Ever dreamed of being able to program your own DSP hardware as easily as you can connect custom effects on your computer? Earlier this summer, we saw the open source OpenStomp effects pedal. Then, information was scant and we hadn’t seen an actual unit. Now, the box is going into production for North America at US$349, available for purchase right now.

The magic inside is Parallax’s Propeller CPU core. If anything kick starts a DIY revolution for DSP hardware, this could be it. The software is Windows-only, but Mac users, could be a good reason to install Windows dual-boot; there’s a graphical interface for programming custom effects, vocoders, or whatever you like.

Effects so far, which come GPL3-licensed as open source patches:

• Tremolo
• Chorus
• Distortion
• Delay
• Tunstuff (Layered repeat loop)
• Test Tone
• Pong w/source

And it gets better: because of its use of the Propeller, video features are possible, too. (Yep, this could be a video stompbox — I’ll have to unleash our Create Digital Motion readers on that.)

I hope to have a chat with the creators so we can cover this in more detail; if you have questions you’d want answered, leave them in comments and stay tuned for a full-blown CDM feature.

OpenStomp Project Page + Details
Online Store

Previous round-up: Guitar Pedals Go DIY, Open Source

Via MusicRadar.com and several of you who sent this in! (Okay, stop with the awesomeness, already! We’re going to have to run like a dozen stories today. I need to eventually get out of the house!)

There’s a growing appetite for using custom controllers or creating DIY controllers from scratch. Why not, after all, get exactly the number of knobs and sliders you want, in just the layout you want? Where a lot of these projects stumble, though, is in the enclosure. That’s what made the appearance of machinecollective, an polished-looking modular system of just the kinds of enclosures you’d want, so exciting when we saw it last month.

Well, here’s some good news: Machinecollective may be coming to you very soon. The site has launched in beta, and prototypes are scheduled for shipping early next month. And the kinds of modular casings look just as tasty, with possibilities like:

• Arrays of knobs and faders


• Monome and Sparkfun keypad faceplates (ideal for those Monome kits, for instance — in whatever arrangement you like
• LCD screens
• A patch bay for banana plugs / body contacts

I’m personally most excited about that patch bay. Korg toyed briefly with analog patch points on their Korg MS-20 Collection Controller — but it only supported that software, and it was a limited edition. Imagine non-analog software (hello, physical synthesis) with conventional patching, hooked up to whatever you like.

The Shape of Things to Come?

Just doing casings would be nice, but Machinecollective is also putting together lots of documentation on prototyping. It could be a really fantastic resource on a topic most musicians and visualists know little about.

With Machinecollective and some other developments, building on increased interest in microcontrollers and platforms like Arduino, we could be seeing the beginning of a DIY ecosystem for enterprising musicians and visualists. Obviously, hardware hacking isn’t for everyone — but the Web and smart, open-source tech platforms have a way of amplifying the power of niche communities. Fortune Magazine profiles the emerging DIY movement in a feature. Curiously, music gets no mention at all, despite the fact that Theremin kits were among the most popular back decades, and musicians have often been at the forefront of electronics hacking and custom hardware. (In fact, Bob Moog might never have become interested in sound had he not assembled one of those kits.)

Machinecollective News
Prototyping Modules Details

Pricing and Availability: Webshop launch “expected Early September.” Pricing: “We have not set official kit pricing yet, but expect a basic module (top panel kit + base kit + bottom panel kit) to be priced between 25 and 35 euro’s.”

You’ve seen plenty of live rigs with mile-high stacks of keyboards and sound modules. But this setup is different: one of the world’s best bands is using an elaborate setup of software synths. Binding it all together is one of the most sophisticated software configurations I’ve ever seen, the fruits of labors by of our friend Jonathan Adams Leonard – a talented musician and technologist – in Kore 2. I wouldn’t exactly recommend this kind of setup to anyone else; it involved pushing Kore to its bleeding edge. But Jonathan’s walk-through of the hardware and software programming for this show is an inspiring one. (For us mere mortals, Jonathan does have a fantastic, free collection of modular tools for Kore, built and editable in Reaktor.)

Jonathan goes through every gory detail of the setup on our special Kore minisite. We’ll have more on Interpol’s tour soon to follow up:

Behind the Scenes with Interpol: Obsessive Details of Hardware, Kore Software Rig [Kore @ CDM, kore.noisepages.com]

And in addition to the software, there’s the rich hardware setup, as assembled by Chad Miller (Lenny Kravitz), assisted by Ally Christie (QOTSA, Mogwai). Yes, these are some of the best techs on the planet, working hard for one of the biggest bands. Good stuff. I wish I could have been in Gdansk, Poland (seen below).

Getting fed up with all this Lilliputian nonsense of mobile devices and ever-smaller portable music gadgets? Well, here’s a massive leap in the opposite direction: DIY sound electronics maker and David Crowder*Band drummer Bwack created the biggest, most oversized sampler he could design. From emprise34’s xanga blog, details of Bwack’s Herculean creation:

he was commissioned by our good friends from the band family force 5 to construct the largest sampler in the history of live rock music. and, with the assistance of his carpentry proficient padre, don bwack, he has done it. there were a few necessary requirements: one, it needed to withstand much energetic punching, and kicking, and general jovial abuse from one of the rowdiest live bands on the planet. there was also the need for it to dominate space with an aesthetic presence large enough to compete with one of the more style conscious outfits on the planet; the family has panache in spades and this thing had to be classy to occupy a stage such thoughtfully coifed hair and magically coordinated garmentry.

You have to see the results to fully appreciate the monster:

The only real challenge: topping this. I suggest, perhaps, a three-story high modular synth with firehoses for patch cables.

Thanks to Bill van Loo, Friend of Bwack (and creator of his own manner of wonderful things), for the heads-up!

The faux-Pan Am logo. The sleek, mod, curved white casing. The elegant controls. Yes, this is indeed a synth that would look at home in the space station in Kubrick’s 2001. Technically not the future so much as the 1960’s version of the future – but surely we’re getting around to reshaping our future to look more like that, right? At least for synths?

The synth in question is the Omega 8, a “luggable” 20-pound, 8-voice analog synth with individual stereo pairs for each voice. It’s really, truly, old-school analog, with discrete analog oscillators, voltage-controlled filters of the 24dB and 12dB variety, multi-stage envelopes, and all the extras. In the “new-school” category, though, it is MIDI savvy, with MIDI destinations for just about everything (including the envelope breakpoints) and even breath controller support. How do I know this? Why, off the top of my head, of course; I’ve got three. Erm. Okay, I read it on the old Omega 8 page, then lost half an hour dreaming of my new lounge-style studio where I adjust envelope breakpoints from a giant aluminum sphere like the one in Sleeper.

All of that luxury will set you back US$4700. (If you can do with fewer voices, you can get down to a more Earth-bound US$1679. But that’s only 10 pounds, so it must make half as much sound.) But normally, the Omega ships in a pedestrian-looking synth case, like every other synth. Enter the Orion rendition.

2008: An Orion Odyssey Teaser Page

Studio Electronics News

As the manufacturers say:

what is this? it is art. it is light. it is glorious design brought to life by Antoine Argentieres, the man, who sagely let his fondness for Stanley Kubrick’s past century enigmatic odyssian vision of the future (and re-visioning of pivotal past events) inspire a house fit for the majestic voice and verve of the Omega8––a cathedral of transformation; the great work of the synth; a mind before matter mystical alignment of awareness: light and sound waves that reveal the ORION GALAXY, expanding and growing and luminous.

I’m not sure it’s art, but it is spectacularly groovy. Studio Electronics also promises a special sound bank befitting its forward-looking body.

I’ve heard varying answers to what availability will be from “I can’t conceive how expensive this is” to “rumors say it’s a one-off.” For their part, SE says it’s

available now for those who "have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

There you have it. You just have to believe. You have to think really, really hard about how you want it, and believe in why it matters, and you’ll own it.

Okay, it must be really, really, really, really expensive.

But I do believe in the mission. Steampunk’s over, folks. So is arbitrarily sticking cheap knobs into a cardboard box and rendering a “polished aluminum sheen” on the case by using duct tape. Let’s get back to the future with our synth designs. (I’m encouraged by the fact that our friend Nostromo found this for us on the SDIY list, by way of the music bar list.)

You still have time to do something for 2010.

See also: Music thing (hmmm, Tom got the jump on me, so maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so lost in that reverie of owning the thing…)

Update: Music thing also points to some artistic inspiration in the same vein.

Brian Kane sends along this whimsical proposal for iPhone/iPod Touch users reading tab. "It’s a portable practice device, also suitable for performance," says Kane of his concept. It’s like a harmonica holster, but for your tab. Attach this to yourself, pull up tab of a song, and fake your way through any tune you like. (Brian also suggested "Practice anywhere; get laid quicker." I’ll leave that to you to determine.)

No, you can’t buy this yet. But never say never. It’s certainly not the strangest idea for an Apple accessory I’ve ever seen.

Study for musical assistive device [at Brian's blog.slashboing.com]

Trinity, the folks who have been pushing the notion of a Linux-based handheld audio studio for some time now, have launched a full product today. It’s called the Indamixx Mobile DAW, and it’s a full software studio running on Samsung’s Q1 Ultra (formerly known as an Ultra Mobile PC). In fact, it might more accurate to say that it’s multiple DAWs, as you have various, full-blown software choices you can use pre-optimized on a handheld computer.

For anyone unimpressed by people tapping on iPhones and such, this is the real thing. Software includes, among other things:

• Just-added special version of EnergyXT, the increasingly-popular music production tool (as pictured here)
• Ardour, the powerful, open-source DAW software
• Hydrogen drum machine, Seq24 sequencer, Ardour audio editor
• Powerful Linux tools: LADSPA and VST effects support, synth and sound tools, and utilities

You also get tools like Skype and Pidgin, plus the usual Linux Internet apps, so I could imagine this would be a really powerful tool to have with you in world travels. Find wifi, call whomever you like.

It’s all about form factor. Some people will, naturally, be perfectly happy with a no-compromises laptop. But for people who prefer a handheld machine that could fit easily atop a keyboard or music stand, this finally gives you some real power – and a full-blown Linux OS. (The addition of EnergyXT to me is really the killer app.)

The hardware features:

• 7”, 1024×600 screen and VGA output
• 802.11g wifi and Ethernet
• 40 GB hard drive (not sure about real-world track count on that; I’ll try to find out)
• 2 USB 2.0 ports, so you could use this with a MIDI or audio interface
• Touch screen and physical keys, plus an 8-way joystick
• 1G RAM expandable to 2GB, reasonably speedy (very much so for a mobile device) Intel processor

Cost: US$999 as a special intro offer through 8/31 or until supplies are gone.

Availability: Now.

Whether or not you’re running out to buy one of these, I think the message to developers is clear. You can no longer assume the traditional computer and mouse is the target platform. With touch capabilities in Windows 7 and likely on Mac OS, with killer apps on everything from the iPhone to the DS, the growth of Linux laptops like the Eee, and touch and mobile interfaces everywhere, the potential diversity of computing is finally being realized. That means UI design will increasingly have to accommodate alternative modes of control (like touch), scale to different screen sizes (including higher resolutions as well as lower ones), and think about mobile. And Linux – already capable of emulating Windows well enough to run many music apps, and ready to host VSTs – could have a new window of opportunity. The change may not happen immediately, but smart developers will be prepared for whatever direction their customers may take.

Indamixx Portable Studio Site

8-bit and robots and odd Max and Reaktor patches and custom visual software and visualizations of data packets and sound made from plants and mutant trumpets and gloves for DJing and laptop music – we’ve got quite a lineup here in New York this week.

Friday night, a live audiovisual lineup from the worlds of createdigitalmusic.com / createdigitalmotion.com invades the HOPE conference, aka Hackers on Planet Earth, the three day-long convergence of tech hacking. $10, open to all, 11-2a Friday July 18 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. It’s a live digital, technological variety show in a doomed NYC landmark hotel with an audience of famous and infamous hackers. (Think Kevin Mitnick and MythBusters’ Adam Savage and Steven Levy, all in one place.)

Facebook event page; also on Going.com

Here’s a look at the performers and projects. If you can’t be in New York, this should give you a little taste of the range of work people are doing here and in our community in general, and I hope to have more coverage after the event.

Michael Una performing at SYNC Fest 08 from Michael Una on Vimeo.
Robot drummer from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Michael Una’s live-looping, robot-drumming, circuit-bending experience

CDM contributor, Circuit Bending Challenge coordinator and sage of all things DIY and sound art Michael joins the ensemble with robotic assistance:

I will be using custom-built interface devices, acoustic and circuit-bent instruments, and a robot drummer to create a rhythmic, textured and melodic sonic experience on the fly.

http://una-love.com

(Hey, does anyone know why Renee and Michael’s site is being blocked by Google? Was it the beat bike or the prayer wheel? What gives?)

The Aurora 224 is a DJ-style controller geared for software like Ableton Live. The design is, as you can see, gorgeous: not only is it at the high end of aesthetics in open gear, but it celebrates its DIY nature by exposing the circuit board. It’s USB powered, and offers easy mixing control functions in a 2-channel, DJ-oriented layout. And it lights up and makes pretty colors.

Hack a Day broke the story –

Aurora open source hardware mixer

– but to be clear, it’s not actually a mixer; that is, it doesn’t mix audio signal. It’s just a controller in a mixer layout; any mixing and DJ functions are provided by your software. But it is freely-licensed from the ground up, under a Creative Commons license. (We’ve been seeing CC more and more in music projects, as opposed to the narrower and more programmer-oriented GPL and other licenses. There’s no word yet on which CC license applies to this project, whether it has non-commercial or ShareAlike restrictions, etc.; I’ll post an update soon. See discussion on the Virtual Turntable blog.)

A video with Ableton Live, plus CDM chats with the creators about more details: