For anyone whose complaint about OSC aka OpenSoundControl is that it lacks broad hardware support, I have one word for you:

Unicorns.

OSC now runs on magical unicorns. (Would a unicorn not want high-resolution, human-readable messages encoded with time-stamps? I think they would. And because OSC is transport-independent, it can absolutely run on magical Unicorn Beams.)

No idea what this post is about? Don’t worry — I’ll have a talking unicorn narrate a proper, sophisticated, complete introduction to OSC for beginners soon. They’re magical, so they can make complex topics lucid to any audience.

Yesterday, I wrote, entirely tongue in cheek and not expecting anything to actually come of it:

I think maybe I’ll start running screaming headlines with things I want in them, if only for good luck. Tomorrow on CDM: “You Know What Annoys Me? The Fact That We Don’t Have Unicorns. Magic Unicorns. Who Speak OSC.”

Today, via Twitter, Max patcher and audiovisual Merlock Andrew Lovett-Barron of Toronto wrote to me:

@peterkirn I made you a unicorn that speaks OSC.

And here it is, for your enjoyment, in Max 5 patch format:

http://andrewlb.com/max/Oscicorn_for_CDM.maxpat

This is, of course, very silly. But it’s an excuse to pitch Andrew’s site, which has lots of patching and coding goodies and visual creations:

http://andrewlb.com/

And perhaps more importantly, OSC now has a mascot. That means t-shirts, plushies, costumes, the lot. Your job: what should the name of this unicorn be?

All MIDI has is an antiquated DIN cable. Oh, yeah, that and millions of compatible devices. We hope OSC support won’t be as rare as unicorns.

Side note: please don’t troll this post, tempting as that may be. It’ll make the unicorn cry.

MIDI control of analog devices from Michael Una on Vimeo.

John at HighlyLiquid has been busy this year- he’s got a new kit out and one in the works that really step up the game. You may be familiar with his previous kits, which add MIDI control to Speak & Spell, Atari 2600, or pretty much every Casio. HighlyLiquid also stocks more open-ended kits which can add MIDI control to pretty much anything- I used one in my MAKE Magazine article last year to build a drum-playing robot.

The new MD24 falls into the latter category. It takes a MIDI input and gives you 24 discrete +5V outputs that can be used to drive relays, transistors, or servo motors. Functionally, the MD24 is similar to HighlyLiquid’s MSA-T or MSA-R kits, except that you now have 24 outputs instead of just 8- a significant improvement.

Certainly, people with a lot of time on their hands will say “I can do that myself with Arduino, running MIDI through the USB-to-serial converter, and I’ll build a custom Max/MSP patch to control the parameters.” Sure you can, but personally I prefer to spend only as much time as it takes to get my musical systems up and running, instead devoting my time to actually making music and practicing my live set. If you are like me and love DIY stuff, but also don’t want to spend 6 months programming your own ATMEGA chips, then I recommend you consider this type of solution.

I found the kit very easy to assemble. The board is laid out with a decent amount of space between the components and is clearly labeled. The online instructions were very thorough and identified any potential problems. I was able to assemble the kit in about 40 minutes and I was able to hook the MD24 up to my handmade sequencer synth very quickly. It all worked on the first try. (Disclosure: I’ve built one of these kits before and pretty much knew what I was doing, but I didn’t find it all that difficult the first time I did it either)

I made a little video to demonstrate the system in action, which works a lot better than trying to describe it with text. (See top)

My conclusion: The HighlyLiquid MD24 MIDI Decoder kit is a very affordable, powerful solution for all your analog sequencing and control needs. My imagination was really sparked by this one, and the potential applications are immense. HighlyLiquid bridges the gap between the analog and digital worlds very elegantly and with a minimum of time and fuss- 100% win.

MD24 MIDI Decoder kit: $44.95 at HighlyLiquid.com

And, a teaser: There’s a DIY MIDI controller kit in the works which looks totally awesome. I hope it’s released soon because I got all kinds of plans for it.

In LA’s DubSpot Live 8 Sessions, I shared a panel with Daedalus, talking about design, live playing, the monome, and how limiting tools for performance can be powerful. Austin gets its own cast of presenters this weekend.

Sadly, I can’t be in all places at once. If I could, I’d be in Austin – twice over – this weekend. Handmade Music session two hits with an all-new set of learning and noise-making. Whether new to electronics making or an old hand, there’s something to absorb from some of the best mad sound scientists in the world. And our friends at DubSpot are in town, too, with a big lineup of production, recording, and performance techniques centering on Ableton Live 8. And on top of all of that, the city is host to the brilliant art + sound East Austin Studio Tour – a fantastic idea coupling events, studio tours, and art exhibitions I hope we steal in cities like my home New York.

This is all of interest to a tiny fraction of a percent of our readers since it’s really relevant only if you’re in Austin, but therein lies my plea — if you are in Austin, we could use your help documenting this weekend’s events. Get in touch, and we should be able to hook you up with a free pass for the DubSpot event, plus — well, whatever I come up with to thank you for videoing and/or writing about Handmade Music.

First up, Handmade Music:

This sunday is Handmade Music Austin #2.

We’ll be building 4ms’ Autonomous Bassline Generator. The upper division class is filled but there should be some space in the beginner class. Even if there aren’t any seats available, there will be all kinds of things happening in the gallery space for EAST. You can play with the Thingamagoop 2, Eric Archer’s noisemakers, Andromeda Space Rocker kits as well as other handmade instuments.

Noon – Gallery space opens. Bleep Labs, Eric archer, and friends interactive exhibit.
4 pm – Free beginner class
6 pm – Upper division synth class $45 at door
6:30 – Free performances :
Red X Red M
Douglas Ferguson/Steve Marsh
TelepathiK Friend

Red X Red M
Douglas Ferguson/Steve Marsh
TelepathiK Friend

As always, see:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com

DubSpot’s event includes two full days of programming covering production and performance. It’s about Ableton Live 8, but it’s also more broadly about how to make your tracks sound better, how to get them into the world, and how to be successful as an artist both in your releases and live. Austin includes many of the folks I’ve been hanging out with in NY and LA, plus favorites like Ableton veteran sound designer and Keyboard contributor Francis Preve. Christopher Willits will also take a first look at Max for Live and talk about how he uses Max/MSP to process his playing. And Saturday night is a FunkAid benefit with DJ OBaH, Ocote Soul Sounds, Akina Adderley & The Vintage Playboys, and Daetron Vargas.

I expect we can get a guest in if you cover the event for CDM.

http://www.dubspot.com/abletontour/austin.html

Say you’re an up-and-coming crew with a turntable and some mics. You’ve got a gig this Friday at the middle school gym (the janitor has been bribed appropriately) and the boys on the corner have been passing out your flyers to all the lovely ladies. Everything’s set, except you heard that Kool Herc is coming to battle. Herc and his mighty sound system schooled you last go-round, so you know you need something fresh to rock the bodies proper. Your DIY solution? The 55-gallon drum sound system.

Step 1: Get yourself two steel 55-gallon barrels and two 15-inch subwoofer cones.

(Kool Herc shown for scale)

Step 2: Have one of your buddies who works at the auto shop around the corner cut a hole in the bottom of each barrel. Drill some holes to mount the speaker facing out from the bottom of the barrel.

Step 3: Face the can towards the floor and have your buddy weld some 6-inch pieces of pipe on to boost it up a bit. Hook up your dad’s hi-fi stereo amp, plug in your mixer, and turn it up as loud as it will go (10 block radius). Get those bodies movin’.

Big thanks to DJ Mister P-Body and the book Yes Yes Y’All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade. This idea comes from a story told by Tony Tone and DJ Baron about their early experiences as an MC/DJ duo.

Ed.: Now I can add this to my regrets about school, along with not taking shop to hone my welding skills — seriously, that should be mandatory. (Yeah, like I needed that extra AP. Dumb.) But I’m curious: have any of our readers tried this? Any tips to share? Perhaps we need a DIY speaker summit to try as many amplification and transduction options as possible — complete with welding lessons, natch. -PK

A new, free software release for Novation’s Launchpad could make your device a lot more usable – and it shows how useful OSC can be for hardware, even if that isn’t OSC hardware. (Now, imagine what OSC-native hardware can do.)

There are plenty of misunderstandings about OSC and the monome out there. Among them, there’s the notion that OSC won’t work without “extra software,” or that the only reason to use OSC messages with something like Novation’s Launchpad grid controller would be to emulate a monome.

Here’s the secret: even if you still don’t know what OpenSoundControl is, the idea is to make messages readable.

Novation released the MIDI message mappings for its Launchpad — that’s a good thing! (See previous post.) But because of the utilitarian and somewhat arbitrary way in which MIDI describes devices, MIDI messages just aren’t terribly readable. For instance, one button is called 50h (in hex), or 80 (in decimal). Where’s 80? Uh…. yeah, no one knows. And simple grid devices like the Launchpad and monome illustrate just how abstract MIDI is. The Launchpad has an 8×8 grid of buttons. You might expect them to be numbered from 0,0 to 7,7, or 1,1 to 8,8. But that’s not actually possible in MIDI.

Will Crossland to the rescue. He’s been working on an OSC wrapper for the Launchpad in Max/MSP (easily ported to other environments if you like). This makes the Launchpad more usable and more logical. It’s just one of what I think could be plenty of efforts to use arrays of buttons on music controllers more fluidly and flexibly. That, in turn, could take the DIY musical ingenuity shown by the monome community to the next level.

Oh, and Will even has an open MIDI networking tool, also built in Max – relevant to the earlier discussion of the day.

http://www.chippanfire.com/SoccoChico/Software

Will’s full description follows.

I thought you might be interested in an OSC wrapper I have been making for the new Launchpad.

From the off, this IS NOT simply a way to make the Launchpad act like a Monome. Oh no. This is a wrapper for converting the MIDI communication provided by Novation into a more human readable (and memorable!) OSC formatted protocol. Additionally the wrapper incorporates a banking system that provides one layer of unaltered MIDI communication (for connection and use with Ableton Live, with all the expected features in-tact) and eight layers (switchable from the Launchpads surface) of OSC transmitting (and controlled) decoupled grid action.

The wrapper is based in MaxMSP, but uses it only for selecting MIDI IO ports, udp communication to the ‘localhost’ (via netsend/netreceive to make it Pd compatible) and a single [js] object with the actual handler/wrapper inside it. Oh, and there’s a local loopback function for testing you have the write MIDI IO selected for each Launchpad you hookup… The wrapper (theoretically, not that I own a fleet) supports up to six Launchpads, each uniquely addressable. If you get really greedy, the javascript could be altered to support more; it is just a 3d array of data elements at its core, currently limited to [6] in one dimension…. The limit of six is a reflection of the maximum number of control surfaces Ableton Live supports.

Specs at a glance:

– Supports up to 6 Launchpad devices, each individually addressable via OSC/MIDI
– Retention of the default MIDI mode for use with Ableton (via internal midi bus)
– 8 OSC mode ‘user banks’ (per device) where the Launchpad (well, technically the wrapper) sends/receives OSC using a markup similar to that used by another popular ‘grid’ device [though it does not directly support Monome markup, as row/col/frame etc messages are not used)
– user bank switching from the Launchpad via top row of buttons
– retains all data received on any bank (even if the Launchpad is not currently focused on it) and updates the surface accordingly when swiching banks

As the handler magic is ALL done via a single javascript file, ANYONE can edit the functionality in their favourite text editor. You then need only MaxRuntime to run the code inside. While this is not an ‘open-source’ solution by any stretch, it can at least be tailored to an individuals needs without spending any money. As the wrapper will communicate happily with Pure Data, an avenue exists for freeware development of OSC patches that use the Launchpad as an interface (via the wrapper).

The appropriate files (along with suitably concise/detailed) documentation can be downloaded from my website (http://www.chippanfire.com/SoccoChico/Software)

Finally, the OSC protocol I have used is fully detailed in the download. It is essentially an extended version of the basic subset (i.e. /press and /led) employed by the Monome. My intention is not provide a ‘Monome Emulator’; the similarity in protocol is both a courteous nod to the Monome creators, and logical progression. The Monome OSC protocol is clearly well thought and well suited to addressing a 2D grid so why reinvent the wheel? I’d expect any sensible grid based OSC controller to use a similar markup as the original is so well thought out…

I have added extensions that allow for the multiple device/multiple bank addressing, as well as some extra ‘data’ for the extended colour set available to the LEDs. If you want to use the wrapper with Monome apps you’ll have to get your hands dirty converting between the two OSC protocols (not that that would be too difficult). The lack of support for /row, /column etc messages is just one example of why this is technically an inferior device to the Monome; that said, i’d still be making a wrapper like this for the banking/multiple device features it enables if I had the budget to buy such a beautiful device…

p.s. Where I am saying OSC, at this stage I really mean ‘OSC formatted’. The implementation is limited to using the netsend/netreceive objects in Max (which perhaps limits their reception to Max/Pd?). I’m a bit too new to using OSC to say I am ‘definitely’ sending Full Packet Messages that could be picked up by any OSC client…. I’d be happy for someone with more know-how to take the final steps in making it truly OSC compliant…

I imagine this could generate plenty of feedback, so fire away.

Max For Live Sneak Peak from max4live on Vimeo.

Suddenly, I have an image of American Ableton hackers patching on their MacBook over Thanksgiving turkey.

After a long, long wait, a public beta of Max for Live is available. The software incorporates the full version of Max/MSP/Jitter – complete with visual output, video processing, and 3D capabilities – with the Live host. Max patches operate with all their usual capabilities as devices inside Live. User interface elements are available to give Max patches conventional Ableton device interfaces, and there are even pre-built elements for useful functions like frequency displays and MIDI patterns. Via the Live API, Max for Live patches are also able to control most elements of the Live interface.

Because of Max’s networking capabilities, Max for Live devices can also be used to route OpenSoundControl data into Live. That isn’t necessarily with the same ease as you might route MIDI, and there’s still no native support in the Live interface, but it is a step forward.

Our friend Michael at max4live.info has been busy documenting the new software. His overview video is at top, and for OSC coverage, see his tutorial [part 1 | part 2].

Updated: Pricing has now been announced.
Max for Live is not included with Live 8 or even (perhaps surprisingly) Live Suite. It will be a US$299 / EUR249 download, available separately, on top of the cost of Live 8 or Live Suite 8. If you already own Max, you’ll have a set of crossgrades available:
1. You own Live. You can add Max for Live for US$99.
2. You don’t own Live, and want just Live. You can get that and Max for Live for US$449.
3. You don’t own Live, and want the whole Suite. Suite plus Max for Live crossgrade, US$699.

Total cost:
Max owners without Live: US$449-699
Live owners without Max: US$299 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8
Max + Live owners: US$99 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8

I think this could arguably be worth the investment, but given the discontinuation of support for developing VST, RTAS, and AU plug-ins in Max – a feature that was formerly free – I expect some resistance. Also, as previously announced, there is no known Max for Live “runtime,” meaning Max patch developers don’t really have a distribution outlet for work made in Max for Live, other than other Max for Live users.

Sign up for the public beta on Ableton’s site, and you’ll be able to grab the downloads (details below). You must be an Ableton Live 8 owner, though you don’t need to own Max 5:
http://www.ableton.com/maxforlive/beta

At the bottom of the page, you’ll have a direct link to download Live 8.1 (the official current build of Live is 8.0.9 otherwise), and a link to Cycling’s site to download Max. (Note: the Max link worked this morning, then promptly disappeared, so it’s possible they’re uploading an updated build is now back up.)

There are full instructions there. I was able to simply click a button and become a beta tester; hopefully you have the same experience. You’ll need to install two pieces of software, both Ableton Live 8.1 on the Live side and Max 5.1.

For the Python-based Live API, and the MIDI and OSC interfaces based on it, this should also come as good news. Live 8.1 should theoretically represent a more stable, feature-complete, fully documented version of the Live API under the hood in Live. That means even without Max for Live, it may be possible to, say, route an OSC input into Live as easily as a MIDI control surface.

If you’d like to join in with other people working on hacking Ableton Live and ask questions, try out our Noisepages group, which should now be functioning properly with a forum, wire, and networking features. More to come with this, with Max for Live, with OSC, with other tools, with… yeah, I’m glad I own a coffee maker.

http://noisepages.com/groups/ableton-hackers

Clean is overrated. If you’re ready for a little digital dirt in your synth life, powered by the open-source Arduino hardware, Marc Nostromo’s Squealer is for you. Built atop the wonderful, Arduino-based Pocket Piano kit by Critter and Guitari, it’s a full-blown, simple, digitally-gritty synthesis engine.

You get a monosynth, some fixed waveforms, a resonant filter, decay, and some aliasing tricks for extra grit. The big news: the Arduino Piano Squealer is now under a GPL license.

Official Arduino Piano Squealer Synth Page has everything you need
Announcement of GPL v3
All at Mustalk@noisepages.com

Here’s what it sounds like:

SAP+BOM+Dodgey Eighties Ringing Reverb:
apbom.mp3

Eery piano:
ap-eery.mp3

SAP+Flanging Mini KP:
ardboy1.mp3

Novation’s Launchpad, its affordable (<$200) "grid" controller, may have a big Ableton logo on it. But underneath, it's just a MIDI controller. Bi-colored LEDs, containing a red and green element for red, green, and amber output (amber = red+green), can be triggered using simple MIDI note and control messages. That means, whether you're looking forward to Max for Live or you're sequencing in a tracker or writing Processing sketches, you can use the Launchpad just like any other MIDI controller.

One of the things I thought was a major demerit for Akai was the fact that they failed to ship a MIDI implementation for the Akai APC40. MIDI implementations are the charts of MIDI messages we've had since the very first MIDI devices came out in the 80s. They're usually printed in the back pages of the manual, and even the cheapest gear has often had one.

Score: Novation 1, Akai 0. Novation has done the MIDI documentation, and then some. Its MIDI “Programmers Reference” is out even before the official Launchpad ship date. And rather than just doing a MIDI chart and assuming people know how to read it, they’ve taken the care to fully explain the way MIDI messages work, how to calculate the right messages, and how to really use this. Experts will have all the information they need, but newcomers will also find they can spend a little time and learn how to do what they want.

Launchpad Support with Downloads (see Programmer’s Reference at the bottom)
Via: Novation released Launchpad Programming Guide, and Protocol [Nezoomie's Zen Wave Blog - great read]

It’s listed as “for Max/MSP programmers,” but anyone using MIDI will want to have a look; that’s obviously relevant to far more than just Max. (In fact, there’s not a single mention of anything specific to Max in the document.)

What might people do with stuff like this? Well, as of just four hours ago, Matt DiFonzo lets us know he’s written a simple monome emulator. It’s even got a clever name:

nonome – monome emulator for Novation Launchpad

There’s some bad news mixed with the good. Even with something as simple as a grid of buttons, MIDI isn’t as friendly as it could be. I still would like to have a MIDI editor for the Launchpad so you can reassign buttons if you like — that’s a feature, incidentally, available on rival Ohm and Block hardware from Livid Instruments. Also, the documentation reveals that Launchpad uses “a low-speed version of USB,” which runs at a maximum of 400 messages per second, thus taking 200 milliseconds to update a Launchpad’s LEDs. (There are some workarounds, but they’re … more work. Clarification: Once you double up messages, though, you can get this to a more acceptable gap, and that’s for updating all the LEDs, not the latency of input messages.)

Also, here’s a hint to Novation: use a Creative Commons license for that document. That way, your users will be free to document even more ingenious solutions and friendly guides. You win, and your users win. For instance, I have the illustration here, which I should be able to do for purposes of reporting on this story. But can I write my own how-to guide using your guide? Why not make it explicit to encourage me to do so? (They list the PDF as “proprietary,” though there’s no explicit license, and I think they just mean “proprietary” as in “what we’ve done on our hardware.”)

That’s a difference between open hardware and closed hardware, but I don’t even want to belabor the point — CC licenses are something a commercial company like Novation could easily use. In fact, if anyone at Novation or Ableton would like to talk to me about why I think it’s a good idea, I’d like to extend an open invitation. I’m no legal expert, but I can explain what it means to me as a user and developer, and connect you with some of the right people at Creative Commons and the CC-using community.

But those gripes aside, kudos to Novation for getting this documentation out here. I think it’s really good news for people experimenting with grid controllers. And we’ll be looking at how all of these tools, hardware and software, fit together, and how open source development can make them more powerful.

Patchers and coders and hackers: if you’re interested in working on interoperability between all this stuff, let us know.

Commercial developers are now releasing music creation apps for mobile game systems, in the form of the KORG DS-10 for Nintendo DS and Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP. But some of the best ideas still come from the homebrew community.

What’s most impressive about ToneSynthDS is not so much what it does as its interface, fitting all its functionality into the DS’ two compact screens. Its minimal interface finds an elegant arrangement of everything you most urgently need, with a sequencer screen on one DS screen and basic virtual analog synth parameters on the other. A 4 x 4 matrix next to the main sequencer grid lets you switch between patterns, in a step sequencer reminiscent of the monome and Tenori-On. There isn’t a whole lot of depth to event editing in this early version, but it could be a lovely way to sketch melodic patterns. (And some of those limitations come from the DS itself. Note, though, that this app gets a full 16 real-time channels on the original DS hardware to the Korg DS-10’s paltry two.)

Developer Fanta/Hotelsinus Sound Design has been posting mock-ups, demos, and now builds as he goes. That means that he gets feedback from an audience of readers and incorporates those as he develops the app – another key difference between the DIY/homebrew scene and conventional commercial development.

More good news: this DS app should also run as a PC VST in a forthcoming version, opening up the fun to folks using netbooks and laptops instead of the DS and creating a nice mobile-to-computer workflow.

http://ndscomposer.blogspot.com/

In related Nintendo DS news: If you’re thinking about getting the new DS-10 Plus Limited Edition of the KORG DS-10, you’ll need to get it for the region coding of your DS. (In other words, you probably won’t want to import it.) The “Dual Mode” functions are region-locked, so North American and European users can’t use the Japanese DS-10. That’s not such a big deal, as North American distribution was announced, and other regions are expected to follow, but it’s good to know. See details on the All Things KORG DS-10 blog. (Thanks, DS-10 Dominator!)

Check out some demo videos and a quick run-down on specs, and if you’ve got the capability to run homebrew, you can give this a try. Thanks to Art/toitoy for the tip!

• Two oscillators with fixed oscillators, ADSHR envelopes
• Filter section (in development)
• Ring modulation and “cross” mixing (cross-fading between oscillators)
• 16×16 step sequencer, 4×4 pattern selection

Clearly, there’s a lot of work still to be done, so test this build at your own risk. But it’s already good fun, and the coming roadmap looks logical, with filter options, disk rendering, song mode, and more in store. It’s also an interesting read as far as wrangling with emulators and some of the challenges of DS development.

Once upon a time, people made things from electronics. Boys, girls, laypeople made stuff. My Dad actually tinkered with Theremins growing up and subscribed to Popular Mechanics. Now, in an age of hyper-specialization, too many people assume that making sounds with geeky-looking, handmade electronics should be left to the pros. But give people some instruction and let them make some noise, and you might be surprised how eager people are to try something out. Noise making, it seems, is some sort of primeval human instinct.

So, it comes as little surprise that the wizards of Austin got lots of people into the act of electronic sonification. Led by Dr. Bleep, Eric Archer, and 8ms, they’ve kicked off the Texas iteration of Handmade Music Night, and send us the video to prove it.

There’s no reason you have to be left out of the fun, though – you can handmade some loud noises at home. Eric Archer has expanded the site for his freebie Mini Sound Rockers, the kit he used to get folks started at Handmade Music Austin:

http://ericarcher.net/devices/mini-space-rockers/

Check out the video below to see them in action. And I think we should definitely have, in addition to the schematics, a step-by-step tutorial. The gang in Austin also promises some ready-to-buy kits coming soon, so stay tuned.

More on the Handmade Music series around the world:
http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

And for another video of the Mini Space Rockers circuit, here’s a terrific creation from Switzerland, as suggested by Eric in comments:

The work is by datenkrieger75, using both Eric’s circuit and a hacked Gakken SX-150 bassline.