Composing the sounds of an animal’s life cycle and ultimate consumption into a musical portrait, Matthew Herbert’s “One Pig” is in turns grotesque and sentimental, rock and opera. I expected squeamishness and vegetarian conversions when I saw it on tour, but instead, the crowd eagerly devoured the creature at the end. (Make of that what you will.)

One Pig is in Manchester, UK tonight before continuing to Brighton and Portugal.

As my own incurable appetite is for musical instruments, for me a highlight of the show is Scotland-based, American artist Yann Seznec’s Sty Harp. (See also our coverage of his iPad music game development work.) Gut strings in historical instruments already make use of animal parts, so a stringed instruments seems appropriate. But by dissecting obsolete, forgotten technology – a bit of a theme in these parts lately – Yann is able to make an effective, expressive instrument.

Sadly, there’s not much video of the instrument in action, but seeing it is a highlight of the live show. Yann’s performance has its own theatricality, rocking out on these extended strings around the “pig pen” like a boxer swinging against the ropes of a ring. First, Yann shares some notes on the show itself:

The album is an elegy to a life lived for the benefit of humans and raises complex questions about our relationship to these often-maligned and misunderstood creatures.

The album is made entirely out of sounds from the pig and its surroundings – the first squeals, the sound of it being alone for the first time, and the dripping of its blood after being butchered. The result is a delicate, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying musical composition with a profundity rarely heard in electronic music.

The live show debuted at the Royal Opera House, London, in September 2011 and has since toured the world, performing at Berghain Berlin, STRP Eindhoven, Club Silencio Paris, Liquid Room Tokyo, Ancienne Belgique Brussels, and more. Future dates include headlining at Future Everything in Manchester, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

The show explores and questions the life, death, and consumption of the pig. A chef cooking onstage brings the sound and smell of cooking pig, and the performance features a brand new custom instrument – the “Sty Harp”, built and performed by Edinburgh-based artist Yann Seznec. This representation of the pig’s home is used to trigger and control elements of music, forming an integral part of the 5 piece band. The rest of the band is comprised of Sam Beste on keyboards, Tom Skinner on SPDS, Hugh Jones on samplers, and Matthew on various keyboards and samples and things.

Yann explains how the instrument itself is constructed:

In terms of the Sty Harp, the instrument is built using hacked Gametraks, which were a failed proto-motion controller from around 2003. They were sold only in the UK, and worked by using two joysticks with strings attached that you clipped onto your hands. These could then sense the distance and vague location of your hands …a few terrible games were released on PS2, Xbox, and PC for the Gametrak before they were pulled from the market.

In any case, I took apart a whole load of these (I probably have owned more gametraks than anyone in the world, ever) and used their innards for the string/joystick controllers, which are totally great! I built a whole system with Jon (from Lucky Frame) to hook up twelve of these controllers into my computer at once. I’m using an Arduino with a mux shield to handle the 36 analog inputs (x/y/string for 12 controllers) at once, converting them into MIDI and sending them over to Ableton.

In Ableton the controllers are doing a number of different things, slightly different for each song. In the Max patch I made I can send out 5 individual MIDI notes from each string, one for general movement above a threshold, and one each for a push, pull, up, or down movement. These movements are also sending out CC values, as is the pulling of the string. So each string controller is sending a whole pile of MIDI data at all times, and I pick and choose for each song which gestures to use. So in some cases I’m just triggering individual sounds using the strings, but in others I am using some strings to trigger clips, others to control effects on those clips, and still other effects to do master play/stop/effects/etc.

The climax of the Sty Harp happens about 2/3rds of the way through the show, when the whole band joins me in the sty for the symbolic butchering of the pig. For that song each band member controls different strings, building a huge sound wall.

You can read more about my building of the sty harp here: http://theamazingrolo.net/styharp/

We’re playing in Manchester on Friday the 18th, Brighton on Monday the 21st, then in Lisbon on June 29th and Porto on June 30th.

http://www.matthewherbert.com/
Matthew Herbert – One Pig: exclusive album stream [The Guardian]

It started as some compelling demos or proof of concept, but it’s plenty real now: the tools for translating movement, gesture, and dance from the body to interactive music march forward. Empowered by Microsoft’s Kinect and an artist-friendly toolchain, even a single, clever developer can do a lot. Sound designer, music producer, and Max/MSP developer Chris Vik of Melbourne has been one of those busy early pioneers, with an incredible tool called Kinectar.

So, the tech is cool and shiny and impressive: what about the actual music? And, even more importantly, what if all the hand waving and moving about could be meaningful? That’s the next step. For his part, Chris is teaming up with a dancer and choreographer to combine his compositional ideas with someone who knows how to move. The Dubstep-y demos (all below) are impressive, true, but the early tests of the work with the choreographer are simply beautiful, and demonstrate that wobble bass isn’t the limit of what this can do. They also turn the arbitrary arm-waggling into a part of the art.

And as for you: the software’s alpha, but you can fire up your copy of software like Ableton Live and grab this software for Mac or Windows and try it yourself. So if you don’t like the results – be the gesture-controlled basslines too wobbly, be they not wobbly enough – you can put your music, and your movement, where your mouth is.

At top, Chris shows off an early test of the dance collab. (There’s more to come.) Below, a tutorial that shows how this works with Ableton. And read on for more from Chris on what the work with the dancer is about, and what the tool can do.

Chris writes:

Since April 2011 I’ve been working solidly with the Microsoft Kinect, developing my software, Kinectar, to enable its use as a MIDI controller for performing music live. I’ve done a number of performances around Australia since I started the project, however, it’s safe to say that, although I would consider myself an electronic musician, I’m certainly no dancer. Enter, Paul…

Dancer, Paul Walker and I have joined forces to bring the Kinect controlled music concept into the world of contemporary dance. Recently we obtained a residency at PACT theatre (centre for emerging artists), where we spent the week developing different ways of implementing my Kinect music control system in a dance context.

My system is developed in Max and uses OpenNI drivers, OSCeleton and Ableton Live.

via Chris’ blog

CDM will check back in with Chris soon, because:

I’ve got some more videos to release over the coming weeks from a range of my different Kinect music performance applications, including controlling/conducting the Melbourne Town Hall Organ and a 100+ speaker Kinect-controlled diffusion performance. I’ll keep you posted when they’re released!

More on the software:

Kinectar Performance Platform is a toolkit developed by music producer Chris Vik to allow the use of Microsoft’s Kinect motion tracking sensor in computer-based music. The software is designed for electronic musicians to expand the way they control their music in a futuristic and extremely expressive way, using only the waving of hands and a small amount of creativity. It can be used to control the simplest of parameters like a filter or LFO, play notes and chords on a sampler or synthesizer, or be programmed to control an entire live-set through nothing more than gesture.

Key Features:

Movement Tracking UI allows manipulation of the Kinect’s human tracking capabilities, displaying all relevant data extracted from the hands location in 3d-space

Instrument Builder lets the user build virtual ‘instruments’ by outputting MIDI notes in three modes:

• Static – Produces a single note value. Useful for drum triggers, turning on/off effects within a DAW or feed that trigger into Kinectar to switch between presets using your gesture
• Solo – Do sweeping solos by selecting from over 40 musical scale presets or click the notes on the UI to make your own
• Chord – Create a progression of up to 8 chords per preset to play live

Global Flags lets you turn on/off Kinectar’s instruments using a MIDI note sent from your DAW, external MIDI controller or Kinectar itself

MIDI Preset Control lets you switch between Kinectar’s presets and instruments using a single MIDI note

Value Editor enables many more MIDI/OSC outputs, for controlling device values

Visual Metronome popout window sits on top of all programs to make it easy to see if you’re in-time when the music gets messy

It’s labeled “rough alpha,” so don’t expect a finished tool here, but you can go download it and give it a try (or learn more about what’s possible):

http://kinectar.org/download

And now, the obligatory (but quite awesome, Chris) Dubstep demo videos:

In an explosion of color, buttons, keys, velcro, and fur, and coupled with a cyborg-chic eyepiece, the VoltAxe is controllerism gone Mad Max, a post-acocalyptic keytar bred from salvaged parts. And if you want to make a unique construction of your own, creator Julie Covello – aka New York’s DJ Shakey – is willing to tell all her secrets, as well as why this was important to her music.

In modeling (the basement hobby variety, not the skinny fashionista one), “kitbashing” is the act of combining bits of multiple kits to produce one finished whole. Some custom new controllers are following a similar route, taking the best bits of, say, a keyboard and a Novation Launchpad, and going a bit nuts. Julie’s work deserves special mention not only because it takes that technique to an extreme, but it couples it with a heads-up, hands-free video display to keep feedback from the computer visible without being a distraction.

Julie tells us all the details:

The VoltAxe controller was created as part of my artist-in-residency at the Clocktower Gallery in New York City, made possible with support from the Jerome Foundation. I named my residency “Dj Shakey’s Audio Control Adventure” and wrote a pseudo-blog on Facebook.

To me, exploring Controllerism means trying to make my performance easier, more creative, and more dynamic. I did quite a bit of general research during this project, but with the performance controller, I focused on making a system that allowed me to walk around, not look at the controller, not look at my laptop (remove the barrier between
me and the audience and / or my bandmates), and have maximum flexibility and spontaneity with the sounds I was manipulating.

I had about 5 weeks to work, and I wanted a finished product that I could perform with, so I followed up on simpler solutions and left the hardcore hacking and studying for another time. I was also planning a huge finale party with 23 music and projection artists performing in multiple rooms, so that was on my plate as well.

Here’s a description of the final controller system…
I use Ableton Live — the way I perform, I want to see the laptop screen so I can pick clips at random to suit my mood. I don’t want to memorize my set and I don’t want to stare at my laptop screen either, so the solution was creating an eyepiece that shows my laptop screen within it. To build this I got help from VJ DoctorMojo aka Mark Alan
Johnson of Mojo Video Tech, Inc.. We experimented with a number of hacks, repurposing components extracted from the viewfinders of old camcorders. These experiments yeilded a number of functional miniature low-voltage displays, however these units were all black-and-white and a color image was what I needed. Very long story short, the final solution was to buy a pair of Vuzix
personal video glasses (US$250), flip them upside down and attach ONE screen to a regular pair of glasses so that only one of my eyes is looking at the screen and the other eye is looking out into the world. What I see with both eyes open is my laptop screen floating in the air on top of what I normally see. It’s amazing how easy this is to use!

There was more to do to make this work:
1. I had to run the output of my computer to a scan converter ($100) about the size of a cigarette pack and then run a wire to the little box that manages the glasses, adapters and cables were required.

2. I had to power the glasses, so that meant making the power cable about 10 feet longer so it could be plugged in while I walked around.

3. The image in the glasses was upside-down, since the unit was mounted upside-down (to avoid my nose!), so I rotated it 180 degrees via my Mac OS preferences.

4. The cursor size was too small, so I enlarged it with the Mac’s “Universal Access” preferences.

5. The image of my laptop screen was pretty low resolution, so low that I couldnt read any of the clip names, I referred to the Universal Access preferences to determine key commands for zoom in and zoom out and then programmed
my mouse keys to do the shortcut keys for these functions. Zoom out and I can see levels and stuff; zoom in and I can read type. I also fooled around with the screen resolution so it would be as clear as possible.

Speaking of the mouse, I did more research on the mouse than anything else! I wanted to attach it to my controller, which I was planning on hanging over my shoulders like a keytar. It had to have basic mouse functions AND I wanted buttons that could be programmed to do a series of keystrokes with one touch. There were some pretty cool mice on websites for the handicapped, but they were either absurdly expensive or they didn’t have all the functionality I wanted. I ended up using the one I had on my desk, the Kensington Expert Pro Turbo Trackball. I’ve had several over the years and I love them. They don’t make them any more, so they are hard to get and costly. (US$150 – 300) Also, the trackball is not secured in the socket. I basically just duct-taped this to my controller backing, and secured the trackball (with help from Mojo) with a piece of silver solder and a rubber band so it could move freely but securely. The mouse comes with programming software and I programmed the buttons to do — whatever I wanted!

The controller backing is 3/4 foam board ($5). I need this thing to be light! It is solid and doesn’t flex at all. I attached a number of controllers to this backing, a Novation Launchpad (triggering clips, punching clips in and out), Korg nanoPAD 2 (fx, samples), Korg nanoKONTROL 2 (mixing, fx), and two Vmeters (fx). I also messed around with a Keith McMillen Softstep foot controller which I like a lot and am still incorporating into the set-up. All of these run into a “Plugable”[-brand] 10-input powered USB hub on the back of the unit. I had to add a 12-foot usb extension to reach my laptop, as well as extending the power brick cable. All these long cables were bound into a single cable sleeve running to the laptop and power strip.

In an effort to use the controllers without looking at them, I added textures to many of the keys so I could find them by touch (velcro, rubber, fur). I covered up the keys that I had no plan to use so I wouldn’t hit them by accident. I divided the Launchpad up into 4×4 quandrants with miniature wire and ductape ridges. I’m still adapting to this set-up.

After the whole thing was put together, I hung it from a strap I grabbed off a gear case I had in the room. It took some trial and error to determine where to place the ends of the straps on the controller so that it would hang properly and my hands reached all the controls comfortably. I spent some time with the prototype attaching and re-attaching items until everything was in the right place before cutting out the foam board into the final shape. At this time, everything is attached with checkered duct tape from Home Depot; soon I will upgrade this to velcro (but keep the checkers as
decoration!).

The VoltAxe was ready to test play at midnight the day before the huge event where I was going to perform! Thanks to
Moldover and Mojo, who were with me doing ongoing troubleshooting, configuring went quickly and I was able to rehearse for a few hours and pull it together just in time! At the show, everything went as planned and I couldn’t have been happier – it was
so much fun! I can’t wait to evolve this set-up! My next move is to make it mobile and take it to the subway station to do some busking.

More information:
DJ Shakey : Clocktower Artist-In-Residency [as written up by the video whiz behind the project, Mojo]

Radio interview, talking DJing, “controllerism,” producing, and complete with remixes and original music from Shakey:
DJ Culture: DJ Shakey, The Illustrated Interview

If you like the project and want to see it developed more, you can also vote for it on Artists Wanted

Here’s a track with the controller in action:
Minor schwing by FreebassBK

Thanks, Julie!

Add this to the Internet of Things: imagine data recording scratching and scratch performances.

Technologists Jamie Wilkinson, Michael Auger, and Kyle McDonald propose a new way of storing scratch moves as data. They’re not just working in traditional ways, either: they’re hacking turntables and optical mice and cameras, and imagine not only recording performances, but having machines recreate scratching. (Robots!) And they want your help. Kyle writes:

i’m going to be leading a group at art hack day ( brooklyn, january 26th-28th www.arthackday.net/ ) about scratch markup
language, a tool for recording performances from turntablists.

this describes the general idea and who we’re
looking for. we need everyone from web designers/developers, to
hardware hackers, coders and musicians. if you’re interested, or know someone who is interested, contact me or join the google group groups.google.com/group/arthackday/

(We cover the awesomeness that is Graffiti Markup Language on Motion, which goes further to explaining why this sort of data storage can be powerful and enabling.)

All is described – rather bizarrely – in an image. (Can we have plain text, please? It is, at least, a pretty picture!)

Music lovers are hacking Apple’s Siri voice recognition technology. By connecting to some of the “intelligence” of the cloud, these tools can make your phone rap or send music files to a player piano for instant musical playback.

First up: Yamaha’s piano taking requests, thanks to music grabbed online. A Yamaha rep explains:

Yamaha consultant Craig Knudsen demonstrates a unique implementation of Apple’s incredible Airplay technology in an exciting new way.
Here’s how it works:
Take a standard MIDI songfile and convert it to an audio file (while maintaining the MIDI data). The songfile is then sent wirelessly via WiFi to an Apple Airport Express (which is mounted underneath a Yamaha Disklavier reproducing piano. The audio output of the Airport Express is then connected to the analog MIDI inputs of the Disklavier, using a standard audio cable.
Then, you simply ask Siri to play your favorite song from your iTunes library, and Siri responds immediately, by making the Disklavier’s keys and pedal move up and down, recreating the performance, including full orchestration.
The result is nothing short of magical.

Of course, the actual “playing” is thanks to the capabilities of the Yamaha Disklavier. I’m actually a bit puzzled as to how the online conversion works, exactly, and I was curious for any Disklavier-owning CDM readers whether this is something publicly available. I’m waiting to hear back from Yamaha.

And now, for something completely different: Siri rapping. (Somewhat … erm … badly, if amusingly. It is a hack.)

My friend Robert “Robb” Böhnke had a lot of fun combining Siri’s voice synthesis and the lyrics of Notorious B.I.G.

My hack for the Music Hack Day 2011 in London, a 24h Hackathon for all things music.

SiriProxy is used to intercept the communication with Apple’s servers. Notorious Siri then sends Notorious B.I.G.’s Hypnotize to the device.

Siri’s speech synthesis is synced to the beat using the timestamps obtained from the Echonest API which were then manually tweaked, to smooth out delays in the text-to-speech engine.

Thanks to Universal Music for awarding me a nice pair of Dr. Dre headphones

The Echonest API, by the way, is an amazing do-everything “API for music,” one that analyzes musical files and connects to a vast storehouse of musical intelligence.

Warning: this video is most definitely Not Safe For Work. (Heck, even the thumbnail isn’t, exactly.) If that concerns you, just go listen to the Yamaha video again, okay?

Siri FAQ [Apple.com]

Previously: Google Translate Beatboxing

…and, of course, that means: Android, your move.

You can complain about music events and festivals as they are, dream about what you’d imagine an event could be – or you can go and make it happen. And since the latter category fits friends-of-the-site Chris Gilroy and Lara Grant, it’s well worth an endorsement for this weekend’s In/Out Festival. (For their part, both Chris and Lara have been regulars at our Handmade Music NYC series; Chris as an electronic audiovisualist, and Lara as a textile-and-sound-melding felted signal processing guru.)

If you’re in New York, hope you can make it or even help cover it for CDM. If you’re not – like, for instance, if you’ve recently moved to Berlin – we’ve got some videos here to give you a taste of this particular assemblage of musical makers.

The lineup looks rich and varied on the performance side, coupling emerging artists with known names, all in genre-bending, adventurous sound:

Daedelus, Christopher Willits, Ander, Bit Shifter, tehn (Brian Crabtree), Portable Sunsets, Nick Demopolous’ Smomid, Comandante Zero, Noizmakr, Programs, Sarah Danke: Switched, Ivan Franco

There’s also a great selection of workshops:

• Heatit°C prototyping workshop, which uses a heat-reactive postcard for an analog circuit alongside “thermochromic and conductive inks and batteries, switches and conductive thread,” all made with a Craft Robo for producing 2D and 3D templates. (Wait… wha? Someone definitely go and cover that.)
• How to make a contact mic
• Kinect and movement using free software (Pd) – with Sofy Yuditskaya, who writes about Kinect and other 3D hacking today on Create Digital Motion
• Max for Live with Christopher Willits
• Comandante Zero on integrating live acoustic and digital instruments into performance
• Alternative musical instrument discussion

And here I’ve assembled some of my favorite videos of the artists and past In/Out events:

Stephen McLeod turns an egg-cooking session into a live, improvisatory tune – fried breakfast you can dance to:

There is a certain sense of magic or alchemy in the way a good cook or a good musician can transform raw ingredients into something beautiful. I feel like there is a kinship between these two disciplines, and this series of videos and performances is a meditation on that intersection.

While I prepare for you a meal, I use microphones and a computer to process the sounds. These sounds combine to form an automatic composition, determined by the recipe and improvised on the spot.

A meditative musical creation by tehn, aka Brian Crabtree, creator of the monome, was a highlight for me in 2009. (I played visuals live, using my photography and software I built in Processing. Side note: the bio pic is Brian appearing at one of our first Handmade Music NYC installments, put on with friends at Etsy.com who are now based here in Berlin. Strange, the arc of time and space.)

Here’s protofuse, aka Julien Bayle (French artist also known for his Max development work and protofuse controller), playing Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room with Chris Gilroy on visuals.

Festival co-organizer Chris Gilroy jams at one of our Handmade Music NYC parties from earlier this year.

“Switch” by Sarah Dahnke (here with meredith Blouin) is a far-out dance confrontation, in which bodies augment one another with sound.

And to close out this set with a groove, here’s Switzerland-based artist Ander playing a truly futuristic-looking controller Station, which appears to be ready to operate the Death Star.

Incredibly, all this music runs US$20 a day, or $30 for a limited-edition two-day pass, with workshops priced at $10-15 or free.

In/Out runs at The Knitting Factory and Death by Audio in Brooklyn.

http://www.inoutfest.org/tickets

Light-up grids of buttons are nearly commonplace, but the BlipBox is something different: its array of lights is also a sensor, making it both X/Y controller and light-up grid. And it’s designed to be completely open — firmware, hardware, schematics and documentation are all fully GPL-licensed and open source.

For those of us who aren’t ninja coders, it’s also easy to customize, thanks to friendly software (pictured below) .k for making nifty interactive animations on its display and support for the artist-friendly Processing code environment. As the creators describe it, it’s three (three!) pieces of hardware in one:

• a creative tool and musical instrument
• a large, high definition x/y controller with visual feedback
• a uniquely versatile MIDI and OSC controller

Lest you assume such oddities as this come only from non-musician hackers, these are designed by musicians. The project, built right in London, is available in fits and starts and stock becomes available, but a recent run was “Prices are GBP 140 for a complete ‘box with USB and MIDI interface, and 9v external power connection, in a black aluminium case with perspex side panels.” (To the team: apologies for giving you splashy publicity right as you have precisely none in stock. Readers, follow @cdmblogs on Twitter for updates. Or just follow their site:

BlipBox News

Side note: yes, we need to stop putting “blip” in the name of things. Guilty as charged. (I’ll be writing soon about the Blippo Box, which is … completely different.)

If you just want to fire up Renoise, the modern tracker/music production app, and not worry about the fact that its innards are hackable, you can. But for a reason why you might at least want to explore customization of this music tool, give the video above a look. It starts sleepy and slow … and then, part of the way through, as creator Dac Chartrand starts demoing the tool, something really special happens. (Anyway, that’s what I think. See if you agree.)

Dac explains his work, completed at the recent Montreal Music Hackday:

My Renoise hack was Grid Pie. One of the new trends in our community is the concept of a meta-interface. In essence, programmers use the Lua API to transform Renoise into something else, hide the Renoise window, and work with hardware interfaces connected to their own scripts. Three current examples: MPE, Step Sequencer Lauflicht and Duplex. Grid Pie is “yet another meta interface.” It turns Renoise into a live performance audio recombination machine. Still in alpha, but people were into the demo I gave. I got a lot of handshakes and positive feedback.

It’s an alpha, so your mileage may vary, but I’ll bet this whets some appetites for people who hadn’t yet realized the power of the Renoise API.

http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Grid_Pie

Music Hack Day is an event that’s been gaining lots of steam. Packing engineering experimentation into a marathon session of collaborative, improvised work, followed by lots of sharing, the event tends to focus largely on Web services but also includes novel musical instruments and other inventions. The events have grown in depth, quality, and attendance – the New York event I attended was just massive. (See the intro video below.) And now, for the first time, there’s an event in Canada, in the tech-rich Quebec hub of Montreal. Since we’re talking Canada events, the timing is perfect to mention it. I very much hope one of our Montreal-based CDM readers makes it out and tells us how it goes — and since Dac Chartrand of Renoise is out there, it’d be really brilliant to see some Renoise hacks this weekend! Take photos, take videos, make stuff, and document the stuff you’ve made for global fame on CDM! Ahem.

Dac tells us a little more about the event, as well as work to do return Hack Day to Boston and London, below.

Dac writes:

# MHD-MTL:

There have been 15 MHD worldwide so far. This is the first in Canada.

http://montreal.musichackday.org/2011/

The organizing team consists of myself (of Renoise) and 6 post-graduate students at CIRMMT (http://www.cirmmt.mcgill.ca/ ). e.g. Alastair Porter (also of EchoNest), Mahtab Ghamsari, Corey Kereliuk, Trevor Knight, Mark Zadel, and Brian Hamilton. We also have support from local startups, some people at the SAT, local universities, and a variety of other orgs and locals who have been following our Google Group in the last few months (http://groups.google.com/group/mhdmtl )

We’re updating the MHD-MTL page every other day now. Lot’s of action for the organizers to say the least. A good place to start is with the French and English fact sheets on the page; bilingual PDFs trying to represent Montreal, of course. We also have a poster that people can put up to help out, DIY style.

# MHD-MTL Location:

The event will be held at Eastern Bloc. (http://easternbloc.ca/index-en.php ) Eastern Bloc is an exhibition and arts production centre dedicated to New Media and interdisciplinary art. The vision at Eastern Bloc is to explore and push the creative boundaries in digital and electronic arts, audio/video installation, multimedia performance and other emerging practices.

# MHD News:

According to Dave Haynes, there are upcoming events in London and Boston. No dates yet but definitely soon. Keep watching the MHD front page or the Twitter feed. (http://musichackday.org/ , http://twitter.com/#!/musichackday )

From Roel and Johan who organized the May 2011 Berlin event: “As a first attempt to open source an event, we (@roelven, @freenerd) put a retrospekt of our learnings on Github, inspired by @arrelid from Spotify. We also shared the docs we used to give to sponsors and locations, this could be of help for you guys along the way. Have a peek here: https://github.com/musichackday/organizing-a-music-hack-day ” The Montreal team intends to commit their experiences to this repository after our event, as well.

Good stuff. Seriously, hope someone can make it out there and tell us how it goes.

I remain interested in the idea of doing a virtual hack day for CDM readers. Face-to-face is great and irreplaceable, but it could be a chance to bring together people from across geography, too.

In Toronto this Friday, we’ll be connecting with InterAccess Gallery in a celebration of DIY, adventurous music making, and blipping synthesizers. It’ll also be the first public debut of the new MeeBlip micro, a pocket-sized version of our MeeBlip open source hardware synth. Part of why I’m excited to be hacking away with the fine folks of Toronto is that we’ll be able to document that new design and what you might make with it for everybody else. The MeeBlip micro and revised MeeBlip se will be coming very soon to everyone.

What’s the MeeBlip micro? It’s the brains of the monophonic, MIDI-capable, hackable virtual analog MeeBlip synth, without the knobs and switches. It does still have MIDI and USB, so you can program it by connecting to a computer, and transmit MIDI over standard cables. It also has analog and digital pinouts so you can use it to try out novel sensors or build it into a sound art installation or wearable Kilt of Synthesis. We’ll be making the first-ever micros in the workshop and starting to play with them. (See the spy photo below for a look.)

If you are in Toronto, here are the details on the workshop (complete with a MeeBlip micro to take home) and the Handmade Music party and lineup later on. Stay on CDM for coverage for everyone in the world.

The Workshop

Hackable Synth Workshop: Meet the MeeBlip

When: Friday, September 23, 2011, 7-10pm

Instructor: Peter Kirn

Price:
$39 MeeBlip micro (special!) + $30 course fee non-members
$39 MeeBlip micro (special!) + $20 course fee members
(10 spots total)

Build the simple, inexpensive new MeeBlip micro – a bare-bones version of our open source, playable, friendly MeeBlip synthesizer – and then learn a little about how it works, even if you’re new to electronics and code. Walk home with an instrument you can add to your studio with MIDI, and make – not only blips and bleeps, but something resembling music. (That is, assuming you can play!)

We’ll assemble the MeeBlip micro board, which contains all the synthesis guts of our full-featured MeeBlip synthesizer, including MIDI implementation, but lacks switches, knobs, and housing. You’ll get to assemble it yourself with some fairly easy soldering.

Next, learn a bit about how the MeeBlip works. We’ll take a look at how the circuit functions, and a bit of the Assembly code that makes it tick (as well as seeing why “Assembly code” isn’t as scary as you probably think). We’ll see how to make a simple modification to the MeeBlip code, even if you haven’t coded before.

Finally, since the MeeBlip micro includes MIDI but no switches or knobs to customize your sounds, we’ll learn the basics of using the free visual modular environment Pure Data (Pd) to send MIDI messages and sequences to your MeeBlip, so you can interactively control sounds and make patterns, via a crash course in Pd MIDI patching.

It’s an open source music-making extravaganza, leaving you with a powerful virtual analog monophonic synth you can play!

Previous experience required: some basic knowledge of synthesis and occasional soldering should prove useful, but are not strictly required. Non-coders very, very much welcome!

To sign up for the workshop, please contact info@interaccess.org / visit InterAccess’ contact page.

Handmade Music: Live Performances + Party

After the workshop, a wide, eclectic set of music, all mixed up for your listening pleasure, curated by Handmade Music Toronto and our friends at InterAccess.

10 pm – late
Pay What You Can, suggested $5 donation. 19+
Friday, September 23

~Island Dweller
Experimental Ambient Sounds [Ed.: that groove, too]
http://soundcloud.com/island-dweller

Red-skies-remix by island dweller

~Mandelbrut
Noise and Visuals
http://www.mandelbrut.com/

~Colin Bergh
Deep House

~TheAlphaNerd
Tech-House, Electro, Dubstep, AwesomeCore
http://soundcloud.com/thealphanerd

Jittery Fingers by TheAlphaNerd

Raven Chacon
Noise art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAQPr_rbk0A

and your editor, Creating Digital Music
~Peter Kirn
Keys and synths and ambient things
http://music.pkirn.com

http://handmademusic.ca/