Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools:

tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to hide his lack of conventional technic. Depending on the venue, the show might be ambient-like, experimental or electronica with weird cinematographic references. But it most often combines all of this.
tokoloten is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It’s proof that the controller – any controller – is in the hands of the creator, and what it sounds like is entirely undetermined.

Mapping a hardware input to a sound means making an abstract connection between one physical action and another sonic reaction. What that relationship is is entirely up to you. I was honestly a bit surprised by some of the impassioned critical reactions to yesterday’s brief mention of the use of the Wiimote as a studio recording. Of course, that proves the creed of the blogger – post first, ask questions later, and when in doubt, just post. Amidst some of the frustration, there are some good discussions, though I do dream of an Internet on which we criticize content without name-calling.

But the reality remains: controllers are always abstracted from the sound, by definition, and whether they’re satisfying to you depends on how you’ve mapped them. I don’t know what qualifies as innovative, but then, there have been times when I’ve very much enjoyed turning a knob, so “innovation” isn’t always what matters to me. I tend to fall back on Duke Ellington – “if it sounds good, it is good.” For controllers, that means “if it feels good, it is good.” You’re the one with the controller in your hands.

For an alternative example, musician/artist Kassen has an excellent session on improvising with custom software and game controllers. Below, you can catch some of his talk from Amsterdam’s famed STEIM research center, which has a long history of researching the controller-music connection. After all these years asking that question, what we have is …more questions. But that’s a beautiful thing.

Kassen (DJ, performer, ChucK programmer) from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Part of the reason I’ve never liked “controllerism” as a term – sorry, Moldover – is that there is no clear technique, no clear sound, no particular discipline. That is, I understand the case for the term and I’m glad there’s a discussion. But it seems to me that part of why controllerism is interesting is that there is no such thing as controllerism. The beauty of digital music is that you do have wide-open, blank-page possibilities. You can create your own system. It is abstract, simulation, ungrounded in physical reality. But while that is at odds with millenia of acoustic instrument-making, it’s also in tune with centuries of compositional and notational tradition, which are abstract. For the first time, the systems of how we conceive music can themselves become physical.

That to me is an exciting thing.

So, here’s a question — let’s take the example of sensors that handle orientation. How would you want to deal with them in music software, if they could be standardized, if any accelerometer or tilt sensor could announce its orientation? How do you decide which is the x, y, and z axis, for instance? How would you want the data normalized?

Digital technology has transformed the listening experience. But there’s little in the way of physical artifacts of that act, and a diminished sense of humanized relationships to an individual being at the other end. From modern radio to Internet-streamed playlists, our listening world is DJed by automated robots in streams that flow through generic, mass-market speakers. The object and the content lack the design intention that imbued, for instance, the gorgeous radio sets of the early 20th Century and the personalities that narrated the programming.

Armed with a lasercutter, designer Matt Brown has a novel concept for how to redesign the act of listening. From the creator’s blog Real Tomato:

For this system, you would have a speaker with an rfid reader, and laser-cut paper radios with rfid chips inside. The radios themselves are designed by musicians, charities, brands, and designers. When the paper radio is placed over the speaker it changes the radio station to what the artist has chosen. Other noises and interactions can be programmed in too. Alec Baldwin’s radio for example could politely ask everyone to turn their lights off from time to time. People could have the paper radios around their house in different rooms. The supremes radio might be a better living room station. This system tries to add a little bit of fun to internet radio, and give people a connection with the artists they choose. The radios themselves would hopefully be cheap and collectible little sculptures, each one accessing unique stations.

The artist, D.A.R.Y.L., is a recent alumnus of Sweden’s Umea institute of Design.

I think we need a new, specialized Creative Commons license that describes “Great Concepts I Probably Won’t Get to Developer Further so Please Go Run with It With Some Credit to Me.” (Okay, maybe with a shorter name.) I love the possibilities this project suggests, if for no other reason than the beautiful sculptures created with the lasercutter.

The works themselves are printed out a single sheet and assembled. THat demonstrates some of the power lasercutters can provide, and the promise they hold for localized production of objects. (Use eco-friendly recycled paper and inks, and this is a consumer product that doesn’t deliver a dropkick to the planet.)

I just interviewed Owen Pallett aka Final Fantasy, and he told me saw a survey that showed some 80% of music journalists listen through music via the built-in speakers in their laptops. That would be terrifying if true – I’m not certain that it is – but regardless, I think there is a clear need to rethink listening processes and objects.

Check out the post and the blog for more inspiring images. Via the wonderful Saturn Never Sleeps blog by Rucyl Mills and King Britt.

From Sarah and Lara Grant, we have a dress that makes music, with tube-like apparatus made of felt for connecting sound, modular fashion. From the raucous duo Great Tiger, we get a homebrewed arcade controller Ableton Live that mashes loops into dance music with a quick button push. Yep, it’s Handmade Music time again in New York tomorrow Thursday. If you’re anywhere in the area, come on down – and feel free to bring your own projects and/or expect some surprise technological appearances. If not, we’ve still got some MP3s, visuals, and how-to information to share.

If you do make it to Brooklyn, we can promise some behind-the-scenes demonstrations, noise, at least one live set, and free, ice-cold Colt 45s while they last.

Read on for event details, a preview of the projects, and videos and downloadable MP3s from Great Tiger.

Wearable Patch Cords in a Sonic Dress

Sound artists, inventors, and designer sisters Sarah and Lara Grant present an in-progress audiological fashion experiment involving patch cords made from felt. (I love the gorgeous conceptual drawing.) They’re working with a dancer to make this into a performance, and we get to see the work evolve before our eyes.

the title of the piece is ‘Audiotrails’, playing off of the word ‘entrails’, since as you’ll from the drawing attached, we are designing a dress that has several felted cords coming out from the gut which will act as patch cords. These patch cords connect to different parts of the garment to produce various noises and effects.

What we will be bringing is an example of our patch cord concept in the form of a felted swatch and a concept drawing of the final piece, which we have not completed, but hope to present either next month or the following at handmade music. We will be talking about our process and answering any questions based on that. Sarah and I had been envisioning our set up on a table in the smaller room, since had not been planning to perform and since our goal has been to show our progress of a project that would take a couple months to finish.

Here’s a look at one of the coils, a felted patch cable that can then become part of the garment:

Sarah Grant has also done fascinating research into what she calls “felted signal processing,” in which textiles can themselves become active sound elements.

Push the Button: DIY Arcade Controller for Ableton Live and the Button-Mashing Music of Great Tiger

That’s button mashing in a good way. Inspired by games, fast push-button moves and combos, and electronic music, the duo Great Tiger has built a custom rig for mashing samples in Ableton Live.

The custom arcade controller, looking like what happens when an 80s arcade cabinet and the monome have a love child, was featured on the DJ blog DJ TechTools. (Worth reading that article for lots more technical details from the duo.) This video by Great Tiger gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the hardware is used with Live and how it’s put together.

Here’s Great Tiger live in action at Brooklyn’s Red Star:

Free Great Tiger MP3 Downloads

Great Tiger were kind enough to share a couple of their fun tracks with us, so you can grab them wherever you are.

Great Tiger on MySpace | Facebook

Come Visit Us

RSVP to handmade@3rdward.com OR
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Handmade Music’s Brooklyn edition is held at 3rd Ward in East Williamsburg, a brisk ride on the L train out of Manhattan.

FREE, as always
…plus FREE Colt 45
7:30-10:00 pm, Thursday, October 15 (arrive by 9 or you’ll miss a lot)

Presented by CDM with our friends at MAKE, Etsy, and XLR8R

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The grid is in. While the monome remains the standards bearer for hardware with grids of buttons on it, arrays of buttons are suddenly everywhere, in the commercial Akai APC40 and Novation Launchpad, and, from Livid Instruments, the Ohm64 and now the Block. I think it’s a real compliment to the monome’s creators – and the community that has authored ingenious open software for the monome – that there is this excitement around the design.

The latest entry is Livid’s Block, a compact, aluminum-and-wood controller that’s easy to carry and which weighs less than 3 pounds. It’s not a monome – it eschews the monome’s stringent minimalist design aesthetic and adds knobs on top, faders on the side. That layout has made the M-Audio Trigger Finger a blockbuster hit, so I think it could attract people who want more than just buttons. (That’s why choice is generally a good thing.) But just as importantly, the Block takes cues from the monome beyond the skin-deep. As with the Ohm64, Livid is working to open-source both the guts of the hardware and the software on the computer. The instruments are made by hand using sustainable materials and finishes, manufactured in Texas in their own shop rather than the lowest bidder overseas. The hardware itself encourages hacks and customization. These are principles championed by the monome’s Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, and they’re badly in need of some company. Livid, like those monome creators, is a handful of individuals rather then a big company, but they give us new hardware that embodies sustainability, openness, and local production – and that makes the monome and its principles stronger. (Livid has been crafting performance hardware and Max patches for many years.) And while this bus-powered USB MIDI device doesn’t yet support (OSC) OpenSoundControl, that could come – without sacrificing conventional MIDI connections to outboard gear when you don’t have the computer connected. (Clarification: as with the Ohm64, OSC support is not yet available but should be possible. Stay tuned.)

Basic specs:

• 8×8 backlit keypad with corresponding knobs, function buttons, and faders
• Square layout that can be used at any rotation (so the USB port lies where you want it)
• Runs a suite of apps built in Max/MSP from Livid – including a sampler, synth, sequencer
• blockEditor for customizing layouts, lights
• US$399, available November 1

I’m interested in more open software, so I’m working on making an editor in Java and would love to hear what else people might want. (SuperCollider looper? Pd algorithmic grid controller? Processing library?) These I hope to make work both with the Livid hardware’s added faders and knobs, and the monome’s more minimal design. Of course, OSC will be terrific for computer applications if that comes to pass, but I love the idea of gear that can also talk to MIDI hardware.

I really like Novation’s Launchpad, but for a little more money, you get a beautiful case, additional controls, and added flexibility, all in gear handcrafted by the maker and with an open approach to hardware and software. Without getting into a debate over the merits one way or another, consider this: you can choose. We didn’t use to have these kinds of choices in music hardware. The fact that we do now – not only the ability to choose the nameplate, but the very philosophy behind the device’s manufacture – I think can benefit everyone, users and manufacturers alike. It opens up the entire music tech industry to new ideas and new variety.

http://www.lividinstruments.com/hardware_block.php

As computer music practice – part composition, part instrumental play – spreads, the idea of software interface as performance tool is becoming second nature. Putting those opposable thumbs and sensitive fingertips to work, multitouch controllers are growing in number, variety, and sophistication. Berlin-based artist Marco Kuhn shows off his beautiful creation, the PlayBox multitouch hardware, and its first app, PlayLive. That first software focuses on Ableton Live performance, but Live could be just the beginning – Marco has worked with Pd in the past and promises other apps to come. He’s interested in selling this device in the future, and he shares with us the tools he used to create this work for those of you doing development along similar lines.

The Project:

“Play Box” is is a User Interface for Natural User Interaction.
? allows multi-touch and object recognition (TUIO marker)
? hovering is also possible
? 22 ” TFT display , 1680 x 1050 pixel
? robust
? plug`n play

“Play Live” is a dedicated multitouch controller surface for Ableton Live.

- GUI Elements support multi-touch interaction
- easy to setup , just load the “Play” Control Surface
- you need no controller assignment
- you can control 32 tracks and 127 scenes, that are 4064 clips
- track controls are mute, solo, record, send1, send2, pan, level
- scene feedback name and state
- clip feedback color, name and state
- Transport control
- 2 Returns
- Master
- support bidirectional communication
- display track level meter, name

The whole app is coded in python.
- use Python Ableton Live API
- and libavg www.libavg.de for the GUI and Trackingengine
- PyPortMidi receive/send Midi Messages

“Play Live” Future plans:
- FX View per Track
- subpage for abstract clip controlling

I tested it with my mac book pro, “Play Live” and “Ableton Live” is running at the same machine. It should work on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X). That Project started with my Diploma Thesis in Applied Computer Science 1 year ago.

Everything is coded and built by myself. The GUI – elements has been designed by Gösta Wellmer.

In this work, I created a GUI-Controller Library which allow me to Develop very rapidly Multitouch Interfaces for other Audio Environments.
More Apps coming soon ;-)

I [plan] to sell the” Play Box” and Apps like “Play Live” if anyone is interested.
The price is yet not specified.

That`s not my first multitouch Interface. 2 Years ago I created forfour – http://forfour.hi-pi.de/
- used PD, Processing, Reactivision and OGRE.
But the “Play Box” is another level;-)

For more on the project:
www.hi-pi.de/play

I hope to have video to share soon – and yeah, it’s time to plan another visit to Berlin.

four tiny drum machines from ALH84001 on Vimeo.

Cybernetics is poised to make a comeback. The theory is, everything from electronic circuits to plants and animals can be understood in terms of feedback loops, as organisms – mechanical or organic – respond to input from their surroundings. The father of modern cybernetics, MIT mathematician Norbert Weiner, was inspired by working on the guidance systems of missiles. His writing was picked up Louis and Bebe Barron, informing their organism-like sonic circuits, as used in the film Forbidden Planet. The word cybernetic itself comes from Plato. Plato was talking about human self-governance. But designed with cybernetic ideas in mind, technology, too, becomes self-governing and autonomous – and the sonic circuits, too.

Young designers like Eric Archer are to me the newest continuation of work like the Barrons’. Inside his lab, Eric and others are creating hardware that behaves like intelligent life. In the video at top, four tiny drum machines, equipped with insect-like brains and reflexes, network together wirelessly over infrared, responding to light by way of photocells. These tiny devices form a colonial consciousness.

Eric may be a mad scientist, but he isn’t keeping his work secret or proprietary. He’s sharing the tools, sharing his methods, and with a whole growing crew of sonic DIYers in Austin, Texas, inviting anyone to join the revolution under the banner of the Handmade Music series. (More on the upcoming event shortly.) If you’re not from Texas, a lot of this documentation is also appearing online.

Here are more of the creations, plus the simple but powerful circuit that makes it all happen.

And yes, there’s a lot of potential to wireless IR sync.

The drums have names:

Drum Machines (Eric Archer)
ASR mk I “pops”: two analog damped sine oscillators with photocell pitch control, 16 presets
ASR mk II “snappy”: analog white noise, photocell controlled filter, envelope + VCA, 16 presets
ASR mk III “twiki”: photocell tuned analog osc, photocell tuned LPF, envelope + VCA, programmable
ASR mk IV “boomer”: analog damped sine oscillator, long decay, photocell pitch envelope, programmable

But drum machines are just the beginning of what could eventually be wirelessly synced. First up, this autonomous bassline generator, created by 4ms Pedals

The Autonomous Bassline Generator creates deterministic bassline patterns in a sci-fi retro sound by generating melodies on the fly, based on a knob. It’s just an AVR (attiny44) chip doing all the work, plus an opamp to act as the filter (photocell). The blue button is Tap Tempo, or if you hold it down for 1 second, it syncs up to the pulses on the IR receiver (this lets you beat-sync multiple Andromeda Space Rocker modules). The red button lets you edit a single note in the melody. Pulse-width modulation is currently pre-set to a certain envelope, but that will become user-controllable soon!

Part of the “Andromeda Space Rockers” series of modules, see www.ericarcher.net for drum modules.

The 6-pin header board dangling to the right is an ISP header. Totally hackable!

“Ah,” you say. “But I have computers and things. I don’t just want a bunch of little drum machines running around my studio like so many electronic beetles while I furiously tap my tap tempo in Ableton. Can’t I sync thing up?”

Yes. Yes, you can. There’s already a MIDI-to-IR prototype in the works.

Four analog drum machines are synchronized with a desktop computer running Logic. Logic is playing a loop with TR808 samples. MIDI timecode from Logic is converted to IR Sync with a PIC microcontroller. The PIC flashes an infrared LED, providing wireless clock to a chain of analog drum modules. Each drum module has an onboard sequencer, analog sound generator, and IR Sync repeater. At the end of the video, the tempo is increased to almost 3000 BPM. In a separate test, the system played OK at 1000 BPM. Of course this tempo is ridiculous but it is a nice “torture test” of Nathan’s PIC code.

PIC stuff: Nathan Wooster
drum machines: Eric Archer

Our friends at Bleep Labs also have projects in the works.

Eric and 4ms have contributed the circuits at the heart of this.

This simple circuit handles infrared clock networking. (Click for the full circuit.) I’m assuming you know how to read this; we may have to put together an actual how-to tutorial for those new to electronics, too.

And 4ms has a version for interfacing with microcontrollers.

The Barrons would be proud.

For more on the Handmade Music series as it spreads around the planet, visit http://handmademusic.noisepages.com.

I don’t know if it’s “the most revolutionary new musical instrument of the last 60 years,” but let’s be clear on one thing: the Eigenharp Alpha is utterly, beautifully insane. It combines breath and finger input in a bassoon form factor, but with quite a lot more physical control, a computer connection, and no internal sound source of its own. The breath input comes from a crooked tube as on a bassoon, with finger input in a touch strip, a fretted, light-up keyboard, and keys that have their own various forms of expression. Launched yesterday in London, the Eingenharp is getting a lot of attention. (And yes, some of you spotted signs of its launch all the way back in June, to which I say – I’m sorry I’m so late to the party.)

From BBC: Do you drum it, strum it or stroke it?

I hope to speak to the creators soon. Already, I see some indications that there are equal parts genius and madness here. The controller itself, even in the bizarre bassoon form factor, has an extraordinary amount of control, with high-resolution keys, percussion keys, elaborate control arrangements that can adjust tone or record samples, and extremely precise breath and touch. At £3,950, many computer musicians accused of “knob twiddling” by the creators probably won’t be able to afford the top-of-the-line model, but I do believe an instrument like this can easily, fairly cost this much, it’s a cost reasonable for musical instruments – and there is a £349 “Pico” edition for mortals.

There’s some madness, too, however. For the “instrument of the future,” the creators appear to have chosen MIDI, via USB, in place of a modern control protocol. Then, they plug the instrument into proprietary Mac software. (A Windows version is expected early next year.) There are software models of a Cello, a Clarinet, and a Synth, but there are also gigs of samples oddly loaded into SoundFont format. Given the futuristic ambitions and the sky-high price, closed software and antiquated I/O seem puzzling to me. I’m also skeptical of the approach here of piling on as many controllers as possible.

CORRECTION – CORRECTION! Yes, indeed – proprietary software and the limitations of MIDI wouldn’t make any sense – and apparently the creators agree. So the software will be open sourced, as will their custom-designed protocol. I’ve got all the details – required reading for anyone working on expressive instruments.

But don’t get me wrong. I think this fascinatingly bizarre instrument is worth exploring. The hardware design looks exceptionally luxurious, and there is some genuine design innovation in the controller the likes of which we’ve never seen in an instrument beyond a prototype or two.

Oh, and yes, I already want the Pico – and I think the Pico’s fewer controls may actually make more sense.

Basic specs:

Video of the key action, among others collected on YouTube:

The “Alpha,” the flagship:

• 120 keys, plus 12 percussion keys. (Wait — 120? Yes, you read that right.)
• Two strip controllers, one on each side.
• Breath pipe and mouthpiece.
• 11-bit resolution (2048 values) in the keys and strip controllers, 12-bit resolution (4098 values) for breath.
• Internal audio interface with mic pre, converters, and headphone out – so you need to carry this and a computer, but not this, a computer, and an audio interface.
• A “Base Station” with inputs for expression pedals and foot switches, which also contains the USB connection. This connects to a floor spike on which the instrument rests.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/alpha/

The Pico:

• 22 keys (18 for playing, four mode switches).
• Keys work via direct pressure and lateral pressure in both directions, as on the Alpha.
• Breath pipe.
• Strip controller.
• Same resolution: 11-bit keys, 12-bit breath.
• £349.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/pico/

To be honest, I’m quite a lot more interested in the Pico, not because I think cheaper is better, but because I’m curious whether you can’t be just as expressive with the more limited set of controls as with the kitchen sink approach of its big brother. After all, 22 keys is roughly the number you’d find on most reed instruments, including the Bassoon. True, the piano has 88 keys, but it also doesn’t really have anything else – and it’s able to have so many because of its form factor.

In fact, I’m sorry, but I love the Pico. It looks friendly, it looks portable, it isn’t terrifying-looking like the Alpha, and it seems it’d be more at home in a variety of musical venues than the Alpha. Sometimes less is more. Let’s see if I prove to be correct.

The software, though I hope you could also customize your own software rig using the MIDI input:

• Modular, allowing the routing of control inputs, sound sources and samples, loopers, and synthesis and effects.
• SoundFont oscillator.
• Physical models of the clarinet, cello.
• AU host for adding your own plug-ins. (And yes, this is where I think you’ll have the most fun.
• A system for triggering events, takes, key, and mapping scale.
• An interactive arrangement system for step sequencing.
• Oddly, an extensive Steinway D multi-sample. On the other hand, for years we’ve all have been playing bassoon and other reed samples on the keyboard, and in organ form for centuries, so now the reed instrument gets its revenge.

Source: Eigenlabs software specs.

The instrument’s creator, John Lambert, repeats the maxim heard at new instrument design conferences: “We’ve got pretty fed up with watching people twiddle knobs on stage.” Naturally, that means… turning to the Bassoonist, that sex icon of the orchestra? I’ll run with it.

One other tidbit from that article:

He says there is one high-profile musician who is about to take delivery of an Eigenharp, but won’t give any names.

Yeah, Herbie Hancock, we know it’s you. (Okay, they are an English company, so maybe it’s an English celeb, but really the question is whether Herbie is who they mean, or whether he’s filling out the pre-order as we speak. He’s like what we would all be like if we had a budget.)

Anyway, consider this a first look. I hope to get closer to the actual instrument soon.

The novelty of the iPhone or [your favorite device here] may fade. But part of what matters in mobile design is thinking about how to create interfaces and uses that can scale to the size of your palm. That can mean embracing radical simplicity, and reducing an interactive, digital musical object down to its essential noise-making functions. In acoustic instrument design, that means economizing sound production in a form. In the digital world, it means finding the interactive role you’d want to bring with you onstage, in the length roughly equivalent your fingertips to your wrist.

I’m a few weeks overdue actually writing about it, but one design I really admire is Star6, developed by Jason Forrest and Agile Partners. There are no awkward, gimmicky emulations of hardware interfaces here; it’s clear this was an interface that was illustrated in two-dimensions. It has funky nerdster chic color combos, with neon pink atop wood grain. It demonstrates that, in the space of a grid, you can fit triangles. It makes use of computer wifi capability to easily load samples without mucking around with over-designed clients – or record right on the iPhone. And it’s – surprisingly – one of the few apps to make heavy use of the accelerometer, which means rather than looking like you’re trying to text message someone, you can move it around. There’s a “grain” mode so that you can randomize sounds and not have everything synced all the time. I also enjoy the “reset” button. These are all design decisions that could make sense in more commercial software – and our own home-brewed Max/Pd patches and such, too.

Apparently Agile Partners were also influenced by the brightly-colored, handheld fun of the Buddha Machine, too; see their interview with the creator.

Star6
A lovely lineup of free samples, including the Buddha Machine

It’s not a perfect app (no mobile app really can be – that’s the fun of it), and it doesn’t do everything, but I find Star6’s personality rather irresistible. The real test of all of this is whether you can use it in real music-making. And, while my inbox is full of cheezy bands trying to ride the iPhone wave, I love the offbeat Star6 music launch party from Berlin, as documented in the video below. It ranges from Jason’s own work to Warp Records artist Jackson and ex-Chicks on Speed Kiki Moorse. And there’s a crazy iPhone + banjo + accordion cover of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” There are even some genuinely experimental sounds – not the sort of thing you’d expect at a launch event, sadly. (I wish we could have more of that.)

An Evening With Star6 – Berlin (Compilation) from Star6 on Vimeo.

More on the artists, and some of Star6 creator Jason Forrest’s own unique work:

Jason’s own artistic aesthetic, as seen in this video for “War Photographer,” does have this quirky efficiency to it, the sense of cut-out animation (in both visuals and music, I’d argue), and saturated, rich, retro colors.

The eclectic Berlin launch.

Jackson (Warp, FR)
Kiki Moorse (ex-Chicks On Speed,DE)
Song Band (US)
Jason Forrest (CRD, US)
Guido Mobius (Karaoke Kalk, DE)
Ben Butler & Mousepad (SCT/DE)
DJ’s: Finkobot & Marius Reisser

Jacki Terrasse / Joseph (@ Maria)
An Der Schilling Brücke
10243 Berlin

For more on the artists:
myspace.com/moorse
myspace.com/jacksonand
myspace.com/benbutlerandmousepad
myspace.com/guidomoebius
myspace.com/jason_forrest
myspace.com/songbandmyspace
myspace.com/finckobot
myspace.com/mariusreisser

Video shot by Martin Sulzer
Photos by Marco Macrobi

Complete sets:
Ben Butler and Mousepad
Guido Mobius
Kiki Moorse
Jason Forrest

There’s a curious distinction in hardware keyboards. You’ll find plenty of keyboards geared for performance with software at the low-end to mid-range. But if you want a keyboard with uncompromising durability and action – and you’re willing to pay more and lift more weight – those choices suddenly disappear. Suddenly, you have to buy a workstation keyboard or something with built-in sounds or even built-in speakers. What if you want a really uncompromising keyboard to use with software and nothing else?

It’s almost as though manufacturers assume “serious” musicians want to gig with built-in sounds on a standalone keyboard. That’s a pretty stunning assumption in the year 2009, given the versatility, reliability, and unmatched sound quality and diversity of software instruments. If you’re looking for a controller alone, your options are limited. M-Audio, Novation, and others have some great affordable options, but nothing really high-end. Roland, Yamaha, and Casio have some nice controllers, but the higher-end models aren’t dedicated to the task, and therefore there’s no way to dedicate all your dollars to the controller itself. (Dig deeper, and there’s still more sacrifices to make – yes, you can have x, but then we take away y…) My short list would probably be Doepfer’s lovely keyboard in a road case and Studiologic – and that’s about it.

Studiologic’s new Numa Nero, therefore, looks like the serious controller a lot of us have been waiting for. It’s a full, 88-note keyboard made for serious musicians. Yes, part of it is plastic, but plastic doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap” – good-quality plastic can be more durable than other materials. And the design itself finally focuses on getting you the best-possible keybed and action, assuming your software will take care of the sound generation.

• Graded hammer action (essential for piano players, as it makes the lower end heavier than the higher end)
• The last key mechanism design by late Fatar founder/designer Lino Ragni
• Double-dipped, “full-body” solid black keys – not hollow black keys. (The press release points out that most digital pianos have hollow keys, which is something I can verify. Unless you play in C major all the time, this is a major problem.)
• 20 dynamic curve settings which “sense” playing in real-time and respond accordingly. It sounds like the piano action equivalent of anti-lock brakes; I have to try it to understand what they mean!
• 4 zones with independent velocity curves, MIDI, program, pedal, and control settings
• Two pedal inputs, plus an illuminated side wheel controller. (The side is an unusual place for a wheel, but I could still see being able to reach it live.)

Now, what’s missing from all of this is a control surface, which bothered me initially – you don’t, for instance, get faders to use as drawbars. Upon reflection, though, I actually think having all that empty space is a huge advantage. If you’re an organ player, you can add a drawbar controller. If you’re controlling unusual instruments, you could add a touchscreen-equipped laptop. Or add a monome. You get the idea.

And the best feature of all may be this: “An aluminum back piece slides out to support another keyboard, sound module, or laptop, without the need for another stand.”

No, my only remaining gripe is that, while the keyboard supports aftertouch, it’s monophonic aftertouch, not polyphonic. Poly aftertouch seems to be a dying breed, but it would certainly have qualified this keyboard as “ultimate.” I’m nonetheless dying to play the Numa Nero. I’ve been waiting a long time for a worthy controller that doesn’t try to make sounds or arrange beats for you or do anything other than talk to your software setup, and this could be it.

US$1274, which goes to prove my point – focus entirely on the controller, and you can keep the cost low without compromise. Weight: 57.3 ponds.

There’s also a 22-pound Numa Nano coming at winter NAMM; keep your eyes out for that one – if it could be just as brilliantly-designed but more liftable, it could be the perfect companion, a nano on the road and a Nero back in the studio (or when you’ve got transport).

Numa Nero Product Page

And yes, it’s worth considering the entire Studiologic range. Ironically, the line they call “vintage” is the one with lots of added controls. They’re absurdly cheap for the quality, have action that can beat most of the pricier options out there, and immensely logical designs that pack maximum playability into the weight and form factor. The designs are, charitably, “workmanlike,” but if it’s more playable, who cares? I also understand they’re easy to service. Now, the only remaining question is why the Italian-based Studiologic seems to be so alone in getting this area right.

Musicians and artists now have the power to fuse visuals, sound, and interaction, to make a spectacle, an album, and a game all at once. But with the blank canvas of three different media before you, what form should that fusion take?

Space shooters with pounding electronic beats behind them have cleared some of the way. Now it’s ambient music’s turn. In the game Osmos, you become a mysterious particle, floating amongst gravity wells in various fields of material. By carefully navigating, applying just the right vector force to move through the shifting landscape, you merge with other particles and escape to safety.

http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/

The move from “shoot stuff” to “move” or “eat” seems to be rising in popularity, with games like fl0w and Spore’s initial “cell stage” encouraging nonviolent navigation. To me, there’s something happening to the zeitgeist, perhaps a renewed awareness of cosmic (micro- or macroscopic) being, and of movement that draws on free-floating physics.

Even amongst a wave of games in this mode,when you actually play Osmos, you realize that it is something different and special. The design makes ingenious use of different kinds of movement and pacing through its different modes, at one point calling upon you to hurtle around a black hole, then move at nearly imperceptible speeds through a seemingly impossible-to-traverse petri dish of massive particles. No less than a shooter, it connects to the id and survival instinct. Pac-Man, the most successful arcarde game of all time, and one of the few that sucked in men and women in equal measure, was noted for its emphasis on eating as the mechanic. Consuming stuff appeals to everyone.

Of course, this is on a music site, and with good reason: what makes Osmos work is that Osmos is musical. It’s immediately beautiful and delicate, a perfect aesthetic union of the texture of the music and the on-screen arrangements of particles. More importantly, the music is woven directly into game play, providing subtle cues for dangers, and underscoring the pace of gameplay. You can only solve a level by managing speed and motion, and the music helps provide both the literal indications of speed and help your head get into the right zone to lose yourself in the world. If blips in early arcade games helped create a zone of play trance, now we have spectacular ambient soundtrack of music by Loscil, Gas/High Skies [Microscopics], Julien Neto, and Biosphere.

The music isn’t simply a beautiful soundtrack to the game. The game really feels like an extension of the world of the music. Put it all together, and something magical happens in this $10 game: you hear the music in a new way.

I spoke to the lead designer behind the game, programmer/animator Eddy Boxerman, along with musical-sonic collaborator Mat Jarvis aka Gas aka High Skies.

Peter: I found it amusing that some of the game press have stumbled around looking for a name for a new genre here, the "eat other stuff" category. To me, the basic game controls could be traced back to early titles like Asteroids. What are the games that have inspired you, either specifically or generally?

Eddy: Some people are dubbing the gameplay type as "eat ‘em up", as opposed to the classic "shoot ‘em up". But it’s true, the physics/controls have more in common with classic games such as Asteroids and Gravitar. The only "modern" game that otherwise influenced me was Katamari Damacy. It’s funny: when I sent out the first prototype to friends, I was concerned they would think the game was too similar to Katamari. That’s when I heard about flOw, which I’ve tried to steer stylistically clear of ever since. I guess it’s an archetype though, and the comparisons have been inevitable. As for Spore, Osmos was about one year into development when I saw the first preview footage of its "cell stage". On top of that, I learned that Will Wright had hired Brian Eno to do the music! I definitely had a "why should I bother?" moment at that point. But here we are, a couple years later, and I think we’ve managed to put out a unique game with a great mix of gameplay, sound, and visuals.

Peter: Ha – well, I’m glad you “bothered”! One thing that I think is really unique about Osmos is the gravitational mechanic. How did this come about?

Eddy: I was (and probably still am) a sci-fi kid. And when I read about real phenomena like colliding galaxies, retrograde planets, and the like, my mind goes to stange and wonderful places. That said, the Spacecraft Dynamics course I took during my engineering degree definitely played a large part in putting those mechanics and levels together. Thanks, Professor Misra! :)

Peter: How are the physical mechanics of the game constructed? This is essentially two-dimensional vector math, yes? Were there refinements you needed to make in order to keep performance up, or to keep the levels playable?

Eddy: That’s a big question! But yes, essentially it’s 2D vector math, though we make use of some 3D math (including quaternions) on the particle systems. The majority of the physics is quite simple though — first year bachelor’s stuff: F = ma, conservation of mass and momentum, gravitational laws, basic time integration, etc. We follow the spirit of the laws, but not always the letter. For instance, if you look at the Earth’s solar system in its entirety, you wouldn’t even see most of the planets; that doesn’t make for a very playable game though. As such, we took many liberties when it comes to scale, constants and exponents in the equations. The majority of the work was in the tweaking of those values to make the game /feel /good.

Peter: How did you prototype the game? What was the process of evolution like? Were there any failed attempts along the way?

Eddy: I put together the first prototype starting from a NeHe OpenGL tutorial. I added some basic physics, mouse controls, some highly unoptimised collision detection code, and voila, I had something to play with. After that, I immediately integrated [cross-platform 3D audio API] OpenAL, as the game was just begging for sound and music. I then hunted for some good sounds (discovering freesound.org in the process), put together a simple looping song (my first rough and humbling attempt to create digital music), and sent it out to a few friends. I’ll make that version available for free someday… when I’m feeling brave.

As for failed attempts, there were tons of shelved experiments and features that were cut. One interesting problem was the difficulty curve of the gravitational levels. In fact, the first gravity levels looked a great deal like the "Warped Chaos" levels do today: several free-floating Attractors in a sea of regular motes. I found it incredibly difficult, however, to make a "beginner" version of those levels. If the gravity was too weak, the Attractors had little apparent effect; too strong, and the level became incredibly difficult. I stuggled with this for a long time, until I hit on the idea of putting one, immobile Attractor in the center, with everything else orbiting around it. This allowed for the creation of systems with strong gravity effects, but long-term stability. It seems so obvious now, especially given the example of our solar system, but it wasn’t back then. In the end, these are some of the coolest levels in Osmos — practically its "signature" level type. Moral of the story: necessity really is the mother of invention.

Peter: What is the visual engine like? The sound engine?

Eddy: As I mentioned, I bootstrapped from a NeHe tutorial, but that’s all been replaced at this point. It’s now a homegrown engine using OpenGL. It doesn’t make any use of pixel/vertex shaders, so it runs on a wide variety of hardware. The majority of our texture work is done in Photoshop.

[The sound engine is] a wrapper we’ve built around OpenAL. At a basic level, all we ever do is mix and adjust the gain and pitch of our sounds and music. This allows us to run on generic sound hardware. But we do make extensive use of those "effects", and it’s possible to get a great deal of variety and feedback with them. In the end, it’s all about the quality of our sound sources, and the algorithms that adjust and smooth the gain and pitch of each.

Peter: For pitch shifting, were you able to do that natively in OpenAL?

Eddy: Yes, OpenAL supports pitch shifting at the software level. I ported our sound engine to use DirectSound at one point, and found that it’s pitch shift range is rather limited. We reverted back to OpenAL.

Peter: One thing that really strikes me about the game that is its use of pacing. Even without the obvious technique of allowing the user to control speed, there’s this extraordinary contrast between levels that require you to move quickly, that require you to anticipate the rate of movement along a vector of other objects, or that require you to move almost imperceptibly slowly. Was this an early goal, or something that evolved out of developing the game concepts?

Eddy: It evolved from the game concepts themselves. We tried to fully explore the fundamental controls and game space of Osmos, and converged on a number of interesting regions and structures that were fun to play with/in. Some people actually "complain" that the pacing of the game isn’t consistent across levels — some are fast, some slow — but that wasn’t our goal. In a sense, we’re merely presenting the results of a great deal of research and exploration into the space, with our sole requirement being that the levels are fun and interesting. We wanted it to be a game of concepts and understanding, not speed. The addition of time-warping allowed us to break free from that, expand our scope, and include a much larger variety of levels, as some have both fast and slow moments in them; we wanted the player to be able to control the pace and difficulty to their level of comfort.

Peter: Connecting the action to music, how important is the use of music in conveying time?

Eddy: I think pitch-shifting the music and sound effects helps players track time-warping in an inutitive way. Without these aural cues, the mental connection would be incomplete. That said, I sometimes test the game without sound, and it’s totally playable — just much less immersive.

Peter: At what stage did you involve the musical element? How was that relationship established?

Mat: Eddy first contacted me two or three years ago about using one of my tracks on Osmos (“Gas – Discovery”). He sent me a basic alpha version where the game was literally flat circles on a plain background, but even back then with the simple graphics and no sound it was compelling. I think it was at this early stage that I sent him a copy of another High Skies track, “The Shape of Things to Come,” which he also used a section from. It wasn’t too long later that he sent me a version of Osmos with most of the music that made it to the release version and it all just complimented each other beautifully.

Eddy has done a great job choosing music that compliments the game and graphics, and they also compliment the music. I think he’s done a great job overall as well, keeping his vision consistent for the look and feel of the Osmos world. Even though some of the levels are quite varied; some are quite chilled, others fast paced, nothing seems out of place. He has created a new world that’s both microscopic and macroscopic.

Peter: The musical and sound effect elements really do blend effortlessly. Mat, I know you made substitute sounds – how did this help blend the aesthetic?

Mat: I made the rebound noise when you bounce off the walls/ boundary. The original sound was quite hard and metallic with a lot of reverb, and I suggested a softer echoey sound. There was nothing wrong with the original, but it made the boundary feel quite hard and cold like being in a metal tank. I sent Eddy some analogue samples, using a [vintage Roland keyboard] Jupiter 6 with varying delays/ echoes. Because the tones are so pure and tuned, Eddy pitched them slightly to fit with the various keys of the different music.

Eddy: In general, it was a matter of searching and experimentation for the "right" set of sounds that fit well together — which can be a lengthy but rewarding process. Once integrated, minor gain and pitch adjustments helped fit it all together.

Mat provided the bounce sound, as well as the continuous absorb/being-absorbed sounds. The other sounds were created/shared on freesound by the users Elektrocell, fran_ky and Jovica. (Check out the Osmos credits in the readme.html for details.)

Peter: I recently spoke to Crystal Method, and while they’ve done some notable game scores, they actually said they wouldn’t want their music to be placed in a game context at which the speed changed, that it’d lose something. This seems like the opposite of that. Now, maybe it’s easy to take for granted with ambient music as opposed to something beat-driven like Crystal Method, but do you think there’s something special that allows this music to be adaptive in that way?

Mat: I think that in the right circumstances music with drums could work well and may even highlight the time-shifting more. Of course with the wrong game and wrong music it could sound terrible too.

Eddy: It’s a delicate issue. Out of the context of the game, I think it would seem wrong. There were also some pieces of music I tried which didn’t lend themselves well to this kind of manipulation, and which didn’t get included as a result. But with these songs, and everything working together in-game, I feel the whole experience is stronger as a result. I’m just glad Mat and the other artists agreed — or at least… didn’t object. ;-)

Peter: Hey, I think if you can write music that sounds good played at a different speed, that’s nice.

Osmos seems to me a musical experience, in that the sense of the music is transformed by the visuals and the interaction with them. Do you think it’s possible that audiovisual interfaces could go even further in terms of their impact on the music?

Mat: Yes, it almost seems as though Osmos creates a world for the music to exist.

I’ve always liked music visualisers like the Processing and Cymatics stuff, they’re quite compelling to watch how they react to the music, so it would be interesting to go the other way; by manipulating/ sculpting abstract shapes which then modify or even create sounds and music, especially using the new controllers like the Wii, [Microsoft’s] Project Natal and Sony’s Motion Controller instead of the mouse.

Eddy: I totally agree with Mat. Yes, please! More feedback between music, visuals and interactivity — in all directions. I’d love to experiment more on all of these fronts. In general, I think games such as Audiosurf and Auditorium, while great, have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Interactive musical "toys" such as [Nintendo/Toshio Iwai’s ]ElectroPlankton or Dub Selector are another great direction; and Rock Band Network is about to expand the market in a huge way. It’s exciting!

Peter: Along those lines, this is obviously a new take on music distribution in a way that goes well beyond what titles like Rock Band have done. Are there other cases in game history that to you have done that? Is there potential in these new outlets, outlets that are more accessible to independent developers (Steam, Direct2Drive, Xbox Live Arcade, iTunes App Store), to really change game development?

Eddy: Wow, that’s another big question. Really, I just felt the music was such an important part of the experience in Osmos that we should show the artist and track names during the game. But now that you mention it, I can’t think of another game that has done this, besides games like Rock Band where the song /is/ the game/level. That said, one way I’d love to push this evolution is to "augment" music videos with interactivity: ie. into music video-games. (The term "game" could be used rather loosely here.) Everyday Shooter does this, though Jon Mak actually created the music /for/ the game in that case — which rocks — but collaborations could lead to some really amazing things in this direction.

Peter: Eddy, Mat, thank you. Whether it’s in the form of a game or an audiovisual performance, we’ll certainly continue to explore these areas. And – hint, hint – Osmos 2, with multiplayer? Just a thought.

Osmos Trailer from hemisphere games on Vimeo.