Record giant Universal Music Group is cutting prices on the CD, as analysts clamor for still-lower prices. But as for actual records – the kind made of vinyl – odder and odder innovations flourish. If the CD is dying, the vinyl record is an undead, sexually-alluring vampire.

Two recent releases not only treat the record as “delivery mechanism,” but also tools for playing the record.

The late hip hop great J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) gets a well-deserved tribute from his label Stones Throw, complete with some fantastic, unreleased instrumentals (“Safety Dance”, “Sycamore”, “Bars & Twists,” and remastered cuts for Mos Def, Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes). But, working in collaboration with Serato, this release also takes note of the people actually buying records these days: DJs. There are beautiful, donut-themed slipmats. (As far as I’m concerned, anything featuring donuts earns automatic bonus points. Mmmmm… donuts.) The records themselves, meanwhile, are dual-sided. When you want to hear the record, play it face up. When you want to use DJ software, flip it for Serato control tone. (Officially, that works with Serato Scratch Live DJ, but it’ll also work with the open-source Mixxx and Deckadance apps, too.)

It’s a fascinating idea: make the record itself friendly to vinyl and digital turntablists. Of course, if you’re a digital DJ, I imagine you already have the control records you need, but — you still get those tasty donut slipmats. And it is a reminder (as if you needed one) that DJs are keeping the record format alive. Massive CD sales may have been the domain of the mass market, but vinyl demonstrates how powerful niches and the long tail can be.

J DILLA DONUT SHOP (SERATO/STONES THROW) 2 DISCS, 2 SLIPMATS & DILLA BEATS

What’s that? No space for turntables? (Believe me, I feel you.) How about a record whose sleeve becomes a DIY turntable, spun with a pencil?

That’s the idea of a direct mail piece created by sound design studio Griffiths, Gibson, and Ramsay Productions (GGRP). Originally intended just as an attention-getter for creative directors, the concept has caught the imagination of bloggers, and those who got them wanted extras for their kids. (It takes me back to all the strange, cheap, disposable records we were handed as kids during what was supposed to be the last days of vinyl.)

The basic apparatus works just like a conventional record player: spin the record (using a pencil in this case instead of a rotating turntable), and a needle transduces the sound (here, amplified by the cardboard housing). I really like the cover on the record, too.

Links:
GREY SPINS VINYL HITS FOR GGRP [Marketing Mag Canada, via GGRP's own excellent Making Noise blog]

And from one of my favorite design blogs, the eco-centered Inhabit:
Album Sleeve Transforms Into a Cardboard Record Player!

For their part, Inhabit notes the value of cardboard as construction material and the green-minded reuse of packaging.

It’s an idea that would be great fun to build upon. The only thing that’s missing, that I can see, is an easy DIY way of producing the records. (Lasercutter trick, maybe?) Adding a piezo element to amplify the signal could be a thought, too.

Another how-to on a handmade paper+needle configuration (suggested only for playing records you really don’t want to save), in a video on WonderHowTo (also via Inhabit):

And some more pics of the two designs mentioned here:

Clavilux 2000 – Interactive instrument for generative music visualization from Jonas Heuer on Vimeo.

Think of playing musical notes for a moment, or close your eyes while fingering a piano keyboard. Odds are, some visual – however abstract – pops into your mind. Visualizing musical notes is second nature in the digital realm, once a note and an image can each be represented with numbers.

Clavilux 2000 by Jonas Friedemann Heuer is one of the latest works to run with the idea. As you play notes, beams of color drift up from the keyboard. In 3D mode, those beams take on a lovely, subtle quality. The model itself isn’t new, owing the notes-as-lines model to player pianos (or even music boxes), and recalling light organs. But there is something intuitive about this model – and I can imagine it being a terrific way to encourage someone to practice. (Well, that or else it could be distracting while practicing!)

Description. Thanks to Yifan Mai for the link; via infosthetics.com, a fantastic resource for exploring ways of visualizing information.

Clavilux 2000 is a music visualization installation that produces generative real-time animations of music. It consists of a computer running vvvv patch hooked up to a MIDI keyboard and projector. Every note played on the keyboard produces a stripe, whose proportions and color correspond to how the note was played. For instance, the color is mapped to the tonality of the note via the circle of fifths, thus visualizing harmonic consonance and dissonance. Besides looking really cool, it also thus creates unique “fingerprints” of each performance.

Clavilux 2000 is extremely close in design to a key 1995 work by media artist Toshio Iwai, known most recently for the Yamaha Tenori-On and Nintendo-published ElectroPlankton DS (each of which uses ideas from the earlier project). Piano–as image media and related works employed both inputs and outputs. (in the installation, visitors could use a trackball to enter note events visually on a screen; in performance with Ryuichi Sakamoto, the work used a piano. In each, events fly off perpendicular to the piano keyboard as beams of light, just as in the work here. That’s not a criticism, incidentally – even without seeing Iwai’s work, it’s a logical solution, because the keyboard organizes notes into an array of thin rectangles (the keys).

Unfortunately, Iwai’s work is not well-documented online; videos of these pieces have been removed. I do have a few resources for you, however. At bottom, there is a video of a 2006 Ars Electronica talk on the visual interface for music. (I have some video of Toshio’s similar thoughts around the launch of the Tenori-On which I should publish.) And for more:

Toshio Iwai talking about the visual-musical interface[artintelligence]

Toshio Iwai keynote at Futuresonic [pixelsumo]

http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/10/artwork.php?artwork=57

Marvim Gainsbug: the Twitter based Song Composer from jeraman on Vimeo.

It should come as no surprise, but Twitter can compose existential nihilistic poetry.

Just ask the creepy, detached voice of Marvim Gainsbug. The robotic, generative songwriter will produce a “song” from Tweet keywords of your choice. And be prepared for some finger snaps at the end of his beat-poetic recitation.

The evil genius of this work is the product of a duo from Recife, Brazil. Details:

Marvim Gainsbug is a musician, singer and composer, created in 2009.

His main influences are Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Dylan, the Brazilian Northeastern Musician, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Alan Turing, Deep Blue, HAL, Wintermute and Marvin, the paranoid android.

Marvim Gainsbug is a software that acts based on Twitter, implemented to compose and to play songs, with music and lyrics, in real time.

The tweets are transformed in verses which are interpreted by Marvim with his singular voice. The melody, the harmony and the rhythm are directly linked with the words of the verses.

Developed in Processing, using Sphinx4, FreeTTS and Twitter4j libraries, by Jeraman and Filipe Calegario. For further informations, visit myspace.com/marvimgainsbug

Even the harmonies, melody, and rhythm are generated algorithmically from the tweets themselves.

Thanks to co-creator Jerman for sending this our way; see:
http://jeraman.info

More photos:
Marvim Gainsbug @ Flickr

Didgeridoo from bar|none on Vimeo.

You can’t quite dance to it, but bar|none has a beautifully-shot video of a strange, invented instrument constructed with some of the technologies we saw last week. As noted then, new support for OSC in the powerful Kyma sound system means the ability to control imagined instruments in more sophisticated, higher-resolution ways. Just days later, bar|none responded to my post with one of his first experiments. It’s just the beginning of his work, so judge it accordingly – think of the first emanations of a newly-created musical instrument – but it’s a reminder that far-out ideas are possible when you combine custom soundmakers with expressive control.

The controller is Jeff Snyder’s Manta, a touch-sensitive controller with velocity sensitivity and a 6×8 array of hexagons. Jeff showed off his instrument at Handmade Music Monday night here in New York; I hope to follow up with a closer look at the Manta soon. Notably, the Manta is not an OSC device; it’s an HID USB device, just as a typical mouse or keyboard is. HID, the standard drivers for which are included in every desktop OS, also supports high-resolution data, so it’s a second alternative to MIDI for input.

My first Kyma X patch for the Pacarana. Kyma is unreal and let’s you do almost anything in Sound Design. I took a concept of a didgeridoo patch on my modular and built it back in Kyma but with even more expression. This is still a work in progress.

The touchplate is a Snyderphonics MANTA. I spent some time coding some algorithms in MAX to enhance the performance control of the patch using velocity, aftertouch and polyphonic aftertouch + controls using OSC to Kyma.

The Manta is a fantastically wonderful controller. It shows it’s [sic] flexibility and feel here.

The patch is microtonal meaning pitches are in divisions of the western concept of half and whole tones.

Since that video, he’s been trying more sonic ideas:

Been messing with this sound and here’s a version where the didgeri is resonating as if it were a metalic vibrating tube as well. This is just trying to see the kind of sounds I can get out of the patch.

soundcloud.com/barnone/karplusdigeri

This makes me wish I could afford this setup, but if, like me, you’re on a tighter budget, the ideas here could easily be applied to other rigs. Keep the experiments coming!

Updated: bar|none aka Chris Lloyd shares his camera of choice: it’s a Canon 7D with a 50mm 1.4 lens for the “Bokeh blur effect,” a tip from stretta.

Why should Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion (and, well, their editor) go to a game conference? This year, in particular, the annual gathering of game developers in San Francisco means a real convergence of gaming culture and digital music and motion, of ideas about how interactivity can work (and the challenges of making interaction design creative), of generative and adaptive music and new cultures of digital media. Aside from that, of course, there’s no particular reason.

A quick look at some event highlights with which I’m involved:
Tonight (Wednesday) is the debut gala for Gamma IV, the creative game design challenge by the Kokoromi Collective. You can check out the winning games on the show floor, as well.
http://www.kokoromi.org/gamma4/

The games themselves offer plenty of inspiration for live visualists and people exploring new interfaces for music. But there’s also a music lineup alongside, with Starpause, Phil Fish, Moldover, Baiyon, Class Prez, and Future Boy. A big thanks to my mate Starpause for putting that lineup together; I’ll also be doing a short live set.

Unrelated to GDC (but working out nicely since I’m in town), Thursday night is a meeting of the illustrious Bay Area Computer Music Technology Group (BArCMuT), with a big, all-female lineup of creative artists finding expressive new interfaces for musical performance. I’ll be giving a lightning talk before the full program, so say hi if you’re around.
http://www.meetup.com/barcmut/calendar/12702241/

Friday night is the free evening of One Button Objects, a set of interactive art pieces that explore what can be done with a single button. I’ll be talking more about that later this week; it really wound up being a great exercise, and even if you believe in rich, expressive control for music, forcing yourself to work with a single button is nothing if not enlightening. I co-curated the show with Heather Kelley of Kokoromi.
Event details: One Button Objects: Kokoromi + Gray Area Foundation for the Arts

We already knew that one Next Big Thing for the Lemur – the specialized multimedia multi-touch controller – would be Ableton Live integration. Having teased that coming functionality, JazzMutant has now revealed the name (“Mu”), as well as a video showing what the features look like. What’s funny to me is that the result is a bit like what I’d imagine Live itself might look like if it were designed for multi-touch screens. That’s a real consideration for all music software UIs, given the direction of computer hardware. But in the meantime, with choices in multi-touch laptops scarce (makers like HP and Lenovo make a handful of models) and quality scarce, the Lemur hangs onto its niche. It comes with a solid set of tools for users to make their own layouts, it has the reliability of wires (which the iPad will lack, since it has no Ethernet port), and dedicated OSC functionality. While it may come to a surprise to those eagerly anticipated the iPad’s arrival next month, the Lemur’s fans are largely unswayed.

One reason is that, cool as Mu is, it isn’t alone. Musicians keep making fascinating control layouts for the Lemur, ones worth noting even if you don’t plan to buy a Lemur for yourself. For instance, Mat of music-interface.com sends along tips from his own work and beyond.

Rick Hawkins goes a different direction entirely from Mu, with a sequencer that’s esoteric enough to have “esoteric” in its name:

The EsoWave sequencer is a project for the Jazzmutant Lemur. It is a esoteric/generative midi sequencer that sends midi notes according to the positions of 32 nodes in a 2D plane. The nodes are connected along an elastic string and can be additionally controlled by two waveforms that drive the X and Y coordinates.

More info on the blog: ILL GOTTEN GAINS: The EsoWave Sequencer

Esoteric Sequencer Prototype – Ambient Session from Rick Hawkins on Vimeo.

For his part, Mat’s own work on the Sequencomat is full of ideas, with track-independent humanization and tempo, a roll pad X/Y marked by rhythmic subdivision, step sequencers, controllers, and more. Mat’s work shows part of the appeal of the Lemur, which has evolved beyond being a simple controller to be a generator of sequencing data. Just like the old days of hooking up a sequencer modular to a bay of analog synths via patch cords, the Lemur becomes the sequencer and software like Ableton Live simply the sound source.

http://www.tonvibration.de/extra/SequencomatV2.html

If you’re wondering why the Lemur fans have remained loyal, this gives you some answers. It proves that a device’s longevity can matter, in an age when (thanks, I’ll admit, to blogs like mine) newness and buzz tends to trump what lasts. While the Lemur may be old news to some, that’s part of the point: it’s taken some time for people to really work out what to do with it. And whether your future is in the Lemur or another device, I always find inspiration in what the Lemur community is doing, thinking more generally about how touch can be used with music. Sometimes my reaction is, honestly “yeah, but jeez, I’d never want to do that” – but then, that’s always why it’s interesting to see other people’s work. And sometimes, it’s just fun to watch.

Side note: if you get fatigued of all this talk of integrating with Ableton Live, fret not. I think we’ll see a lot of ideas around a lot of tools; just to take today’s news as a jumping-off point, note that the Renoise team are still working on their own, friendly API for customization with native OSC control (something Live still lacks). And variety is the spice of life, or at least, of blogs.

Updated – here’s part 1 of an intro by Michael Chenetz to the Mu environment.

max4live.info: Mu-tations: Part 1 – An intro to Mu from Michael Chenetz on Vimeo.

Source:
max4live.info: Mu-tations: Part 1 – An Intro to Mu (Beta) [note the video was uploaded by special permission]

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

Artist and design Yoshi Akai (no relation, as far as I know) treats analog electronics as an art form, a sculpture, an instrument, and an exercise in interaction design, all wrapped in the velour of vintage hardware design. For everyone who misses the deco elegance of meticulously-engraved surfaces and tastefully-appointed enclosures of early-century electronics, Yoshi’s work will be a special treat.

These aren’t just pretty boxes, though: they work as instruments. A prolific inventor with a background in textiles and design, Nagoya-born Yoshi Akai has spun out countless playful experiments in musical interaction, and all make fascinating sounds. There’s a turntable that scratches Swedish rye crackers as though they’re records, a step sequencer made from a telegraph, thumb-controlled instruments, and various synths, noisemakers, effects, and drum machines, some quite practical. Some emphasis electrical, analog sounds, while others go chip/8-bit in timbre. All look beautifully handmade, with some tending toward luxurious front panels while others flaunt intentionally disorganized arrays of knobs.

(Just don’t say the word “steampunk” — the designs seem to be to be placed pretty firmly in the electrically-powered early 20th Century, and there’s even a reference to Czech proto-science fiction landmark R.U.R..)

Yoshi Akai Artist Site + Gallery

MrYoshiAkai YouTube Channel

There are many models, so it’s worth investigating the full YouTube gallery and his site gallery. I’ll call attention to the two most theatrical. First, LEGO blocks form the playing pieces for a musical sequencer. That’s fitting: Ableton CEO and founder Gerhard Behles once revealed to me that he adored playing with LEGO blocks as a child, a design element that resurfaces in the sequencer he helped design. LEGO blocks are modular, they’re playful, they’re neatly color-coded, and because of their shape and interchangeable design, they easily represent blocks of sequenced time in music.

Here’s a video of the LEGO sequencer in action:

The Wireless Catcher produces rawer sounds than some of Yoshi’s creations, but you can’t beat its whimsical presentation and unusual conception. This isn’t just another Theremin-style device, either: the creation intentionally sucks up the wireless radio activities happening around you. Adjusting the angle of the device causes it to receive different sounds. In an age when wireless interference and overcrowded spectrums threaten to shut down even digital technology, this is one of the few instruments I’ve seen that makes interference the signal, rather than background noise. This could be what we’re all playing wirelessly as the spectrum continues to fill up.

I knew those Knäckebröd Swedish rye crackers would be good for something. See how neatly they fit on a turntable?

“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.

OTO Machines’ BISCUIT is new 8-bit effect processing hardware from a boutique design firm in Paris. The essential effect is all 8-bit: using 8-bit converters and processing, you can add crunchy, digital waveshaping, delay, pitch shift, and step filter effects. But because those processes produce distortion and aliasing, BISCUIT combines its 8-bit effects with an analog resonant filter. (It’s switchable, so if you want to retain all the artifacts, you can – but you also have a filter at the ready.)

The whole design is a lovely exercise in reducing a set of sound capabilities to their most essential elements. The appearance of the front panel, though, is deceptively simple. Multifunctional uses, all provided within the eight buttons at bottom and the parameter controls at top, allow effects from filtering and basic bit reduction to wild, radical bit destruction, step-sequenced filtering, delay, and even a little synthesis.

The BISCUIT is also fully MIDI-enabled: every control sends MIDI, and every function receives MIDI CC. Critical to its step-sequenced and delay functions, BISCUIT receives MIDI clock, as well, or you can use tap tempo.

Finally, quality and local production figure prominently in the OTO: the company advertises that they don’t outsource production and work entirely with local companies in France.

Price: EUR529 including VAT (so 442,30 if you’re outside Europe). Available now:
http://www.otomachines.com

That’s pricey, I know, but it also packs as much sonic power as a collection of several Moog effects – and likewise might be the only effects box you need.

And, oh yeah – the future of BISCUIT may provide more than it does now.

I got to look more closely at the BISCUIT (think “bis-QWEE” as in French), at least on paper. I’ve also had the chance to talk to one of the creators about the evolution of this box, which reveals something of the process of hardware creation in general.

First, let’s take a closer look at the hardware.

Inside the Hardware

Onboard controls include:

• Drive: Input gain, up to +15 dB (which can clip your sound prior to conversion)
• Naked: dry signal
• Dressed: 8-bit (wet) signal
• Filter controls: set to green (low-pass), yellow (band-pass), or orange (hi-pass), then adjust cutoff (20-15kHz) and Q
• Brain: changes the function of the rectangular switches at the bottom, between selecting parameters and muting/inverting the 8-bit signal
• Clock: 250-30kHz sample clock frequency
• Bypass: a true relay bypass
• Switches 1-8: mute or invert your 8-bits, select effects and parameters, and recall presets/snapshots

The main issue is that it’s using the 8 rectangular switches along the bottom of the unit that most directly shapes the sound, by allowing you to set each bit independently – literally, the eight bits of the signal itself. Switch off “Brain” mode, and you can directly manipulate the bits of the signal, then mix that signal with your dry source.

The presets portion can incorporate all of your own presets, with 16 slots and SysEx dump functions for storage and recall on your computer. (Hmmm, may be time to dig up an editor/librarian tool, or make a new, simpler one.)

I/O:
Unbalanced 1/4″ inputs (2x mono L+R)
Unbalanced 1/4″ outputs (2x mono L+R)
MIDI in, MIDI out
9V AC adapter

Form factor:
Metal case
1.27 lb (580g)
7.48″ x 2.36″ x 4.60″ (190mm x 60mm x 117mm)

Interview with the Founder/Creator

I talked to Denis Cazajeux, creator of BISCUIT, about his work.

It took time to design this device. I started by building stompboxes in my kitchen under the name Cazatronics (http://www.myspace.com/cazatronics). I built some MIDI controllers, SID and FM Midibox synths (I lover [MIDIBox creator] Ucapps !), analog reverb stompboxes…

Few years ago, I built a box in a plastic butterdish, to simulate the sound of an old Fairlight CMI, but without have to sample through this machine.

The idea was simple: use an 8-bit AD converter with a parrallel output, and connect these 8 outputs to an 8-bit parrallel input DA converter. The sampling frequency was controlled by a special pot. You could pass sounds from a modern hardware or sofware sampler through this box to get an old-school 8-bit sampler sound.

I discovered that I could get some very harsh and radical digital distortion by simply mute (always 0) or invert (a 0 becomes a 1 and the opposite) one or several of the 8 lines between AD and DA converters. The initial box was then upgraded with 8 toggle switches, each with 3 positions (on, mute and invert).

As the sound can become very strong and aggressive, I added a 12db/octave low-pass filter with a Q control.

I forget a little bit this box in my kitchen for some years. One day, I met an engineer/producer in a vintage studio near Paris, where I worked as a sound engineer and maintenance tech. We shared the same passion for music, electronics, lo-fi, 8-bits,… (Thanks for your blog, we really love CDM and have a look on it few times a week!).

He loved the 8-bit box and we started the idea to sell this thing, as there were no other things like that on the market (except Frostwave Sonic Alienator). It took me 2 years to set the company, find the money, improve the initial design (MIDI, stereo, FX, multimode filter, pads instead of toggle switches,…), find subcontractors…

I wanted a strong box, with soft switches similar to a monome, customs knobs…

There’s more than 350 components inside BISCUIT, most of them are SMD (Surface Mount Devices) to keep the product small and not too much expensive. This is small and local economy: all parts (electronics boards, metalwork, pad and knobs design, packaging…) are made in french factories (most of them are in Normandy). Each Biscuit is assembled by our hands and tested by our ears in our workshop.

Input gain (Drive pot), little mixer (Naked and Dressed pots) and filter are analog, but with digital control (using Maxim digital pots IC’s), so you can memorize some presets and have a MIDI control.
I choose to use hi-quality parts (Panasonic low signal relay for bypass, Polypro Caps for filter, Neutrik jacks, linear -8v/+8v power supply…).

Digital processing (waveshapers, delay, pitch, bit manipulations) is pure 8-bits, using a simple Microchip PIC microcontroller. Delay and pitchshifter use the internal PIC RAM (3kB !).

The PIC microcontroller can upgrade its firmware, using a MIDI SysEx utility (SysEx Librarian for MAC users or MIDI OX for PCs).

All firmware upgrades are for free, as a simple SysEx file to download from our website.

In case it wasn’t evident from the gorgeous design of the case and associated graphics, yes, there was a significant design collaboration behind all of this, says Denis:

We worked with graphic artists H5 (http://www.h5.fr/).

They design the:

OTO and BISCUIT logo,
Knob design,
Silkscreen drawing,
User Manual layout.

They work in advertisment for companies such as Dior, Yves St Laurent, Audi…but also for music (record cover and videoclip) : Air, Royksopp (“Remind Me” videoclip), Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Etienne de Crécy, Alex Gopher,…

They did a very nice job for us so I wanted to talk about them!

Producer/engineer Stéphane Alf Briat is the partner with Denis, and the man who prompted actually releasing BISCUIT as a product.

Let us know if you have further questions for Denis. This is far more information than I usually do for a product preview, but it’s fantastic, of course, to be provided with this much detail. It looks like a fascinating design, and I can think of a couple of friends I expect will want one. More coming soon.

http://www.otomachines.com