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/

The computer as bandmate is nothing new. It’s just more stable, more powerful, and friendlier than it has been ever before — and that, coupled with growing familiarity, has been making it more commonplace with artists. So just how are artists working with computers onstage when they also play instruments and sing?

Recent guests at New York’s Ableton Live user group have been demonstrating their own techniques for playing Live, live. They work with loops, recording, sampling, live effects, synths – all the things you’d expect – but find ways of navigating all that functionality while still playing their instrument. I was just editing interviews in which electronic artists made the opposite argument, that they preferred producing only electronic sounds with technology. But whatever your desire, you can find a playing technique to accommodate it.

It’s just one set of snapshots from one city — consider it the tip of a very large, very global, very diverse wave of artists getting more comfy with live laptop performance. Here’s how Cosmo D, on cello as part of the band Archie Pelago, and Erin Barra, singing and playing keys, work with software live.

Cosmo D

New York-based artist Cosmo D is doing some wonderful cello and laptop music. Even that’s something that’s becoming more frequent – a good thing, I think, as it means a range of artists will explore ways of working with instrument and machine.

In a video for our friends at the bangbang blog, he demonstrates a simplified version of his set.

And here’s Cosmo D with his band Archie Pelago, jamming away…

If you’re in the New York City area, this ensemble is playing live at the Ableton User Group at Tekserve on Thursday.

Archie Pelago on Facebook

Erin Barra

On the singer side of the spectrum, Erin Barra was also a guest this year at the New York Ableton UG. She’s working on a Live setup that’s a hub of vocal performance and keys, using the computer to host chains of effects.

A Berklee graduate with the chops to match, Erin is a recent convert to Ableton use; her publicist tells us she just dove into the manual last summer and is working on a training certification. The musical idiom is a bit different than the kind of artists’ work regularly featured on this site, but that’s further evidence that the tools aren’t genre-specific.

She walks through her live rig for the performance above in a separate video:

Also, in July she did the first of a writeup for a local New York production and recording outlet, Sonic Scoop, in which she talks more about production. The video is geared at novice and intermediate artists, so it walks through things gradually, step-by-step, and also reveals a bit of her approach to working with Live for vocal processing:

“Insert Scene” by Erin Barra: Creating a Vocal Chain in Ableton Live

It’s great to see artists being brave and patient enough to do this kind of walkthrough. (I say that because I personally find doing screencasts to be a huge pain, though I do promise more in the future on CDM anyway!)

One small nit-pick: I think the Shure SM57 is very, very popular as a vocal mic!

Erin calls herself a “one-woman army,” and deservedly so — playing keys, singing, and operating a computer requires some serious multitasking chops, and she handles her APC with aplomb.

Erin has an album out called Illusions, and a tour of the US on. (Warning: autoplays music.)
http://www.erinbarra.com/

Your Neck of the Woods?

That’s just one city’s recent Ableton user group appearances, and a fraction of the kinds of artists who have appeared in New York alone. Got artists working with laptops — using any software, not just Live — talking in your community about what they’re doing? Want to share your rig? Get in touch.

If you’re in the NYC area, we hope you’ll mark your calendar; if not, we have some free listening for you to explore below.

Hacking and inventing, creative musicians are making and modifying the tools of their performance to express the music they imagine, with stunning variety of results. And so it is that once a month (erm, more or less), we get together in Manhattan to celebrate music makers at a little thing we call Handmade Music.

This month, experimental sound systems and Afrotronic future funk with new electronic instruments inspired by west African tradition join the lineup.

1-6 PM, FREE: OPEN LAB (all ages)
Bring your project to work on, or just hang out and see what others are producing.

• Bluetooth wireless MIDI music-making on hardware and Android phones
• Open show-and-tell, including a couple of presentations of free Pd patching tools for making new instruments
• At 5 PM, Todd Michael Bailey will show off his Where’s the Party At 2 open, DIY sampler, which takes inspiration from grungy digital samplers past.

7PM, FREE – LIVE MUSIC (21+)

Futuristic performances meet reimagined renditions of everything from Game Boys to m’biras this month. The full night is free, and you can remain quenched and fed with Culturefix’s superb beers, wines, and delicious food menu. (Where else in New York can you hear chip music and Afrotronic future funk while munching on The Grilled Cheese of Awesomeness?) The program:

DIGITAL DIASPORA
Afrotronic future funk band! Electronic, handmade remixes of traditional African instruments like the “the Gongo~Tron,” based on the traditional “Gongoma,” a Guinean m’bira (thumb-piano), and “Nano-Shakerator,” based on the traditional “Shekere,” a percussion instrument found throughout western Africa. All in grooving, futuristic new combinations!
http://soundcloud.com/digitaldiaspora

RUCYL MILLS (Saturn Never Sleeps) sci-fi singer

CONCRETE SOUND SYSTEM live sound set (David Primus Luta Dodson). I could try to put into words what David does, but it’s best to see in the video above, from Manhattan’s Harvestworks sound and music research center.

SAPHRYN PHOLLICLE (STEF EYE, Saturn Never Sleeps), multi-instrumentalist, singer, and sound experimentalist plays a left-field live set.

ACTIVE aka CHRIS GILROY live digital monome music played on grids (In/Out Festival)

KRIS KEYSER chip music +
BATSLY ADAMS NES + Genesis-powered vintage game visuals
Kris Keyser is already a favorite of spectacular 8-bit LSDJ music, here accompanied by live-generated visuals on vintage game consoles by this talented digital artist and inventor.

ALEX KIEFER (exilefaker) Forward-thinking chip music from a man also working toward a PhD in philosophy. The chip philosopher? Believe it.

Listen Now, Learn More

Stef Eye/Zaphryn Follicle, pictured above working away (via SNS), has a great profile by Saturn Never Sleeps’ Rucyl Mills on her production setup, here with Ableton Live, a Kaosillator, a kalimba, and an ancient guitar thing:
Living on the Rings | Stef Eye Artist Process Interview

And she has an experimental Zaturn Blend podcast.

Rucyl Mills, pictured above, has her music up on her endlessly-inspiring blog.
http://rucyl.com/tagged/audio/

I can’t embed it, but I absolutely adore the sound of the Yesterday’s Machine preview; I promise to make sure Rucyl keeps us posted on its release. See also Rucyl’s rig, at bottom.

http://saturnneversleeps.com/yesterdays-machine/

Lovely chip music by Kris Kesyer:

From our last edition, Chris Gilroy (on the docket this time, too) joins Philippe “Flippy Lesaux,” as documented in video by Thomas Piper.

And finally, in addition to one more video below, some SoundCloud-hosted tracks from Digital Diaspora, including Mikel Banks on vocals and “freakaphone” (“Looking Back”) and Janice Lowe on vocals (“Sing With Me”).

Looking Back by digital diaspora

Sing With Me by digital diaspora

Where to Go

If you’re not in NY, I hope you’ll get to spend some time with the listening and videos above. But if you are in the area, here are details on our venue for Saturday:

Presented by Culturefix NY
9 Clinton Street
New York, New York 10002

View Larger Map

http://culturefixny.com/

RSVP on Facebook:

Open lab, 1p Saturday 4/2

Live music party, 7p

Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools:

tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to hide his lack of conventional technic. Depending on the venue, the show might be ambient-like, experimental or electronica with weird cinematographic references. But it most often combines all of this.
tokoloten is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It’s proof that the controller – any controller – is in the hands of the creator, and what it sounds like is entirely undetermined.

Mapping a hardware input to a sound means making an abstract connection between one physical action and another sonic reaction. What that relationship is is entirely up to you. I was honestly a bit surprised by some of the impassioned critical reactions to yesterday’s brief mention of the use of the Wiimote as a studio recording. Of course, that proves the creed of the blogger – post first, ask questions later, and when in doubt, just post. Amidst some of the frustration, there are some good discussions, though I do dream of an Internet on which we criticize content without name-calling.

But the reality remains: controllers are always abstracted from the sound, by definition, and whether they’re satisfying to you depends on how you’ve mapped them. I don’t know what qualifies as innovative, but then, there have been times when I’ve very much enjoyed turning a knob, so “innovation” isn’t always what matters to me. I tend to fall back on Duke Ellington – “if it sounds good, it is good.” For controllers, that means “if it feels good, it is good.” You’re the one with the controller in your hands.

For an alternative example, musician/artist Kassen has an excellent session on improvising with custom software and game controllers. Below, you can catch some of his talk from Amsterdam’s famed STEIM research center, which has a long history of researching the controller-music connection. After all these years asking that question, what we have is …more questions. But that’s a beautiful thing.

Kassen (DJ, performer, ChucK programmer) from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Part of the reason I’ve never liked “controllerism” as a term – sorry, Moldover – is that there is no clear technique, no clear sound, no particular discipline. That is, I understand the case for the term and I’m glad there’s a discussion. But it seems to me that part of why controllerism is interesting is that there is no such thing as controllerism. The beauty of digital music is that you do have wide-open, blank-page possibilities. You can create your own system. It is abstract, simulation, ungrounded in physical reality. But while that is at odds with millenia of acoustic instrument-making, it’s also in tune with centuries of compositional and notational tradition, which are abstract. For the first time, the systems of how we conceive music can themselves become physical.

That to me is an exciting thing.

So, here’s a question — let’s take the example of sensors that handle orientation. How would you want to deal with them in music software, if they could be standardized, if any accelerometer or tilt sensor could announce its orientation? How do you decide which is the x, y, and z axis, for instance? How would you want the data normalized?

Autonomous bassline generators? Wireless, modular, infrared sync? Tiny drum machines networking together? Welcome to Texas, and the minds of Eric Archer, Bleep Labs, 4ms Pedals, the Church of the Friendly Ghost, and Andromeda Space Rockers.

One look at a floor full of blinking circuits, and most ladies and gentleman might assume they’ve stumbled upon some alien technology. “Imagine the things we could learn from this civilization – advancements far beyond our own,” as the stock line from sci fi goes. “Man and woman are not meant to learn such things. You’re meddling in things beyond your comprehension.”

In other words, you couldn’t build something like this, right?

Or could you?

In Austin, Texas, Eric, Dann, and Dr. Bleep are launching a new Handmade Music series, kicking it off with kits and classes so that anyone – including beginners – can start building stuff. For the 101 crowd, there’s a free beginner class even if you’ve never touched a soldering iron, so you can build your own analog drum. “I’m no n00b,” you say, “impress me.” Sure – the “upper division” gets to talk more advanced synth design and walks through the full-blown modular, networkable kit.

At the end of it all is an open jam and featured performance.

If you’re anywhere near Austin, Texas – or can find a bargain plane fare – you’ll want to clear your calendar for October 18!

Full Event Details, October 18 Handmade Music in Austin [Handmade Music @noisepages]

That’s just the first of more events to come, so stay glued to the Handmade Music site for events in Austin, New York, Portugal, Germany, and beyond.

“That’s right / you’re not from Texas / Texas wants you anyway.” For those of us in New York, Lisbon, Rio, Sydney, and Jakarta, there’s still hope. The kits will be online, and I”m looking at ways of putting together a full Handmade Music curriculum of projects online for all of us on the site we’re developing this fall, noisepages – ideas welcome.

I certainly didn’t expect to get deep into these geekier topics in high school while I was busily trying to fail Calculus and screw up science lab results in ways that baffled my teachers. But it’s a glorious age we live in, in which we get to assimilate alien technology as our own. Stay tuned.