Stompboxes are back! Yes, software is great, but the gigging musician still loves something you can plug in and step on. The Messe show saw some traditionally rack-mounted gear reborn in stomp form.

Sure to be a huge hit, Roland’s BOSS RE-20 takes the beloved RE-201 Roland Space Echo and recreates it as a stompbox. It emulates all the major features of the RE-201, down to placement presets and tape flutter and magnetic head sound saturation, and adds a longer delay time — plus the ability to tap in delays with your foot. No pricing or availability yet that I’ve seen.

BOSS RE-20 Space Echo Product Page
Music thing weighs in with some thoughts.

At the other end of the spectrum, vocal processor maker TC-Helicon is best known for making big, do-everything racks. They’ve now taken the most popular features there, and repackaged as stomp boxes called VOICE|TONE. The idea is to perform all of the sweetening you’d normally apply in the studio onstage.

Brad Sucks, the one-man band known for Internet stardom and Brad’s brilliant title “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing”, is taking on laptop performance. First job: find a way to use limbs on your body other than your arms and hands, since those need to play the guitar.

Like many Ableton Live users, Brad finds his way to the Behringer FCB1010 foot pedal. Before you scoff at the brand name, this foot pedal’s configuration is unusual (ten stomp pedals, two “scene” pedals, and two expression pedals), and the price is ridiculously cheap (often US$150 or less).

Of course, it is from Behringer, which means there are lots of things wrong with it: it doesn’t work out of the box with Ableton Live, and it’s a pain to program. Enter an aggressive community with tutorials, homebrewed Windows editor software, patches, hardware mods, and even a $10 firmware hack. Brad has rounded up all of them in a central location so you can skip Googling and get straight to modding:

AES is supposed to be about high-end gear for audio engineers, but apparently no one told the sparring rival computer guitar effects makers.

In this corner, from Modena, Italy, the reigning champion: IK Multimedia AmpliTube. And in this corner, from Berlin, Germany, the challenger: Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2.

Photos and comparison after the break.

Digital guitar software/hardware combos? It’s on.

Just days after IK Multimedia shows its new version of AmpliTube with new effects and a new hardware stompbox / audio interface / DI box, rival Native Instruments unveils its own upgraded computer guitar rack with new effects and a new hardware stompbox / audio interface / DI box. Not only that, but both IK and NI are at the AES show, which, as the “Audio Engineering Society” moniker implies, is not usually where you’d expect to find new guitar kit.

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2

So, anything different about NI’s announcement (aside from the notable absence of Swedish models — see IK’s babefest promos)? Well, the Rig Kontrol 2 from NI is much sexier looking (silver instead of IK’s Barney-esque purple and black), and has an expression pedal, which is absent from IK’s box. And Native has the Boss LoopStation-like Loop Machine for layering loops on-the-fly. Both have gorgeous interfaces and terrific-sounding amp emulations and effects that easily rival hardware. It’s a good time for computer-based guitarists.

Now I’m off to the IK and NI booths to see if I can make these work for vocals and keyboards. (Any other non-guitarists using this stuff?)

More soon . . .

Stumbling around for the right foot pedal? Prostage hears you with their giant new foot pedals. (via Synthtopia) Looks like fine kit: all-metal, no plastic, delay-tap, LCD on some models (various alternatives) and GIANT LETTERS AND NUMBERS for the vision impaired. Their continuous controller pedal looks especially nice for sending volume to organs or other continuous controllers. (I always just feel around with my feet, but if you really need to know which pedal you’re tapping, here you go. Now if they could just light up . . .)

As for foot controllers, though, I’m still loyal to my new Behringer FCB-1010, which I bought after suggestions from you readers. I’ll check back in to let you know how that’s going with different apps.

How about you: who hear is playing with your feet? Show of toes, please?

Sure, at MIT building interactive LED-powered disco dance floors is a good way to decorate your dorm and procrastinate. But, Chris O'Shea of pixelsumo
reminds me, for the designers at Lightspace, it's serious business.
Clearly, the MIT students' DIY project was directly inspired by the
Lightspace team that's . . . wait a minute . . . headquartered in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Guess there's just something about Cambridge
that makes people want to build elaborate digital disco dance floors.
(See Chris' post on Lightspace)

Lightspace's interactive floors respond in subtle and ingenious ways,
which is why small children are so fond of them. (And, as we've learned
in the past on CDM, small children love heating up dance clubs.)

As seen on Slashdot: a group of students at MIT have constructed a Disco Dance Floor, with over 1,500 LEDs and covering 128 square feet. Dance on it, and pressure sensors trigger some 4,000 colors. Jeez, I knew I shouldn't have gone to Sarah Lawrence;
these MIT folks don't mess around. Not only are the colored patterns
surprisingly sophisticated, but it interfaces with a Linux audio player
to work with the grooves.

So how do you build your own? Check the detailed construction details,
though consider what they learned: don't ever do this: "Don't try to
build a disco floor in your lounge; it will consume your life. Now
there's a lesson they don't teach in any class." Okay, fine, but when
they say "As far as we know, there is no mention on the internet of
anyone home brewing a dance floor of anywhere near this complexity,"
can't you hear the gauntlet falling? (Hey, stop looking at me! I'm just a keyboard player.)

Dance Wednesday continues, so get your dancing shoes on. You
can trigger audio and video with a Dance Dance Revolution pad (or any
USB game controller).

Resources: You'll want some kind of PS2-to-USB converter so
you can plug it into your computer, for starters (here's an example). Then check out software like STEIM's JunXion (Mac OS X), which maps USB input to MIDI, or, better yet PSmaX (Mac/Windows), which is designed specifically for this purpose and runs standalone or (if you've got it) in Max/MSP. (Savvy Max users might also map the dance pad to the OSC
protocol.)

Examples of the system in action:

• Mapping tap dancing gestures to audio and video (Max/MSP)
• Geoff Matters rocks the DDR (with Max/MSP) at Remote Lounge
• Interactive Dance Dance Revolution performance
  with 4 DJs and 2 composers ganging up on one dancer (though in this
  case they actually just hooked the DDR up to a PlayStation and filmed
  the thing with a camera)
• DDR has even had life as installation art

Why would you want to do this, aside from the basic cool factor? A
dance pad could let your audience get up and jam, triggering sounds or
video, or you could use this as a cheap foot controller — and hey, if
you have four limbs, why should your hands have all the fun?

See also: game controllers as instruments, Unreal Tournament 2004 for music (part 1 and part 2), and how to use the P5 virtual reality glove with your Mac or PC.

As always, CDM is anxious to hear your tips, experiences, and see your
work, so just drop me a line if you're doing this kind of thing. I'll
even promote your next gig!

Guitarists have had the right idea for a long time: when you
run out of hands, get your feet in on the action. Now with us
keyboardists busying ourselves with complex synth patches and
triggering grooves from Ableton Live in live performance, the time is
right for mainstreaming the stompbox-style foot controller.

Strangely, finding an affordable (sub-$400) foot controller is hard to do these days. The first model I found was Behringer's FCB-1010
– but I was immediately suspicious. Behringer usually means a) cheaper
than hell (good), b) will fall apart after a couple of weeks if not
already dead on arrival (bad), and c) ripped off from someone else
(unethical). Ethics aside, cheap means nothing if the gear is crap.

Sure enough, the design of the Behringer is ripped off verbatim from Roland's FC-200,
which has a street just above US$360. Even the typeface and pedal shape
and layout is the same, for crying out loud! (See Roland's lawsuit against Behringer
for ripping off their effects pedals.) I'll opt for the Roland because
I trust the company, though if you're the sort who likes buying fake
Rolexes in Chinatown, be my guest with the FCB-1010.

So, I'm set to give the FC-200 a try — but has anyone else found other
MIDI controllers that are better? (And do me a favor, please don't buy
up the entire stock of FC-200s before I get mine!)

Jerry Halstead has taken a beautiful photo of the Tranzport wireless DAW remote,
my essential tech of the week for Gizmodo, for those of you who can't
get enough of drooling over tech. The device looks just gorgeous; I'll
obviously post when this ships, expected in March 2005. Jerry also
talks a bit about the challenges of product photography, though nothing
may make me any better at it!