“Press play” … “button-mashing” … the very criticism of digital music is often directed at the button or switch, even as the cult hit monome spreads arrays of buttons like a virus.

Well, we’re still interested in what you can do with a button, so to fully focus you, we’re only giving you one button with which to play. The challenge of limiting interaction to one button has already spawned an explosion of entries from game designers, who have fought their way through intense competition for the legendary Gamma indie/experimental game competition. We’ll see the winners at the Game Developer Conference next week.

But we want to see what people can do with a single button and sound. Friday, March 12, sonic (and game-based, and other) objects involving a single button will converge at San Francisco’s Gray Area Foundation, in the midst of GDC.

The deadline is officially today, March 1, but as I follow up on entries, we’re extending that to Friday, March 5, by the end of the day NYC time. There are already some terrific-looking submissions, but we’re willing to entertain the possibility of more, at least for a few more days. (if you have something you want to share online but can’t ship, let us know that, too)

How to enter – simplified rules:

It doesn’t have to be a game. (But it could be.)

It does need to do something – make noise, make lights, move, or otherwise interact.

It needs to operate on its own. We have to be able to plug it in and have it function, without the addition of a computer, etc.

It needs to be shipped to California for March 10 arrival, to be ready for the opening Friday, March 12. It will then be shipped back to you.

Send submissions, as detailed as you can, to:
onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org

Party + Hack

Part of the beauty of the one-button limitation is that it encourages quick hardware hacks and simplified designs. It’s a design you can make even if you’re out of time. We’ll be having a party to finish off creations in NYC on Saturday afternoon, building last-minute creations for Handmade Music Monday night (details forthcoming) and the One Button Objects show in San Francisco. If you want to get your own little hackday going between now and then and join us online from your local hackerspace / studio (anywhere in the world), let us know in comments. Here are details for those of you near NYC – plus some music for everyone to listen to while you solder/code/build:

Being a digital musician requires a new set of skills, a precise tack between the forces of engineering and creativity. Robert Henke aka Monolake is always someone I find thought-provoking, not only because he’s so open and articulate, but because he seems uniquely focused on balancing those two sides of his personality. As a media artist and producer, his work relies heavily on his own technological invention, but he is also able to keep true to his own aesthetic compass.

For acoustic evidence of where Robert’s mind is exploring, his full-length album Silence, released last month on his own Imbalance label, reverberates with clarity. To my own ears, its crystalline rhythms and finely-honed, always-foreground timbres and textures recall all the best of Monolake through the years, back to the early, pre-Ableton collaboration between Robert and (now Ableton CEO) Gerhard Behles. (For an eloquent review, see Fact Magazine’s take.)

As far as engineering in the sense of recording and production, Robert did a terrific interview with engineer/musician Caro Snatch for her blog; she gets some fascinating answers out of him and they even talk about his technique of avoiding compression on electronic sources. But I was interested in how engineering can work in the compositional sense: with open-ended tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP, how do you create compositional systems? How do you wrestle with the potential of Max inside Live? Where do you draw limits?

As always, Robert has some sharp ideas – whether fodder for inspiration or disagreement, I think you’ll find things worth talking about. And indeed, while technology figures prominently, I think you’ll find some ideas that are really fundamentally about music, about compositional intent, thinking about sound, and thinking about rhythm.

How to do mpc pad finger drumming from Brandon Murphy on Vimeo.

Composer, musician, and drummer Brandon Murphy has put together a how-to video on playing and programming beats with a 4×4 grid. One reason to pay attention: he’s a real drummer, and had been just as skeptical about the value of all this as you probably are:

I’ve been using an MPC longer than I’ve owned a computer and something that never appealed to me was “finger drumming”. It evoked thoughts of s***ty 80’s outdoor music festival wankery, dudes with offensive looking devices strapped around their necks and lots of synthetic “tom tom” fills. Even recently speaking, “live MPC” usually implied super played out “battle” routine style stuff. Fortunately, a new generation of talented producers and performers decided to reclaim the drum machine’s potential as a realtime performance instrument (right around the time MPC’s were kind of running out of steam I’ll add).

What changed his mind? Artists doing things drummers can’t, and making production more productive in the process. (Check out the video and his full blog post for more.)

The resulting technique he uses isn’t so much about the MPC or even his tool of choice, Ableton Live, as it is finding a comfortable mapping that makes composing and performing beats more ergonomic. After sharing various tips at the Chicago Ableton Users Group, Brandon has put together the technique above.

To me, it suggests ideas not only about making quick drum breaks, but also assembling pitch generally into arrangements that help you play. Coming from a piano background, I do believe that arrangement and layout of keys can be important, and that even a simple (12-tone equal temperament? black and white?) configuration can turn out to have incredible potential. Of course, this does also reveal why a 4×4 grid is valuable, even as 8×8 or larger monome-style arrays catch on.

Got tips or techniques of your own? Find you can play Javanese slendro a whole lot faster on your custom hexagonal keypad on your dodec-o-phone? Let us know in comments. (Comments currently under moderation, but they’ll appear after a short delay.)

The monome meme continues to spread virally through your music gear. With some custom code (made freely available) and a little assistance from the free Arduino platform, Philly-based hacker Wil Lindsay has converted the $50 Bliptronic 5000 device from ThinkGeek into a monome. That gives you full compatibility with the community-made patches that support the real thing, for a song.

If you’re handy with this sort of thing, you can follow the code and basic build instructions provided and mod your Bliptronic yourself. If not, you have two choices – the first half dozen early adopters can pay Wil to hack and test their Bliptronic for a fee to raise money for a PCB, and then once that happens, anyone who wants an all-in-one, more fully-documented kit will be able to choose that route instead.

Bliptronome V2 : tests, kits, and code released

Bliptronic 5000 @ ThinkGeek

It occurs to me that someone might be able to do something different with that source, as well.

The way I’d still recommend assembling a monome if you can’t get in on one of the official products or kits would be the Arduinome, which is best-documented at FlipMU’s Arduinome site. But I like that the Bliptronic is now an option, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if some monome owners pick one up for the heck of it. I’ll send an update if Wil is successful with that kit.

OTO Machines’ BISCUIT is new 8-bit effect processing hardware from a boutique design firm in Paris. The essential effect is all 8-bit: using 8-bit converters and processing, you can add crunchy, digital waveshaping, delay, pitch shift, and step filter effects. But because those processes produce distortion and aliasing, BISCUIT combines its 8-bit effects with an analog resonant filter. (It’s switchable, so if you want to retain all the artifacts, you can – but you also have a filter at the ready.)

The whole design is a lovely exercise in reducing a set of sound capabilities to their most essential elements. The appearance of the front panel, though, is deceptively simple. Multifunctional uses, all provided within the eight buttons at bottom and the parameter controls at top, allow effects from filtering and basic bit reduction to wild, radical bit destruction, step-sequenced filtering, delay, and even a little synthesis.

The BISCUIT is also fully MIDI-enabled: every control sends MIDI, and every function receives MIDI CC. Critical to its step-sequenced and delay functions, BISCUIT receives MIDI clock, as well, or you can use tap tempo.

Finally, quality and local production figure prominently in the OTO: the company advertises that they don’t outsource production and work entirely with local companies in France.

Price: EUR529 including VAT (so 442,30 if you’re outside Europe). Available now:
http://www.otomachines.com

That’s pricey, I know, but it also packs as much sonic power as a collection of several Moog effects – and likewise might be the only effects box you need.

And, oh yeah – the future of BISCUIT may provide more than it does now.

I got to look more closely at the BISCUIT (think “bis-QWEE” as in French), at least on paper. I’ve also had the chance to talk to one of the creators about the evolution of this box, which reveals something of the process of hardware creation in general.

First, let’s take a closer look at the hardware.