Something very funny has happened in the world of music controllers. It started with the rising popularity of Ableton Live, along with the likes of Reaktor and Max/MSP, as musicians started creating more dynamic, rich live performances with computers. Supposedly, this shift should have created new controller designs. If Live was the killer app, where was the killer hardware?

Instead, what we’ve gotten is a sort of primordial soup of controller experimentation, with people hacking together circuits, appropriating Wii remotes, abusing and warping commercial controllers, and generally resisting any standardization. The results have been, in short, fabulously chaotic. And maybe that’s the point – just as, even with relatively standardized music tools, musical variety remains virtually infinite.

Of course, there’s one little problem: working from scratch might (ahem) not leave you any time to make the actual music. (Doh!) So, if there’s not a killer single piece of hardware, what might a platform for experimentation look like. MachineCollective responds to a pretty nice wish list:

• Modular components you can mix and match at will
• Agnostic components that might be picked up by people building instruments, synths, controllers, circuit-bent projects, visual apps, or even non-musical electronics projects
• Easy combination with platforms like Arduino and Wiring and software like Processing, Max, vvvv, Flash, and other programming environments
• Rapid prototyping and manufacturing
• Get stuff shipped, or use your own local tools / local fab facility
• Fully open source licensed (it’s actually not clear which license – the CC non-commercial license would presumably mean you couldn’t build one of these and sell it, which I think builders might want to do)

That sounds great. So what is it, actually? The “platform” for now is just the physical components: a top panel of acrylic, an aluminum base, and a bottom panel. You do get machined holes and connectors, though, which could help you radically speed through the stuff that’s hard to do on your own – that is, machine solid cases. And if this catches on, it’s not hard to imagine people swapping circuits and software patches and such that puts some life into that case.

Looks great on paper; we’ll have to see what the actual platform is like. But in the long run, could locally-manufactured, open platforms someday stand alongside the conventional musical hardware industry? I think it’s very possible.

Thanks to everyone who sent this my way!

machinecollective.org

Omer Yosha has created a beautiful, elegant interface that uses infrared sensors to control music applications. Touch-free interfaces, of course, date back to the Theremin, but Omer is trying some new things here, creating an invisible matrix of controls in the air. And I love the way the physical object looks. He writes to tell us about the details:

I’m an Interface Design student from the FH Potsdam (near Berlin), i have a musical background, and the idea to create an AirPiano developed as i was playing around with the Arduino board, Processing and some IR sensors in my free time. It was fun controlling MIDI through moving my hands in the air, so i eventually found a way to set it all up in a way that makes sense and that is easy to control.
The concept behind the AirPiano is having a matrix in the air, with virtual keys & faders. The location of each key must be very clear for the user and easily learnt. The AirPiano is therefore only one example of an application that could adopt this concept. Since it is only the first prototype i built, it features at the moment a matrix with 3 layers, 8 keys for each layer. As long as a key is triggered, a note plays and an LED underneath the virtual key turns on (unfortunately it is hard to see it on the videos). The LEDs give the user additional feedback. The device is connected through USB and communicates with the AirPiano Software, which allows the user to assign each key/fader with a Note/Controller number, Channel and Velocity as well as transpose and save/load presets. The AirPiano Software can communicate with any MIDI instrument/sequencer. It is of course a polyphonic controller.
The AirPiano is not only fun to play, it also invites to experiment, to explore endless arrangements and develop new playing techniques. It might be useful for DJ performance, as a music therapy instrument or as a toy.
I’m at the moment trying to look for investors and people that could help me take this idea further. I presented the prototype two months ago in the Hannover Messe and received very good feedback. The concept is protected as a Provisional U.S. Patent Application.

If you can help him, chime in! I’d love to see what develops.

Here it is controlling Ableton Live:

More photos and another video to give you a sense of how this works (it’s particularly clear once you see the software interface):

The Sharper Image, a source of various amusing musical oddities over the years, now has a ready-to-use USB laser harp music controller for PC (Windows XP/Vista), at the price of — wha? US$599? Yes, this is obviously Sharper Image exercising the business and marketing acumen that allowed it to — erm — file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

And, in a move we haven’t seen in years, they spell the name with a ‘z’ instead of an ’s.’ Classy. And they’ve opted for a design that looks like the security fence in Jurassic Park.

The beamz Music Performance System @ Theremin World

Not sold yet? Read this feature and drool:

Choose a complementary rhythm track from 30 original songs in 19 music genres, including jazz, bluegrass, classical, hip-hop, reggae, heavy metal and more.

And it all “brings families and friends together through highly personalized music performances that elicit joy and excitement across all ages.” So, is $600 really so much to ask if it saves your family?

Make Your Own Laser Harp

As it happens, you can make a much cooler (okay, not saying much — a cool) laser harp on your own, as Stephen Hobley has done:

Stephen Hobley’s *awesome* laser harp [ladyada's ranting]

Click through to comments for more details on the project and how-to info.

Updated: Stephen’s site is back up, so go have a look. The project uses the very inexpensive Boarduino Arduino clone. I’m an Arduino vet but just picked up a Boarduino, so I’ll let you know when I do something with it.

“Totally awesome” as this may be, I still feel somehow unsatisfied. And then I know why:

Someone needs to do a laser tag harp. Ah, that takes me back. Anyone?

Once the domain of the few, creating and customizing sophisticated DIY controllers is now more accessible than ever. That means, if you can’t find what you want, and you’re ambitious and knowledgeable enough, you go make your own. Josh Boughey was impressed by the Monome enough to buy one — but the Monome, a grid of on/off buttons, doesn’t provide any kind of variable control. So Josh built his own, combining a series of parallel touch strips with LED indicators. (The lights are the tricky part, requiring an obscene number of connections.)

The creation, dubbed “Stribe” by Josh, could have been a one-off. But instead, he’s working on making it into a tool for others, with completely open source hardware and software. The whole system is built on the popular Arduino platform, making it uncommonly easy to modify. It’s a work in progress, as you can see lacking an enclosure. But ten have made it out into the wild, people are already programming custom software, and more are coming.

I got to hang out with Josh while he was in town this weekend. Luckily, he’s a fan of early music, meaning we met at a concert of a viol consort that was playing my music — an unusual collision of 15th and 21st Century music technology.

Josh gave a demo of the Stribe, for myself plus Phil Torrone of Make and Limor Fried (aka lady ada), creator of the x0xb0x open-source 303 clone. It’s still a project in process– there’s more to be done in firmware and support software and documentation — but it already shows some real promise. I snapped some shots, studied the Max patches, and mostly listened to Limor and Josh talk about the challenges of starting a DIY hardware business. (I hope that DIY builders start to share experiences, even informally, as they work to make the business end work so they can keep building.)

Just what can happen when you let your baby go? Someone else can do stuff with it you didn’t expect. Here’s musician Stretta developing music ideas-in-progress with the Stribe (see blog post, Stribe forum thread):

A Brief Conversation Resulting in One Less Child from stretta on Vimeo.

Some tidbits from the hands-on session:

If you’re planning to build a creative new instrument or interface for music, and you don’t already have the open source Arduino project on your watch list, you should put it there. Chris O’Shea at Pixelsumo brings some great new goodies for Arduino lovers via the Italian project site / tutorial site / shop Tinker.it:

CDM Stalwart bliss thinks that Wired’s article on Miya Masaoka’s Laser Koto is worthy of front page CDM status.

Well let’s have a look at the required aspects of a CDM article: Electronic Music? Check. Samples? Check. Lasers? Check. Midi? Check. Arduino? Check. Laptop? Check. Max/MSP? Check.

Yep, I think we can squeeze it in somewhere.

Masaoka was then able to play the instrument in its natural, acoustic state, use the gestural data supplied by motion sensors to generate and process sounds electronically, or do both at the same time. Toward the end of the Monster Koto’s life cycle, Masaoka installed laser arrays above and below the instrument’s body.

The Laser Koto was born when she decided to get rid of everything but the lasers.

Check out the rest of the article.

Other forum questions currently looking for answers include: Is buying Logic Pro 7 a bad idea? Is the Sonny Bono law going to go away? Can you capture live imagery from a Canon Powershot to G4 Powerbook? Does Zebranlogic make great looking effects boxen? Can people give Breathe advice on how to start making electronic music?

The Arduino I/O board is becoming the board of choice for building DIY electronics projects cheaply and easily. It’s affordable, it’s flexible, it’s open source (and has a growing community to help you out), and evolving nicely. Naturally, one of the first things we want to do with it is build some cool music electronics projects. Todbot has been doing a terrific series of tutorials for his “Spooky Arduino” class, and in the latest installment, turns to drum triggers and MIDI:

Spooky Arduino Projects #4 - Musical Arduino [todbot blog]
Be sure to check out the full class notes and PDFs; they’r really helpful if you’re getting started with Arduino (in addition to what’s on the Arduino site, of course)

Now, before a bunch of CDM readers chime in, I know we have some true connoisseurs of drum triggers, so let’s assume this is a beginner DIY project rather than a way to make a full-featured drum project. (As such, though, it looks like a great way to get started.)

But what’s also nice here is that the tutorial explains how to use the Arduino as a MIDI interface, with links to further resources. You need physical MIDI DIN connectors, and you need to format your messages properly (remembering that MIDI really is a serial protocol):

… to implement a MIDI interface, all you really need is the ability to send serial data at 31,250 bps. This is easily done with “Serial.begin(31250)“. Once that is done, a complete three-byte MIDI note-on message can be sent with three “Serial.print(val,BYTE)â€Â? commands.

I still like the MIDIsense as a plug-and-play DIY MIDI solution, especially with new Windows software and more I/O on the way. But the Arduino works well for MIDI in situations when boards like the MIDIsense won’t do. (And if you’ve got a few projects going, you might wind up with both on your workbench.)

MIDI Over USB?

Andy Bennett, aka SteamSHIFT wonders if it’s possible to send MIDI messages over USB, as you would with another MIDI device. Certainly, you can send the messages; see the example above. The problem as I see it is that the current Arduino drivers map the board as a serial port, and most music software doesn’t recognize serial device inputs as MIDI devices without additional drivers. It seems like you might have to write a USB MIDI driver for the board. But I’m not sure; I haven’t done anything like this. Anyone with some insight? (Here is the point where I expect someone to correct me on something I said that turns out to be wrong.)