Remember when electronic sound gear hid in hulking, rack-sized cases? Korg’s Kaossilator series had already begun shrinking the desktop KAOSS Pad gear, but even the first-generation Kaossilator wouldn’t fit in your pocket, given its square shape and corners. (Well, unless you were wearing overalls.) The Kaossilator 2 and Mini Kaoss Pad 2, on the other hand, are scaled perfectly to your hand and would tuck neatly into a pocket in your pants or bag. And while I know some readers were hoping for a new Pro addition to the KAOSS line, these little bundles of joy have added some functionality that could make them musically useful. Being dedicated hardware, they also won’t suffer from a battery sapped by phone calls or the interruption of a Facebook message – and that input jack is built in.

We saw the new models at the NAMM show this month. The highlights:

The Kaossilator 2 is a PCM-based phrase synth, inspired by the original Kaosillator, for improvising melodic lines. What’s new is some handy recording functionality:

• Scale Key and Note Range so every note is “right,” effectively, as on the original
• Drum sounds
• Gate Arpeggiator with adjustable gate time and swing settings
• Loop recording to layer phrases and add as many overdubs as you like
• “Dual Loop Recording banks allow DJ-Style mutes and cross-fades”
• Record using the built-in mic; or use the mic input for recording of external input
• microSD/SDHC, so you can cheaply add up to 32G of removable storage

That crossfader, of course, is entirely new, and Korg does mention “dance music” in the sounds and focus. It’s easy, then, to imagine this as a pocket-able instrument for jamming or something you’d use to make musical ideas on the go, and it does look like a lot of fun.

The Mini Kaoss Pad 2 is an effects box to the Kaossilator 2′s synth – and it even has a built-in MP3 player, so you can load up sounds and tracks ahead of time:

• MP3 player with microSD card slot for data storage/exchange – or record performances and mixes
• 100 effect programs, with 3 favorite slots
• Looper, Vinyl Break, and Ducking Comp from the Kaoss Pad Quad (actually, need to find out if all the slicer effects from the Quad are there)
• Internal mic plus external audio inputs
• I’ll quote them directly on this: “Support for pitch change and cue point settings allows serious DJ play.”

Now, it’s a little hard to imagine DJing on something the size of a deck of cards, but, of course, I hope somewhere out there tries. I like the idea of putting your tracks on there and improvising a little mix, especially with the ability to record. Again, you could use it as a little sketchpad.

I got some hands-on time on the first morning of the show, and they’re a blast to play with, certainly. See the official Korg videos.

The other advantage of dedicated hardware here is, again, having a dedicated resistive touch interface. On a phone, the highly-sensitive capacitive interface can lead to missed triggers, and you have to fiddle around with menus and the like. There is something to be said for this dedicated gadget, at least for some. And it seems worth comparing, since many of you have a smartphone. What do you think – are you intrigued at all by these latest Korg gadgets?

With a US$160 street, if you are, they may be hard to resist. We’ll watch for when these start shipping.

http://www.korg.com/kaossilator2

http://www.korg.com/minikaosspad2

Previews of each, then the two together:

I think I’m going to have to start teasing random projects I’m doing, like taking a picture of the corner of a dirty dish before I do the dishes, or showing a corner of my shoe before I tie them in the morning. But here’s one more teaser for you, especially since Americans today have the day off.

One reader tips us off to an image inserted in iKaossilator. It sure looks like a new KAOSS product. Aaron lazytrap writes some reasonable speculation:

New KP, red & yellow = Kaossilator+KP in one h/w box? New `tribe (play/stop buttons)? Hrmn.

I’m just hoping KORG will get some MIDI connections and MIDI sync back on their products, cough – we’ll see if this continues the trend of leaving that out.

Thoughts?

Ready to just use the gear you’ve already got and quit it with the teasers, already? (Hey, after NAMM week, I get to sit down and make music again myself, hopefully.)

“Panzer” is beyond any mobile studio you’ve ever seen. It’s basically a tank with speakers and a cockpit containing beat-making gear. (Mackie mixer, Roland sampler, Akai MPC, Korg KAOSS, as near as I can see, plus … the machinery to drive the tank.)

From the description:

Minidumper, Holz, Stahl, Kunstharz, Glasfaser, Audioequipment, Sound
2011

And to make sure it’ll fit in your garage:
H 250 cm x L 350 cm x B 140 cm

Nik Nowak, born in Mainz and based here in Berlin, has a whole portfolio of re-imagined speakers and motorcycles and flames and I’m glad I’m not a curator or art critic because I would be tempted to use phrases like “installations made completely of awesome.”

Nik, if you’re out there, please tell me you still have this and can drive it out to an event. Otherwise, I’ll come to you. Just don’t shoot … or … boom or whatever.

I was going to add the images to this story, but I’m not sure I want to see a takedown notice from Nik. It might actually set me on fire.

Also, Alesis IO Dock: eat your heart out.

http://www.niknowak.de/
http://www.niknowak.de/images/panzer.htm

Alternatively (thanks, Beetlenaut):

In what is proving to be a NAMM week bonanza for lovers of hardware effects, Korg’s Kaoss Pad Quad may be the best bang-for-the-buck. You can control up to four effects simultaneously, all via the trademark KAOSS-style touchpad, triggering effects you want via single-button toggles. (In fact, this device reminds me in a good way of the superb but sadly now-defunct Entrancer KPE-1 video device, in that everything is neatly accessible.)

Plug in your input from an external source or use the onboard mic input, then control effects from the touchpad with multi-color LED effects for visual feedback. There are four basic modules – looper, modulation, filter, and delay/reverb – each with variations, so that Korg promises 1,295 combinations. (That’s an utterly meaningless number to me, but I’ll take their word for it.)

There’s also a “freeze” effect for each module, so you can lock its settings in place. Some effects:

• Multi-mode looper with reverse and loop slicing.
• Vinyl break.
• Ducking compressor.
• Automatic BPM. But real men and women use the onboard tap tempo instead, so pretend you didn’t read that.
• Pitch shifter, grain shifter.
• Reverb, delay, tape echo.

All that’s missing, really, is MIDI input – it’s intended as a self-contained device, and any sync will be up to its auto BPM feature or tapping in tempos.

If you’re in my house, you’re not allowed to use the fake vinyl break effect. Sorry, them’s the rules. (Keep them for the next time you need to score an MTV reality show.) But otherwise, this looks useful. And at this price, with this kind of ready-to-play control, the whole device looks pretty irresistible. Korg’s ability to keep churning out KAOSS stuff people love is kind of ridiculous.

Kaoss Pad Quad [Korg]

Summer has ended, but that leaves time to look back. Among the many parties around the world, Electric Zoo was New York’s biggest electronic festival, with headliners from Moby to Flying Lotus, descending on a dusty, sunny Randall’s Island just east of the island Manhattan.

At top, I took my new Diana mini (lo-fi film camera) out for a spin amongst the music lovers, who gravitated moth-like to the camera. Never let it be said that Americans don’t like electronic music; families and a new, young generation of ravers flooded into the park. Since Moby’s set was off-limits for photography, it seemed to me only appropriate to go hang out with the music fans. And it’s good to remember that, whatever your musical genre, there’s someone whom you can make happy with your work. (Having spent the same weekend on a rooftop and in a barn with monome practitioners and lovers, yes, there’s a place for everything.) Feel free to page through the sets, especially if it’s a rainy, cloudy day.

When you face a crowd of eager fans, the desire to deliver real performance becomes all the greater. In an age of pre-configured DJ sets, it’s a chance to have the same enthusiasm as those in the audience, and yes, to actually sweat a bit. As a study in what’s possible with computer performance, I took in live, non-DJ sets by Jon Hopkins and The Glitch Mob.

Both artists use touch in their performance. The interaction with the music is reasonably limited, but that means the effect is easy to read. As it happens, we’ve profiled the setups of each of these acts before. For Jon Hopkins, multiple KAOSS Pads facilitate quick access to dramatic effects. Ableton Live is just the sound-source; the outboard gear handles both touch control and signal processing. For The Glitch Mob, Lemur multi-touch displays, tilted toward the audience, control parameters in Ableton Live.

More details:
Behind the scenes of The Glitch Mob’s Lemur setup

Jon Hopkins tells CDM about his studio, live rigs and playing the KAOSS Pad

I have to notice that the KAOSS Pads fare a bit better than the Lemurs in regards to tactile access to what you’re doing. The Glitch Mob had to make its touch areas on the Lemur fairly large just to find them; because they’re all on an undifferentiated screen, you have to find the right location by feel. But for both acts, creating big gestures is important, partly so that it reads to the audience, I imagine, but also so that it’s the kinds of gestures that feels good as a player and are easily reproduced. And even with a touchscreen, it’s possible to begin to tap into muscle memory, as was clear as The Glitch Mob used their consistent control layout in their set.

Touch alone, in each case, is augmented by tactile controls. The Korgs have physical encoders and controls, and Hopkins uses MIDI input and computer control for tactile control over sets. The Glitch Mob use Akai drum pad controllers, as well. And fun as the touchscreens are, they can’t compete with good, old-fashioned drumming: the highlight of The Glitch Mob’s new set is when they break out drumsticks and explode into lines worthy of a drum corps. (The Glitch Mob need to meet Caity at Georgia Tech.) You can tell the guys are just having a great time doing it. We talk about all the ways computer performance can become more like instruments, but, of course, there’s no reason not to simply use the traditional instruments we love alongside computers.

There’s still a sense of a divide between the virtual and the physical, the digital interface and the kinetic gesture, and maybe that’s natural. Rather than try to entirely reconcile the two, they can sit side by side – just like my digital Olympus and analog Diana.

I could say more, but I think in this case, the pictures tell the story, a little microcosm of the many musical events of this summer.

Flying Lotus

There’s something to be said for the good, old-fashioned MIDI controlled and laptop combo. FlyLo makes an Akai MPD32 his axe of choice – and it makes it look damned good. Photos courtesy the festival.

The Gear

The Fans

All of this would be meaningless if fans only responded to DJ sets. On the contrary; live sets in electronic sound live and connect in a way that’s special.

All photos (CC-BY-SA) Peter Kirn, unless otherwise noted.

Classically trained as a pianist, musician and producer Jon Hopkins has one of the richest resumes in electronic music. He’s a frequent collaborator with Brian Eno, wand has worked with artists like Coldplay (who featured his music on their last album), Tunng, David Holmes, and Imogen Heap. He worked with director Peter Jackson, and has a sci-fi score on the way. He also has a rich set of solo releases. And we’ve seen him here recently with remix swaps with Four Tet and contributions to Eno’s upcoming Warp record.

Coming to the Electric Zoo Festival, the blowout Randall’s Island Labor Day weekend electronic party here in New York, he’s set to perform a straight-up, genuinely live set, complete with a small squadron of KAOSS Pads. You can catch him Sunday at 1pm if you’re at the event.

I got a chance to speak to Mr. Hopkins by phone from the UK, before he departed for New York and Electric Zoo. He shares here how he works live onstage and in the studio, talks about how Brian Eno got him hooked on the Kaoss Pad, and reveals his addiction to the tools he first used as a keyboard and resistance to software and hardware upgrades. I’m especially able to resonate with what he has to say about working with sound, and transitioning from a piano background to working as a producer – and I’m listening to his work from a fresh perspective after the combination.

(Don’t miss the spectacularly lo-fi film of “Insides” from Live at the ICA, London, below.)

CDM: Not having seen your live show, knowing only your studio work, I’m looking forward to seeing you at Electric Zoo. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do for live sets?

Hopkins: It’s an Ableton [Live] system at the core of it. I ran off all the separate sounds from my own studio, and kind of loaded everything up into Ableton, so I’ve got total flexibility over all the songs. Then I have separate outputs through the interface, so I can have four or five [Korg] Kaoss Pads running in sync with Ableton, where I can do sampling and looping and all kinds of crazy sounds. And then I go into a mixing desk, and I’ve got a lot of control over what’s going on. I’ve got a little MIDI keyboard up there to play stuff on and to keep things triggering. That’s kind of it, really. It’s not enormously complex, because I have to be able to travel around with it on my own.

How do you use the multiple Kaoss effects in tandem?

The card I use has 16 outputs, so I can separate sounds into different ones and have different effects running on each pad. And sometimes I put one at the end to control the master. It depends. It’s a very flexible setup that way.

In order to assemble your clips, are you simply loading stems from the tracks into Live?

Loops, stem loops, and a little bit of everything. One-shot things, longer things. It’s kind of really just about having a variety, so you can take it any way you feel. I found out recently I’m playing for an hour and half rather than an hour [at Electric Zoo], and I normally do an hour, so there may be some slightly longer pieces. I’ve got some time to prepare, so I’ll go and revisit some other songs and try to bring some new things over, as well. So it should be interesting.

Otherwise, it sounds like the live set is mostly dry; you’re doing most of the processing on the KAOSS Pads.

Yeah. Those things – the Kaoss Pad [KP3], specifically — I was working with Brian Eno over the years and he showed me the original one when it first came out, and I’ve kind of followed them as they go. And seeing from him, some of the crazy things he can do with them — I’ve just gotten really addicted to them. You can kind of make them do things they’re not supposed to do. If you record things into the delay settings, particularly the loop settings, and then speed up the tempo, the craziest effects come out. If you got that going into another one, you end up with a sound onstage that you’d never get out of a computer. It’s cool.

Let’s talk about the new single, and the work with Kieran [Hebden / Four Tet]. How did that come about?

Well, we met about three years ago, I think. We had quite a lot of mutual friends. I had been a bit of remixing for an artist on Domino called James Yorkston, who he’d worked with, as well. A year or two later, I signed to Domino.

We did a show together at the Natural History Museum in New York, and it was our first show together – a year and a half ago or something. And the mix of styles went quite well, I think. And we did a few more, and we did a remix swap recently. I did one for his last single, “Angel Echoes,” with the Caribou remix on the other side. And he did one for my new single, which is “Vessel.” And now we have this tour together in October, which I look forward to very much.

Angel Echoes (Jon Hopkins remix) by Four Tet

How do you approach working with his sound, or approach the remix as opposed to your solo work?

It was great, actually, because I love the original. I loved his last album [There Is Love in You] — it was fantastic. The first time I heard it, a guy from Domino played me some of the tracks in the car, way before it was out. And I heard that song, and I just had this idea for it, which was to take that vocal out of the chords he had it in, and write a completely new chord sequence on the piano — have a very natural piano sound, and then have those vocals and those beats flow back in on top of that, and really just try to rewrite the whole chord structure. And he had a live drum loop in there, and I found that if I really squashed it with a limiter … you heard every tiny detail of it. I added an extra few snares here and there, and turned it into a real 3/4 kind of thing, a dance track. And then the main sound — the track was called “Angel Echoes.” I’ve got an old Eventide DSP 4000, which has got a setting called Angel Echoes — which is a complete coincidence; he had never heard of it. I tried putting all the vocals through this Angel Echoes patch and then sent the pitches up an octave and down an octave, as you can with the Eventide in a quite interesting way. There’s this sort of enormous, floating delay. And I had that filtering up in the background while the dry vocals play over top. So you can hear a lot of that effect in the song, particularly in the end. So that was that track.

It seems like the combination really works naturally, that there’s some common aesthetic between the two of you.

There’s some common ground in there, yes. Also… my early albums are completely different than his. I think we’ve grown closer over the years. I think it’s a nice combination, because we have some areas in which we’re similar, and some in which we’re completely different.

What’s your studio setup look like, aside from obviously the aforementioned Eventide?

I’ve got quite a strange combination of things. The core of it is now a Logic system. But I’ve only had it for about a couple of months. Everything I’ve actually released so far was done on Cubase VST from about — I don’t know, 2001 edition; I can’t remember what number it was. And all the sounds I’ve made over the years have been on SoundForge, which is a program I’ve just always loved. I’ve been using it since I was 19; I just got so used to it. I guess it’s whatever program you know best is the best one there is, really. I don’t think there’s huge amounts of difference between one sound editor and another. I’m sure they all can do similar things. But I’ve loved the way SoundForge just has the one massive waveform on the screen, and you can just have infinite levels of undo on every spearate sound. And I have that going into Cubase, so you can have these sounds kind of open live, and be changing them all the way through the process of the song. Just recently, I worked on a film soundtrack, and I found that system finally couldn’t quite handle having any video, so it started crashing a lot. So I’ve got this new Logic system, but I just can’t make any of the more complex sounds on that, because it takes so long. So what I’ve done is hook them up together with an Ethernet cable so now I can drop certain sounds in a folder and have them open in SoundForge and then drop them back in Logic. So I’m using them both, really.

And that’s great. I didn’t want to just completely lose all that, because I think that is what has defined the sounds I’ve been making over the years. I don’t want to change everything in one go. It just seemed like a step backwards in some way.

There’s something psychological about it too, right, when you’ve done a lot of work to have it look familiar? It seems you feel differently about that tool.

You do, I think so, yeah. And particularly when I started on Logic and hooked the two up, I just felt quite bewildered as to how I would ever reach the complexity of editing levels that I was used to. I just operate directly on the waveform. And I love that what you see there on the screen is what you’re hearing, rather than it going through a bunch of live plug-ins. It’s just what I’m used to, really.

So, what don’t you do on the level of the waveform? At what point do you decide, okay, I’m done with that level of granularity with the waveforms and now I’m ready to work with effects and mixing?

I think initially, you go by instinct. In SoundForge, I’d have three or four variations of a loop, and then they would be open in Cubase, or now Logic. And you’d be able to operate on little micro-edits. And then at some point, you feel the drum track is ready, and it doesn’t need any more tweaks — it would be overworked. And I don’t like over-programmed electronic music; I think it had its time, really. Now I really think a solid groove is the way.

And it’s great, at that point you can stick it in Logic. I invested in some crazy plugins, so I’ve got quite a lot of fun things going on in there. Hopefully it will evolve to be the best of both worlds.

And you work a lot with the keyboard, coming at this as a pianist, as well?

Yeah. I didn’t mention that the only keyboard I’ve ever used is a Korg Trinity. I’m sure there aren’t many around these days, but again, like with SoundForge I don’t think it’s about what you use, it’s about how well you know it and how long you’ve been using it. And I know that machine ridiculously well. I’ve had it again since my first setup, when I was 18. And I’ve got a few hundred sounds that I’ve made over the years. Every synth sound on all three of my albums comes from that, with the exception of a couple of bass sounds from a Nord Lead that I’ve got as well.

But it just gets enormously processed. I don’t use them as they are; I stick them into SoundForge and just mess them up, and go through a lot of processes.On the new album, a lot more of the sounds that sound like synths are actually real instruments that have been mangled. A lot of the things that sound like synth pads are actually where I was playing piano through a series of pitch things into quite a deep reverb, and I was using that with a kind of gate to make a lot of the pads and the rhythmic sounds.

You do have a piano in your studio, as well, I would imagine.

It’s, like, behind me when I’m sitting at the computer, so I can swivel around on the chair I can play it. It’s hooked up to a couple of mics, [which] goes into a nice old TL Audio valve pre-amp thing, which then goes into either SoundForge or into Logic, depending on what I’m working on.

It’s the same piano I’ve had since I was a kid, so it’s nice for me, it’s in good condition.

Do you find that piano practice or piano technique are still sort of part of your musical life?

No, unfortunately not; it’s gone. (laughs) I can only play what I need for myself. I used to be a clasically-trained pianist when I was a teenager. I guess it stopped when I was 17; I realize I wasn’t interested in pursuing that, because as a career, I wanted to make my own things.

I used to play a lot of technical stuff which is unfortunately gone. But I couldn’t really justify sitting there and practicing for two hours a day, which is what I used to do. Once you work on musica all the time, music in your spare time isn’t really something you want to do.

Having faced this very issue myself, it doesn’t sound like you feel in any way limited by that. From what I hear in your music, you have far more than enough facility to allow the keyboard to be part of what you do, even if it isn’t central. (And I enjoy that playing.)

Oh yeah. It’s very much limited to the exact thing that I need, but I can still do exactly what I want to hear on what I’m recording. The thing that hasn’t gone is the dynamic range, so I can still play very quietly if I need to, or generally stay in time. It’s just anything fast — but I would never have anything like that anyway, because it’s not really what I’m into playing-wise or writing-wise.

Do you find you draw on the Classical background that you have?

Yes it is, although in a very subliminal way. I haven’t played a Classical piece on the piano since 1998, so whatever’s left — I think I’m more influenced by film scores and what appeals in them, which in turn I guess are influenced classically. But there’s certainly no conscious reference between what I used to listen to and what I used to perform and what I write now.

So what are you listening to these days?

(pauses) My mind always goes blank when that question comes up.

Me, too — or I could say, in the last 72 hours?

(laughs) Actually I think I’ve got my iPod right here. I’ve been listening to a friend of mine, Nathan Fake of Border Communities, who did the other remix of my single. Been listening to his stuff, his album Hard Islands. I do tend to listen to stuff that people I work with or who are friends of mine. I listen to a lot of Brian Eno, very specifically the ambient series. I love all of that stuff. You kind of never get bored of that, really.

But I’m also into a lot of songs and more traditional singer stuff like Arthur Russell or Jim Martin, people like that. Proper lyrics I love, as well, almost listen to more of that than electronic stuff.

Take a listen to Nathan Fake’s remix yourself…

jon hopkins – wire (nathan fake remix) by nathan fake •official•

And then you had the experience of Monsters, the sci-fi film.

That was an amazing experience. I don’t know when it comes out in the US, but it comes out in the UK 12th of November. It was the first film I’ve worked on just on my own. Ed.: Hopkins is no stranger to film scoring by way of collaboration, having scored Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones with Brian Eno. And we’re in luck here in the US – the movie arrives October 29, on demand even sooner on September 24.

And there should be a soundtrack album that comes with that. It’s very much more cinematic style, no beats, much more pure melody and atmosphere and tension. So it doesn’t sound like any of my albums, really. It’s interesting to be pushed in different directions by whatever you’re working on.

Had you had the experience of thinking about visual ideas when you worked on music before? I know it’s very different when you have someone else’s image there in front of you.

No, that was a whole new thing, because I actually don’t tend to think particularly visually. I always wanted videos to get made – but you don’t really get those kind of budgets any more. So I don’t tend to think of anything in particular when I’m writing. I just follow the instinct of the melody and where it goes. So it’s almost like having a film in there takes an enormous part of the pressure and responsibility off, because you’re not the main focus.

How slavish were you in terms of how you lined things up?

Pretty specific. I mean, it was my first time on my own, as I said, doing it. So I pretty much was feeling my way; even simple things like how to arrange the sessions on the computer for each queue — it would have been useful to know that you should have a different session for every queue, because I was trying to do it in one and thinking, wow… (laughs) Just simple organization was quite difficult.

I guess the learning curve is administrative as well as creative!

And it went really well in the end. I was working very strange working hours of 2pm to 4am every single day, and sleeping very strange hours, and not doing anything else. It was the middle of winter, and I barely saw daylight. Life is very simple when that’s all you’re doing. You just feel like for that period of time, you’re not thinking of anything else. I manage to take care of everything else that comes up and come in every day and fight through to the end, really. It was an amazing experience.

It’s starting to pick up some great momentum, so we’re really excited about it coming out.

More Information

http://www.madeevent.com/ElectricZoo/

Official site: Jon Hopkins

Monsters Film

And one more Jon Hopkins remix…

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (Jon Hopkins Remix) by Jon Hopkins

How much can you do with a suitcase full of soundmakers? Quite a lot, as it happens.

The 20th Century gave sound two great achievements. One was the successful modeling of filtering in digital software form. The other was the production of the electronic filter, first in quartz crystal form. Today, all of those advancements are available in cheap, often battery-powered devices that fit in the palm of your hand. Spurred by yesterday’s discussion of sonic mobility and battery power, Sasa Rasa points us to the recent work of Chris Carter (of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey fame).

Chris has built out a set he calls “Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons,” featuring a suitcase rig of noisemaking gadgets. Among other devices, this includes a new experimental, DIY noisemaker kit that came out of a collaboration with Dirty Electronics / John Richards. The setup, and accompanying performance, were recently the featured item at an event at Amsterdam’s STEIM, a hub for experimental sound. The contents comprise a veritable guide to what’s useful in mobile music making, without resorting to mobile phones or similar devices, and without, even, any use of MIDI.

Below, one of the setups, combining specialized and custom electronics with some familiar sound objects.

He describes a sample set using the rig on his blog, proudly entitling it no MIDI no keyboards:

I generated some rhythms using two [KORG] Kaossilators – going through two mini KPs, and manipulated some bass loops with a Korg KP3 pad. I had a Chimera BC16 synth (the LFO and the ADSR) voltage controlling a BC9 synth and two Eventide stompboxes. I synced and beat matched on the fly using ‘tap-tempo’ buttons on the Korgs and Eventides.

Equipment shown:
Two Kaossilators, two mini Kaoss pads, a KP3 Kaoss pad, a Tom Bugs WOM synth, Chimera BC8, BC9 and BC16 synths, two Zoom PFX-9003 effects, an Eventide Modfactor, an Eventide Timefactor, a Dirty-Carter E.S.G.I synth, a portable Edirol mixer and a Zoom H2 for recording.
No MIDI, keyboards, laptops or desktop computers were used.

Here’s that set recorded to his Zoom H2 mobile recorder:

no MIDI no keyboards by chris_carter

Is there an advantage to working this way as opposed to assembling a similar arsenal of tools in a computer? Not necessarily. But maybe that’s part of the point: whether you assemble a set of hardware sound boxes, some custom circuits and DSP processing in hardware, a Pd or Max patch on a computer, or a set of effects, you’re engaging in what is fundamentally the same process. The fact that you have all of these choices means there’s really no excuse for not finding some set of tools with which you feel comfortable, and with which you can push the envelope of your own performance style.

Not only that, but even the most die-hard computer lover is likely to find something here – the mobile recorder, one or two of the effects boxes – that would nicely complement their rig.

And what I like about Chris’ examples is that, within the “experimental” aesthetic paradigm he’s set out, there are rich compositional and sonic ideas, modeled in the flow of signal betwixt his noise gadgetry.

Lots of great ideas for useful hardware came up in comments on the battery-powered story, so watch for a further compilation.

There’s a special love among certain Ableton Live users for the Korg KAOSS Pad KP3, Korg’s lovely and capable sampling/effects box. Al, aka DJ Chinkial (see his trippy MySpace page) has a free VST for free as a holiday gift to us all (Windows-only). The basic idea: make a beatbox plug-in for your computer, using the KP3 as outboard controller, complete with visual feedback. (If you don’t have a KP3, you can use any controller, minus the blinkie lights – monome hack, anyone?)

The results are very wonderful: the KP3 becomes a synth drum machine. The only problem: some bugs may yet need to be ironed out, as the plug-in eats some CPU resources and this is a first version.

I don’t have a KP3 to try out that aspect myself, so if you grab it, let us know how it goes. (Your mileage may vary.)

Al writes us:

the info u posted is on one of my first attempts at a vst version of my reaktor beatbox live machine

kaoss64 is a 16 step 64 part sequencer
that triggers the slices of two bar
loops like a sort of rex file player for wavs

oh and if you’d like to try it out
it would work with any old midi controller just wont have the visual interaction

x position is cc10
y position is cc24
pad trig is cc25 but thats just used for visuals

the abcd buttons are the lowest register keys on a keyboard

cheers again and have a good christmas and new year al.

Description

Direct download link Link not working; exceeded bandwidth

Updated: CDM is now hosting the file as kaoss 64.rar

PLEASE don’t link directly to the file without linking to this post! Thanks!

More from MySpace:

kaoss box 1 vst plugin for kaoss pad 3

my vst beatbox for the kp3

pretty much finished this version
4 part synth record
4 part external control mode
for synth parameters
every synth part has 8 faders each
controling lfo adsr vibrato phase mod and somthing else by selecting the
a b c d buttons
in xy pad mode the a b c d buttons
set which synth part gets recorded
pitch for pt 1 2 3 pt 4 is the octave
the drums are 8 part sample players
select a part using the fx depth knob
in external mode
then the 8 buttons trigger the steps
in pad mode
the fx release slider is the shuffle
in extr mode its used for loop size
the hold button

Okay, getting a bit off-topic here. The big news is, Zoybar is a whole platform for creating your own superguitars. Here’s what the creator had to tell CDM about his vision – and there’s yet another contest in it, too:

Zoybar is a modular hardware platform for creating custom electric string instruments and effects.
The basic Zoybar kits enable you to assemble a variety of electric string instruments that could be mounted with different sound effects.

You can learn more about the project at my blog post http://www.zoybar.net/profiles/blogs/from-the-begining

I was inspired [by] the open source movement. In the virtual world of software production, every individual programmer can be a powerful autonomous production unit (provided with a web connection and a computer) whereas in the physical world materials, energy, production lines, storage and marketing takes much more time, money and risks to become a reality.

The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform.

The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be change during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile groves.

My vision is to found an open music instruments hardware community. Every new effect or feature that would be created by an independent developer could become relevant to the whole Zoybar users and community.

Almost any application can be easily attached to the Zoybar platform, just by adding and changing its position across the profile groves with common bolts and screws.

One last thing – we are giving Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits.

The project is scheduled to be launched at December 2008 with a contest for music instruments and sound effect developers. Entrants shall submit a video clip performance of their new instrument to demonstrate its musicality, design, and engineering features. Performances may include new self made sound effects, synthesizer or electronic instruments.

Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits will be given to the three videos with the highest number of views received through the video interaction at Zoybar.net.
http://www.zoybar.net/contest

So, modular builders, let us know what you make of the site, and if there’s useful stuff there for you. We’ll be watching.

Just be prepared to try to read chinkial’s massive run-on sentence describing the project. He writes:

just thought id let youse know im making a reaktor ensemble at the moment to utilize the korg kp3s 8×8 grid as a seq its going pretty well managed to get the kp3 to trigger the steps on an 8×8 event table and ouput them im also getting visual feed back from the kp3 aswell so u can make beats and not look at the screen just like the monome this is just a test to c if it could b done as i plan on porting it to a vst plugin in sythedit somehow that was my initial idea as not everybody uses reaktor that has a kp3 u know so let me know what youse think about my project

More power to you, man — I think you’ve learned to speak better to the Reaktor than to us, but keep on rocking the KP3. The project looks really cool, from what I can see through blurry cameraphone footage. Anyone in the UK who wants to go shoot this with a real camera, let us know!

It’s like a spy video. And 69 views, plus two tips from CDMers, which means basically you guys see everything before the rest of the universe, even if it’s barely capable of being seen.

chinkial also wins bonus points for plastering his MySpace page with marijuana leaves, being the first and only person to create a stoner mystique for Reaktor. (As opposed to, you know, basement club in Berlin and Red Bull or, maybe more like a lineup of espressos and cigarettes.)

The project looks great, though, so you can bet we’ll stay tuned to the chinkial YouTube channel.