I received my Arduino Diecemila in the mail last week and have started to experiment with using it to synthesize audio and video. I’m not very experienced with programming microcontrollers, so I’ve been doing a lot of research to see what’s out there, and it’s greatly encouraging to see that people are taking this little kit in fun directions.

While I wasn’t able to find many “finished” projects, I did find a whole lot of ideas that deserve further exploration:

First up is a simple but effective “Arduino Theremin” from Alberto Bietti. Looks like this one uses an ultrasonic rangefinder rather than an RF field to effect pitch. The squelchy FM-like tone is a little screechy but could work well with a little bit of filtering:

Minitek is a massive “electronic music + innovation festival” coming to New York this weekend. If you’re anywhere in the area, I definitely recommend finding a way to get out here. And if you’re far away, stay tuned, as we’re planning some epic coverage here on CDM. The events are split between Midtown Manhattan and the eccentric shores of Coney Island (above).

The music lineup includes some big names — think Richie Hawtin, Magda, M.A.N.D.Y., Audiofly, Audion (big highlight for me), Adultnapper, Heidi, Guy Gerber, and the like, with Francois K closing out the evening. But for those of you whose tastes tend in the more experimental, there’s quite a bit of that, too.

Under the “innovation” category, we’ll see works like James Patten on the tangible Audiopad interface, Norman Fairbanks jamming on the Tenori-On, Audiocube players, and more. There’s also a big lineup of generative visuals for the nights; we’re covering that on our sister site Create Digital Motion. You’ll also be able to chat up record labels and play with the tech during the day in the village on Coney Island.

Minitek Festival Site; ticket info (you will want to get a pass if you can!)

Set times are finally up, though that includes only the main acts, not the innovation. (I know some of the, ahem, “innovators” so when they find out themselves when they’re playing, I’ll pass it on!)

Details are constantly coming in, so you can watch the blog or mailing list on the site. And yes, Astroland just closed, but Coney Island’s other rides are up, in case you want to hop on the Cyclone between sets. (Artists playing, if anyone wants a CDM interview on one of the rides, I’m game. I think it’s be fun to do an interview mixed with screams on the coaster.)

Tangible Roots

One of the projects I’m most excited about is Roots, a new music/visual interactive installation for the Brick interface. Co-creators Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis took home a Tenori-On the last time they ran into CDM (video of that after the jump); this time they team up with London-based designer Memo Akten for some beautiful generative visuals. (They’re also behind the Arduino-based Monome clone we saw a couple of weeks ago.) Here’s a short teaser video; we’ll have more on this after the weekend.

Roots Multi Touch Tangible Installation Teaser from BricK Table on Vimeo.

And that’s just a taste of one of the innovation day projects, every single one of which have gotten a mention (or three) somewhere in the pages of CDM in the past (really)!

Monome Life, indeed. What makes the Monome so wonderful is not so much that the hardware and software itself are open source — nice as that may be — but that they have become a platform for experimentation and personalization. Max/MSP, now freshly injected with life following its version-5 release, has a similar ethos. Here are a couple of the creations that have impressed me most recently: a hacked-together implementation of The Game of Life in Max and Monome, and an impressive DJ app, dj64.

This is Your Life

Bean (blog | twitter | flickr) clearly very much loves his Monome, as indicated by the slideshow above. I recently spotted an interesting creation on the CDMusic Flickr Pool — an implementation of the iconic Game of Life simulation/game — and asked him about it.

I made it mainly just because I figured it should be possible. It’s not terribly efficient, and occasionally stutters, but that feels like part of its charm. It is monome tailored, but would run stand-alone with a little tweaking.

I’ve got the cleaned up version posted on my page of monome-specific patches:

http://www.fourthirtyeight.com/monome/#maxlife

There are a number of downloads there, including that one, so Max users, have at them!

In case you missed it on Create Digital Motion, we’re now beta testing a version of open source OSC controller software for the iPhone and iPod touch 2.x firmware. (For something along the same lines, see also OSCemote.) It’s well worth reading that story, as mrmr’s creator Eric Redlinger talks eloquently about what this is about: controllers that can connect to a performance, even a stranger’s performance, as easily as an iPhone could dial up a webpage.

Mrmr iPhone 2.x Firmware Beta, and the Self-Configuring Touch Controller

But in case even that argument doesn’t make it clear, this isn’t an iPhone story. It’s an OpenSoundControl story. It’s about chickens, eggs, and the future. It’s just a glimpse of that future, but it could be a meaningful one. This is technology coming to far more than just Apple’s devices. Let me explain.

An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:

• A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
• using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording

** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…

The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:

• 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
• $80 Toneport GX
• old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)

**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.

(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)

If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful - starting with album art, but going beyond that.

Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.

Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.

drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies

Updated: Plug-in List

Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)

MyHome 2.0 is a promotional site for Verizon FIOS that’s enlisted some very talented DIYers. They’ve got a couple of pretty impressive interactive music projects — this is not the sort of stuff most people would take on. The Pipe Organ Chair isn’t a digital project per se, but we all love sound here, and who’s to say you couldn’t integrate bellows into your next digital instrument? The basic idea is to force air through pipes using butt-powered bellows, requiring, of course, a fair bit of assembly.

How 2.0: Pipe Organ Chair from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

Pipe Organ Chair Project Page

The other project, by way of the multi-talented Allison Lewis (the creator of SWITCH, a DIY show for young women, and some brilliant fashion + technology work), is a wall harp. Think infrared sensors plus MIDI, using the MidiTron kit by Eric Singer, which is seen regularly around these here parts.

How 2.0: Build a Digital Wall Harp from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

I wish that, in addition to the DIY portions, they had spent more than two or three seconds documenting the results. But I think this may be in New York, so maybe I’ll have to go over there and try it out myself.

If you’ve got your own favorite projects involving pipes or infrared sensors, let us know. And maybe this will inspire some of your own work.

Side note to Verizon: please stop torturing us poor New Yorkers with how awesome Verizon FIOS is when we can’t get it. Hurry up with that build-out, already. I can send you my address. You can come over with the fiber optic cable today, even; I’m pretty good with a wire crimper.

Nova (audio by Helios) from flight404 on Vimeo.

The rumor mill’s conventional wisdom is that iTunes 8 will be part of Apple’s music-themed press event next week. That’s a safe bet — iTunes 7 is clearly due for an update. But Allan White has some interesting speculation with which I’m inclined to agree. There’s an excellent change Robert Hodgin’s excellent Magnetosphere visualizer is going to become an official visualizer for iTunes 8. That’s be a big win for Processing (site | cdmo tag), the visual code “sketching” tool — and a likely time suck for your productivity next week, if true, as you stare into its hypnotic pulsing orbs. (Just fair warning.)

Allan White writes on his blog — a lovely visit for fans of music and visualization:

[Robert] Hodgins built a wonderful iTunes visualizer called Magnetosphere a while back - which mysteriously disappeared from his site a few months back. I wrote him, and he said that it had been sold to a third party. There’s strong evidence that this third party is in fact Apple, and that it may ship with iTunes 8, which could be shown as soon as next week at an iPod Event.

iTunes 8 Rumors: is Magnetosphere the New Visualizer?

One way or another, it looks like we will be getting the visualizer. And getting it officially would be terrific — it’s about time the fairly moribund world of visualizers was reignited. (Just remember, musicians, work with a real VJ/visualist when playing live for the full experience. End public service announcement.)

Magnetosphere Video
(Above, a reskinned take on the original — Robert does wonderful things with iterating his code)

Magnetosphere iTunes Plugin Page

Flight404 on Create Digital Motion

I usually try to steer clear of the marketing crud, but this is too bizarre to pass up. Taco Bell, anxious to jump on this whole “indie music” bandwagon, is using the only currency it has: combinations of refried beans, cheese, rehydrated ground meat, and tortillas.

Here’s the plan: they find 100 bands, and give them $500 in Taco Bell food while they’re on tour — just in case the burritos were the one thing breaking your tour budget. (Okay, there is that whole fuel cost and lodging thing, but get some bikes and a tent and you should be fine.)

The grand prize: the kind of fame that can only come from including hot sauce packets in your marketing plan. And to think, all this time people have been chasing music press and blogs and word of mouth and such. PR helpfully tell us that they’ll get “a well-known indie rock producer” to record the single. (Wait — aren’t “indie” and “well-known producer” supposed to be mutually exclusive?) But it’s really the hot sauce packets that seal the deal:

The singles will then be promoted on www.feedthebeat.com and through online advertising and in-store efforts in the Spring of 2009, as the Web site address will be featured on Taco Bell’s iconic Sauce Packet, which reaches more than 208 million people in about a month.

Oddly, talking about this has only made me hungry. I know, I know — I’ll try to find a real burrito, not a Taco Bell.

If a CDM reader happens to win this, we’ll be proud to see your name in lights extra spicy.

feedthebeat.com

Reader Mark notes that, as covered in Pitchfork, Girl Talk got the right idea after last year’s contest and shared their taco winnings with fans. Now that’s good publicity.

Readers: got better ideas for viral condiment marketing? (Oooh, wait, I shouldn’t say the word “viral” in the same breath as a fast food joint, should I?)

Today’s reflections on the importance of album art:

1. Album art can be beautiful, whatever the recording medium. It can reflect great design, and extend the expression of the album itself (well, and it helps if the album is great). Justin and Colin have created the site Hardformat to celebrate design on everything from tapes and records to new releases. They have a gorgeous gallery of stuff, pictured above. I like what they have to say on their about page:

It seems like everybody’s talking about the end of physical music media. Who knows whether they’re right or not, but Hard Format is a little place we’ve set up to celebrate our love of brilliant music-related design. That means we’re going to focus on records, CDs, cassettes and their like. However, Hard Format isn’t intended to become a dusty museum devoted exclusively to past glories, though there’ll certainly be some of that, we also want to highlight the brilliant new design work being produced right now.

2. Physical objects could be a powerful force in the digital age. Digital downloads are wonderful. But there’s a coming renaissance in physical objects, premium album releases, and oddities. I’ve been talking with people about crazy ideas like DIY Blu-Ray discs or building custom MP3 player kits loaded with music. In the throw-away age of culture, it’s a chance to care about what an object is, who made it, how it got to you, and what it means in your life. And it’s a chance not just to bring back the goodness of the LP’s cover as artistic canvas, but to go beyond that to new expressive forms. Nostalgia is fine; making new things is better. Make the change you want to see. (Apologies to Ghandi.)

3. I really wish the album art on my digital downloads weren’t so $#(*& screwed up. I rip music from CDs, I download through promotions, I use eMusic, I buy from medium to obscure digital stores and digital labels and direct from the artist, and yes, very, very rarely from iTunes. Somehow, about half wind up without embedded album covers, and my iPod touch insists on syncing with iTunes. Has anyone found a good workflow for properly cleaning up your album tags, filling in the missing covers successfully, and syncing it to devices?

Comments welcome on my syncing woes. (Yes, even Winamp and Media Monkey aren’t able to clean it all up, though I do use the latter for clean-up.)

But in the meantime:

Hard Format: Reaching for the Sublime in Music Design

And for more album art collections, see their inspiration page

Or from vintage CDM and the opposite end of the spectrum, Terrible Album Covers, Fugly Bands

At your desk, you want another few moments with FL Studio or Live or Pd or Pro Tools or (your app here). Then, you kick back on the couch or on the bus to play with … more music software. Yep, you’re one of us. Here’s the latest from the world of Nintendo DS music apps.

First off, a couple of you write to say your preorders for the Korg DS-10 cartridge have been delayed until October 14 for the US. (The cartridge was released in Japan over the summer, and we had previously heard September 30.) This does line up with the anticipated European release, though.

For a better sense of what the DS-10 looks like, here’s a nice video from YouTube user Denkitribe, who has been carefully producing all sorts of hands-on videos. (high-quality link) Take a close look: as I’ve said before, I think there are design lessons from mobile apps that may carry over to how other music hardware and software is designed.

Meanwhile, in the homebrew scene, the step sequencer / soft synth / sampler will be released free, joining other lovely DS homebrew for music. (See Palm Sounds.) CDM got to break the news on GrooveStep, and as it happens, we have another couple of announcements to make about this; stay tuned. Currently closed beta, but we should have release info and hands-on for you soon. GrooveStep also lets you load your own samples, so there’s no question this can be a tool as well as a toy.

GrooveStep homepage

For a feel for what GrooveStep can sound like, its creator played with it during CDM’s Futuristic Music Night at NASA Ames Research Center in the spring: