From the suggestion box at CDM, we’re taking a look at DIY party-rocking sound system technology from the birth of Hip-Hop. Ed.: Resident DIY expert and editor-at-large Michael Una returns – and the man has been known to do strange things with speakers himself.

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

It’s easy enough to dismiss mobile music devices as toys, and I’d add, there’s really nothing wrong with toys. But the test – a personal one – is whether or not you can develop your musical ideas with them. Some of the deepest, most consistently satisfying tools for mobile devices are the ones that shrink down real production capabilities to a handheld size. Look closely at these apps, and you’ll see software that could easily have passed for “advanced” sequencers on computers fifteen years ago. (Indeed, I think arguably we’ve lost some usability with the complexity we’ve added since.)

While the iPhone phenomenon continues to grow, don’t write off Windows Mobile for music. Tony Stone sends a video showing off the piano roll-style sequencer in an app called AudioBox. It goes beautifully with the stylus – precision input that isn’t possible with your finger on the iPhone.

AudioBox Micro Composer is available at various online software stores. Here’s where Tony says he picked it up:

AudioBox Micro Composer @ ClickApps

AudioBox Product Page @ 4pockets [developer]

AudioBox has come up many times on Palm Sounds; see the interview with the developer

US$44.95, but for that you get the sequencer, an analog synth, a string pad synth, a samples, a drum machine, 16 channels of mixing, effects, editing capabilities, and “device automation” (not sure what that last one means). Part of the reason this is all possible is that developing for Windows Mobile is very much like developing for Windows – and unlike Google’s Android, you can write the apps in C/C++. If you’re not a developer, what that means it that you’re basically getting desktop-like apps.

Tony is worth checking out, too. He’s a Christian hip-hop artist, beatmaker and producer, and youth minister, and he’s promised some very interesting DIY projects coming soon. See his blog and MySpace page. We actually have a whole lot of readers making music in communities of faith, demonstrating that there’s a lot more diversity of musicians working with technology. It’s not at all limited to the view people have of the club or DJ scenes.

Side note: Microsoft should never have gotten rid of the Pocket PC moniker.

What do you say when it’s all been said? We felt it was time for a fresh perspective on the MPC phenomenon — one a normal review couldn’t provide. So we got the opinion of our friend, samplist/producer and Segue member Dave Dri. And the verdict: there’s still something about an MPC — even if it suggests why there’s also something about software, too. But it involves dust. Here’s his op-ed:

Recently I had the task of reviewing an MPC5000 for a local street press magazine. The MPC part of it was fine — the word limit was trickier. Over the last decade I have reviewed the MPC2000XL and the MPC1000, with a lot of time and gigs passing between them. From early days in a live breaks act to my current progressive house act, an MPC has been right under hand. In the week that I reluctantly handed the 5000 back to Musiclab, the drummer that guested in my band at the Big Day Out festival asked me to play keys and samples in his band at a local festival. [Ed.: Our own Jaymis filmed the Big Day Out gig if you want to check it out.] I found myself in a chance conversation with a friend from the live breaks act Bitrok and the very next day, somehow, I’m on stage with his MPC2500 — a unit which I have since bought. So why did reviewing an MPC5000 lead to me buying an MPC2500 after years of happy service from an invincible MPC2000XL?

If you’re reading this, you probably know what an MPC is, and you can readily review any number of link-bait Google results for the product mentioned in the title of this post. [Ed. Hmmmm, link-baiting MPC's, huh? "10 Ways an MPC is Like a Cupcake"? "15 of the Best MPC YouTube Videos Featuring Hot Women MPCers?" perhaps? -PK]

What you probably want to know is what it’s really like. So I will tell you.

Sometimes in technology, the design of a product can have an impact beyond just the tool itself, and that’s easily the case with the Akai MPC. Even if you aren’t part of the device’s cult-like following, you’ve likely worked with software influenced by its approach to musical interaction. While we await the coming of creator Roger Linn’s new collaboration with Dave Smith, the LinnDrum II, it’s great to look back at the MPC itself, and the artists who stretched it to its musical limits, from hip-hop to classical. Current TV has a short documentary they’ve just sent us.

Current’s Parisa Vahdatinia describes it thusly:

I’d like to share with you a short piece we recently produced here at Current TV all about the MPC–a brief history, how it was created by Roger Linn, and how it’s effected contemporary music, followed with some interviews with Damu The Fudgemunk, P-Fritz, K-Murdock who share their sentiments on how the MPC has shaped their music.

I’m just going to have to imagine how great this piece is as I’m stuck on a train with only phone-as-modem access, so you get to sort of scoop me. As I wait, there are some great comments up there already, haiku-like:

“I mistook them for drum machines….”

“mpc is the hip hop guitar!”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. But it raises the question, given the endless variety of even pre-digital musical instruments, what’s next? That’s a question I know Roger cares about, which is why he helped us judge a design challenge last spring. I’m personally excited by the idea that some designs are already here, and more are likely to come out of someone’s studio, without the major product maker label on it.

Okay, now I’ve seen it. Good to be back off the train and able to download videos. It does come off strangely as an ad for Akai, but there’s another way to look at it — as an executive summary of how MPC users describe their axe. Talk to any MPC user, and you get a case study in why the design of integrated hardware matters to people. I believe those principles are absolutely applicable to the design of software, as well. And the immediacy of the monome is entirely related, as a computer-based instrument, to the MPC as a hardware instrument. It’s easy to get hung up on the philosophy of instruments, but what really matters to people is (surprise) sound and how they manipulate it.

BeatMaker, the all-in-one music production tool for iPhone / iPod Touch, has hit hip-hop after just a few days on the market. Producer Henny, of the Bizness, has done a full-blown demo tutorial. And it sounds simply amazing. (Okay, suffice to say I can’t tap on a phone and swing properly so you get a good groove, but Henny can.)

Henny makes beat on iPhone 3G using Beatmaker!!! from Henny on Vimeo.

Thanks to Mr. Get It Poppin, Kapo, and everyone else who pointed us to this. I’ve gone from being jealous of the iPhone to being jealous of the producer’s insanely rapid skills. Nice.

Back on the technical side, Mathieu from Intua writes to say that the software is making rapid progress. PDF documentation is up now. A beta of the file synchronization tool, BeatPack, is available, so you can start transferring files to and from your Mac or PC. The 1.0.1 update is very close, with small feature improvements and bug fixes. And we anticipate MIDI export of patterns not long after that. I don’t normally cover incremental updates, but I know this is big for you as I’ve gotten lots of reader emails. Stay tuned!

Downloads available, including BeatPack for OS X 10.4 and later and XP/Vista:

Intua Shop

BeatMaker page