was very progressive,” recalls Saunderson. “A mix of disco with lots of European stuff, especially all the Italian.”

The scene was epitomized by the influential party Charivari, where the soundtrack was a diverse mix of European and American dance forms. As Sicko explains in his book, European new wave and Italo disco “became the most popular music of the high school set.” The writer goes on to make the case that Italian dance groups such as Kano were actually every bit as important to the development of the early techno sound as Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Witness the archive footage from The Scene, Detroit’s take on Soul Train, and you’ll see how huge Italo disco was for Black dancers in the city in the early ’80s. Such was the influence that what is often credited as the first techno record, “Sharevari” (produced by a Number of Names, a group of regulars off the high school scene) borrowed heavily from the B-side to Kano’s hit “I’m Ready.” “Detroit DJs would work two copies of ‘Holly Dolly,’ repeating the sparse intro over and over again and doubling up on the chorus,” explains Sicko. “A Number of Names mimicked this interpretation.”

At the same time around 1981, as the high school scene dominated Detroit nightlife, May and Atkins joined forces with their friend Eddie “Flashin” Fowlkes and started the DJ and party collective Deep Space Soundworks, which Saunderson would later join in ’84. With competition intense, the friends had to learn quickly both in terms of technical skills and also branding. May recalls to Sicko how their parties were as conceptual as the music they were playing: “We had amazing flyers back then, [which contained] these subliminal messages of an alternative way of thinking. We were trying to attract people that wanted to be alternative and wanted to be different.”

At the same time as A Number of Names was concocting its sonic landmark, Atkins had spent 1980 experimenting with the equipment his friend Rick Davis, a Vietnam veteran, had collected as an avant-garde electronic musician with a penchant for numerology and mysticism. “I went into his room, and it was like going into a spaceship,” Atkins recalls. “All you could see was the LED lights flashing. It was like I’d stepped into a whole new dimension.” Taking the name Cybotron from a term used by Alvin Toffler, the pair firmly saw themselves as techno rebels providing the soundtrack to an alternative future—where the people reclaimed technology for the benefit of the community.

While the pricing of electronic keyboards in the ’70s had been out of reach for all but the most established of musicians, by the early ’80s, the speed of technological advancements meant keyboards and synthesizers were quickly outdated. All of a sudden, drum machines and synthesizers became afford- able, and Atkins and his peers became fascinated by them. “I just liked the weird sounds,” he says, “the UFO and spaceship sounds you could make. So I was mainly into the synthesizer not so much for musical stuff but more for effects. But then I realized that it was dependent on how you tune the filters. You could tune the filter to make it sound like drums, snare sounds, or a hi-hat. So I would just combine all these sounds and ping- pong between my cassette deck.” But it wasn’t just Detroit’s young music obsessives who were accessing this cheap technology. Listen to Cybotron’s early records like “Clear” and “Alleys of Your Mind,” and you are reminded not only of their debt to Kraftwerk and Funkadelic but also of the similarities with the electronic music coming out of New York’s outer boroughs. Atkins was in New York City when Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force burst across the airwaves like a futuristic flash. “It was a very bittersweet type of thing,” he tells writer Sheryl Garratt in her book Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture, “seeing something along the lines of what I was doing go national like that.” While New York claimed the electro crown, the stark machine soul of Cybotron would be an important building block for Detroit techno, helping to dis- tinguish it from the sonic reverberations of mid-’80s Chicago. “That was the beginning for me,” reckons Saunderson. “Right there with that electro sound [with] which we would go on to build on and create our own thing.”

Although much has been made of the intellectualization of Detroit techno, in truth, the music of the early pioneers was made for the feet rather than the head. While the Belleville Three did take an academic approach to the consumption of music, they were all avid clubbers who had been inspired by Ken Collier, the godfather of Detroit dance music and, in particular, the city’s gay club scene. “He had a mix show on WDRQ,” recalls Derrick May, “and Juan came to me and said, ‘Hey, man, there’s this guy on the radio, and you’ve got to hear what he’s doing—he’s mixing records on the radio.” While Collier is considered to be something of an underground disco and house-music legend whose name evokes reverence in anyone who heard him spin, his name is often missing in the history of dance music in America. “It’s because it’s Detroit and the fact that it’s not one of the major music markets. And it’s also this very superficial, very, very jaded country and the way it sees things,” suggests May. “Our media decides to leave out the facts and doesn’t even try to find out what is the real story, what is the scene behind the scene, who was really important.”The truth is that Collier’s time behind the decks at clubs like Chessmate and Todd’s (alongside his brother Greg) in the late ’70s and early ’80s, as well as his later tenure at Club Heaven, were as important for Detroit as Ron Hardy’s tenure at the Music Box in Chicago or Larry Levan’s at the Paradise Garage in New York. “I would say Ken was important to the whole ecosystem of the music in Detroit,” May states thought- fully. “Without him, Darryl Shannon would not have existed. Without him, Delano Smith would not be here.”Shannon was an influential progressive DJ renowned for his mix of music at parties like Charivari, while Smith was another much-overlooked figure who played alongside his mentor Collier at both L’Uomo and the Downstairs Pub. “Without [Collier],” May continues, “there are music scenes that would not have happened, because he opened the doors for all those guys to learn how to be DJs.”Chez Damier,who had arrived in Detroit from his hometown of Chicago, also sees Collier as a pivotal figure in the city’s club scene. “He was very, very important to dance music in Detroit,” he states. “Because he had the gay kids as well as the straight kids—so he inspired everyone, really.”

Derrick May also regularly made the trip to Chicago, where Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles were bringing down the walls at the Music Box and the Power Plant respectively. “Frankie was really a turning point in my life,” May explains to Sicko. “When I heard him play, and I saw the way people reacted, danced, and sang to the song… This vision of making a moment this euphoric…it changed me.” However, the energy of Ron Hardy had even more of an impact on the aspiring DJ: “That blew me away. The first time I went to the Music Box, I lost my mind, I truly did. I was dancing like crazy, I was emotional, and almost in tears. I had never felt that power and emotion from the human soul all at once. All these people were feeling the same thing. It was as if they had been touched by the Holy Ghost… To hear the crowd screaming and calling Ron Hardy’s name, to go in there the first time and to wit- ness these people the way they were dancing and screaming his name. And to see Ron with no shirt on and playing with his eyes closed, just in it, and lost in the music. Man, it was the most important moment of my young life towards develop- ing and becoming a musician and DJ… How he slipped and twisted records and the edits he did and all the shit he was doing—it was psychotic.”

Detroit’s musical pioneers maintained close ties to their neighbors. Chez Damier, who was raised in Chicago but became a key figure in the Detroit techno scene, explains: “The dance music from Detroit and Chicago both came from the soulful disco sounds coming out of New York combined with the electronic music from Europe. At the same time, both cities have such a strong Black musical tradition that it was inevitable that when this new technology became affordable, they would both give birth to such strong electronic dance music.” Ron Hardy would use Detroit tracks in his sets, alongside those of the European futurists who had inspired them. And while the argument continues about which city laid down the first electronic dance tracks, Saunderson admits that ultimately the scenes developed in tandem: “At the time, I think we were really running neck and neck with Chicago. We had a relationship with most of them, you know, Farley [ Jackmaster Funk], Chip E., most of the guys. And so when we started to take our records there, they would all play them.” Chez Damier recalls dropping off Juan Atkins’s first solo release with Hardy. “We brought the test pressing of ‘No UFO’s’ to CODs where Ron Hardy was playing, and to our surprise, he played both sides. And we completely freaked out.” Such were the ties that during one of their trips to Chicago, Derrick May gave Frankie Knuckles the 909 drum machine that he’d use to create beats to bolster old disco records at the Power Plant and that would be featured on some of the first house productions by the likes of Chip E.

At the same time as Chicago’s early house pioneers had the infamous Trax label to release their DIY beat tracks, Atkins used “No UFO’s” to launch his own small imprint, Metroplex. There was a vision and direction to his art that inspired those around him, in particular a young May. “If Atkins was the prophet, the one to tap into the unseen and unheard possibilities of electronic music, Derrick May was the high priest who brought them about with forceful incarnations,” claims Sicko. In 1986, May launched Transmat, taking its name from one of Atkins’s techno-speak terms and originally planned as a subsidiary of Metroplex. “Juan has been the most integral part of the whole thing; without him it really doesn’t happen,” May fondly admits in Sicko’s book.

While “No UFO’s,” released under the name Model 500, sat somewhere between the electro of Cybotron and the jack- ing DIY music of mid-’80s Chicago, May launched Transmat with a track that really started to define a new sound for Detroit. Released under Rhythim Is Rhythim in 1987, May’s “Nude Photo” (co-written by Thomas Barnett) “represented a totally different approach from that taken by Chicago house— closer to the vest and definitely more personal,” writes Sicko. Saunderson is eager to give credit where it’s due for the dis- tinctive sound of early techno: “I think Mojo influenced us greatly. We had a more European sound, and that came from him. He opened our ears and made us believe we could play this music… I mean, if you listen to [my first release under the Kreem moniker] ‘Triangle of Love,’ it’s really a New Order bass line. It’s got the same chord progression.”

If anyone was to epitomize the sound of early Detroit techno, it was Derrick May. While “Beyond the Dance” furthered the stark atmospherics of “Nude Photo,” his next track, “Strings of Life” (co-written with Michael James), revealed a classicism and refinement that placed the electronic music of the city apart from the more raw, beats-driven sound of early Chicago house. Drawing incredible warmth from the cold- ness of the machine, May’s early productions as Rhythim Is Rhythim were as haunting as they were uplifting—creating a fitting soundtrack to Detroit’s post-urbanization. At the same time, if one wants to hear where the jazz of Detroit went after labels like Tribe, one only has to lend an ear to the man who has been called, maybe somewhat lazily, “the Miles Davis of techno.”

If the appetite of May and Atkins for high-energy tracks and stark beats had been the result of nights dancing at the Music Box, it was at New York’s hallowed Paradise Garage where Saunderson had received his education. “The Garage influenced me subconsciously,” he explains. “When I went into this big room and heard that huge sound system, it changed the way I heard the music. When you listened to the radio, you heard things like ‘Good Times’ and ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,’ but at the Garage, it would sound different because of the way Larry [Levan] played it. He would just keep the mu- sic going and stretched it out, playing these incredible vocal tracks.” Although releases on Saunderson’s own KMS label and under his Reese moniker could be as deep and dark as any of the early techno tracks (with the brooding “Reese bass” becoming a staple sound in drum and bass), his love of New York garage and what became known as “deep house” brought out the soul in the young producer. “I had always loved the great divas like Chaka Khan and Jocelyn Brown,” Saunderson continues. “And hearing Larry play the music in that way made me want to make underground Detroit music but with vocals, just using the tools I was used to instead of the full band on those records I loved from the Garage.” Just as instrumental tracks like “Strings of Life” became anthems in the fields and warehouses of England during the late-’80s acid-house boom, Saunderson’s soul-drenched releases “Good Life” and “Big Fun” (under the Inner City moniker) stormed the clubs and the charts across Europe. “It happened so quickly,” recalls Saunderson, who became a regular at Spectrum in London and the Hacienda in Manchester when he toured with Inner City in the U.K.

Such was the boom in Detroit’s electronic music scene that 1486–1492 Gratiot—the street where the studios of Metroplex, Transmat, and KMS were located—became known as “Techno Boulevard,” as the city’s music scene experienced a boom not seen since the days of Motown. Interestingly, it was Motown fanatic Neil Rushton from Birmingham, England, who was to make the journey to Detroit to check out the scene and to instigate the release of the first and most influential techno compilation, the aforementioned Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit on the Virgin subsidiary 10 Records. Sheryl Garratt recalls in her book that when Rushton arrived back at Derrick May’s home studio loaded with soul 45s, the young host had to tell his guest to “turn the crap off.” As Rushton explains, “Mute Records [English label home to Depeche Mode and Yazoo] had been much more of an influence on them, than say Stax.” But it was this northern-soul lover with the help of eager British journalists that broke Detroit techno to the masses. “He has done so much for us, and I think he kind of gets knocked out of the loop a bit,” says May thoughtfully. “The guy discovered us. We were making music, but he brought us together and unified us and gave us the opportunity to attack the world and send our message out.”

In the same year that techno was exploding onto the dance floors of Europe, the scene finally had a place to call home with the opening of a new club at 1315 Broadway, the Music Institute. “I think we captured magic in a bottle,” states May. “The timing was perfect. I had my radio show and had really honed my skills as a DJ. Jeff Mills was doing his thing. Kevin, Juan, and myself were making those records. All this was happening at the same time, and then the club opened… It was unbelievable.” Opened by George Baker, Chez Damier, and Alton Miller in the spring of 1988, the club became a sanctuary for Detroit’s alternative community. “It had a profound effect on the city’s development, culturally,” says May, who like all of Detroit’s electronic music makers had been waiting for a truly egalitarian space for their culture to grow. “The MI was important because it took our scene to the next level,” adds Saunderson. “[With] all that stuff that had been happening in New York and Chicago for years, it gave us our own version of that. It was definitely our Music Box or Garage.”

A former coat-check boy at the MI and now producer and label owner of NDATL Muzik—which has just released a series of old unreleased MI classics—Kai Alcé goes one step further: “Well, at that time, there was no ‘techno’ scene really; just a few house/club parties thrown by party groups such as Charivari and other groups like it. But as far as for Derrick and those who were about to create what we now know as techno, there was no better testing ground.” Kai vividly recalls the excitement of those formative days: “Fri- days after school, I would go down to the club and we’d go through all the promos sent to the club and to KMS, which was down the block. Around midnight, the cool kids would start showing up in the parking lot and chilling, drinking, smoking, doing whatever in their cars. The line would some- times be long but always worth the wait… As you walked through the door, you saw the famous sign that is now the graphic on the first MI 12-inch. Then a right and quick left, and you are now in the future!”

Friday nights at the MI would open with D Wynn, Saunderson, or Atkins before May took to the decks at the height of his art. “Mayday was the star of the show,” enthuses DJ/ producer and MI regular Alan Oldham on the Hyperreal web- site. “Many times, he’d play tracks right off a Fostex two-track recorder that he’d just cut hours before at his studio, some- thing I never got over. He’d beat mix between the reel-to-reel and 1200s and back, using the pitch control on the reel. He’d cut, edit and destroy other people’s tracks, too, as he did with his fucked-up psycho re-edit of the MI theme ‘We Call It Aciiiieeed’ by D-Mob.” In an interview with Andy Battaglia in the A.V.Club, Carl Craig explains how the younger generation were inspired: “If he wasn’t Derrick May the producer and DJ, he would have been Reverend Derrick May, because he was so spiritual at the time, and into how the music related to what he felt and what he was doing—how the music can change the world… So there was a lot of teaching there, whether he was doing it on purpose or not.”

Chez Damier, who took care of Saturdays with fellow DJ Alton Miller, recalls the importance of the club to Detroit’s next wave of producers: “It was very much needed in Detroit at the time. Because it was a juice bar, it allowed kids to come in and experience the music. And through that, it raised a whole new crop of people.” Kai Alcé remembers how the club be- came a hotbed for Detroit techno’s second wave of producers and DJs: “Seeing folks like Carl Craig, Jay Denham, Kenny Larkin, Eddie Fowlkes, and Anthony Shakir on any given night and hearing them come up with their own sounds, but all stemming from this one vibe, was amazing.”

At the same time as the MI created a home for Detroit’s alternative arts scene, the likes of Derrick May grew increas- ingly opposed to how their music was being consumed in some quarters. “I don’t even like to use the term ‘techno’ because it’s been bastardized and prostituted in every form you can possibly imagine,” he explains in Generation Ecstasy, being particularly turned off by the heavy drug use on the European rave scene. Eddie Fowlkes, who had been a con- stant companion of the Belleville Three throughout the ’80s, went so far as to title his 1996 album Black Technosoul to reconstruct the links.

If the approximation of techno became in many cases a watered-down or misrepresented version of the raw electronic soul of the original pioneers, back in Detroit, the second wave went deep. At the head of the pack, Carl Craig took the jazz influences that ran through the work of Derrick May to the next level with releases on his own Planet E label such as Innnerzone Orchestra’s “At Les” and “Bug in the Bassbin,” a journey that would lead to his recent collaboration with elders from Tribe Records.

While Music Institute regulars Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva’s Plus 8 label continued in the vein of Transmat and Metroplex, the ’90s also saw a more hard-core form of techno both in sound and appearance emerge from Detroit. If Der- rick May was the Miles Davis of techno, Mike Banks was its Archie Shepp. Rallying against the commercialization of their culture, Underground Resistance, the label Banks started with Jeff Mills, became a breeding ground for militant yet moving electronic music. Retreating deep into the underground, UR brought some much needed mystique to a scene that was in danger of suffering vertigo after its sudden ascent. “There’s a very strong, individualistic mentality here in Detroit,” the elusive Mike Banks explains in a rare interview in 1992. “You develop it without even noticing. I didn’t notice until I went overseas, where everyone has several really close, dear friends. Here, it’s like Vietnam—I’m not getting close to anyone.” The UR uniform became as militant as their music with Banks’s regulation army boots and flight jackets drawing comparisons with another crew fighting the power through music. The Un- derground Resistance collective created no-holds-barred, syn- apse-crushing slabs of electronic music with names like “Riot” and “The Punisher,” and rather than celebrating their success, the makers decamped to their Detroit bunkers to radicalize their art.

Equally as suspicious of the industry and the commodifying of their culture were producers like Kenny Dixon Jr. (aka Moodymann) and the Three Chairs collective of Theo Parrish, Rick Wilhite, and Marcellus Pittman, whose deep productions of the mid-’90s represented for many what was a third wave of Detroit electronic music. As dedicated to preserving the arts in their hometown as the pioneers of original Detroit techno, these fiercely independent music makers would take Black electronic dance music back to its roots. As Theo Parrish claims, “The medicine in the dance is originally African.” At a time when much techno and house was being commercialized in the same way that R&B had been in the ’60s, figures like these were essential in reclaiming the soul of Black dance music. Whereas the original pioneers of electronic music in Detroit were sometimes penned in by the myth that had been created around their music, the understandably press-shy third wave refused to be boxed by media-friendly titles, producing instead what the Art Ensemble of Chicago termed just “great Black music.” But at the same time, in the music of Theo Parrish and Kenny Dixon Jr. and new heads like Omar S and Kyle Hall, we are hearing Black electronic funk that could only have come from Detroit.

As for the Belleville Three, they remain in Detroit and continue to produce breathtakingly raw and soulful electronic music both in the studio and behind the decks. While Detroit techno has, more than any other dance music, found itself intellectualized and analyzed to the point of distraction, the original pioneers have never lost their focus on what is, at the end of the day, music to move your soul and make you sweat. And like many Detroit music makers, they remain fiercely loyal to the hometown that shaped them. With Detroit “being isolated from the rest of the popular world, that whole pop culture didn’t really have a big impact. So there was none of that Andy Warhol–style phenomena,” concludes Derrick May. “The common man of Detroit, the working stiff, didn’t know anything about Warhol or Salvador Dalí, didn’t grow up having any off-Broadway productions; he didn’t have that. Detroit has had it [in the past], but the latter-twentieth-century man didn’t have it. So I think the impact of what happened is totally tied to the fact that it’s a city of improvisation. And that improvisation is more or less tied to an impoverished community that has had to find new ways of entertainment and new ways of survival. And I think you have to say that creates a subculture. It means that people have to look another way to find some sort of level of enjoyment, entertainment. Some sort of outlet, some sort of euphoria.”

-Andy Thomas

Playlist

Wax Poetics assembled a playlist for this issue, relevant both to this article and, well, with some good listening in general. Look it up and enjoy – or stream free and buy directly from their site.

Issue 45 Playlist

Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied) – B.T. Express
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (JM 4AM Mix Pt. 1) – Inner Life
Dance and Shake Your Tambourine – Universal Robot Band
Hunk Of Heaven – Lemuria
Don’t Take My Shadow (A Tom Moulton Mix) [Extended] (A Tom Moulton Mix – Extended Vocal) – Kings Go Forth
Slipped Disc – Lizzy Mercier Descloux
Your Life – Konk
Crusader – Knightlife
Love Me Like This (Nonsense Dub) – Floating Points
Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto – Philadelphia International All-Stars

CDM guest and photographer Marsha Vdovin joins us for a photo essay. Given free reign to choose what she wanted to do, she visits a Buchla module maker. Photos can speak volumes, and here the beauty of Don Buchla’s synth designs come through, a decades-long legacy of open-ended, eminently-musical sound possibilities. So, too, does the craft of the custom Eardrill modules. Disclosure: while we loved both, a number of us preferred the Buchla 100-series modular to the Moog modular we had, learning synthesis for the first time back at my alma mater Sarah Lawrence. I’d love to see a Buchla versus Moog patch-off at Moogfest this year. Oh, and while I cheekily add this to our “Create Analog Music” series, the 200e is in fact a hybrid system. Analog and digital come together. It’s fitting.

I recently visited my friend Chris Muir, a musician, engineer and all-around super-smart and fun person. Chris has a company called Eardrill and he handcrafts custom modules for Buchla 200 or 200e modular synths.

What was your first analog synth?

I learned on an ARP 2600, although the first one that I could call my own was an Oberheim SEM that I drilled out to bring out all the internal patch points. A band mate had a Minimoog in the dim, dark past, so I got to play with that quite a bit.

In college, I got introduced to the Buchla, and it was love at first sight. At the time, I couldn’t afford Buchla so I went with a Serge Modular, which at the time was known as the poor man’s Buchla.

I worked for Salamander Music Systems (SMS) in the late 1970s-1984, and really enjoyed working on making advanced synthesizers. I sold my Serge and got into a good-sized SMS system.

Why did you start making modules?

I worked in and out of the musical instrument industry for many years, then while waiting for a consulting gig to materialize, I thought it would be fun to get back into module making.

When I worked for Salamander, it was really fun seeing something go from an idea to reality. I love having a design on paper become three-dimensional “just” by working at it relentlessly. There’s something very satisfying about that.

Why do you use a Buchla 200?

To me, the Buchla represents the road not taken. The question “what is a synthesizer” was largely answered in the marketplace by something resembling a Minimoog. Buchla was there at the beginning, following his own vision of what electronic instruments should be. The Buchla instruments emphasize workflow, and put a lot of musically interesting controls under your fingers. Most parameters on a Buchla can be voltage- controlled, so large-scale control structures can be realized. I resonate with the ideas behind it.

Eardrill.com

Buchla Love

Some more Buchla love seems an appropriate way to close this story. -Ed.

Moog made the scene, indeed. In this birthday week for Bob Moog, here’s a gallery looking back at the man and in advertisements, the Minimoog, the keyboard that shaped so much of synthesis to this day.

I could say more, but the images already say so much. Indeed, it seems we’re long overdue for a resurrection of this kind of romance with synthesis and electronic music technology. As I’m also editing remembrances of Max Mathews – a digital counterpart to Moog’s analog breakthroughs – I’d love to have someone do an image like the one on top for Max.

These images are also a reminder of how important the Bob Moog Foundation Archives are. Aside from being the source of these images, BMFA are working hard to get an accurate historical record of Moog and his circle. Moog’s legacy can easily be a catalyst for better understanding all early electronic music history, particularly in the US. Their work is essential and deserves our support:

The Bob Moog Foundation

The Foundation this week unearths an essay from 1951, as Moog writes – for college admission purposes – about what had already impacted his interest in science and learning, at age 17. Thank the Bronx High School of Science, for one.

I’ll let the rest of the images speak for themselves:

http://www.moogfoundation.org/
Supporting the Foundation

All photos courtesy the Bob Moog Foundation Archives, without whom so much of this history would simply be lost.

For more birthday wishes:

Synthtopia asks what you would tell Bob Moog if he were still alive.

Moog Music, via engineer Steve Dunnington, plays happy birthday for him on the instruments of his creation:

And here’s the history of the Minimoog I wrote for Keyboard Magazine last year, in which I sung one unsung hero at R.A. Moog, engineer Bill Hemsath.

Keyboard: The Minimoog at 40, and How A Legend Emerged from Spare Parts Bins

It’s nice to think software gets better, not worse, with age. And so it is that if you use an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad in the studio, your mobile gizmos are getting more powerful and useful. Expanded support for MIDI – using both wireless and wired connections to interface with gear of the last couple of decades – and other features make these tools more musically productive. Here’s just a quick refresher on what recent updates are adding.

TouchOSC adds MIDI, improves documentation, support, and community. TouchOSC has been popular as a control solution – it’s simple, makes whipping up custom layouts fairly quick, and interfaces wirelessly with lots of tools. You can even use it with Linux or free tools; the documentation starts out with instructions on translating its network messages to MIDI for free on any OS, using Pd. In fact, while I don’t think TouchOSC’s layout editing is perfect – I’d like to see other ideas, too – I find creating layouts much quicker than it ever was on the pricier, now-defunct Lemur. (That was a complaint I made in the first review I wrote of the Lemur years ago, for Keyboard.)

Adding MIDI support to TouchOSC means a lot more flexibility. You can now connect over a network using Apple’s wireless MIDI implementation (which, incidentally, is not Mac-specific – ports are available for Windows and Linux). You can connect USB MIDI interfaces using the iPad Camera Connection Kit. And the new release even includes support for the MIDI Mobilizer, which works not only on iPad but iPhone and iPod touch, too – ideal for pocket-friendly control.

Updated: I’ve read user reports about 1.7 with custom OSC names and compatibility with Missing Link hardware. You may want to wait for a fix before updating. Feel free to discuss here in comments. (Thanks, Josh!)

TouchOSC + CoreMIDI
TouchOSC + MIDI Mobilizer

This version also adds complete documentation and a forum. See blog post. Developer hexler also promises a library section for people to contribute their own layouts.

Speaking of layouts, I routinely see new ones in my inbox. Here’s a creative drum sequencer template; see video below:

http://stilllebend.blogspot.com/

Expanded MIDI Support for Molten Drum Machine Molten, the excellent drum machine tool for iPad, added MIDI support earlier. Version 1.1 seems to iron out some issues with it, however. Synthtopia gets the scoop here: MIDI clock sync and CoreMIDI configuration have all been improved. Clock alone is a reason to try out Molten, especially if you have computers or hardware you want to try syncing.

Virtual MIDI ports allow for the first time routing between iOS apps. Interestingly, with the combination of new background audio and virtual MIDI, you can use an iPad a bit like you would a desktop computer, with multiple apps working together. It’s not quite the main appeal of tablets to me, and you may max out the fairly lean computing powers of the iPad (especially the first-generation), but it’s compelling work.

Official site:
http://www.onereddog.com.au/products/molten/

The other cool thing about Molten is that some of these features have come from discussions with other developers, including on our own Noisepages group. Case in point: some cool network MIDI features, described in a blog post here — have at it, developers!

CoreMIDI Networking Setup [One Red Dog Blog]

A new wireframe OSC controller. TouchOSC isn’t the only game in town for iOS controllers. WireGUI is a new, palm-sized wireframe controller for iPhone and iPod touch. ( There’s no iPad-native version yet.) What it does that TouchOSC doesn’t is allow you to edit controls directly on the device. I also love its retro graphical style and unique widgets, and updates are already in store.

Chris Jeffs made the release from Berlin earlier this month. I don’t normally like copying and pasting, but he sends a very detailed description, so I will quote it:

WireGUI is a new OSC controller App for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It features easy customisation of controller setups, with all editing taking place on the device. Groups of objects may be added simply by dragging and dropping a chosen icon, and they can be arranged with custom colors, resized and even rotated. Underneath the distinctive aesthetic is an extensive OSC message specification with many options for outgoing data. In an update currently in review, any group which stores values may also act as a simple step sequencer.

Features:

▪ An OSC controller App for iPhone and iPod Touch.
▪ Includes groups of controls: Sliders, Slider Bars, Arrows, Buttons, Knobs, Drum Pads, a mixer and an X-Y Touchpad.
▪ All groups respond to multiple points of contact.
▪ Quickly arrange controller elements on the device itself – no need to spend hours using complicated desktop editing programs.
▪ Groups can be resized, automatically arranged and even rotated.
▪ Arrangements may be saved on the device for later use.
▪ (forthcoming in version 1.3) Simple sequencer function allows values to be stepped through with adjustable tempo and ppqn.
▪ Distinctive, minimalist looks with customisable color schemes.
▪ Extensive OSC spec.
▪ Only $4.99

Compatibility Information:

▪ iOS 4.0+ required, 4.2+ recommended.
▪ Use of 4th generation iPhone or iPod Touch is highly recommended. Testing has revealed problems with the display of bitmaps in some older generation devices. A fix has been identified and is planned for release in a future version.

On iTunes: http://itunes.com/apps/wiregui
Developer site: http://chrisjeffs.com/wiregui/

New creations for the free and open source Control. I covered Control earlier this year. It’s a significant release: unlike other tools here, it makes use of Web rendering and HTML5 to build its layouts. That offers Web-style coding (JSON!) and far greater portability of layouts than native controls that use only Apple-specific tools. Developer Charlie Roberts has maintained a blog where you can keep track of development:

http://charlie-roberts.com/Control/

Check out, for instance, the nice sequencer module. And users have been doing cool things, too, like an insane Pelligrini Space-Time Keyboard Controller, or emulating the monome.

Ableton Live controller touchAble makes full use of multi-touch. Last but certainly not least, multiple touch points (multiple dots or … if you can keep from snickering, multiple balls) now make full use of the iPad’s touch capabilities in a new update to touchAble. touchAble is Ableton-only, but as such tightly integrates with parameters in that tool.

Developer Sylvain Garcia from touchAble tells us:

This new module, up to 4 dots, can record, cut, loop & reverse motions of balls and play them back as automations in total sync to Ableton Live. You can create your own loops and save & restore them with just one tap. Each Ball has its own Gravity & bouncing settings – allowing for a variety of different movements and on the fly adjustments. The direction of gravity can be adjusted as well as gravity’s force. It also allows you to save snapshots + morphing….

We have worked very hard on this new update, and are very proud of the result.

It’s worth noting that, while Rana Sobhany has earned a lot of attention as an “iPad DJ,” many other artists are using devices like the iPad as remote controls for computers. I served on a panel with Rana at South by Southwest and got to talk to her a bit, and her technique focuses on making the iPads act like decks or looping samplers, with a crossfader in between. By contrast, acts like Andrew Andrew – who got started iPad launch week as did Rana – focus instead on using the device as a controller. At a recent party at New York’s Ace Hotel, that allowed them to freely wander the crowd. (They’re using TouchAble with Ableton Live.)

If the controller approach appeals more, here’s a look at touchAble’s official video:

I have to see, of all the controllers out there – for any application – touchAble is probably the most extensive in terms of the sheer variety of control layouts and the degree of integration. It’s worth a look, even if you find some friend with the combination to check out.

Here are images of the new X/Y functionality, courtesy the developers. Click for full-sized versions; you can see some of the assignment powers here. It’s not just as though they gave this a couple of balls and popped out for drinks.

Far-out Konkreet control. One of the most unusual tools to come out of the iPad software crop, in terms of design, has to be the stunning Konkreet Performer. It focuses on advanced parameter control via a multi-touch interface, but it really commits to that paradigm – no fake knobs or faders in sight. In the place of the virtual pots, you see gorgeous geometric eye candy that explodes around your finger touchpoints.

http://konkreetlabs.com/

A future update will let you project those visuals onscreen as you work. A couple of nice examples, among others:

Stephan Bodzin vs Marc Romboy are using the rig live onstage in their LUNA tour, with both the Visualizer and Performer modules. Extensive documentation below:

On the same lines, Reaktor house Twisted Tools has a series of custom layouts for their soundmakers. The first of these uses Konkreet; the others use TouchOSC and an original template, respectively.

Also, our friend Peter Dines has put out a mind-bending “ultra-Theremin” instrument for Konkreet. You can use TouchOSC, to be sure – but for a “freakish playing experience,” as Peter puts it, it has to be Konkreet.

Behold the Arcturan UltraTheremin – free download for Reaktor and Konkreet Performer [modulations @ noisepages]

Arcturan UltraTheremin improv by peterdines

And there you have it – real polyphonic Theremin, not a joke after all. I’ll leave it there, but let us know which controller apps you’re using in the studio and how they’re working for you. And I’ll keep saving up my pennies for a Xoom to see if I can’t give Android lovers some choices, too (both OSC and bluetooth MIDI are possible there – or sync to an iPad for a cross-platform, let’s-all-get-along lovefest).

There are plenty of reasons to consider free software tools as part of your toolchain for music making. They might fit your budget, give you needed flexibility, allow you to use a tool driven more by development needs than commercial ones, give you tools that would otherwise lack proprietary commercial niches, allow you to run (via Linux) on a wider variety of hardware or with greater low-latency performance, or allow you to contribute more directly to a project, from documentation to actual development. And increasingly, they don’t mandate some sort of philosophical choice, either – I routinely use free software tools on the proprietary Mac OS, and use commercial, proprietary projects (Renoise) on Linux or (Harrison Mixbus) to make free projects more powerful.

What usually holds people back from free software projects is, simply, not knowing where to begin. Software in general can overwhelm with choice; free software, often, doubly so.

Fortunately, some software gurus have jumped into the legwork so you don’t have to. I have some of my own thoughts on how to put this together, but first I wanted to share the input of these esteemed colleagues. These aren’t all Linux-only – many run on Windows and Mac, too – but if you are looking for a way to put together a robust studio on Linux, they’re a great start.

Webcast, Software Picks, Knowledge Databases

If you like real-time feedback, today, you can join Red Hat’s Adam Drew in a live webcast for “Open Your World,” entitled “Making Music with FOSS.” [Free and Open Source Software] It runs at 11:00a Pacific / 2:00p Eastern, and will be archived. (I’ll update that link here.)

Learn to make open source music–Register now for a webcast with Adam Drew

Warning: I just discovered that this thing pops up an annoying survey that assumes you use JBoss. (And, heck, CDM is indirectly a Red Hat customer – the whole site runs on RHEL.) Trying to tell it you don’t use JBoss makes the whole survey fail. I’m going to try to schedule something separately, as this is … more than a little ridiculous for a music-making survey, and sadly shows Red Hat’s blind spot in regards to end users.

Day job in tech, night job in music making – yup, that’s the M.O. of quite a few people around this community.

I asked Adam for his top picks, and he explained he would demo:

• JACK / qjackctl (the GUI for JACK), the tool for interconnecting audio, MIDI, and sync between applications
• Hydrogen Drum Machine
• Ardour, the terrific, all-free DAW
• Rakarrack, a free guitar effects tool set for Linux (one new to me, in fact!)
• ZynAddSubFX, probably the most capable free standalone soft synth – ugly, but very powerful, and a candidate for a “desert island” synth.

For additional resources, there’s a superb guide on the Fedora site (one that Ubuntu actually might mirror). It’s Fedora-focused, but the advice often applies to other distributions:
Fedora 14 Musician’s Guide

Adam himself operates the FOSS Audio KBase, full of articles on configuration and individual software programs. It’s about the most productive guide I’ve seen:
FOSS Audio KBase

Adam has some more philosophical thoughts:
Webcast preview: Free and open source software for music production [opensource.com]

And you can check out Adam’s music (CC-BY-NC-ND) and Linux-oriented personal blog. I tend to be more pragmatic about some of these issues, so I’m not endorsing all the opinions on Adam’s blog, but it’s a compelling read, and often comes with useful practical advice. (Mainly – I disagree with two points, one, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that proprietary DAWs lack interoperability, and two, I’m far more pragmatic about the future of Android as a platform, mainly because I think it’s currently the best bet for the distribution of free software on mobile. Oh, I don’t trust Google, either, though – that’d be silly.)

Picks from Dave Phillips of Linux Journal

Last weekend, I had the pleasure to meet Dave Phillips for the first time. Dave, an Ohio-based musician and teacher, is bar none the most invaluable writer when it comes to free software and music-making on Linux. His series for Linux Journal in particular is a must-read.

Dave and I joined Columbia’s Brad Garton at Virginia Tech to do a bit of teaching, a bit of playing, and to enjoy the hard work of the Linux Laptop Orchestra. I’ll cover more of that soon, but in the meantime, I took some notes as Dave walked through a current take on the software for Linux that most excited him.

His picks:

• Ardour, naturally
• Ardour 3, the next-generation update to Ardour that at last adds MIDI support (and beautifully executed). Dave noted that you can and should install Ardour 3 alongside the stable Ardour, so you can test both. There are even pre-built alpha binaries, so there’s really no excuse: you could be up and running in less than the time it took to read this. (See a much earlier story from Dave on testing 3.)
• Harrison Mixbus: It’s not free software, but it is now Linux-native and supports Linux plug-ins, and it’s built on Ardour (and, in turn, contributes back to Ardour). As Dave put it, Mixbus is a mind-boggling value “from a company that thinks of a budget console as costing $100,000.”
• IR: LV2 convolution reverb. The work of Tom Szilagyi, IR is a brilliant, no-nonsense plug-in for powerful convolution effects; LV2 support means it runs beautifully in hosts like Ardour 2.8.x and higher and Renoise. I’m really grateful to Dave for turning me on to this one. woo, tangent has a nice blog entry on the plug.
• LV2, generally. Dave credits the evolving state of LV2, and the work of its principle developer, David Robillard, for a lot of innovation in free software and Linux audio. I’m surprised LV2 hasn’t gained more attention, in fact – it might be the best bet yet to finally help plug-in developers escape the shadow of formats like VST. But that’s probably a topic for another article.
• RubberBand Audio Processor Powerful time stretching tool, now on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Available as a library, too, if you’re a developer – or just use it to mangle your audio files as an end user. Someone has already ported it to Renoise.

The focus of Dave’s presentation, though, was one tool so deep, it could easily be your only tool, for the rest of time. AVSynthesis couples visual output in OpenGL with the veritable Csound sound and composition engine. It includes built-in sequencing capabilities, basic sound generators (themselves written in Csound), envelopes and modulation, the powerful MatrixSynthMod instrument, MIDI control, and effects (phasers, choruses, filter, waveguide filter, and so on). There’s shader support on the graphics side, too. The result: based on built-in building blocks or, if you’re adventurous, your own code, you can produce 3D audiovisual musical-eye candy performances. I hope we’ll take more look at this soon; the one question that came up repeatedly – and that Dave couldn’t answer yet – was what the workflow might be for adding your own Csound creations. (The package itself is built in Java.)

More information:
http://www.avsynthesis.net/
AVSynthesis: Blending Light and Sound with OpenGL and Csound5 [Dave in Linux Journal]

AVSynthesis Tour 1

Composing With Csound In AVSynthesis [Dave in Csound Journal]

Lest you think we’re all a bunch of “neckbeard” Marxist free software revolutionaries, though, Dave – who’s had drinks with Stallman on occasion – was also full of questions about Mac OS and curious about it for his own music making. I think largely we’re all technologically curious; if anything, the only people I’ve met who have gotten really emotional are the people who mistrust free software, perhaps because they just need to loosen up and accept that something really can be free.

But as with proprietary software, I think the biggest danger with Linux and free software is that you can become overwhelmed with choices rather than focusing on music. That’s part of why I find these choices so appealing: deep, capable, well-designed, and rock-solid, I’ve found them to be eminently musical. Some of the best demonstrate that free software can provide choice – not, as many believe, only compromise. And I see absolutely no reason that they can’t coexist with other popular proprietary options in your studio. You may not be ready to leap into Linux, but especially given that by now you’ve likely accumulated either extra machines or machines that can easily dual-boot, there’s no reason not to add these free tools to your arsenal.

Got favorites of your own? Let us know; I’ll continue to feature this stuff in coming days.

Jim Guthrie was a rockstar long before the iPad was. Paired with pixel-intense artist Craig D. Adams (aka Superbrothers) and the co-design and coding effort of a crack team of video game “wizards” at the indie studio capy, he’s made a soundtrack that’s destined to be a gaming classic. But if you don’t want to play it, you can still listen to it. And if you’re playing it, you may find that it feels as though you’re listening to it, and gazing into its artwork.

From the moment you tap to launch it, Swords & Sworcery plunges you into a world that’s part game, part interactive album. Yes, there’s the obvious presence of a spinning vinyl record you can scratch and brake, right there on the title screen. And yes, there’s the conspicuous “EP” in the title, or the just-released LP (a real LP, on digital but also now sold out on vinyl).

But it’s once you navigate the expansive digital forests of the title, once Jim Guthrie’s moody soundtrack taps away at your brain, that you begin to get it. Sword & Sworcery will certainly get the dreaded (or is that coveted?) “arty” title, but it’s the way in which it spins out audiovisual entertainment that makes it special.

It’s pure aesthetic deliciousness, a brew that makes your head buzz.

And it’s finding that aesthetic sense – neither retro nor modern, neither low-fidelity nor slick – that makes this title relevant beyond even the world of gaming. Jim Guthrie’s songs and the lush pixel art graphics are the perfect fusion of old and new. It’s telling that Guthrie himself crafts his tracks in a combination of a PlayStation music game (MTV-branded, no less), GarageBand, and then high-end Universal Audio plug-ins. (See video above, and have fun gear-spotting familiar toys through the jump cuts.) It’s sort of studio garage, in the way digital music can be now. Its unabashedly synthetic instrumentation gives voice to a generation that grew up with computer-produced music. The musical score itself sometimes nods to Philip Glass, sometimes to punk rock, very often a mixed-up, intimate fantasy folk cinema, with sounds both shiny and flat.

But happily, this isn’t just a game with a clever soundtrack, or a release of game music. It’s a real fusion of album and game, music and visuals. And, lest we get to carried away with the Art label – capital a – music and game alike are good fun.

CDM managed to pry co-creators Craig D. Adams and Jim Guthrie from an adoring gaming press long enough to talk to us in depth about the making of the music and release, down to every last technical and artistic detail. They said so much – and crossed two media so completely – that I’ve broken up their ideas into two stories, across Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion. Their reasoning for committing to those two media has a lot in common, I think, with why we run these two sites and why a lot of you read and contribute to them.

Out now: both an LP music release on Bandcamp and iPad version. Coming this month: recent-gen iPod touch and iPhone versions of the game, too.

Jim Guthrie: Sword & Sworcery LP – The Ballad of the Space Babies @ Bandcamp
http://www.swordandsworcery.com/project/

Let’s begin with the notion of this as musical-visual collaboration. Obviously, some of our favorite game experiences have used music effectively. What’s different about this project?

Craig:The iPhone & iPod Touch, and the iPad to some extent, don’t have an input style that lends itself to precise inputs. So, it seems to me that a lot of traditional video games seem to fall a bit flat on these platforms. The thing is, these machines are great music and video players, so we knew going in that we wanted to make something that was as open and as laid-back as a record-listening experience matched with a naturalistic visual presentation inspired by film, so that was really the starting point. We also felt that a more relaxed, more occasional, less punishing, more interesting experience would be a better fit, something that was closer in pace to browsing the Internet or whatever. Early on we were calling S:S&S EP “a brave experiment in Input Output Cinema.” I/O Cinema is kind of an intentionally absurd nonsense buzzword but I think it’s perfectly apt for this type of entertainment, it’s a heckuva lot more descriptive than ‘videogame’ anyways, in that it gets away from the idea of a program with rules and win/lose conditions and it puts the focus more on the conversation the audience has with the creators while the audience pokes, prods & problem-solves an authored audiovisual creation.

How did you work together, Superbrothers and Jim, to combine music and visually? What was that collaboration like?

Craig: When we looped Jim into the project in we told him the name, described the aesthetic, talked a bit about The Legend of Zelda & Castlevania, and then Jim dug around and found a few songs he thought might fit. I went ahead and tried to generate art & narrative concepts using Jim’s songs or else stand-ins to set the mood. As we started to mix things together we’d evaluate, iterate & improvise. Eventually we’d get into situations where me and Kris, Capy’s creative director and co-designer on S:S&S EP, would have a plan for an environment or a scene or a situation, and we’d get the art & the mechanics together and then pass along a rough build to Jim with some kind of suggestion like ‘go John Carpenter on this one’ or whatever, and then Jim’d work his magic, filter the concept through his music-making mind and barf up something totally beautiful & shockingly perfect. So yeah, it was a messy process, but towards the end we kind of got a feel for it, I think it all worked out super well.

Jim: It wasn’t always clear if the art needed to inspire more music or the other way around, but it was a very necessary process considering the relation the two elements share in the game.

Technically speaking, is there anything unique to the way the music integrates with game play? How did you approach the technical challenge there, in other words?

Craig: For the music integration aspect, we really just made things up as we went along. We tried some things; some of them worked, some of them didn’t. Then we’d iterate on them or revise them as necessary. We tried chopping things up into a million loops and then stringing them back together with logic, and it kind worked, but was kinda rough, so then we’d revise it or refine it. Eventually we started to figure out a bit of a groove – we learned what the limits were with the machines & the quirks of fMOD [the game sound engine]. We’re a whole lot wiser now, but I think it was a positive thing going into something like this a bit naive.

Jim: Technically, there’s nothing in this game that hasn’t been done before. We sort of ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’ and made it our own. It’s more about the mood and atmosphere that the music and art create that is special. Like Craig said, we made things up as we went.

From the beginning, we knew it was very possible that this would be released digitally as an album, but it wasn’t until a little later on that the idea of vinyl struck us as a good idea. You would think it was all planned from the beginning considering how often the image of the record appears in the game but it sort of willed itself in that direction over time.

It’s always tough to describe the process of summoning one’s art. After we had sort of figured out what the first few tracks were going to be, I just let Craig’s art and ideas lead the way and I reacted. It also really comes down to knowing your craft and what tools you use to create with. Once you figure that out the tools don’t get in the way when you’re hot on the trail of a fleeting melody. There’s noting worse than loosing that spark because a technical issue. Computers have robbed me of so many musical sparks, but to be fair, they have given it back tenfold.

I will give into the temptation to ask one obvious question – what does it mean that it’s an EP? Obviously, it’s a reference to the notion of a game release as being akin in some way to an album, but anything beyond that you wish to say?

Craig:The EP concept goes back to the start of the project – we wanted to put the sound component right out front. We wanted the whole project to feel like a musical composition, and at first we wanted to make something small and acknowledge that this was a tentative first release by a new videogame ‘band.’ The project grew from ther,e and it goes well beyond the 37 minute running-time we had originally envisioned, but everything else fits.

We had always planned to prepare a record release to accompany the project and when the time came to commit to this we basically had to make a vinyl edition, and Jim basically just put that into gear on his own… so that became Jim Guthrie’s Sword & Sworcery LP – The Ballad of the Space Babies. While the record is a smaller component of the project in terms of man-hours, the music on its own is kind of larger than the art and the story we tried to create in the actual videogame, so I think it’s kind of perfect that it’s the LP.

Jim, the music really has a quirky personality all its own, and I think it’d be too easy to describe it aesthetically. How did you approach scoring the music, in finding a voice for this title?

Craig: Several of Jim’s songs pre-date the project, so they informed the aesthetic & concepts from the start. My role early on was to translate the music into artwork & narrative that would fit the general idea of the project. But yeah, beyond that I’ll let Jim fill in the blanks here!

What’s the production process like for the music itself?

Jim: I captured all of the music either on a PlayStation using MTV’s Music Generator and/or
[Apple] GarageBand. For example, on the song, ‘Lone Star,’ I drummed a beat onto a cassette four-track, burned that onto a CD, placed the CD into the PlayStation, sampled and looped in MTV Music Generator,
and then built a song around it using that software. THEN I brought it into GarageBand and added more layers and effects. I also used a [Casio] SK-1 peppered throughout. In terms of plug-ins and soft synths, I used a lot of the Arturia stuff, [Native Instruments] Kontakt, [XLN Audio] Addictive Drums, [Toontracks] Superior Drummer, and a [Universal Audio] UAD-2 card loaded with a bunch of their processing plug-ins.

Not all games are narrative, and I’ve never found conventional narrative to be a prerequisite to art (cough, Ebert). But there is a strong narrative aspect to this title, too. How do you go about telling a story and building a game mechanic at once? (And, for that matter, do you still scrawl things on index cards to get there?)

Craig: It’s funny, we are getting some positive responses to S:S&S EP’s narrative, but really, the narrative only exists to make sense of the player’s experience; it’s not exactly ‘the point.’ We started with the songs, then the art, then the mechanics that would bring it together. And while the broad narrative concepts were always there, it was only in the final stages that the script came together, and really it’s just a way for us to help communicate what’s supposed to be going on. I was on the line to write the script, and for a good long while, it kinda sucked while I was buried under art, sound & design tasks, but I kept iterating on it, editing it for brevity, clarity, and humor, with Jim and Kris and a few others kinda guiding the process.

So yeah, I guess we did some okay things with narrative, and I’m actually super-proud of the mind-fuck tear-jerker heart-breaker finale, but I think the only reason any of it comes across is because of Jim’s music wrapped up in paintings. And really, Jim’s songs are all the narrative I ever wanted.

Now that you’ve become gaming rockstars, what’s next?

Jim: A bottle of vodka?

Craig: Hahahaha… Jim’s already a rockstar, so this stuff is probably old news. I think we’re definitely enjoying our fifteen minutes of fame in this very specific niche, and I’ve been trying – maybe too hard – to keep that buzz going so the project stays visible as we gear up for the all-important iPhone & iPod Touch launch. Once all that’s out of the way, I’m really just looking forward to some quiet time: bike rides, swimming, hiking, and whatever else.

We’ll keep the Sword & Sworcery project rolling along in the background too. We have plans for a gala event here in Toronto in a few months and some other schemes related to the app itself that’ll last the year & maybe into next year. We’ve been given a real opportunity here & we want to continue to honor that.

What are you excited about in gaming – or, for that matter, audiovisual work – at the moment, beyond your own work? Anything you’re listening to, watching, playing (or all three) at the moment?

Jim: Honestly, I went into my iTunes to have a look at my ‘Recently Played’ list and for as far as the eye could see, it’s all stuff I’m working on. No time for art! Just work!

Craig: I’ve been too busy and too exhausted to be paying much attention to what’s happening out there in videogames, film or music. To be honest, what I’m most excited about right now is the prospect of getting some fresh air and some exercise, maybe getting away from electronic screens for a bit sometime, and then after a little break maybe starting on some new creative work.

I had the opportunity to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in theaters a few months ago. I’d seen it a few times before but only on VHS… so that was a real treat, it’s an entirely different film in the theaters, there’s so much more to enjoy. I’m also a huuuge fan of Kanye West’s “Runaway.” I think that’s a genuinely incredible piece of audiovisual work; Vanessa Beecroft’s art direction really shines. Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop and James Cameron’s Avatar blew me away too, for entirely different reasons. I’ve just recently seen my friend Firas Momani’s Fantasia Festival award-winning short film The Adder’s Bite & it gave me all those groovy Cronenberg + Lynch + Kubrick feelings, very inspiring.

On the video game side I’m still intermittently playing Motorstorm: Pacific Rift for PS3, a 2008 effort from Liverpool’s Evolution Studios that I think is basically perfect, plus I’m digging in to Monster Hunter Tri on Wii. I’m playing Monster Hunter co-operatively with a couple friends every Sunday morning… we’re still just scratching the surface but it’s easily the most intricate and deep video game I’ve ever played, which takes me way outside of my comfort zone in an interesting way. I’m also cautiously optimistic about L.A. Noire, Uncharted 3, and The Last Guardian… we’ll see how they work out in the end.

On the music side, I’ve been listening to Jim’s Sword & Sworcery LP… even though I’ve heard these tunes so much in the last two years that my ears hurt, the record itself still comes across as beautiful & fresh, the songs still evoke all kinds of imaginings. That record aside I’ve got a heckuva lot of catching up to do… but first I have to give my ears a bit of a break. That said, I’m amped for the Beastie Boys record that’s hitting in the next little while.

All images courtesy Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie. Used with permission.

Do let us know what you think of the game, folks – or whatever audiovisual creations, in the form of games or otherwise, inspire you.

More on the art, the design, the coding – and why Superbrothers went iOS-only.

On our sister site:
Inside Handheld Game Art: The Art Style and Making of Swords & Sworcery, Superbrothers Pixel Cinema [Create Digital Motion]

And, oh yeah, don’t forget to get the game:
http://www.swordandsworcery.com/

As Max for Live matures, Ableton is working to convince more people to try this open-ended tool – and creations built for it – as a way of extending the experience of using Live for performance and production.

For years, music software has focused on trying to do everything you need, to be a solution to problems you haven’t even considered yet. But recently, we’ve seen a move to software that considers customization and extension a core feature – not just the province of the hard-core hacker or DIYer, but something basic to the tool. FL Studio, Renoise, Reaper, Kontakt, and Ableton Live, to name a few, each incorporate tools that allow scripting, customization, and custom instruments, effects, sequencers, and other tools. (Each does it in very different ways, I might add.) In place of from-scratch construction, these tools build on the capabilities of the software in which they’re hosted.

And even if you don’t personally decide to take on scripting or patching, that means you can take advantage of unique contraptions made by other users. These creations aren’t just hacking for hacking’s sake: they meet specific musical needs, and make tools more practical and expressive. Like knowing the reeds on a wind instrument or tuning on a guitar, they’re part of how musicians are able to make their instrument their own.

Of course, unlike a new effect or workflow tweak, getting your users to embrace an open-ended tool takes time, and it may not be for everyone. We’ve been following recent efforts by Ableton to respond to feedback from their user community. While these fall short of the ability to distribute patches to all Ableton Live users – something I and others have advocated – they do make Max for Live more affordable and patches built for it more accessible.

CDM talked to Ableton’s Daniel Büttner in February about some of the changes on the developer side, both in terms of improvements to the tools and guidelines to make patches better:
Ableton Delivers Max for Live Improvements and Guidelines, Responds to Feedback; Full Details

In the last couple of weeks, Ableton has made offerings to the user side.

Max for Live Sale: First, right now you can get Max for Live for less. In the month of April, Max for Live is free with a purchase of Ableton Suite 8 or upgrades to Suite from the Lite and Intro versions. If you have Live 1-8 or Suite 7 and upgrade to 8, unfortunately, Max for Live isn’t free – but it is half off. I’d like to see more aggressive, permanent pricing from Ableton if they want widespread adoption of the tool – it seems to me that offering a “Suite” without this key component is complex for users to understand and makes budgeting for Live needlessly difficult. But that’s my prerogative as a critic and writer, just as it’s their prerogative to determine that what I’m saying doesn’t make sense for their business. In the meantime, I can certainly recommend the Suite purchase if you’re getting Live new or upgrading from an intro edition.

Updated: Current Suite owners qualify for a 30% coupon which they should have received via email, says David from Ableton via comments.

If you’re considering Max for Live but aren’t sure if it’s for you, there’s also a 30-day free trial – always a good bet.

Featuring Max for Live patches: More interesting than the pricing stuff is the fact that you can get some truly spectacular patches for Max for Live, and Ableton is doing more to highlight the work of some of the most talented, creative artists working with the tool.

As readers have repeatedly observed, maxforlive.com is a terrific resource for Max for Live lovers and those wanting fun patches to play with. It now includes a Featured Devices page curated by Ableton’s sound team, with some really great, free stuff.

Ableton has also added both new basic devices – including some oft-requested options, like an LFO – and featured artist creations, too.

Max for Live Highlights from Artists

Artist endorsements can be a mixed bag – they sometimes feel forced, an attempt to get some fame to rub off on a product. Not so here: as with, say, some of the recent gems on the Reaktor side from the likes of Tim Exile, the featured artists working with Max for Live really are pushing the technology and the medium.

Robert Henke, aside from being an Ableton co-founder and conceptually steering a lot of their direction, has one of the best recent Max for Live creations. Monolake helped establish the granular sound on the electronic palette in the 90s, so it’s little surprise that a Henke-designed granular device is a terrific instrument. See the video at top – it’s one of the best reasons yet to try Max for Live.

Kapture by Liine is an eminently-practical entry, sucking all of the parameters in a Live set into snapshots and allowing you to morph through them. I’ve been testing this paired with their iOS app on an iPad, and it’s terrific; I’ll finally talk about it once I’ve wrapped my head around some good examples.

And, I should say, it’s thoroughly enjoyable seeing Richie Hawtin back as Plastikman – the work he’s doing on the tour is exactly the sort of audiovisual electronic performance I hope we see more of from artists famous and unknown alike.

There’s also a House-style beat generator by Alexkid (video, above), and of course the obligatory APC step sequencer (though check out more step sequencers below).

This isn’t just about pure electronic dance music, though. Henrik Schwarz has a new edition of a device that fits notes to a musical scale, as relevant to jazz artists working with electronic instruments as electronica artists. Katsuhiro Chiba makes some classic retro-80s synths that could appeal to keyboardists in a wide variety of genres. I love seeing versions of the Yamaha TX81Z or simple, analog-style Sep2.

The most welcome offering, though, may be the addition of new LFOs, which allow synth-style modulation of any Live devices. Manuel Poletti has a powerful LFO collection with plenty of options for assigning modulation wherever you like. (See our previous, unintentionally-controversial, coverage of LFO modulation in Live, and more examples on the maxforlive.com site.)

Find the artist devices, descriptions, and downloads at the main Ableton Max for Live site:
http://www.ableton.com/maxforlive

New, Essential Devices

Max for Live itself has added 21 devices that give the tool a more complete set of basic building blocks for patchers. That’s good news, in that it means a lot less reinvention – and because the value of Max for Live itself goes way up.

New in the release this spring are LFOs, envelope followers (for using an audio signal to modulate parameters), randomizers, and multichannel routing devices.

Indeed, my only concern here is that many of us hoped to see some of these capabilities in “native” Ableton Live devices, rather than Max for Live patches. An LFO to many users is an essential built-in module that would benefit the software, as it has been in some rival tools, comparable to tools like chord and pitch manipulation for MIDI included in Live.

I don’t know that the LFO per se is necessarily fundamental to Live. But I do hope that Ableton continues to develop native devices for the Live environment. Max for Live could serve a useful purpose here – as a testing bed and prototyping tool, as it has been intended – and aid in determining which tools really do need to be included with Live itself.

More (updated info) on the included devices:
What Comes with Max for Live

And Don’t Forget…

Even with all these Ableton-provided goodies on their site, it’s worth visiting community sites like the unofficial maxforlive.com.

There are some gems at maxforlive.com, including the featured page:
http://maxforlive.com/featured/

– some of those, in turn, chosen by Ableton. Pictures of some of my favorites:

Let us know how you’re using Max for Live, if you find it fits into your workflow or if you focus on the core Ableton software instead. And certainly, if you’re a Max for Live patch developer or user and want to show off your favorites (including your own), we’d love to hear from you.

Despite being a musical technology enthusiast, I really do think of my Android phone first and foremost as a communications device. I imagine I’m not alone, just as I’d guess that people who want a mobile music maker may look first at the iPhone. But that raises the question, are there tools you’d install on an Android phone purely because they’re genuinely useful? What tools would you use in your music, or even refuse to be without?

There are actually a surprising number of tools out there on Android for music-making, though quality can be quite variable. So here, I’ll look at ones that are not only impressive to look at, but which I absolutely make sure are installed on my phone and come back to over time.

The timing is relevant – one of the most significant Android music production apps was released this week.

Quick side note – if you’re in New York City tonight, libpd developer Peter Brinkmann and I will be talking about using Pd on Android, with a little cameo of Processing for Android, at the NYC Android developer meetup.

A New Sampling Sketchpad

“Mobile” to many people means sketchpad, the musical equivalent of carrying a little steno notebook. It’s not the place where music gets finished, but a place where electronic ideas might start. So, it’s fitting that the newest tool from developer Mikrosonic, SPC, is described as a “music sketchpad.”

SPC is, as the name implies, an MPC-style sampling machine. Features:

• Edit samples in a waveform view, up to 24-bit/96k, with envelope controls
• Create variations for each pad, played either in sequence or random
• Use steps to sequence and combine different audio slices and samples

Working with loops can often produce monotony, so something that can slice up samples, randomize or sequence playback of variation, and combine different loops is a welcome change of pace. The workflow is simple and touch-friendly, but focused on variation.

SPC also has some key features that separate it from mobile toys by allowing you to do something you can actually use on your (cough) “real” computer. You can share files and export to lossless WAV. You can load the app itself, and its data, on the SD card to save internal memory space. And you benefit from one of the key benefits of Android. While iOS apps rely on iTunes for sync, plus a cobbled-together, unpredictable selection of cloud services (maybe you get Dropbox, maybe you don’t), SPC’s files save on the SD card and can be loaded directly from any connected Mac, Windows, or Linux machine. You could even theoretically connect the phone or (with an adapter) the SD card to sampling hardware without a computer.

At US$4.99, it’s a steal. And in another advantage to Android, you can download a free demo before you even part with the five bucks.

http://www.mikrosonic.com/spc

That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and happiness on Android. Microsonik have faced extra testing challenges to ensure their software works properly. They also tell CDM that they’ve been frustrated with the “sadly limited” number of music creation apps. (Yes, even though that’s competition for their work, they’d like more choices.) They also say they’ve been frustrated with persisting latency issues and the absurdly slow rollout of the updated Gingerbread operating system to handsets. (I feel their pain on all of this. My research, and information from Google engineers, suggests the latency problem is largely an issue with audio chipset and firmware on the hardware itself, not, as is commonly believed, Java or the OS, though that’s a topic for another story.)

That said, the software is eminently useful, and can be a great starter for sounds you work with on your much more powerful, lower-latency computer.

The developers have also integrated with their own groovebox app:

303-Style Groovebox

RD3 is a 303-style bassline synthesizer and drum machine with step sequencer. Controls are big and touch-friendly, without any excessive amounts of UI chrome, and you can work with three live waveforms for the bass and plenty of sampled drum kits for percussion. You even get eight lovely sampled drum kits: 808, 909, 606, CR-78, Linn, KR55, RZ1, and DMX.

You can cut, copy, and paste patterns, and export to audio loop. With integration with the SPC, though, this really starts to get interesting: put the two tools together, and you can build patterns and then sample them. That looks perfect for long bus rides or waits at the airport. It’s US$4.49, also with an available demo.

http://www.mikrosonic.com/rd3

Music Notation

GUIs may be more widely-used in notation, but because of the nature of engraving, I find simply typing in notes can often be quicker and more accurate. They’re also a natural on a phone screen, which can’t easily fit a full score view.

Enter Zap’s abc. Using the Abc language, which lets you use standard characters to reproduce notation, you can type in simple or even advanced, page-formatted scores. You can convert to MIDI and PDF scores. Oddly, the conversion itself is actually done in the cloud via your network connection.

It could be pretty painful on a touchscreen, but if you have an Android with a keyboard – the Droid line, etc. – it could be terrific. (I’m using a Droid 2 with it and have managed to bang out some snippets, at least. It’s the best mobile notation solution I’ve used yet, which is handy if I forget to stash a manuscript notebook in my bag.)

Make no mistake – this is a very powerful solution. I just wish there were an easier way to import ABC notation into Lilypond; open to suggestions. (That’s not this tool’s fault – ABC is simpler and makes far more sense on mobile – but it’d be nice to then take ABC and use the more powerful Lilypond engraving language.)

I was also lucky enough to meet developer Jonas Petersson at an Android developer conference in Stockholm, so Jonas, hi!

http://home.petersson.se/android/abc/

Musical Pro: A Bunch of Stuff You Might Need

The Swiss Army Knife of music-making on Android, Musical Pro is full of simple but useful tools. Even if you’re a skeptic when it comes to handheld production, it’s hard to argue with this feature set. The metronome and pitch pipe are worth it on their own. Touch-ready piano, keyboard, piano practice mode, drums, and MIDI over WiFi are just a bonus. The “Pro” version is just US$1.99, and the Lite version – which has the esssential metronome and pitch pipe and basic piano/keyboard – is free. The free version absolutely suits my needs; I think the main reason to buy Pro for many may be to support the efforts of developer Christopher Souvey.

Cutest feature that’s also handy: you can blow into the mic for the pitch pipe.

http://www.androidmusical.com/

(Sorry, that domain name makes my head go someplace entirely different. I hear a chorus of people singing “Fragmentation…”)

Jasuto, a Deep Modular Environment

Christopher Wolfe’s Jasuto is a mind-bending, touch-centric modular blank slate designed for mobile. It’s not for everyone – there’s a learning curve as with any fully modular environment, only here you’re doing it on your phone – but it can be rewarding. It’s also one of the most ambitious mobile projects I’ve seen. It runs on iOS and Android alike, but on Android, the order’s even taller: support a wide range of devices. I recommend only using it on a fast processor, and unfortunately, it does indicate just how hard it is to do this kind of development on the platform.

On a fast phone, it can be extraordinary – and it might be the only mobile music production app you need.

Best of all, you can take your work with you, with Windows and Mac plug-ins that let you bring your resulting creation into your desktop environment.

See previous coverage.

http://www.jasuto.com/home/

Samalyse TapeMachine

This mobile recorder is darned near perfect. True, the mic on your phone is probably not perfect, but for (intentionally) low-fidelity field recordings or practice sessions – or attaching an external mic – TapeMachine is terrific. Despite the name, there’s no silly faux-tape interface; instead, you get a waveform view with cropping and undo. There’s Dropbox support for sync and email, plus the aforementioned ability to load directly off an SD card. And you get terrific codec support, including lossless WAV, AIFF, and FLAC, which I find a must. You can even record in the background.

As with most of the other options here, you can try a free demo.

http://tapemachine.samalyse.com/

Pd, SuperCollider, Processing

If you are interested in hacking your own instruments – or using increasingly-powerful, portable gadgets as pocket-friendly containers for your work – you’ve got options.

libpd takes the insanely-powerful, mature Pure Data patching environment and makes it run on phones. You can even use externals (with a little effort), and there’s a scene player for RjDj patches. Learn more and discuss with a group working with this environment not only on Android, but everywhere from Python on the desktop to iOS, too.
Pd Everywhere [Noisepages]

Platforms like iOS don’t allow the distribution of GPL-licensed open source software, but Android does. As a result, you can get a full port of SuperCollider, the rich synthesis coding environment. The best place to get started is on GitHub:
SuperCollider-Android

Because Android is based on Java, Processing has now been developed to run natively on the mobile platform. It’s simply astonishing what you can do: connect a device, hit “play,” and your code is instantly up and running, something almost nothing else can do. Performance is striking, too: a new OpenGL render pipeline does hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics. And you can mix and match Processing code with Android APIs.

Processing for Android isn’t out yet, but there’s a very stable version to try, and it will be fully integrated with this lovely artist-friendly sketchpad for code with the upcoming 2.0 release. That’ll mean that, for Android users at least, going from desktop to mobile will be as easy as flipping a switch.
http://wiki.processing.org/w/Android

Wireless Control

I can’t recommend the crippled TouchOSC port for Android, but perhaps that’s just as well – it’s worth trying out new ideas on a different platform.

FingerPlay MIDI is a simple but effective controller that sends MIDI over WiFi, and is a good choice right now.

I’m personally most eagerly anticipating tools that aren’t out just yet. The promising, Web-based, open-source Control is bound for Android, for one. I think the widespread availability of tablets will make control apps more interesting; phones are a bit limited in this regard.

Listening and Productivity

As I suggested earlier, creation is hardly the main application for most people of their phone. So, many of my must-have apps fit other categories. And quite a few offer options not available on iOS, lest this platform rivalry feel lopsided.

Winamp: Winamp is simply my favorite mobile music tool, full stop. You can sync wirelessly via WiFi (including if you’re a Windows Winamp user), or sync to iTunes, or simply drag and drop music to the SD card. (I’ve found the latter ideal when I want to keep listening to a mix I’m working on.) There’s even Shoutcast radio support and Last.fm scrobbling.

I oddly sat on the plane last week next to the guy who runs this division, and sir, if you’re reading this, I, uh, hope you didn’t catch my cold.

I think Winamp is the best option for Android, but music enthusiasts also get something on this platform they don’t elsewhere: choice. With a variety of music apps from which to choose, you can select one you really like.

XMP Mod Player: Tracker fans will like this one – this omni-platform player (BeOS and Apple II and OS/2 are all supported) is now on Android. Mod files are tiny, so you can now have fairly unlimited music on the go. It’s also a neat example of what you can do with native development on Android.

Todo.txt Touch: My favorite to-do application now has a terrific, community-build, Android-exclusive tool. You sync to text files via Dropbox and can then use a command line to manage your to-do list on any platform. It’s simply the most productive task management I’ve ever done, leaving your mind free to focus on music when you can. The app is $2, and free elsewhere – only a Dropbox subscription is needed for cloud sync.

Dropbox for Android. A life-saver – instant file sync.

Google Listen: This lightweight podcast manager syncs directly to the cloud, as it should. Google-powered search makes finding your favorite podcasts easier, as well. I use it to keep up with music podcasts from XLR8R, Bleep, KCRW, the Bunker, NPR, and others, which remains a great way to discover music. And it’s free. Early versions were a bit … twitchy … but recent builds have been rock-solid in my experience.

Evernote for Android: The ability to capture photo notes or type in notes is key. Also, Android makes it easier to clip materials between applications: share buttons will connect to any aware installed app. This can also be a great scrapbook for ideas and inspiration; in addition to the more utilitarian notebooks, I try to keep a couple that tend to the creative.

Last but not least, Soundcloud for Android is a must-download, providing both mobile recording and sharing capabilities and the chance to keep up with discovering music on the service. You even get widget support so you can keep it on your homescreen. I just wish TapeRecorder supported SoundCloud, too.

Did I Miss Any?

To me, the above selection of software is more than I could ever really use on a phone; I feel happily spoiled. I’ve largely ignored flashier, more experimental tools – these are all chosen with productivity in mind. But there are some gems there, too. Ethereal Dialpad is an exceptionally good, experimental soundmaker, and its developer had lots to say about the platform when he spoke to us last spring:

Ethereal Dialpad Touch App, Development Experience on Android and Beyond

Rhodri Karim’s student project Spectral, developed at the University of Cambridge, is also fascinating, turning images into spectra into sound. (See the Android Market.)

And lastly, MusicRadar has done a terrific job keeping atop music apps on Android as they have on iOS; you can read about their top picks, updated regularly:
The best Android music making apps in the world today

We haven’t really seen tablet-specific tools, as the first Android tablets worth using are just now hitting the market. I’ll be pleased just to get a good tablet workflow with Pd, myself.

But if you’re an Android user (or developer) and have feedback, I’d love to hear from you. And beyond that, do stay tuned. No OS, no machine – not even the Apple IIGS – goes unturned here.

Nearly as long as we’ve had electronics, musical inventors have tried to imagine new electronic instruments. In the crowded world of new instrument design, the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition has emerged as a key prize for the best work, with creations battling fiercely for attention.

But in the oddball world of sound and music, how do you judge a winner? As a starting point, organizers this year asked the judges what they personally found important. With an expert panel including synth pioneer Tom Oberheim and reacTable creator Sergi Jorda, those answers are themselves revealing.

As for the competitors themselves, even with eclectic entrants, one theme stands out. Human gesture and performance presence is a strong dimension of the winners. And in perhaps the most promising first-prize winner yet, research begins to crack the code of how to make real gestural analysis work, even allowing everyday objects to become musical instruments.

To help us learn more, Competition founder and Georgia Tech Music Technology director Gil Weinberg grants CDM a window into the philosophy of some of these leading technologists, and introduces us to this year’s winners.

The Winners

First Prize: MO, Interlude Consortium. Everyday objects become novel gestural interfaces.

From the project site:

The MO tangible interfaces are a series modules to capture various gestures, from motion to touch. The central module MO contains motion sensors (3D accelerometers and 3axis gyroscopes) and transmits the data wirelessly. Moreover, two accesorries, i.e. other sensors can be added to both side of MO.

Second Prize: MindBox Media Slot Machine, Humatic Berlin. A vintage slot machine is transformed into a compositional interface.

Personnel:

Christian Graupner , Humatic
….media artist, director, composer

Roberto Zappalà
… performer, choreographer

Norbert Schnell, IRCAM — Centre Pompidou
… interactive music & sound design

Nils Peters, Humatic
…system developer and software artist.

Third Prize: Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee, Leon Gruenbaum. It began as an ergonomic computer keyboard, but years of layered work on relative pitch makes it an instrument – a bit like a macro keyboard for composition.

Honorable Mention: Hexenkessel, Jacob Sello. A conventional acoustic timpani is both projection surface and multi-touch input.

From the creator’s description on the video:

The Hexenkessel is a modded 22″ timpani using LLP multitouch technology for control of live-electronics & dmx-light. the realisation of the instrument involves a modified led-projector, webcam and IR-Lasers. the programming is done entirely using max/MSP/Jitter + CCV. The instrument-hack is non-destructive and costs less than 300$.The instrument is intended for the use in multimedial stage performances and innovative concepts of new music.

Pioneering Judges Offer Their Philosophies

A musical instrument design may seem like subjectivity atop more subjectivity, a meeting of the aesthetic of the object with personal musical expression. Judges were asked, therefore, to describe the philosophy they brought to the contest. The reason, explains organizer Weinberg: “To steer it away from general statements – this is the better instrument than this – to make it more personal, about the judge’s opinion and artistic manifesto and instrumental manifesto.”

Tom Oberheim, the man who created the first polyphonic synth product, responded:

The first thing that I look for in a new musical instrument is its musicality. This means where appropriate: does is sound good, is it playable, does it add to the music making language. Then I consider if the device has some sort of universality; in other words, can it be used by a variety of musicians from different backgrounds. Finally, I consider the ease with which the device can be learned.

Sergi Jorda, creator of the reacTable tangible interface:

The ultimate goal for any new instrument could arguably be the potential to create a new kind of music. In that sense, baroque music cannot be imagined without the advances of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century luthiers, rock could not exist without the electric guitar, and jazz or hip-hop, without the redefinitions of the saxophone and the turntable. Yet, this extremely ambitious objective is often beyond the reach of its creator (eighty years separate Adolphe Sax from Coleman Hawkins, and no less than thirty go by between Les Paul and Jimi Hendrix). Being a bit more pragmatic, as a performer, my goal when constructing the instruments I will play is clear. I need instruments that are enjoyable to play and that mutually enhance the experience when playing with other musicians. Thereby allowing me to create or co-create music that will surprise me as much as possible, that will keep revealing little hidden secrets at every new performance. Music not necessarily better, nor worse, than a piece that I could compose in a studio, but music, in essence, that could not have been created in any other possible way. As a ‘professional’ luthier, I need to take some additional considerations into account, but the overall goals do not change: my aim is to create instruments which people can enjoy playing; instruments that will be able to enrich and mature the performers’ experiences in any imaginable way; instruments that allow scope for the performer (particularly in the case of a non-expert user) to be proud of the music created. In order to survive in the extremely demanding instrumental ecosystem, any new instrument should clearly excel in something. It should either be able to do one thing that no other instrument could or, at least it should do it better (whatever this can be and whatever “better” may mean). My last advice would be that when envisaging new instruments one should not only concentrate on the instruments’ sonic capabilities, on their algorithmic power or on the amount of sensors used. One should also be especially careful about the instruments’ conceptual capabilities, and consider how new instruments impose or suggest new ways of thinking to the player, as well as new ways of establishing relationships, new ways of interacting, new ways of organizing time and textures; new ways of playing, in short.

Jason Freeman, a composer, technologist, and Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech:

For me, new musical instruments are significant for their potential to transform our experiences with music. They may enable us to create new acoustic or electronic sounds not previously possible. They may encourage us to think about musical content, structure, and hierarchy in unusual ways. They may suggest new methods of musical collaboration, performance, or education. And they may make musical creativity more accessible to everyone. I am interested in instrument makers who have thought deeply about their work from technical, musical, and design perspectives to create musical instruments that transcend novelty to suggest new paradigms for musical creativity.

A Chat with the Organizer

Now in its third year, the Guthman competition has become a coveted award. As a result, says organizer Weinberg, who is director of the hosting Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, quality and quantity were up in entrants. And, he says, he feels that entrants have transcended some of the typical designs in the field.

“New interfaces for many [means], let’s think about an object that we didn’t use before, and some kind of gesture, stick on some sensors, make some music … But I think the winners of our competition were outside of this realm, really innovative, completely new approaches for playing music,” he says.

On the prize-winning MO tangible interface:

In a section of the performance, they took a ball – a soccer ball – and did some [musical] gestures with it, threw it … moved it … on the hands, on the floor. Each one of these gestures was recorded with the gesture recognition. And then they actually threw the ball to the audience. The audience members started to throw the ball back and forth. If you threw it in a particular way, it made a particular sound — and everything’s wireless, completely — if you threw it back and forth in a different way, it made a different sound. It was really fun; people threw the ball at each other, threw the ball back at the stage. And all made music that was pretty cool to listen to.

Basically, the instrument becomes an intelligent entity. It can sense similar but different gestures and create something smart and relevant musically.

On the slot machine:

The gesture is mostly visual — the intelligence here is of the human performer. He makes his own gestures, accompanied by sounds. And it allows you to manipulate and change [the sound] — and get some surprises, because it is a slot machine, after all.

You can play, explore it. He was able to very expressively pet and touch and click and manipulate the slot machine to create some very nice — not only musical outcomes, but visual outcomes. In some cases, this guy is lying in the sea and making gestures in the sea. Sometimes he’s hanging stuff on the walls, and making sounds with his mouth. Sometimes it’s basic stuff that you can manipulate in real time, with a pretty unique interface — it’s not a monome, it’s a slot machine. It surprises you.

On the Samchillian:

Some instruments – controllers – have this short or sometimes long learning curve, but once you get to a certain point, you know it, and that’s what it can do. And you cannot get better at it. I think the Samchillian is really an instrument with a learning curve that’s very long, and just like other acoustic instruments, violin, piano, there’s a wide range of [technique]. And this guy was really a virtuoso with this instrument. He was able to play chords, all kinds of arpeggiators.

What I liked about it is it’s an instrument more than a controller. There’s always more to learn about how to become better with it. And I think that’s valuable.

Notably, Weinberg has no illusions about the challenge of making new instruments. It’s no accident that the winners were typically the result of years of development and evolution. “I don’t think any of the great instruments were invented in months,” says Weinberg. “It’s a lot of iteration, a lot of building… only a few are good enough to stick.”

And perhaps the great electronic instrument, while getting nearer, hasn’t yet been created. Weinberg says one example of a new instrument design that doesn’t work particularly well is the legendary Theremin – it’s beautiful in the hands of only a couple of artists, but generally a design that stumps musicians and is hard to play.

Looking at the winners this year, though, there are ideas on which new work can be built, not just impressive one-off instruments but real research into handling pitch and gesture. That, at least, should present a bright future. But with the competition heating up, aspiring engineers may want to get started on those designs now.

Thoughts? Questions about the work? Let us know.

More on the MO tangible interfaces from the IRCAM-based Interlude:
MO Interfaces

That work isn’t yet available for download, but an “augmented score viewer” is.