dromama from Altitude Sickness on Vimeo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks:
ro, tehn, soundcyst, peter kirn

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

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

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

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

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

Moldover at the Maker Faire from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

Yann Seznec aka The Amazing Rolo brings CDM his coverage of music tech at the Maker Faire in three episodes today.

Our friend Matt Moldover is a mad scientist of controllers. Stock Novation and M-Audio keyboards enter, and wind up coming out as live musical control monsters. You know that kid who mashes up toys in the first Toy Story movie? It’s like that, only musically productive.

Moldover has been steadily perfecting what was originally the Octamasher, a set of M-Audio keyboards connected to a central Ableton Live brain. The basic concept is a powerful one: instead of one person, one set of secret mappings even the performer (cough) sometimes forgets (yeah, that’s me), and one computer behind which he can hide, get a bunch of people jamming and remixing live – even if they’re new to computer music.

The Syncomasher is the latest iteration, and it’s looking utterly beautiful. It can be an installation toy or a serious performer instrument – or both at once. Check out the new custom body – which still retains that whimsical Moldoverism.

Check out this controller modification how-to, as well, from last year:

Download MP3

Liz McLean Knight aka Quantazelle catches up with one of our laptopist idols: edIT, the talented solo artist and Glitch Mob member. I won’t insult what he does by giving it a dumb name (”Glitch Hop?”). Suffice to say, edIT is adept at bringing insane musical chops to live laptop performance.

Liz got to geek out with edIT about the details of his live setup, which now drops the M-Audio Trigger Finger for the visual feedback and fluid multi-touch flexibility of a JazzMutant Lemur. (All due love to the Trigger Finger. But I think that would have been like, when I was a child, trading my Knight Rider Big Wheel for the full-sized KITT.)

edIT tells Liz just what this is all about, how he puts together his live set, and what the technical setup means for him musically. He also talks strategy. Sometimes, that means keeping the integrity of the tunes by loading changes into Ableton Live’s pre-composed Arrange View rather than triggering relatively mundane changes of loops manually. At the same time, that frees him up to work with more radical changes with effects and the like – stuff that may actually be interesting. So, no, just glimpsing the Arrange View will not land edIT on deadAct.com — in fact, edIT and Glitch Mob are just the kind of antidote we need.

Interview audio quality is low, but it’s well worth the listen for all the details.

While we’re at it, here’s more insight into edIT’s unique IDM and Hip Hop-inspired world, including the greatest anti-electronic music quotes of all time.

XLR8R TV in one of their nicest episodes ever got to play a street gig in San Francisco on Haight with the Glitch Mob. Now, playing outdoor gigs in San Francisco isn’t exactly that big a deal – hey, it’s not New York City, where you’ll last about 2 bars before meeting the NYPD. But it’s fantastic to see what the Mob are all about, and the performance is terrific.

Most importantly, this video includes this poetic diatribe by An Angry Man, which I will transcribe here in the hope that someone puts it on a t-shirt for us:

Nobody is playing an instrument.
You have technicians here, making noise – are you taping this?
No one is a musician.
They’re not artists because nobody can play the guitar.

For more insight into edIT’s thoughts on music in general, here’s an extensive video interview. This comes from an apparently defunct show called The Craft. The show title has certain unfortunate associations with bad girl-witch movies, and pops up odd bits of trivia that make it seem as though it was targeted at old people or kittens. (Turntables, associated with hip hop? Who knew!) But the production itself is lovely, and edIT has some great things to say. And the show producers got one thing very right: edIT is part of the future of music.

More on edIT’s music and edIT and Glitch Mob touring to a town near you (NY tomorrow, LA 4/30, Arizona, Detroit, Alberta…):

edIT

Touch interfaces abound on this site, but Usine has one edge: it’s built right out of the box to enable touch interfaces with custom, modular creation of whatever you might like. And there’s now an Ableton Live template in testing, with a lovely 5×5 controller.

The advantage of working this way, as I see it, is that you can begin to expand Live sessions beyond endlessly-looping, pre-built audio clips or DJ-style mixing.

Discussion on the Sensomusic forum:

5 x 5 Live Control Patch

More on Usine:

Modular Sound by Touch: Usine

And for two significant new multitouch tools, from last week:

Roll Your Own Multitouch Screens, Tables: Max Multitouch Framework, PyMT

Stanton is teasing a new DJ controller with touch controls, and particularly a circular scratch/control area, with live LED feedback. This allows “virtual” controllers not only for DJs, but (Stanton hopes) VJs, laptop musicians, and the like. (Stanton says “multimedia artist,” to which we suggest “visualists”.) I especially enjoy the “confidential” site, though I’m not sure marking press release with “do not publish / embargoed” has much more impact given a lot of sites these days.

It’s a little hard to tell, honestly, how this is different from a lot of controllers that use physical controls, thus giving them better tactile feedback. And the Stanton brand earns some skepticism from the discussion on the Ableton forum. But there’s some potential here; launch date is supposed to be September 19 so I’ll update with availability plus other specs then.

In the meantime, DJ/vinyl/DVS site Scratchworx deserves full credit for breaking this story posting the first video; they picked it up from the basement of one of the beta testers. (It looks reasonably cool, though, again, surely any controller could keep you from having to touch the laptop.):

Updated: Retail list is expected to be US$299; see turntable poetry which appears to be the first blog to have carried the story.

The moment I saw the DaScratch (or wait, is that da DaScratch? an DaScratch?) … I thought of the aborted Midiman (now M-Audio) Surface One. Announced in 2001 but apparently scrapped after it was determined to be overly expensive to produce, the Surface One still looks desirable. It combined touch controls with physical encoders, and the faders were arrayed in positions that made sense for, well, human beings with two hands.

Apparently I’m not the only one who is sad the Surface One never saw production.Our friend Nathanaël Lécaudé even made a fan page. I believe that prototype may be floating out there somewhere, assuming it works.

Look very closely at the Stanton controller and the Surface One, because touch sensors tend to come from a handful of vendors. (Yes, even the old iPod scroll wheel came from a third party.) A popular vendor is Quantum Research aka QProx, now owned by chip giant Atmel. (Yes, that’s the same Atmel that brings you goodies like the brain of the Arduino for you DIY geeks.) Atmel’s acquisition of Quantum speaks to the conventional wisdom that these kind of touch sensors are becoming an important commodity, so I expect the Stanton could be the tip of the iceberg.

The Surface One, in turn, owed a great deal to the ca. 1990 Buchla Thunder. Don Buchla is just one of those people in music technology who seemed to get there first – Buchla had a jump start even on waving around controllers in your arms before Nintendo caught on, and I gather a new generation of Lightning controllers is coming soon. The Thunder was actually made, too — just not in any quantities; I don’t even know where any of them are. Somehow, one of them managed to get reviewed in Electronic Musician, and at just under US$2000, costs roughly the same as today’s multi-touch Lemur, proof that every generation can have its own limited-run, pricey touch controller.

So, Stanton has another touch controller coming. But they now have to compete with $200 iPods that run any controller software you like. Stay tuned.

Related:
I should also note the DIY controller Stribe, though its touch strips are significantly less sophisticated than the options mentioned above (particularly the high-end, pressure-sensing ones originally slated for the Surface One).
Hands-on, Interview: Stribe Multi-Touch Controller

 The Prevolt has put up some photos of his Ableton Live controller, dubbed Ambassador. I love that it shares a moniker with the AMC Rambler automobile, though I suspect that wasn’t intentional (pictured at right, photo: Ty Sonneil).

Prevolt describes the gear, which features analog-y, arcade-style hardware controls and a custom case:

This is what I’m using to control Ableton now. All arcade hardware, aluminum top panel by FPE, and a nice wood case courtesy of my man Michael Yates. It uses all key commands through a custom driver to handle playback, effects, editing, warping, UI, mouse clicks, scroll messages, and more, with a lot of tweaks (some strobe, some send double messages, etc):

Finished Ambassador Pics (blog for the Aux Armes VJ/DJ collective)

I got to look over Prevolt’s shoulder while he used the Ambassador in an epic music set in Austin at our SxSW party. It’s really remarkable: those controls may look like overkill, but he’s managed to map just about everything th Live software does to hardware control. To anyone who complains Ableton hasn’t yet done their hardware, this illustrates why that might not even be a good idea — Live users seem to come up with endless control schemes, all different.

Not to mention, with this controller you could get a little Street Fighter in between sets on nice, arcade buttons.

And yes, you even get a little trackball.

After the jump, the whole AV collective in action at SxSW’s closing:

Aux Armes at SXSW 2008 from Aux Armes on Vimeo.