Fritzcrate Project / RGB Color Mixer from Michael Schieben on Vimeo.

As you can see, people have already begun playing with ideas for tangible interfaces. Oddly enough, two German gentlemen each named Michael (not aware of one another) have gotten a headstart, including the first experiment above in progress. We’ll be experimenting with new interfaces in New York and around the globe. (If that isn’t enough experimentation with new interfaces, the NIME conference – New Interfaces in Musical Expression – is happening now in Pittsburgh, and we expect reports back from that, too!) The event has also been featured on Boing Boing and MAKE.

Follow the action at :

http://hackday.noisepages.com

Or via…

IRC: FreeNode #cdmblogs

Twitter: Hash tag #hackday or cdmblogs or follow the group of hackers at tweetknot.com/hackday

Live Streaming Video (we hope!): livestream

View Global Hackday in a larger map

AudioMulch 2.0 live patching screencast from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Wonderful things come from Australia. Developer Ross Bencina has released AudioMulch 2.0, the audio patching environment, now on both Mac and Windows.

Audiomulch is all pretty in black now with a new UI. But why is it special? AudioMulch has always been distinguished in its quick workflow, its ready-to-use objects that allow sophisticated patches with relatively simple structures, and its idiosyncratic soundmakers. The Metasurface multi-parameter controller is also a favorite.

The price is higher, which may scare away some – US$189, or $89 upgrade. There’s a 60-day trial that you can try out.

But the best part of this launch is that, instead of releasing a flashy demo with pans over girls in bikinis or booming drum beats and type flying through that says something like “THE FUTURE OF MUSIC IS NOW … HOLD THE SOUND IN YOUR FIST … BE THE MUSIC … WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?”, they just released a video showing someone making a piece of music. (What a concept!)

The video at top is a live-patching video, and it really reveals how, powerful as many interactive music environments may be, having some objects that get straight to what you want musically makes a real difference. (That’s something to keep in mind even as you create macros or code in other environments, too, I think.)

I like the idea of other people doing live-patching videos that work as music and not just tech demos, not only in AudioMulch but whatever your tool of choice may be.

If you give AudioMulch 2 a try, let us know what you think.

http://www.audiomulch.com

The mda-vst collection of effects has been a long-time favorite for me. It’s a set of no-nonsense, unique, simple effects, just useful stuff that doesn’t have any unnecessary bells and whistles. Oh, yeah – and it’s free, making an easy way to fill out your effect arsenal. But until recently, the collection was proprietary freeware. Now, it’s GPL-licensed open source for Mac and Windows.

Included: multi-band distortion, drum replacement, amp and speaker simulators, de-essing, degrading, delay, detune, dither, dub delay, compressor/limiter/gate, envelope following stereo imaging and simulation, a Leslie simulator, multi-band compression, an overdrive, a really insane pitch changer, a 3D panner, a sub-bass synth, a couple of vocoders with different numbers of bands, test tone creator, flanger, pitch tracker, and more.

I imagine the access to code for these things could help people launch their own effects projects. And as Windows VSTs, it can run easily in Linux hosts that support that format, too.

http://mda.smartelectronix.com/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mda-vst/

Thanks to Marc Resibois for the tip. And you budding C coders out there, if you dig into the code, let us know.

The translation of music from something largely invisible to a physical object is oddly beautiful, even when imperfect. That’s part of why we’re working on the Tangible Interface Hackday – less than 48 hours away now.

Here are a couple of additional sources of inspiration as we prepare.

At bottom, Guy John has made a sequencer out of one of the world’s most ancient games, Go. Over two millenia ago, Chinese people were passing the hours playing this game, so it’s an incredible way of connecting our passtimes today with the leisure time of our ancient ancestors – and a sign that gaming is a part of culture that endures. It’s fitting, too, as a lot of computer musical interfaces can be thought of as games. This particular game uses Max/MSP/Jitter and the CV Jitter externals for image analysis, then translates the game into a grid. Guy’s idea is fairly early in development, so I actually think you could go all sorts of different directions with this basic concept. (As seen in Hack a Day at the end of last year.)

At top, the Graphite Sequencer translates optical images made in the electricity-conducting material to sound in a simple turntable. It’s lovely seeing these patterns as sound objects, especially since usually we go the other way (trying to find patterns to affix to sounds). The same basic graphite-conducting process is used in the business card PAiA kit we showed at a past Handmade Music, as well as the Drawdio pencil (based on the same circuit).

Graphite Sequencer (2006), as seen recently via the blog of the fabulous-looking Montreal Elektra Festival

I’d love to see people continue to combine these fairly basic analog-style techniques – or thousands-year-old games – with the newer digital approach. Let us know what you come up with, creative folk.

So, you’ve been looking at that Akai APC40. And it’s appealing. It’s got lots of lights and a huge array of buttons for triggering samples or video or what have you, and plenty of knobs and faders.

Now the APC40 has some serious “indie” competition, though, in the form of Livid’s Ohm64. Let’s compare:

APC40:

• Proprietary connection to Ableton Live
• A proprietary handshake that ensures only a real APC is being used with Live
• Fixed MIDI assignments – no MIDI assignment editor
• MIDI only
• No MIDI out jacks, so you can’t use it with outboard gear
• No bus power
• 40 buttons
• Made in some factory somewhere we’ve never seen

Livid Ohm64:

• Open source editor, partially open source firmware, open source patches to connect to whatever you want
• Custom MIDI assignments, for use with whatever you want
• MIDI for now, but the chipset supports open source solutions for OpenSoundControl (OSC) in the near future – and even DMX (for lighting) is a possibility
• USB and standard MIDI jacks so you can sequence outboard gear
• Bus power
• 64 trigger buttons in a more logical 8×8 array
• “Made in the USA by humans” – with a beautifully-crafted body
• Free Cell DNA video software included

Both the APC and Ohm are class-compliant, so at least neither needs drivers to work over USB for MIDI on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Sure, the APC is plug-and-play with Live. But just as lots of non-programmers use open source browsers like Firefox, the whole point is that the Ohm could wind up being more plug and play with more tools thanks to its more open approach.