Music has always moved forward when people get together to play. Groups of artists in Los Angeles’ Interface LA collective – and other California groups, like LoveTech and controllerism.com – are challenging each other to keep expanding their technique in playing electronics live.

I’m pleased with CDM and some of our friends to support a party Friday night in downtown LA celebrating playing live. Interface LA is a group centered on live electronic music performance and interactions. We’ll be bringing you video coverage after the event here, thanks to talented videographer Charlie Visnic. But we can kick things off now with videos of the artists and work. And if you are in town, be sure to preorder tickets now, as we expect this to sell out really quickly and hope to see you there!

Videos, from top: Mike Slott (Brooklyn), who’s headlining Friday night, in an interview. Second from top, check out the crew in their last event at top, that one centering on the monome grid instrument.

I’m playing, as well (hey, I’ve got to put my money where my very large mouth is). But I’m really thrilled to get to share some time with a bunch of artists I love, many coming from San Francisco’s LoveTech and controllerism.com, and from LA’s own Interface LA regulars. The lineup:

Mike Slott
Moldover
Vass Glenison
Rich DDT
‘House Band’ (Smacktop Ensemble, featuring the awesome force that is the Smacktop laptop-that-you-hit)
Nonagon
Ro and the Interface LA crew
Presented with Novation and Ableton

Friday, January 21
Doors 9pm
18+
$10 cover

We also have an interactive work entitled (con)textile:

A digital installation using the Kinect, stop-motion and digital noise, and interactive audio” by Jeff Aaron Bryant.  Jeff is a composer working in digital media and kinetics. He is pursuing his MFA in music technology at California Institute of the Arts.

Information:
http://interface-la.tumblr.com/events
http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/82413

Facebook links:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Interface-L-A/316896995011687
https://www.facebook.com/events/351095438239262/

Images

November Interface LA, in photos

San Francisco’s LoveTech crew, including their Burning Man trip

SmackTop, in Video

We’ve seen this before, but it’s still good watching someone hit their laptop.

More Events in LA This Week

I have an early flight Saturday morning back to Berlin, but there are two other great events in Los Angeles this week if you happen to live in the area or are in town for a certain massive trade show down south in Anaheim.

TRASH_AUDIO NAMM BBQ 2012 has closed its RSVP, but if you do make it, let us know how it goes or (with, uh, permission) take photos of any cool stuff you find. Really wish the TRASH_AUDIO folks the best and all our modular and sound-making friends and Matrixsynth and company; I’ll be somewhere like 40,000 feet over Ireland while that’s going on.

Also, Droid Behavior is doing a party Friday night that should go late at an undisclosed location, the fifth anniversary of their Wham Bam series. I thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in that in 2010, and might duck in if I can on my way to LAX; the event here is not related, to clear up any potential confusion.

What do you do if you can’t find an instrument that you can play the way you want? In the digital domain, you can just invent one.

So, when Brooklyn-based artist Nick Demopoulos wanted a controller that’d allow him to articulate digital instruments more like a guitar and less like a keyboard, he built his own expressive touch controller. It uses arrays of touch-sensing strips on a guitar body. A future version, he says, will incorporate 6 “strings” (touch strips).

New York-based literary/culture quarterly BOMB Magazine shot a video in which Nick walks through his creation.

Nick has also played our Handmade Music series in New York, at Culturefix. (See documentation of that event, from 2010.)

Videos of Nick playing:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nicnut210?feature=mhee

Lots of stuff on SoundCloud, too; I enjoy the rhythms in this one:

Whispers in the Water by Nick Demopoulos

http://soundcloud.com/nickdemopoulos

It occurs to me looking at this, too, that if you could improve the sensing accuracy and physical feedback from the touch strip, you could radically improve the instrument. It’s really the quality of these kinds of sensors that will have the biggest impact on future instruments – that is, the fundamental ideas about these controllers are out there, and now implementation means everything.

Thanks for sharing your work, Nick!

You can complain about music events and festivals as they are, dream about what you’d imagine an event could be – or you can go and make it happen. And since the latter category fits friends-of-the-site Chris Gilroy and Lara Grant, it’s well worth an endorsement for this weekend’s In/Out Festival. (For their part, both Chris and Lara have been regulars at our Handmade Music NYC series; Chris as an electronic audiovisualist, and Lara as a textile-and-sound-melding felted signal processing guru.)

If you’re in New York, hope you can make it or even help cover it for CDM. If you’re not – like, for instance, if you’ve recently moved to Berlin – we’ve got some videos here to give you a taste of this particular assemblage of musical makers.

The lineup looks rich and varied on the performance side, coupling emerging artists with known names, all in genre-bending, adventurous sound:

Daedelus, Christopher Willits, Ander, Bit Shifter, tehn (Brian Crabtree), Portable Sunsets, Nick Demopolous’ Smomid, Comandante Zero, Noizmakr, Programs, Sarah Danke: Switched, Ivan Franco

There’s also a great selection of workshops:

• Heatit°C prototyping workshop, which uses a heat-reactive postcard for an analog circuit alongside “thermochromic and conductive inks and batteries, switches and conductive thread,” all made with a Craft Robo for producing 2D and 3D templates. (Wait… wha? Someone definitely go and cover that.)
• How to make a contact mic
• Kinect and movement using free software (Pd) – with Sofy Yuditskaya, who writes about Kinect and other 3D hacking today on Create Digital Motion
• Max for Live with Christopher Willits
• Comandante Zero on integrating live acoustic and digital instruments into performance
• Alternative musical instrument discussion

And here I’ve assembled some of my favorite videos of the artists and past In/Out events:

Stephen McLeod turns an egg-cooking session into a live, improvisatory tune – fried breakfast you can dance to:

There is a certain sense of magic or alchemy in the way a good cook or a good musician can transform raw ingredients into something beautiful. I feel like there is a kinship between these two disciplines, and this series of videos and performances is a meditation on that intersection.

While I prepare for you a meal, I use microphones and a computer to process the sounds. These sounds combine to form an automatic composition, determined by the recipe and improvised on the spot.

A meditative musical creation by tehn, aka Brian Crabtree, creator of the monome, was a highlight for me in 2009. (I played visuals live, using my photography and software I built in Processing. Side note: the bio pic is Brian appearing at one of our first Handmade Music NYC installments, put on with friends at Etsy.com who are now based here in Berlin. Strange, the arc of time and space.)

Here’s protofuse, aka Julien Bayle (French artist also known for his Max development work and protofuse controller), playing Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room with Chris Gilroy on visuals.

Festival co-organizer Chris Gilroy jams at one of our Handmade Music NYC parties from earlier this year.

“Switch” by Sarah Dahnke (here with meredith Blouin) is a far-out dance confrontation, in which bodies augment one another with sound.

And to close out this set with a groove, here’s Switzerland-based artist Ander playing a truly futuristic-looking controller Station, which appears to be ready to operate the Death Star.

Incredibly, all this music runs US$20 a day, or $30 for a limited-edition two-day pass, with workshops priced at $10-15 or free.

In/Out runs at The Knitting Factory and Death by Audio in Brooklyn.

http://www.inoutfest.org/tickets

The duo Sepalcure – Praveen Sharma (aka Braille and PRAVEEN) and Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum) – have already, as solo artists and as a duo, been a big part of the vibrations of so-called Bass Music. Originating from New York, the duo now champion their taste in sounds on two sides of the globe. Travis spends a lot of time in Berlin while Praveen anchors a scene that spans Brooklyn and the Internet in the form of Percussion Lab, with that group’s events, Web downloads, and Monday night live streams. (In fact, if you’re up against some deadlines or feeling blue on some Monday evening slash early morning European time slash Tuesday morning over in Asia and Australia, I highly recommend tuning in. Or go and grab one of the downloads, which cover Bass Music but also ambient, experimental, techno, and other sounds.)

Crisply soulful, “I’m Alright” is a perfect single to introduce you to the upcoming full-length. It represents the comfortable, relaxed collaboration between Travis and Praveen, from its lush production quality to heartwarmingly-grooving rhythms. It speaks to a hunger for danceable music that tracks closer to its history in House and Chicago sounds, to me, a sound that is as much about the roots and tradition of the music as any one place or time.

But I don’t have to really tell you anything; you can grab the single for free and exclaim, yeah, “I’m alright.” And I’m sure we’ve all had days where we were ready for a song to make us feel that way. In fact, I’m fairly surprised this is a b-side; having heard the album, though, the self-titled “Sepalcure” will deliver more of this manner of goodness.

Have a listen, grab the download, via CDM and Hotflush:
02 AA. I’m Alright – Sepalcure (promo) by cdm

Sepalcure promise “extensive touring,” but if you’re around New York, you can watch it all get rolling. After appearances at Unsound Festival Krakow and, this week, MUTEK Mexico City, the duo’s new live AV show will debut November 10th at Le Poisson Rouge. I believe visuals will come by way of another Friend of CDM, the awesomely-talented artist and designer Sougwen Chung. See her design from a previous release below, just because it’s too pretty not to include here. We’ll be due for another catch-up with Sougwen, but read our previous Create Digital Motion profile of her work for US label and tastemaker Ghostly International:

Visuals for Shigeto Full Circle, and Reflections on Drawing by Hand [Create Digital Motion]

Release details:
“I’m Alright” is the B Side for the single “Pencil Pimp,” November 7, Hotflush Recordings
Self-titled full-length, Sepalcure will be released November 22, Hotflush

And let’s give you some more visuals via Sougwen, inspired by the duo’s debut EP, Fleur:

I normally wouldn’t do this, but I know Gamail from Backspin Promotion, and his analysis – clearly written here with the duo – tends to be right on point, so I really like his track-by-track description:

Opening with ‘Me,’ a clear statement of intent that brings to mind early Metalheadz-era Alex Reese and Waxdoctor tunes within a fresh 2011 beat dynamic, the album continues its rhythmic and soulful attack on ‘Pencil Pimp’ which drops abandoned melancholic soul into a burnt out etheral city that isn’t Detroit. The Bronx? Brooklyn? Queens? New York while we waited for Hurricane Irene? No surprise then that this is slated to be the first single from the album. Tribalisms on ‘The One’ echo Zanzibar-era New Jersey Black House before it came over to Madhattan and stormed the world. On ‘See Me Feel Me’ you can hear Sharma’s IDM roots but Stewart has clearly helped him take a trip down to Philly for a bit of what can only be dubbed as an East Coast urban love fest. With Hip Hop mutating towards electronic music it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear a big league rapper biting this soon. ‘Eternally Yrs’ continues what is surely a romantic core in this album – it’s a burbling update of the ravehouse sound, with processed vocals rubbing up against woodblock beats and a relentlessly bouncing bassline. ‘Yuh Nuh See’ takes a bite out of juke’s trademark staccato bass and looping vocals, washing the tension away with lush melodies and dubbed out atmospherics. ‘Breezin’ indicates an ease but is in fact one of the more bass-heavy tunes on the album, bringing to mind a crowded beach in the Bronx where everyone is playing something different on their boombox – it’s Nigeria, Harlem and other undisclosed sources of wonder trapped in summer heat. ‘Hold On’ gets even more Jamaican – did we just enter a Soundclash? if so, this one is especially blissful. ‘Carrot Man’ lets us know Model 500, UR and Carl Craig’s dystopian landscapes still continue to inspire. while the finale ‘Outside’ sounds like the duo captured the elation of finishing the album and walking outside after weeks in a dark and sweaty studio. Sophisticated, yes, but accessible too. Emotional, yes, but fun as well. Simply titled ‘Sepalcure’ this album is a bold statement from two artists rising to the top of their game.

I’ll be interviewing Travis and Praveen, so if you’ve got anything you’d like to know about them, music they like, process, etc., let us know.

http://www.sepalcure.com/
http://percussionlab.com/
http://www.hotflushrecordings.com/

Circuit bending has a reputation as involving far-out, unstructured experimental noise, of real violence and distortion done to instruments. And there’s probably a place for that. But Reed Ghazala, circuit bending’s spiritual father and electronic practitioner, takes a more organic, evolutionary approach.

Reed recently told me about his favorite application of his iPad, apart from exploring new experimental soundscapes with tools like the brilliant granular app Curtis. He brings it with him into the forest, using GPS for location, and tracking plants and animals, identifying the sounds of bird and beasts.

In our electronic ecosystem, fowl and beast are finding their own electro-diversity. Circuit bending, then, is giving electronic devices a gentle push toward becoming something else, into taking on a unique and individual personality. It’s evolution. So, it’s fitting that New York’s Bent Festival has become an eclectic gathering of musical makers, espousing no singular philosophy or aesthetic.

For a sense of how broad that notion spans — both in Reed’s own head and at Brooklyn’s festival — our friend Kaley at VICE points us to their Motherboard.tv series on Reed, and his 1967 breakthrough of circuit bending, as well as their coverage of last year’s Bent. The Bent Festival, for their part, provide the remaining schedule if you happen to be in the area. At bottom, the classic “what is circuit bending” video by DrRek, featuring monome artist Daedelus.

If you happen to be the area, on behalf of CDM and in recognition of my lack of a) an inexhaustible budget or b) the ability to be a pan-dimensional creature in all places at once, please take photos and videos and notes and let us know what you see! (That goes for artists, too! Find a friend!)

We’ll be at Bent today before hauling off some makers yet deeper into the woods and wilds for the Solid Sound Festival. (Well, okay, metaphor stretched, broken, and beaten — at least further afield than the middle of Brooklyn. It’s Friday. I’m letting my metaphors take the rest of the day off.)

Sound Builders: In 1967, This Guy Invented Circuit Bending [Motherboard]

Bent Festival 2011

Also, notably organizing venue The Tank is again homeless and in need of support:

“Viable spaces for artistic research and development pop up as unpredictably as wild mushrooms, and sometimes vanish just as quickly. The Tank, a hardy nonprofit arts presenter formed by recent college graduates in 2003, has adeptly navigated a terrain in constant flux, taking root in a series of locations around Manhattan.” – Steve Smith, New York Times.

Their campaign to work in conjunction with other organizations to keep programming moving forward: http://do.nr/2sX

Before evolutionary adaptation comes mutation. Some of the weirdest stuff, in other words, could be the future – just ask biology. That was the conversation I had with folks like artist Rosa Menkman in Old Amsterdam (the one in Holland). So, as we gather back in New Amsterdam (NYC), we get a chance to celebrate the unusual.

Wherever you are in the world, here’s a look at some of those new mutations: a sewing machine converted into a musical instrument, an expressive audiovisual instrument borrowing ideas from the trumpet, and an electro-country band that covers classic honky-tonk American hits.

If you are in the sliver of our audience who live in the NYC area, of course, you can catch these folks live in a variety show-meets-science fair format. We don’t charge admission for the weird, and you can buy beer. Thanks to our new home at Galapagos Art Space, the NYC edition of Handmade Music can offer a proper stage and a lineup of live performances, along with the noisemaking and friendly atmosphere.

Live, Monday, March 8
Where: Galapagos Art Space, DUMBO Brooklyn [directions]
When: Doors open 7p
Cost: FREE
Highlights online for the rest of the planet here, later

Augmented Sewing Machine + Ensemble

Circuit Bending Orchestra: Lara Grant at Diana Eng’s Fairytale Fashion Show, Eyebeam NYC / SML from See-ming Lee ??? SML on Vimeo.

Lara Grant’s Augmented Sewing Machine, entitled “16TH AND MISSION,” takes the workings of the device and transforms it into musical control. Contact between needle and fabric and onboard switches and knobs (with help from Arduino and Max/MSP) make it a novel controller.

Lara joins myself and Matt Ganucheau providing additional electronic sounds (and possibly a surprise DIY creation or two from me), forming three quarters of the ensemble we formed to play a wearable technology fashion show. The Fairytale Fashion show, by Diana Eng, is documented below by MAKE’s/Adafruit’s Phil Torrone, with our group’s live (PA) music in the background. (See also an extensive photoblog of the designs by designer-technology See-ming Lee.)

fairytale fashion 2010 from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Missing but rejoining me next week in San Francisco is Lara’s sister Sarah Grant. Together, the Grant Sisters work on conductive fabric sound. If you’re interested in how to work with textiles in sonic electronics, they’ve promised to share more of what they’re doing:
http://fsp.fm

The TOOB: An Audiovisual Hypertrumpet

How do you build on the idea of a trumpet? Give it digital control and control over audio and visuals, of course:

Arvid Tomayko-Peters plays The TOOB – a unique wireless electronic wind instrument that gives the performer a vast but intuitive and malleable range of sonic material, allowing creative freedom in solo or group improvisation. The instrument senses breath, finger pressure, tilt and acceleration and utilizes sound captured and processed on the fly to create expressive soundscapes ranging from comic to tragic to “a force of nature” and abstract live video.

At top, a recent short audiovisual improvisation recorded on the instrument, provided to CDM by the artist. The TOOB even made an appearance at SIGGRAPH, the geektastic visual conference. More information:

Short live video from SIGGRAPH:
http://arvidtp.net/music.php#siggraph2009

How it works:
http://arvidtp.net/portfolio/instruments.php

Performance with the TOOB:
http://arvidtp.net/portfolio/index.php#toob

And here’s what the creation looks like. Notice the clever use of a project enclosure, tubing, and force sensing resistors. (Getting the job done always earns bonus points in my book.)

Owen Lake, Electro-Country, and New Handmade Instrument Designs

They call it electro-country. This isn’t modern, top-of-the-charts, watered down Nashville pop. Think covers of classic 1950s honky-tonk, covered on modular synths and custom electronic instruments. The instrumental lineup for Owen Lake:

Owen Lake (jeff snyder) – voice and manta
Penny Hunt (kate soper) – voice and synthesizer
Tommy Byrd (matt hough) – voice and guitar
Frank Arnold (spencer russell) – bass
Buck Flash (alex ness) – live video

But alongside his love of country music, bandleader Jeff Snyder moonlights as inventor. His Manta is a fascinating new small-run, boutique touch controller with a hexagonal layout. I had been meaning to check out the Manta anyway. (Its design has caught the eye of folks like Cycling ’74 engineer Darwin Grosse, one of the key minds behind Max.) Now I get to see it in person, with a full electro-country band behind it. Expect a full report thereafter.

Just don’t get too rowdy with the beers and start tossing them at the band in excitement, like that scene from The Blues Brothers. (Ah, though maybe we should put all these players together and try to cover “Stand By Your Man.”)

The hardware project:
http://www.snyderphonics.com/

The band project:
http://www.owenlake.com/

Gesture-Controller Exploration, by Matt + Lisa

Gesture-Control Deomonstration from Mouse & the Billionaire on Vimeo.

M Bethancourt wowed us at a previous event with an elegantly-designed gestural controller. Such devices are hardly new, fundamentally, but the GCe3 is beautifully refined, in a gorgeous wood housing. Since then, Mouse and the Billionaire (aka Matt + Lisa, though I’m not sure which one is which) have been practicing – because it’s not only the invention of the thing, but practicing on it to get good. Here’s what they’re up to:

The Gesture-Controller Exploration is a study of innovative musical instrument / controllers that investigates the relationship between movement, physical space and musical performance. The most recent incarnation, the GCe3, combines a musical software suite built in Max/Msp with an intuitive physical form to create a rich musical experience. Dipping, swinging, swaying, tilting, and turning the The Gesture-Controller sends signals to the computer running the audio software, informing its sound-making functions. This allows for a more satisfying performance, leveraging the power of the computer and helping the electronic musician to use physical means to create and manipulate digital electronic sounds in new and interesting ways.

http://www.mouseandthebillionaire.com/gce/
http://vimeo.com/tag:gesturecontrolexploration

The Event

Event details

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

on Facebook

Bonus! Saturday we’re hanging out with Babycastles, the indie arcade, and the folks of Loud Objects, chip-programming sound scientists. Bring a soldering iron (if you own one; if not, it’s a worthy investment), and stop in for hacking controllers and making one-button objects. Previous details | on Facebook

“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:

Handmade Game Objects Hackday + Party
SATURDAY OPEN HOURS @ 2PM – 6PM
L TRAIN – 915 WYCKOFF AVE ( SILENT BARN )

Map
Facebook

Babycastles teams up with Handmade Music Night for a hacking afternoon. Come make crazy new video game objects, art, and controllers with us! We’ll have a jungle of fun stuff like dentures and gloves (high five to play!), but you should bring some fun things too. No experience at all necessary! (Bring soldering irons, tools, etc. if you’ve got them.)

with music by CHEESE’N'BEER CHIP MUSIC COLLECTIVE MATINÉE

ADAMGETSAWESOME »>
http://myspace.com/adamgetsawesome
Adam uses a gameboy with LSDJ and a lot of alcohol! We assure you that his name is not just all talk, he does in fact “get awesome.”

Zen Albatross »>
http://8bitcollective.com/members/Zen+Albatross/
Zen Albatross make stuff with pixels, Game Boys and ancient spirit magick. He also blogs about art, airships, bleeps, bloops and other swell things.

Goatslacker »>
http://music.goatslacker.com/
Goatslacker is Florida’s Josh Perez who promises to fill you up with high octane chip music.

and curry by chef Syed Salahuddin

And yes, that music lineup includes Goatslacker, who did the MUSE covers in 8-bit. It’s the sort of high-energy music that goes well with trying to keep your brain on hardware hacking.

Seriously, if anyone wants to switch on a webcam or IRC chat while you work on your submission, let us know and we can co-hack internationally.

Last week, what was intended to be a day of posts wound up being several days of updates on events centered around music technology and DIY creation. Here’s a birds-eye view of what we covered, some of the events you can catch in person, and some of what these events reveal.

It’s worthwhile just putting these posts in one spot so you can easily mark your calendar – and you can see, even in this small slice, the amount and breadth of activity happening now.

At STEIM in Amsterdam, I’ll be talking about the state of DIY and open source technology for musicians and artists, and what that means for creative people — both the potential and some of the challenges. So I’d be curious to hear your thoughts before I begin waxing poetic. Readers here aren’t shy, so let us know your concerns in comments.

Now, here’s your guide and calendar to DIY. Tell us what we’ve missed. I’m hoping to devote a permanent spot on Noisepages to an events calendar; anyone with slick WordPress/BuddyPress-based solutions, give us a shout.

The best new inventions.

Don’t miss web-savvy hacks and creations from the music hackday, including an all-JavaScript clone of a popular Nintendo handheld music tool, online Web tools that make musician’s lives easier, and fantastic combinations of Android phones, web listening tools, online data, and physical objects. Meanwhile, if you want to start your own project but don’t know where to begin, Austin is a hotbed of new DIY kits.

February 17. Amsterdam, NL. (event)

Handmade Music kicks off in Amsterdam at the STEIM research center. The action starts at 8p. I’m making a stop there on my way to Stockholm, and hope to provide documentation next week for the rest of the world. Details.

February 19. Toronto, Canada. (event)

Handmade Music hits Toronto.

What they teach us: Why is it a “great time to make electronic music?” Toronto’s organizers point to the fact that makers are spoiler for choice of platform, with monome and Arduino on the hardware side, and ever-more-mature Max/MSP and Pure Data on the software side.

February 28. Austin, Texas USA. (event)

Austin shares all their latest musical inventions, plus resources for those wanting to work on making noises with the Arduino.

What they teach us: beginners can get in on these events, with the aid of newbie-friendly workshops and easygoing, noise-making parties. Oh yeah, and the advanced folks can create terrific, usable music hardware.

March 8. Brooklyn, NY USA.

Handmade Music starts a new series at Galapagos Art Space, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Details.

February 14, April 3, May 28. Porto, Portugal + worldwide. (call for works)

Digitopia seeks the best Max+Pd patches, dream ideas for musical inventions, and miniature music. I’ll be there in June 2010.

What they teach us: the twist here is making an open source hardware controller the prize, and sharing the how-to with the world. Plus, all the competition entries are required to be open source, meaning the competition itself generates tools for the community.

March 1 deadline; March 12 event. San Francisco + Worldwide.

One-button Game Objects challenges designers to make self-contained sonic and visual interactive art — all using just one button. If you can ship it to San Francisco, we can show it. And in March, we’ll be looking at other ways that just one button can make a musical interface. Call for works info.

What can you do with a button? What circuits can you bend? What software and hardware can you construct? Want to meet up with myself and fellow makers from the DIY music and visualist communities? I’m touring and looking for new works, we have one call for one-button objects that (if you can ship it) can come from anywhere in the world, plus upcoming events in New York, San Francisco, and — this month, Amsterdam at the planetary music tech hub that is STEIM.

STEIM + Handmade Music Amsterdam (Netherlands, February)

Handmade Music is beginning in Amsterdam. To kick things off, I’ll be visiting the legendary STEIM research center. The event will be open to anyone with inventions and self-built hardware and software you’d like to share. We’ll plug in and make a raucous noise. I’m really quite looking forward to meeting folks from this area.

When: Wednesday, February 17, 8p – ?
Where: Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Cost: FREE
STEIM Hotspot Lab Event Page

I’ll also do a short presentation of some work TBD; more on this next week.

If you’re attending and want to share what you’re bringing in advance or make sure you see me, use the CDM contact form.

One-Button Objects Call (SF + World, March)

What can you do with one button? In an age of ever-more-complex touch interfaces, we’d like to imagine what a single, tangible, hardware button can mean for a design. To celebrate the arrival of their Gamma game event in San Francisco, art game collective Kokoromi is teaming up with Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion to launch a call for ONE-BUTTON OBJECTS.

So, sorry monome — too many buttons (unless you want to make a one-button monome, that is). The one-button game objects will incorporate a single-button-centered design and inspiration from the world of gaming into unique creations. Read up more on our sister site:

Call for Works: One-Button Game Objects
Then send your submissions for the gallery show in San Francisco to onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org
(see also Kokoromi
Receipt deadline: March 1

If you’re in the NYC or San Francisco, we’re looking to do some informal hackdays to play with buttons, HID interfaces, Arduino and microcontroller platforms, and the like — we just need a hackerspace to host us. And if you’d like to do that elsewhere in the world, let us know and we’ll promote it.

And of course, be sure to attend Friday, March 12 at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts if you’re in the Bay Area or attending the Game Developer Conference.

Handmade Music Brooklyn Returns; Your Inventions, Live Artists Wanted (NYC, March)

Handmade Music in its hometown of New York is being rebooted. We’re launching new workshops, new hacking, and a new quarterly performance series at a proper performance venue, Galapagos.

That means we need you.

For the quarterly party, we’re continuing to look for people to bring in your own creations. If it runs on a netbook, if you have headphones you can bring, if it’s made out of wood and you can play it, if you can plug into a portable amp and make some noise, if it’s a circuit-bent toy with built-in speakers, it’s a welcome guest.

But we’re also looking for live artists in the greater New York area who incorporate DIY instruments, hardware, software (and even wearable interactive costumes, if you’ve got them) into your act. We’d like to hear who’s out there. We can’t invite everyone to play, but that’s all the more reason to hear about what people are doing.

If you have a project or act to consider, send them here:
Official 2010 Handmade Music NYC Call for Works

The first event is Monday, March 8. Doors open 7p, live acts start 8p.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year in New York. Mark your (advent) calendars. And for non-New Yorkers, let me know – who do you want interviewed? What do you want covered? Whose music do you want us to podcast? Our gift to you will be coverage of these events. New Yorkers and metro-area residents of the Northeast US’ Megapolis, I hope to see you there.

Wednesday, December 2: CDM 5th Anniversary Party. At Love Nightclub, CDM celebrates its 5th anniversary at Love Nightclub with Philly’s own King Britt, David Last joined by Brazilian baile funk vocalist Zuzuka Poderosa, laptronica artist and CDMer Ganucheau, and IJ Catling DJing, all one one of the city’s best sound systems. Compete in Twister and you could walk home with a new laptop yourself (HP Envy 15′s Beats Limited Edition). Free + open bar, Manhattan. (Facebook)

Thursday, December 3: TurboTax. Our friends at XLR8R Magazine continue their monthly with future-bass Dub War resident Dave Q and friends, proof that NYC can do dubstep, too. Free + free beer, Williamsburg.

Saturday, December 5: RjDj + Pd Skill Share @ Eyebeam. Brush up your patching skills in the free and open source patching environment Pure Data (Pd) with some of its best developers, Hans-Christoph Steiner and the team behind reactive music environment RjDj. See also RjDj’s hackshop (hoping we can add some extra sprint time not opposite in/out fest) and a party for their new creation on 12/11. All events at Eyebeam. Free, Manhattan.

Friday, December 11: Saturn Never Sleeps. A live beats lineup wrangled by King Britt hits the new Knitting Factory; I’m doing live generative visuals for the evening. DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Saturday, December 12: in/out Festival at The Tank. A new entry this year, in/out Festival looks to be a packed day of unusual music control. By day, the fest features workshops on Jitter, Reaktor, Max for Live, and … felt. (Yes, the Grant Sisters are back with felt as a music controller.) I’ll talk about OSC and visualizing music and musical messages. By night, we make music and visuals, with a lineup ranging from Lori Napolean on appropriated telephone switchboard to monome creator tehn. Tix are cheap at $10 for the whole day. Tickets. Manhattan.

Thursday-Saturday, December 17-19: Blip Festival. The annual 8-bit music and visual chipfest returns with three nights of events. Gowanus, Brooklyn.

That’s just the fests and special events. I know The Glitch Mob play Webster Hall on December 10, among others.

So we have very little to complain about in NYC, and it’s my duty to bring the goodness to the world beyond our Megapolis.

BLIP FESTIVAL 2009 from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.