In a competitive show of virtuosity, artists at an event in San Francisco over the summer battled to show that live electronic and laptop performance can be physical. It’s dance music that makes the artist sweat, and not just the audience.

Hosted by the new Controllerism.com blog with San Francisco’s LoveTech and Slayer’s Club communities, the West Coast Championship Controller battle saw some fierce competition from some top names in live laptop music. The events itself was back on June 25, but this week, full video documentation has become available, so those of us who couldn’t be there can get a glimpse of what took place.

Event host Matt Moldover, himself a champion for the notion of “controllerism” in performance, shares with CDM his three favorite videos from the event, which we pass along here. That includes monome legend Daedelus (and the instrument’s creator, Brian Crabtree) with the hall of fame induction, Tim Thompson working with Kinect to amaze with the Space Palette, and Edison versus Rich DDT in the final. If that’s not enough for you, though, you can make your eyeballs fall out with the full set:

http://controllerism.com/battle/videos_2011.html
YouTube Playlist with all the vids

The winners, great artists, all:
Edison, champion
Rich DDT, 2nd place
Artful Codger (aka Tim Thompson), tied for 3rd with Sabotage (though Tim, a regular in these parts, deserves extra credit for a top-scoring final round and some serious audience love)

Other highlights: Ean Golden of djtechtools, another controllerism cheerleader, was on hand to perform and host, as was Future Mouse-Pet (Mochipet + Future Freddie + Joey Mousepad).

The event looks amazing, and there’s plenty of inspiration in the performances. I’m curious what readers think of “controllerism” as a moniker, and of doing battle-style events like this. (Both seem, to me, to advance the state of the art and help push performances, even if not all artists may work in a virtuosic way. But I’d love to hear what you think.)

And, as always, we’re keen to hear more about how you and artists you love play.

Congrats to Matt, Ean, Rich, and everybody who put together this event – and to the well-deserving winners!

controllerism.com/battle

Updated – here’s a “playshop” presentation starring Laura Escudé – “new music in the first part and the Wii + Kinect motion stuff happening in the later part.”

Nearly as long as we’ve had electronics, musical inventors have tried to imagine new electronic instruments. In the crowded world of new instrument design, the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition has emerged as a key prize for the best work, with creations battling fiercely for attention.

But in the oddball world of sound and music, how do you judge a winner? As a starting point, organizers this year asked the judges what they personally found important. With an expert panel including synth pioneer Tom Oberheim and reacTable creator Sergi Jorda, those answers are themselves revealing.

As for the competitors themselves, even with eclectic entrants, one theme stands out. Human gesture and performance presence is a strong dimension of the winners. And in perhaps the most promising first-prize winner yet, research begins to crack the code of how to make real gestural analysis work, even allowing everyday objects to become musical instruments.

To help us learn more, Competition founder and Georgia Tech Music Technology director Gil Weinberg grants CDM a window into the philosophy of some of these leading technologists, and introduces us to this year’s winners.

The Winners

First Prize: MO, Interlude Consortium. Everyday objects become novel gestural interfaces.

From the project site:

The MO tangible interfaces are a series modules to capture various gestures, from motion to touch. The central module MO contains motion sensors (3D accelerometers and 3axis gyroscopes) and transmits the data wirelessly. Moreover, two accesorries, i.e. other sensors can be added to both side of MO.

Second Prize: MindBox Media Slot Machine, Humatic Berlin. A vintage slot machine is transformed into a compositional interface.

Personnel:

Christian Graupner , Humatic
….media artist, director, composer

Roberto Zappalà
… performer, choreographer

Norbert Schnell, IRCAM — Centre Pompidou
… interactive music & sound design

Nils Peters, Humatic
…system developer and software artist.

Third Prize: Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee, Leon Gruenbaum. It began as an ergonomic computer keyboard, but years of layered work on relative pitch makes it an instrument – a bit like a macro keyboard for composition.

Honorable Mention: Hexenkessel, Jacob Sello. A conventional acoustic timpani is both projection surface and multi-touch input.

From the creator’s description on the video:

The Hexenkessel is a modded 22″ timpani using LLP multitouch technology for control of live-electronics & dmx-light. the realisation of the instrument involves a modified led-projector, webcam and IR-Lasers. the programming is done entirely using max/MSP/Jitter + CCV. The instrument-hack is non-destructive and costs less than 300$.The instrument is intended for the use in multimedial stage performances and innovative concepts of new music.

Pioneering Judges Offer Their Philosophies

A musical instrument design may seem like subjectivity atop more subjectivity, a meeting of the aesthetic of the object with personal musical expression. Judges were asked, therefore, to describe the philosophy they brought to the contest. The reason, explains organizer Weinberg: “To steer it away from general statements – this is the better instrument than this – to make it more personal, about the judge’s opinion and artistic manifesto and instrumental manifesto.”

Tom Oberheim, the man who created the first polyphonic synth product, responded:

The first thing that I look for in a new musical instrument is its musicality. This means where appropriate: does is sound good, is it playable, does it add to the music making language. Then I consider if the device has some sort of universality; in other words, can it be used by a variety of musicians from different backgrounds. Finally, I consider the ease with which the device can be learned.

Sergi Jorda, creator of the reacTable tangible interface:

The ultimate goal for any new instrument could arguably be the potential to create a new kind of music. In that sense, baroque music cannot be imagined without the advances of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century luthiers, rock could not exist without the electric guitar, and jazz or hip-hop, without the redefinitions of the saxophone and the turntable. Yet, this extremely ambitious objective is often beyond the reach of its creator (eighty years separate Adolphe Sax from Coleman Hawkins, and no less than thirty go by between Les Paul and Jimi Hendrix). Being a bit more pragmatic, as a performer, my goal when constructing the instruments I will play is clear. I need instruments that are enjoyable to play and that mutually enhance the experience when playing with other musicians. Thereby allowing me to create or co-create music that will surprise me as much as possible, that will keep revealing little hidden secrets at every new performance. Music not necessarily better, nor worse, than a piece that I could compose in a studio, but music, in essence, that could not have been created in any other possible way. As a ‘professional’ luthier, I need to take some additional considerations into account, but the overall goals do not change: my aim is to create instruments which people can enjoy playing; instruments that will be able to enrich and mature the performers’ experiences in any imaginable way; instruments that allow scope for the performer (particularly in the case of a non-expert user) to be proud of the music created. In order to survive in the extremely demanding instrumental ecosystem, any new instrument should clearly excel in something. It should either be able to do one thing that no other instrument could or, at least it should do it better (whatever this can be and whatever “better” may mean). My last advice would be that when envisaging new instruments one should not only concentrate on the instruments’ sonic capabilities, on their algorithmic power or on the amount of sensors used. One should also be especially careful about the instruments’ conceptual capabilities, and consider how new instruments impose or suggest new ways of thinking to the player, as well as new ways of establishing relationships, new ways of interacting, new ways of organizing time and textures; new ways of playing, in short.

Jason Freeman, a composer, technologist, and Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech:

For me, new musical instruments are significant for their potential to transform our experiences with music. They may enable us to create new acoustic or electronic sounds not previously possible. They may encourage us to think about musical content, structure, and hierarchy in unusual ways. They may suggest new methods of musical collaboration, performance, or education. And they may make musical creativity more accessible to everyone. I am interested in instrument makers who have thought deeply about their work from technical, musical, and design perspectives to create musical instruments that transcend novelty to suggest new paradigms for musical creativity.

A Chat with the Organizer

Now in its third year, the Guthman competition has become a coveted award. As a result, says organizer Weinberg, who is director of the hosting Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, quality and quantity were up in entrants. And, he says, he feels that entrants have transcended some of the typical designs in the field.

“New interfaces for many [means], let’s think about an object that we didn’t use before, and some kind of gesture, stick on some sensors, make some music … But I think the winners of our competition were outside of this realm, really innovative, completely new approaches for playing music,” he says.

On the prize-winning MO tangible interface:

In a section of the performance, they took a ball – a soccer ball – and did some [musical] gestures with it, threw it … moved it … on the hands, on the floor. Each one of these gestures was recorded with the gesture recognition. And then they actually threw the ball to the audience. The audience members started to throw the ball back and forth. If you threw it in a particular way, it made a particular sound — and everything’s wireless, completely — if you threw it back and forth in a different way, it made a different sound. It was really fun; people threw the ball at each other, threw the ball back at the stage. And all made music that was pretty cool to listen to.

Basically, the instrument becomes an intelligent entity. It can sense similar but different gestures and create something smart and relevant musically.

On the slot machine:

The gesture is mostly visual — the intelligence here is of the human performer. He makes his own gestures, accompanied by sounds. And it allows you to manipulate and change [the sound] — and get some surprises, because it is a slot machine, after all.

You can play, explore it. He was able to very expressively pet and touch and click and manipulate the slot machine to create some very nice — not only musical outcomes, but visual outcomes. In some cases, this guy is lying in the sea and making gestures in the sea. Sometimes he’s hanging stuff on the walls, and making sounds with his mouth. Sometimes it’s basic stuff that you can manipulate in real time, with a pretty unique interface — it’s not a monome, it’s a slot machine. It surprises you.

On the Samchillian:

Some instruments – controllers – have this short or sometimes long learning curve, but once you get to a certain point, you know it, and that’s what it can do. And you cannot get better at it. I think the Samchillian is really an instrument with a learning curve that’s very long, and just like other acoustic instruments, violin, piano, there’s a wide range of [technique]. And this guy was really a virtuoso with this instrument. He was able to play chords, all kinds of arpeggiators.

What I liked about it is it’s an instrument more than a controller. There’s always more to learn about how to become better with it. And I think that’s valuable.

Notably, Weinberg has no illusions about the challenge of making new instruments. It’s no accident that the winners were typically the result of years of development and evolution. “I don’t think any of the great instruments were invented in months,” says Weinberg. “It’s a lot of iteration, a lot of building… only a few are good enough to stick.”

And perhaps the great electronic instrument, while getting nearer, hasn’t yet been created. Weinberg says one example of a new instrument design that doesn’t work particularly well is the legendary Theremin – it’s beautiful in the hands of only a couple of artists, but generally a design that stumps musicians and is hard to play.

Looking at the winners this year, though, there are ideas on which new work can be built, not just impressive one-off instruments but real research into handling pitch and gesture. That, at least, should present a bright future. But with the competition heating up, aspiring engineers may want to get started on those designs now.

Thoughts? Questions about the work? Let us know.

More on the MO tangible interfaces from the IRCAM-based Interlude:
MO Interfaces

That work isn’t yet available for download, but an “augmented score viewer” is.

Record an album in the month of February, and have it in the mail by March 1: that’s the RPM Challenge, and so far, some 6,000 acts have already delivered. Nathan Groth writes us with details (and apologies for late posting here, since that means you have… less time).

Long time reader of CDM. I’m also a coordinator of this little thing called the RPM Challenge, which is now into year #6. I think you may find it interesting and we would love to get some coverage in the hopes it may entice more people to get involved. I also think it’s something the CDM community would find appealing.

While it’s not geared specifically towards electronic or experimental musicians or usage of specific tools, it does represent a little local event that has gone global, while still running entirely (100%) by volunteers and donated server space. The website is also powered by open source code. With no corporate sponsorship, it’s managed to curate one of the largest free music collections on the internet, plus it’s a really neat idea!

It began as a idea based on National Novel Writing Month, and it was a strictly local affair in Portsmouth, NH at first. Over the years it’s gone global, attracting people from as far off as Tokyo and McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Despite the reach, though, the great thing is that it’s managed to be strongly local as well, and in that really lies it’s power- it’s managed to walk a fine line between an amorphous- internet based event and a strongly local one at the same time.
Enough babbling from me, I’m just an excited volunteer.

rpmchallenge.com

The competition is global, and there’s a global listening party on March 26 – I hope we’ll check in there. Do let us know if you get your music posted; Synthtopia posts the same call so perhaps we’ll have a number of music tech blog-reading producers out there.

I’m not sure February will be right for everyone, but you’ll know if it’s right for you. As for the question of whether a month is enough time to produce an album, in some cases, it’s actually harder to take longer. When I talked to Gold Panda back in October, he described the three weeks he had to make “Lucky Shiner” as the very element that made the production possible and satisfying:

I looked after their dog over Christmas and had my whole studio set up there. I have a really short attention span, so most tracks are done in a day, and then I’m bored with them. And if they turned out good, then they’re good, and if I think that they’re not really finished or whatever, then they get rendered to the hard drive and put into iTunes and sit in there forever.
I was never really a big fan of dogs before, so I kind of had this bonding with this dog called Daisy. She’d wake up really early and wake me up, and I’d take her for a walk, come back, start making tracks. And then after an hour or so, she’d want to go for a walk again or play. Every time I was getting into it, she’d kind of stop me and we’d go for a walk. It stopped me from overworking things, and I think that’s what made it — [the album's] more simple and more direct. It was good to have a distraction while I was doing it.

It’s a familiar scenario – both the three weeks, and the smaller periods of time are a kind of “timeboxing.” (See my story on the Pomodoro Method.) I hope to talk more about productivity this week and next, so feel free to bring up ideas – and let us know if you’re taking up the RPM gauntlet.

What if you could have any musical technology you wanted – if you had only to imagine something, and it appeared? That was the somewhat insane notion behind the Dreams Competition CDM organized with Rui Penha of Casa Da Musica’s Digitópia research and education program in Porto, Portugal. Earlier this week, Rui and I sat down on the banks of Porto’s famed Douro River with Paulo Maria Rodrigues to pour through stacks of imaginary instruments. Some proposals read like wish lists composed to Santa Claus. Others included exquisite renderings, mock-ups, and even video that made them into serious, near-finished product designs. In the end, we attempted to choose the ideas that seemed the most surprising and original, including a winner that – with some limitation of its scope – would be feasible to actually build.

Far from just being idle fantasy, the winner will be realized by a team of developers as an open-source, free project. And I suspect some of the other entries may yield real tools, too. The line-up offers plenty of indications of what matters to people, and what’s possible. Here are some of our favorite entries out of an impressively high-quality bunch, plus, of course, our winners and the grand-prize selection that will inspire a real project.

Winner: Dream Synthesizer, Andreas Paleologos

The “Dream Synthesizer” lives up to its name: it embodies a laundry list of ideas about how to make a more interesting synth. Building the whole instrument would be wildly impractical for this project. But one central concept caught our eye as both practical and innovative. The idea is, touch interaction with an array of LEDs creates envelopes that provide a single metaphor for all sound design. Those envelopes aren’t just one paradigm among others: every sound parameter is accessed with gestures.

To realize this idea, we’re directing the Digitopia team we’re assembling for this project to focus on the LED array itself, and working with software to produce sounds. The very limitations of the LED display itself have some appeal, even in this age of multi-touch displays. Furthermore, the constructed physical object should produce a reusable part that other people interested in building their own hardware can reuse. Mapping different software synthesis methods, all built in free software, to touch gestures means the sound side should be reusable, too.

Making a project “free and open source” isn’t just about a license; it’s about choosing something that could be a building block for a wide range of ideas, and making that building block as usable and friendly – from engineering to documentation – as possible. Here’s how Andreas describes his concept, the spark that most inspired us:

My Dream Synthesizer has 3 sound modules that together generate the sound.
Digital Sound Module.
Physical Sound Module.
Vocal Sound Module.
They’re high-quality software modules with a lot of identity. The sound is constantly routed through all three
sound modules, whether generating sound or silent.
It has a big Low Resolution LED screen, covered with a transparent high resolution multi touch film for on
screen interaction with support for up to 3 fingers.
Draw the waveform on the screen and get instant control of the sound.
Use one finger to manipulate the Digital Sound Module.
Use two fingers to manipulate the Physical Sound Module.
Use three fingers to manipulate the Vocal Sound Module.
The envelope is basically ADSR, but with looping sustain. Draw your envelope curve.
You can record and automate all waveform and envelope changes making really complex sounding sounds
with just a finger stroke, recording your particular timing.
Select whether all automation should be triggered once or whether it should loop.

There are more details in the proposal we’ll share soon. And since the project is open, it’s one I hope that we’ll share with the CDM community on an ongoing basis, including getting reactions and ideas as the project is implemented.

By the way, check out Swedish-born, Norwegian-resident Andreas’ artist site, Cuckoo — cool stuff:
http://cuckoo.no/

First Runner-Up: Odu, Nicole Weber

Nicole Weber’s (Germany) Odu was probably the most stunning design work in the lot, including a full physical mock-up and UI design concepts. It’s an unusual combination of physical interface and Web-based sonic engine. On the Web side, users find sample content through a browser interface. On the physical side, a handheld interface turns those samples into tangible objects for manipulation and performance.

Nicole describes her “modular” project thusly:

programmer

• With the programmer the user is able to program the controller with samples
• Ships with a sample archive, e.g. created in collaboration with freesound.org or similar
• The user is able to archive and search own samples
• Optional community feature like competitions are provided via the software interface

base

• The base has all the basic features like USB connection, volume and connection ports for effects or other modules
• Integration of sensors in the controller body, e.g. tilt sensor or accelerometer

See her full proposal:
http://topotropic.de/odu

Honorable Mention: Fabric Ghost Controllers, Tycho

Tycho (Germany) sent what was perhaps the most evocative idea. It’s one I hope actually will be realized, but I think one that involves very specific skills. (Our friends the Grant Sisters of felted signal processing have been working on this very problem.) Tycho writes:

I have a dream.
I imagine when playing electronic music live I have sort of a display beside keyboard and computer where seven colored silk scarves are hanging. The cloths are maybe half a meter long, they are square and fixed with their center at a pole or something, their four corners loosely hanging down. It looks remotely like seven ghosts in a row. You get the picture?

These are the scarf ghosts controllers! Blowing against the scarves or touching them of fanning at them, maybe even squeezing them for extreme results shows that all seven of them control parameters of the actual sound(s) playing.

I do sleep concerts with very very low volume electronic music in Berlin, Germany. I believe such a “silk scarf ghost controller” would be perfect to accompany my music. During my nocturnal seven hour concert (plus some wake up music) I refer to (and sort of musically render) the seven chakras––so I would choose the number seven and the six rainbow colors plus white for the “ghost controller”.

But can a cloth be a controller? I learned of a Doepfer device that transforms a signal of 0 to 5 volts into the MIDI range. Unfortunately I have no idea how to make a scarf turn out volts when blown at or touched or squeezed. Could you work in a metal wire or something? Plug in little invisble batteries?

I had the idea just a few days ago when I heard of your competition. Maybe you would like such a beautiful and subtle “ghost controller” as well. I had even the vision of using it as sort of wind chimes: hang it in a breeze with my equipment rigged up in nature and let it produce generative sounds.

Its main purpose is being a live controller though that maybe look like decoration at first but turns out to affect the sounds and music. (As such it’s naturally highly lightweight and portable: Just fold the scarves.) They maybe even interact when one scarf touches another.

And imagine taking the pole into your hand and swinging it gently all seven the scarves flapping in the air! What a finale!

More Terrific Ideas

There are really too many interesting proposals to list here, but just to give you a taste:

The Wheel Array and the Ball Array, Stefan Blixt (Sweden): Blixt proposed a kinetic interface involving physical wheels. The idea is novel and a tangible contrast for the increasingly-minimal digital interfaces in our world.

Vitus, Michael Oneppo (USA): Vitus is a “controller” suite of connected, wireless objects.

each performer has a foot panel that controls expression, recording, looping, and effects for his or her performance. through the panel, the performer can enable or disable effects, modulate parameters of the effects, and mix up to four loopable performance clips on the fly.
a number of different wireless connections are provided that allow any microphone, guitar, keyboard controller, or other instrument to be wirelessly connected to the system. in addition, these interfaces provide a one button control for activating the instrument for recording and looping with the foot panel.
finally, a main controller panel is available for the controllerist/mixer of the group. this unit provides a master view of all performers’ clips and settings, and also allows the performer to manipulate these clips to make unique mixes. the interface is an array of hybrid button knobs, which present the performer with endless possibilities and configurations. the panel instantly slices any clip into eighth notes segments that can be triggered in monome-style phrasing across the button/knob grid.
all devices are truly wireless, eliminating any messy cords and freeing the performers. being battery powered, each unit recharges inductively through a storage case that can plug into any outlet.

Boulier, Yann Girard (France): Boulier has an ingenious take on how to maximize musical functionality in an array of encoders: use color to denote pitch. Someone may have thought of this before, but the execution is lovely.

LUM from Alfredo Duarte on Vimeo.

LUM, Alfredo A. Duarte Jorquera (Chile) is already, in this mock-up demonstration video, a compelling demonstration of the use of the Sony PS3 Move controller for music. Max Mathews, maker of the Radio Baton, would be proud. I hope Alfredo continues with this project, because I think he’s got a clear vision of how it can work. Updated: that’s an actual demo, so the work has already begun! Go forth!

And the rest…

Jacob Adler (USA) easily wins the honorary Luigi Russolo Award for craziest idea. I think you can agree from the first line:

I want to turn a mountain into a giant organ.
In the millennia-old tradition of organ building, I propose to develop a new kind of instrument – one constructed from powerful train horns and heard in an open desert space. The performer of such an instrument will actuate the valves of multiple air compressors remotely through a digital signal processing program and midi keyboard controller (when an E is pressed, the corresponding horn will sound). The harmonic richness of train horns are beautiful and I believe they can be used to create a new kind of music in
vast spaces. The instrument will be mobile and may be installed in any natural, open space for a series of concerts. One ideal location for this instrument is the south face of Papago mountain in Phoenix, AZ – the
mountain itself is visually beautiful and the park is acoustically ideal.
With a rank of 48 horns (corresponding to four musical octaves), free community concerts of new and old music will be performed. Every stage of the project should be documented through digital video, audio, and photos.
Throughout the organ-building process there will be many issues that will need to be resolved such as power/air-pressure requirements, acoustics in relation to topography, tuning, scaling, voicing, shape of the pipe/horn body, aesthetics of the organ case (if any), and design of the overall instrument. I have a background in working with pipe organs (performing and maintaining), and I would love to work in close collaboration with engineers and musicians. Visually, I would like to base the design of the instrument
after a famous antique organ case in Alkmaar (Netherlands) – the Schnitger Organ in St.
Laurenskerk<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Alkmaar_organ.jpg>.
However, the design and materials used will harmonize organically with the desert landscape.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Steppophonic Looperformer, Per Boysen (Sweden) is a very practical-looking approach to step sequencing, and is labeled “please steal this!” It’s well within the range of things readers here could accomplish, so perhaps take the creator’s invitation — write back with the results!

Other ideas, like an OSC sequencer or modular musical/MIDI hardware seem like things that are destined to happen, even if this isn’t quite the forum for those problems.

A big thanks to everyone for compelling, creative contributions. If you have any more ideas or questions, if you missed this round and want to continue the conversation, the grand project of dreaming up the future of music tech is an unending one.

Want a flying car? Dream of the flying car. Build the flying car.

A competition I’m hosting with Digitópia, the musical-technological community of Porto, Portugal, extends to readers worldwide a challenge to dream up the digital musical instrument/interface/creation you want. Got something practical you wish could be built? Got something impractical and bizarre? Either way, articulate it in the best way you can — images, words, videos, mock-ups, stop motion animation, beat poetry, whatever you think is best — and send it in. We’ll share the most interesting entries, and pick one that the folks at Digitópia will actually build. (So, if it is unfeasible, we’ll have to find one that at least can be made feasible.)

I hope it’s just the beginning of this kind of big-picture thinking in digital music.

Here’s organizer Rui Penha on the concept behind the call for entries:

Digitópia = Digital Utopia. We strongly believe in the power of communities, of open source endeavors, of sharing and spreading inspiring ideas, either simple or utterly crazy ones. Our goal is to empower the individual with means to achieve a more fulfilling, rewarding and personal musical expression, regardless of his or her experience and motivation. New interfaces and instruments can overcome the steep technique obstacles of some old ones and create new musical languages and thus we want to make them available to everyone. We want to help you build your idea and, together, we’ll share it with the whole world!

We want your ideas, but you have to act fast. The deadline is this Saturday, midnight GMT, April 3.

Submit ideas via email to competitions@digitopia-cdm.net, using whatever medium of illustration you wish. Works will be judged on innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential. If you win, you get your instrument, built for you.

http://digitopia-cdm.net/competitions/

Full rules after the break / bottom of this post.

By the way, if you’re near Porto, Portugal, there’s a Handmade Music event this Saturday 3/27! Go, take videos, photos, enjoy! Details:

In Portugal, Now

Por favor divulgue. Obrigado! / Please spread. Thank you! (english version below)

A quarta edição da Handmade Music Porto terá lugar já no próximo sábado, dia 27 de Março, na Digitópia: uma festa que junta um mostra&conta a uma jam session com instrumentos únicos. De hardware a software feito em casa até circuit bending, kits personalizados ou instrumentos acústicos originais, todos estão convidados a aparecer na Casa da Música pelas 21h30 para montagem de instrumentos. Estarão disponíveis algumas mesas e tomadas, contudo os canais de amplificação serão muito limitados, pelo que será melhor vir prevenido. Pelas 22h abrimos o evento ao público geral – a entrada é livre e recomenda-se -, ocupando a Digitópia e a zona do bar do Foyer Sul. Contamos convosco!

Teremos dois convidados muito especiais: Rolf Gehlhaar e Luís Girão, que trarão alguns dos instrumentos criados para o projecto “instruments 4 everyone”, no âmbito do Festival Ao Alcance de Todos, edições de 2009 e 2010, que agora começa.

Rolf Gehlhaar – http://www.gehlhaar.org/

Luís Girão – http://www.artshare.com.pt/

——

The fourth Handmade Music Porto, a party + show&tell + jam session with unique instruments, will take place at Digitópia next saturday, March 27th. From handmade hardware or software all the way to circuit bending, customized kits or original acoustic instruments, everyone is welcome at Casa da Música around 9:30pm for assembling the instruments. We’ll provide some tables and power sockets, but only a few channels for amplification, so it is advisable not to rely on them. At 10pm we’ll open the doors – admission is free and we’ll have a bar! See you there!

We’ll have two very special guests: Rolf Gehlhaar and Luís Girão, who will bring some of the instruments made for the “instruments 4 everyone” project, part of the Ao Alcance de Todos festival in 2009 and 2010, starting this week.

Rolf Gehlhaar – http://www.gehlhaar.org/

Luís Girão – http://www.artshare.com.pt/

——

You may view the latest post at
http://digitopia-cdm.net/2010/03/handmade-music-digitopia-2703/

Entering the Competition (worldwide)

Rules (PDF download):

RULES · Digitópia Dreams Competition · Digitópia 2010
1 ·
WORKS
1.1 · Entrants shall submit an idea for their dream instrument, interface or software.
1.2 · Only original and yet to be materialized ideas will be admissible.
1.2 · The winning entries shall be developed under a Creative Commons license – http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses .
2 · SUBMISSION
2.1 · Works shall be submitted by email to the address competitions@digitopia-cdm.net , with the contact information of the
applicant – full name, nationality, date of birth, email address – on the email body.
2.2 · Each applicant is free to choose the best way (text, schemes, videos, etc.) to present his or her idea.
2.2 · The closing date for entries is 03/04/2010, at 23:59 GMT.
2.3 · All successful submissions will receive an auto-reply by email.
2.4 · Each applicants may submit up to three ideas.
3 ·
JURY
3.1 · The jury will be comprised of Peter Kirn (president), Paulo Maria Rodrigues and Rui Penha.
3.2 · Judging will be based on each submission’s innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential.
3.3 · The jury will announce its decision on 02/06/2010, through Digitópia’s website – http://digitopia-cdm.net .
3.4 · The jury may decide that none of the works submitted merit selection.
3.5 · The jury’s decision shall be final.
4 ·
PRIZE
4.1 · The winning applicant will be invited to collaborate with Casa da Música and Digitópia’s team on the development of his or her
project.
4.2 · At least two copies of the project will be built, one for the applicant and other for Casa da Música.
4.3 · The complete process will be documented and shared under a Creative Commons license – http://creativecommons.org/
about/licenses attributed to the applicant.

Good luck! I look forward to the results.

What if a competition didn’t just encourage entrants to try to make a better product? What if it encouraged friendly rivalry between makers to produce entries that were also shared across the community?

That’s the idea behind Digitópia’s upcoming series of competitions, now entering its third year. Digitópia itself is based in Porto, Portugal, at the Casa da Musica. But even if Portugal isn’t exactly in your neighborhood, entrants and onlookers alike can benefit from shared, open sourced contributions.

In fact, even the prizes itself are open projects. The simple, anthropomorphic-looking controller above is a free project. It’s dead-simple, a combination of an IKEA salad bowl, a potentiometer, and ultrasonic distance sensors. But as a result, it’s also inexpensive, simple to use (particularly with the addition of Digitópia’s custom-developed software), and a flexible starting point for further work. (Actually, handling multiple ultrasonics is a bit tricky, too, relative to things like infrared, so that’s a particularly nice addition.)

First up: Max and Pd patchers, your pride is on the line.

Think your Max/MSP or Pure Data multimedia patch is the most original around? Prove it. An international competition will find the best patches, and all of them (whether made in Max or Pd) will be released under a free software license. A panel will judge the results, led by Pedro Rebelo, composer, digital artist and Director of Education at the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast. New deadline: February 14. (That’s right, polish off your best patch, send it into battle, and then take your pumped-up sense of masculinity / femininity out for a fantastic Valentine’s Day dinner.)

There are other competitions, too. The third-annual Musical Miniatures Competition is looking for musical works or “gestures” of 15 seconds or less. (If you’ve ignored other calls for works, this one should leave you no excuse.) The sounds will be licensed under a Creative Commons license for freesound.org, adding to that communal repository of sounds. Bram de Jong, legendary developer and freesound.org guru, will judge the results. Deadline: May 28.

Produce the best sound or the best patch, and you get the controller above and accompanying software. But the for third competition, you get the futuristic controller of your dreams. You submit the idea, and Digitópia builds the results. The entrants are judged on “innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential.” (Yes, it needs to be feasible in order for them to build it — no electronic music equivalents of The Homer.)

Oh, yes, and the Dreams Competition has me as the judge. Deadline: April 3. Keep a dream journal.

The beauty of all of this is that these are contests that give back. We’ll have sounds, patches, inventions, and hardware documentation for the prize and the entrants; stay tuned as that documentation becomes available.

Speaking of getting something out of this for yourself… don’t have any dream ideas? No good at Max and Pd patching? For an absurdly-cheap €15 for three whole days of seminars, Digitópia will teach you patching skills in these two tools. Jeez, for that price, you could afford a flight to beautiful Portugal and still come out ahead. No details on the new seminars for spring up yet, but I’ll put up a notice when they are. (I’m also teaching a seminar at Digitópia the first week of June.)

Digitópia Competitions 2010

Digitópia – Platform for the Development of Digital Music Communities

It’s nearly Election Day again here in New York. But it’s also Musical Election Day worldwide for the Efficient Music Competition with CDM, portable Linux-powered studio Indamixx, and modern tracker Renoise. In an age when technology tends to mean more, these artists are making music with less, carefully optimizing Renoise-powered tracks to operate well on lesser CPUs. Now’s your chance to hear the fruits of their labors, and register your vote. (And because these are Creative Commons-licensed, they’re free to share and share alike, too.)

Here’s what to do:

1. Head to the Renoise-hosted official competition site.

2. Sign in to your Renoise forum account, or register for a free account if you have not already. (This is just a forum account; the Renoise folks won’t be spamming you. Having the account gives you the ability to discuss the songs and pick up some Renoise tips, too.)

3. Give the tracks a listen. You can download them all at once in XRNS format and play them in Renoise – a free demo will do the trick. Alternatively, click the “plus” icon to expand the song for more details; most include an MP3 preview you can listen to on-demand (a good way to browse the tracks, especially on a machine that doesn’t have Renoise installed).

4. Drag and drop to vote. Drag the song from the list down to the voting box at the bottom, then reorder them in order of which you like best. You can vote for multiple songs, but whichever is listed higher in your list will be “weighted” better, so pick your favorites, then choose your favorite favorites.

5. Save your votes! You can adjust your list, add additional entries, and change your mind – just be sure to save each time.

6. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 is the deadline for voting. Whatever you have listed as your votes then is final.

The forum will be the official venue to discuss these tracks. Of course, I’m also curious to hear on comments – what do you think of these entries overall? Those of you who worked on tracks, what was the experience like having to optimize for limited system resources?

Awesome as Renoise is, I also wanted a place for lovers of all trackers to come together, so I’ve created a new group on Noisepages:

I <3 Trackers [noisepages.com]

Sign up, join in, and we can talk about tracker technique and tools in general. (For instance, I’d love to get a workflow going working on a tiny tracker on the go, then bringing that work into a netbook or laptop running Renoise.)

If you’re ready to show your skills creating digital music, we want your work.

UPDATED! New contest entry page, new deadline (10/25):
http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/
Plus tips, tracks, and more to give you additional inspiration:
More with Less:”Efficient” Renoise Music Tracks and Tips

Renoise, the "bottom-up" music production tool that makes brings modern comforts to the tracker interface, and Indamixx, the turnkey Linux-powered mobile music rig, are working with CDM on a contest to produce a new song. You’ll need Renoise to make your track, but the software now runs natively on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and you can even finish your production on the free demo version if you’d like to give the software a taste before committing to it. (Really – you can even save your file. The demo won’t let you save a wav file, but we’ll judge the xrns, and the only other restrictions are some nags – Renoise is a rare return to the old “shareware” model of development.)

Here on CDM, we’ll also be featuring some tutorials on music production using Renoise, using Linux, and using free and open source software, as well as the commercial offerings. So, this is a chance not only to compete, but to learn some new tools. Rather than just feed off your work, I’m really eager to make this competition a chance for us to work together and share knowledge, to give to you. So I’m pleased to have some of the experts in the Linux audio community and Renoise community helping us do just that.

The competition will also be fully Creative Commons-licensed, to make sure you’re free to use our tips and tutorials, and that the track you make is free for others to remix – without abusing your work. (This is not officially CC-affiliated; we’re just making use of their license.)

Aside from the prizes, I’ll be thrilled to have the chance to promote your best work here on CDM, and the winner will become a demo song available via Renoise and on the Indamixx Linux-powered USB flash drive and pre-configured netbooks. (The USB stick means that if you already have a netbook, you can get a stable, pre-configured Linux rig on your existing machine.)

Above: The grand prize, the Indamixx Netbook. I’ve just gotten one in the mail from Indamixx to try, and I’m already hooked on the thing. Based on the MSI Wind, the rig is pre-configured with Linux software, set up in advance for you, with energy XT, Renoise, and ArdourXchange for converting sessions from software like Pro Tools – plus lots of free and open source software, of course. Win the contest, and you get one of your own – and your track will ship as the Renoise demo on this laptop and on the Renoise site.

How to enter:

Here’s how the competition will work:

1. You’ll make your track in Renoise, saving as an .xrns file. (Don’t want to start from scratch? Renoise imports MIDI files and many tracker formats, so you could, for instance, bang out some beats on your PSP using LittleGPTracker, then finish up in Renoise.) You can use any samples you like, but make sure they’re your own recordings or samples you’ve cleared for this purpose, and that you properly attribute them.

2. Make sure your track will play on a netbook – so go easy. For reference, here’s a file used for benchmarking systems. Figure that your track should have a similar task on your CPU.

CPUBenchmark21.xrns (nothing special musically – for testing only!)

3. Post your music somewhere (audio + xrns) – put it on your blog, use drop.io, sign up for CDM’s own in-development blog platform noisepages.com, or whatever you like. If you put the sound somewhere like SoundCloud, of course, you get an instantly-embeddable player.

4. Be sure to apply a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. I’ll be doing the same with CDM’s tutorials and such. This leaves others free to share your work and to remix it, while ensuring they can only do so if they attribute you properly and if their work is just as free to share. (It does not preclude you from selling it later on, either.) See the details of the license, then sign up.

About the license

License your work 

Choose “yes” for commercial uses – because any commercial use must still share alike, which discourages commercial abuse. Select “yes, as long as others share alike” for modifications. Choose “unported” for jurisdiction. And make use of the other fields to attach metadata to your work.You should get a CC-BY-SA license as a result, which allows maximum flexibility for your work while protecting you from people exploiting your work without also sharing the results.

5. Tell us about it! Point CDM, Indamixx, Renoise, and the contest judges to your track by signing up here:

Contest entry form [Google Docs]

6. Judging will evaluate whether tracks are relatively CPU efficient xrns files, but – most importantly – are original, terrific music. There will be categories judged by producer/remix artist/DJ Ron Stewart of Indamixx and Peter Kirn of CDM, and a user’s choice judged by you via public voting.

Prizes:

An Indamixx Netbook MK II SE, to the Indamixx choice

A registered version of Renoise, to the CDM choice

4 Indamixx USB stick versions, to the user choices

DEADLINE:

October 15

We’ll have updates through the competition.

Stay tuned for more tips and tutorials on Renoise and Linux audio alike, plus a look at the Indamixx Linux-powered netbook rig (I’ve just gotten one for testing – it’s deliciously compact).

Questions? Thoughts? Shout out in comments below.

Remix contests are all the rage lately, but quality is another thing altogether. I’m happy CDM is involved in a new contest with Dancetracks, however, because the ingredients of a contest that’s worth your time all all there.

First off, Seattle-based [Dave] Pezzner on freefrange is an artist worth noting. He’s a talented producer, has a great sense of sound, as has moved from commercial and television sound and music into being a breakout dance artist – something to which many CDM readers may aspire. He’s assembled just the kind of smart track we like:

Valldemossa was inspired initially by a tape recording I found of a boys choir recorded circa 1982, which was piped through an analog tape delay. The ending result of this tape recording was outstanding and left me with a gold mine of sounds to pick from. I built this song using a handful of my favorite tools, FL Studio, Ableton Live, Native Instruments Battery, Reaktor, D16 Phocyon, some sounds from the Mellotron M400 tape banks, Klanglabs Stompbud collection and Mixed in Key (as well as some keen direction from master and chief, Jimpster). Feel free to let loose and let your inner artist speak loudly. We’re excited to hear what you do!

Pezzner

Valldemossa

Freerange Records

Download M3U »

Dancetracks Pezzner Valldemossa Remix Contest

Many contests claim they get you exposure, of course; it’s another thing to deliver. The winner of the Dirtybird Records Dancetracks contest last year, as covered on CDM, managed to net a deal for an EP with that Claude VonStroke-run label.

Of course, dangling promises of exposure and record deals is one thing – let’s talk loot. In this contest, the winning release (ultimately determined by the label) is a sure thing, along with other goodies:

Winning remix released digitally on Freerange, featured on Dancetracks
Dubspot NYC Professional Mixing & Mastering session ($1095) with private mixdown session*
Ableton Live 8
M-Audio CX5 Studiophile monitors
M-Audio Pro Tools M-Powerd 8
M-Audio Torque Conectiv
Glyph Technologies PortaGig 800 professional harddrive
Cluster Sound 20 Gigabytes of sounds
MONO Producer bag
$100 download credit on Dancetracks
Freerange t-shirt
Dancetracks t-shirt

Nor is Dancetracks just using this as an easy way to cash in — pre-warped stems for Ableton Live (or plain audio for everything else) are a free download.

The contest ends August 31.

Pezzner Valldemossa Remix

Help Us Choose CDM’s Pick

If you do happen to enter, let us know here on CDM, as I’ll also offer a CDM Editor’s Choice Award to my favorite track. I know this musical genre is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’ll be listening for something really unique and further out, and will make sure your work gets properly exposed. I sadly can’t offer lavish prizes, but I will have a dancetracks shirt and $50 certificate for you – plus coverage we like to think is priceless.

If you’ve entered something already, just send us a link. If not, let us know when you have.

When Remix Contests Go Bad

So, I’m just here pimping dancetracks, right? No, I went through those points carefully only to emphasize that most remix contests get this formula horribly, horribly wrong. And that’s a shame – this shouldn’t be rocket science. Cool track and artist + free download of stems + rich prize package + actual exposure = working remix contest. This should be a doable thing.

So, how is it that the formula often becomes variations of random track you want to shill + paid stem download as a quick cash earner + cheap prizes + exposure that’s anyone’s guess? As our friend Dave Dri – himself both a successful recorded (and performing) artist and musical journalist — puts it:

What is disappointing is the increasing frequency of major labels and their “independent” imprints in creating prize-less or obscene remix competitions, under the premise of “helping up-and-comers”. The fact is that a remixer can simply message or email another producer or label and offer their services with a great deal of success.

So where is the appeal of remix competitions that offer little in the way of an actual prize? Or having to purchase the remix parts from Beatport? Just where does “up-and-coming” translate to “exploitable”?

Check out the whole article for a no-BS take on remixing in general – remixing as business, and not just supposed remix culture.

Life at The Terminal with Dave Dri [Time Off, Australia]

I’m sure some will disagree with his take, so feel free to debate the merits of the argument in comments. But it is worth asking – maybe even about dancetracks’ contest, too; I’m happy to hear constructive criticism.

A thing for the sake of the thing tends to be useless. Remix contests can be a total waste of time – or they can be a powerful tool. But then, you can’t blame labels alone. It’s up to artists, too, to make the right call.

Guitar Rig Hero is a huge contest with some big prizes. Native Instruments notes that users were already, without prompting, posting Guitar Rig videos to YouTube. So, they’ve put together a jury to properly judge the best possible contributions, with jurors including the likes of the Deftones, Dweezil Zappa (yes, the offspring of Frank Zappa), and (one of my personal favorites) Mogwai. Prizes: a quad-core Fujitsu-Siemens laptop, NI software, and (non-software) guitars from Gibson.

NI says participants are “asked to capture a video of their most original and spectacular performance using GUITAR RIG 3, without any sonic or artistic limitations applying.” What’s interesting is that not all the entries are using guitars — there’s already an interesting experimental entry with violin and Guitar Rig, and I suspect if we unleash some of the CDM community on this contest, there will be more.

You don’t have to own Guitar Rig 3 to participate; the demo version will work (and then you can try to, you know, win the full version). The contest ends September 30.

I’ve run synths, keyboards, and even sitar through Guitar Rig, so I’m interested to hear what other not-guitars you can come up with.

Guitar Rig Hero Contest Page @ NI

Guitar Rig Contest YouTube Channel (with various videos up already)

Matthew Dear, performing as Audion, is coming to Minitek in New York this weekend, and we know from reader feedback that you’d like us to talk to him. (Yes, some of the endless minimal entries in Minitek, true to the festival’s name, start to blur together, but Matthew to me is someone really musically special.)

As it happens, among Beatport’s regular contests, there’s an Audion remix contest for “Billy Says Go.” Downloads started this week, and you can submit through the end of the month. This is public voting as opposed to juried voting, but since I know there are some Audion fans out there, let us know if you do something nice. Prizes: Traktor Scratch, $100 Beatport gift card, and a grab bag of Beatport swag. Those of you trash talking Richie Hawtin, maybe this is your chance to show us your skills.

Audion Remix Competition @ Beatportal

Sonoma’s RiffWorks software and accompanying community is apparently popular among readers here, so it seems worth passing this along. The RiffWorks site is awarding RiffWorld.com community members IK Multimedia software and other downloads and goodies. That in itself isn’t that interesting, but what is a bit different about this particular competition is that you can collaborate on entries; if you decide not to go solo, you can invite up to three other people to work with you. I still prefer collaborating in person rather than online, but I’ll be interested to hear how collaboration is working out for people. (Naturally, the reason they’re emphasizing this is to promote the collaboration features of the site — but you’re the best judge of how that works.)

RiffRumble 12

Seriously, do let us know if you choose to participate in these contests, or if there are other online communities you’re working on; we’d love to know. I imagine running this means a dozen PR folks will be breathing down my neck tomorrow with other contests, but these do seem up the CDM alley and … well, for the rest, that’s what the “mute conversation” feature in Gmail is for. Enjoy!