Every so often, I’m reminded of a simple fact: the greatest machine on the planet remains the human machine. So, yes, it may seem strange to one of the uninitiated to imagine strapping an iPhone to your wrist. And yes, musicianship in the digital age is partly about triggering, not just playing (though Onyx can really blow on his Akai wind controller.) But the bottom line is, the precision of movement and the genius of human musical creativity wins out. However unusual the technological solution, it can still tap into that power.

In the video above, our friend Onyx Ashanti shows off his proof-of-concept work-in-progress as he assembles a new musical rig. Open source patching software Pure Data (Mac/Windows/Linux) is the sound source, proof that you can substitute free software at the center. The controller is an iPhone running TouchOSC (though this makes me want to revisit ultra-portable, open, embedded hardware with sensors). And yes, that’s a Yamaha WX5 wind controller, a digital input tool of choice for those with a wind background. Onyx says this is only to be one of two iPhones.

Expect craziness to come, but I like watching things in progress, too – so I couldn’t resist sharing.

http://onyx-ashanti.ning.com/

Correction: Instead of looking closely at what Onyx was playing, I relied on my memory, and egregiously called the WX5 an Akai EWI. Thanks to commenters for spotting that.

dromama from Altitude Sickness on Vimeo.

Turning one knob and bouncing up and down may work for some, but virtuoso electronic performers want more live control out of music. Why? Because we have more fun. Raymond Weitekamp is a monome power user based at Princeton who has organized like-minded monomists. As with Edison’s performance work yesterday, Raymond is working to develop real performance technique.

He’s already got the monome doing more that button mashing, thanks to clever mapping of tilt controls. (Check out the custom housing, too.) But to provide additional timbral controls, Raymond makes use of the Korg nanoKONTROL and the humble MIDI Remote Scripts I made and documented here on CDM. The nano provides some compact, accessible controls for adjusting the active rack. Details below.

If you want to learn from this setup, Raymond is sharing everything he’s doing, so you can take this in a direction that works in your performance rig. Here’s the full setup:

Software:
-smack-a-duck: vimeo.com/4739761
-mlr_aes_mdb: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/mlr_raw_0.2.zip
-midi_bends: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/midi_bends_0.3G_RAW.zip
-midi_bends midi remote script: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/MIDI_Bends_LiveRemote.zip
-nanokontrol midi remote script: createdigitalmusic.com/files/media/files/korg/korgnano_live.zip
-ableton live

Discussion:
post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=5458

Samples:
Drums from the “droms” sample pack by ro: post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=5414
Beach Boys – Mama Says
Viktor Vaughn – Raedawn

Thanks:
ro, tehn, soundcyst, peter kirn

From that discussion thread (well worth checking the whole thing out), here’s the basics on how the bits fit together:

Since it may not be immediately obvious what’s going on, I’ll elaborate for the curious amongst you:

mlr_aes_mdb => soundflower => live
midi_bends => IAC midi bus + midi remote script => live
nanoKontrol => midi remote script => live
smack-a-duck => soundflower => live

I modified Peter Kirn’s midi remote script for the nanoKontrol, and wrote my own for midi_bends. The tilting of the monome on the left (Tuppernicus) is controlling the 8 encoders of whatever the active FX rack is. The knobs on the nanoKontrol control those same 8 encoders. This way, I can use either to control the same FX parameters. I like this a lot better than 1:1 midi mapping, because it allows multiple methods for controlling the same parameters. Tuppernicus also controls the FX toggles (4 FX x 6 channels), drum rack, and active channel/effect rack. The monome on the right (Tupperbot) is running my slightly tweaked (added rowfix) version of mlr_aes_mdb 0.4.

Ableton Live is just one choice, of course. I’m actually trying to get some similar tools together on the Linux side, where this sort of combination fits naturally with the JACK audio server. I hope to have something to share by mid-fall.