How do you allow musical ideas to flower – technically, creatively, and when finding your musical voice? The floral images reflected in visuals and sound in Christopher Willits’ “Tiger Flower Circle Sun” are evocative imagery, but also an apt metaphor for Willits’ artistic process.

The composer and artist spins unique, organic ambient worlds with layers of sound and pattern, transforming the timbres of his guitar. He’s also known for making custom software to craft his results, a prolific patcher in Max/MSP with a regular series on Ableton Live, Max, Max for Live, guitar recording, touring, and other topics translated to friendly how-tos on XLR8R TV.

I got a chance to talk to Christopher about the technical and inspirational alike, reflecting on the new record.

PK: Let’s talk a bit about your approach to production as a guitarist. Part of what I love about your work, live and in the studio, is the way in which the instrument is interwoven with the music. In this album, what’s the relationship of the input to output? How much is live playing; how much is after-the-fact production work?

CW: When I’m developing new ideas, I’m always playing guitar and processing it, and recording it out … then I either let it be as-is, or develop it further. It’s like throwing out all of these seeds. Some grow into things and others decompose back into the soil and help the others along in a less direct way.

I have no expectation about where things will go when I’m in the experimenting / play phase of working. Sometimes I don’t even know that I’m in it. I’m just playing guitar and then something will stick and begin to resonate.

All of these pieces began through this method. None of the guitars that you hear have been processed after-the-fact; it’s all a live, in-the-moment process of recording the guitars through software. I want the life of those recordings shining through, [rather than it being] overworked.

As far as the guitar itself, any comments on tuning, timbre, and how you handle the instrument itself?

Pretty straight up, standard tuning, A 440. I used my strat mostly and baritone for some depth here and there.

Naturally, I’m interested in your software creations for this record, as you’ve been a vocal advocate of Max patching. What sorts of contraptions are involved here? New Max patches? Using Max standalone, Max for Live, or a combination?

Most of the processed guitars were created before I dug into Max for Live. So these processing patterns were developed through plug-ins I made with Max that I use with Ableton Live, as my mixer and sequencer / workstation.

Just to pull something out timbrally – “Heart Connects to Head” nicely represents some of the juxtoposition of organic and electronic sounds for me, in particular the synth arpeggio with percussion. Can you share some of your sound sources here, or in general how you view the ensemble?

That synth was Operator in Ableton Live, being played by my guitar with a MIDI pickup, an Arpeggiator MIDI effect on it, while the guitar output was running through some spectral smashing-ness.

So the bass synth, and chords are all recorded live in one flow, the guitar triggering the bass and the processed string vibrations together.

There’s a lot of microsampling going on, and percussive elements. Is this reflected in the software? How do you conceive the rhythmic activities of the record?

Some of it is from the Max plugs processing shards of guitar; others are recordings that I made — I EQ’d [them] and adjusted the envelopes into percussive ticks that occupied the right space for the music.

The percussive elements created spinning wheels, often in different directions from other melodic elements. These events for me create an opening into the patterns. Even the simplest triple click low in the mix can rotate and open up more surfaces to feel.

A couple of the tracks seem to burst into vocals; can you talk about what motivated these differently?

I was not attached to any sonic outcome with this record, and there was no plan to even use vocals, but at certain times i heard these big words, multiple people singing them. And it was really important to me that more than two people were singing these parts.

There’s a liquid sense of tonality to me, a sense of harmonic freedom. Can you talk about your harmonic influences, and how these evolve in these tracks compositionally?

The creative process is mysterious, but I know it does require devotion and love and time, and surrendering control. I feel like the music tells me what to do. I follow my intuition and the music either embraces it or challenges the adjustments / additions / subtractions. It’s an amazing process for me; nothing short of magic, really. With an intention and with some focus, love, and time. these things grow. The harmonic vibrations attract other vibrations and the flow keeps flowing.

Maybe my influences come out in this process, but that is never intentional. There is music I love — like Coltrane, Hendrix, Stereolab, Tortoise, Sun Ra, Steve Reich, Yoruba Andabo — that I can hear relationships to.

Obviously, you work a lot with visual imagery in your work and in your performance, and there are some evocative titles in the tracks and the album itself. Did specific visual images feed into your musical conceptions here?

Yes, definitely — images that were woven into imagining and intuiting what the music was opening up to. I’ve been shooting tons of video and composing video pieces for these sounds. Throughout the rest of the year, I’ll be releasing these videos.

The lastest is for “Flowers Into Stardust.”

nowness.com featured it recently and it’s on my YouTube channel.

What does your hardware rig look like in preparing for this album? What’s your software rig?

Adam at Guitar Geek did a pretty good job last year detailing my hardware setup. it has changed a little, but this is a good overview.

guitargeek | Christopher Willits

Software modules I’m designing, now in Max for Live, are mostly time domain-folding plugs. Sound is recorded in and I index to different locations using delays, jump-cutting buffers, and granular techniques. I also work on weird spectral morphs with convolution techniques, brittle odd and even-harmonic distortion, and different MIDI input from the guitar to alter filtration settings. These seem to be the processing machines that I’m always gravitating towards.

I used these plugs in about 12 audio tracks with input-only monitoring, with both dry guitar input and looped guitar, fed via return tracks. I then added extra tracks in Live for percussion recording and sequencing, vocal recording, baritone, synths, etc.

How will you adapt the hardware/software setup for this material for live performance?

The system i use live is very similar to the recording setup, but without the extra tracks for supporting instruments.
The hardware setup will be scaled down for easier traveling.

For live shows right now I’m using:

MacBook Pro
MOTU UltraLite [audio interface]
iPad (for video control)
monome for improvised pattern sequencing
[M-Audio] Trigger Finger (for processing details)
Doepfer Pocket Fader (for controlling processing tracks)
Guitar + Line 6 Pocket Pod, or Korg Pandora (Still in a shoot out for small pre to take; I keep changing my mind)
Diamond compressor
Customized Big Muff (analog distortion)
[Behringer] FCB 1010 when I’m sitting in a chair or standing up while playing.

I’m experimenting a lot with sitting down and standing up in the last few years. Both feel good for different situations.

Some of the material I can play solo; other tracks need the stacked vocals and other elements, so I’ll wait until a band tour is dialed in for that. I’m really interested in playing with percussion lately. I either meet up with different percussionists, bring friends along, recruit audience members, or all of the above. In the last performance I had at twin space in san francisco, [I brought in] eleven audience members.

How do you see this album fitting in with your previous work?

I feel this album is a natural progression from everything I’ve been doing. That growth is not a linear. I’m more interested in creating a bunch of supporting branches of art flowing in a similar direction, rather than one main limb with only a few flowers.

TFCS brings together all of the sounds that I love into one statement, perhaps the most concise that I have made yet. And the really fun thing for me to think about is that I feel like I am just now beginning. After ten years of making records as a solo artist and in collaboration with some of my best friends, I’ve really honed my voice and focus and I can only imagine what the next 10 years is going to bring.

For more information

http://ghostly.com/artists/christopher-willits
http://ghostly.com/releases/tiger-flower-circle-sun
http://christopherwillits.com/

Listen: Christopher has a fantastic, exclusive, free set available via our friends at Percussion Lab. It’s a good taste of what’s on the album:
Christopher Willits Live on Earth Exclusive Mix

For some time, I’ve been a champion of Livid Instruments’ controller hardware, because I like the principles behind it. The devices are handmade in Texas using sustainable woods and environmentally-friendly stains, are standards-compliant with open specifications, open source software, and driverless class-compliant operation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and lend themselves to programmability and customization. They certainly have some of the spirit of the open source monome devices, but for anyone who wished the monome grid also had knobs, faders, and such, and didn’t require weird serial-over-USB drivers, it’s nice that we have Livid, too. This is not by way of advertising Livid, either. I really believe that generally, open configurability and small-batch construction result in hardware that’s more fun to own and use.

But, oh yeah – there’s also the question of what you can actually do with your music using these controllers. With grids, crossfaders, and faders at the ready, the Ohm64 and more compact Block each have plenty of control possibilities.
The gang at Livid, and the community of users this niche line has attracted, have been hard at work over the past months inventing new ways of controlling musical and visual applications. Here are a few of the best of those examples.

Of course, the wildest of all is the Renoise work at top by proflific Renoiser hitotori. Do not adjust your computer; there’s not something wrong with the speed of the video at top. (Who needs drugs, really – even caffeine – with music like that? I’ll have what he’s having. Check out his other YouTube uploads, as well.)

Here are some other applications:

Reason + Ohm64

Before Ableton’s mapping features or Novation’s Automap, there was Reason and Remote. And the use of Remote scripts can still be very powerful, as seen here, complete with some keyboard tricks.

Reason Remote mapping for Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Ableton Live

See Livid’s forums for the Ohm 64 Remote Script, which should work with any recent 8.x version of Live.

What’s most impressive about it is that, thanks to some ingenious work by Mike Chenetz of max4live.info, it not only “automaps” the Ohm64 but even provides access to the “red box” used by Novation’s Launchpad and Akai’s APC. You don’t even need a copy of Max for Live to pull it off.

Ohm64 Ableton Live Remote Script from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

There’s also now a script for the Block. I have to say, I like using the Launchpad with Ableton, but I’m constantly reaching for device knobs that … aren’t actually there. (The Launchpad only has buttons.) That means the Block wins out in day-to-day practicality for most users, unless you only ever trigger clips and never so much as adjust a filter cutoff or wet/dry amount.

Block Remote Script for Ableton Live from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Some of the most amazing integration comes from nativeKONTROL, the advanced scripting project that began with the KORG nano series. These are really advanced scripts that have elaborate, layered control of everything from sequencing drum racks to muting and arming tracks – more control, even, than you get from the APC40. Because it’s a script, you don’t need a special template (any file will work), and you don’t need Max for Live. nativeKONTROL omComponent handles the Ohm64, and just this week blockLive added the Block, seen below. These are payware, at $22.50 for the Block and $25-45 (depending on how many presets you want bundled in) for the Ohm. But they’re really quite impressive pieces of work.

http://www.nativekontrol.com/

Max for Live

I’m burying the lead a bit here: Livid’s open-sourced LividStep Max for Live device is about the most brilliantly useful patch I’ve seen yet. It finally fills a gap Live itself hasn’t managed to fill: it makes patterns you can step sequence live. Video part 1 below; see also part 2.

LividStep: step sequencer made in Max For Live from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Here’s a demo video by user Monoque featuring some nice use of drum pads in Max for Live with Ableton Live. I’ll try to find some other information on the custom plug itself.

M4L – Livid OHM64 integration plug-in v2 from Monoque on Vimeo.

Traktor

The crossfader, faders, and banks of knobs make the Ohm a natural DJ controller. (The Ohm itself was designed by folks who make and use VJ software, so that’s not a coincidence.) Using Traktor Pro DJ from Native Instruments, the Ohm becomes a controller for looping, cues, sync and bpm, mixing, effects, and even navigation of the browser.

Traktor Pro and Livid Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

MIDI and Hardware

Yes, while it seems almost every other recent controller has dropped the good, old-fashioned MIDI DIN connectors, the Block and Ohm64 each have 5-pin MIDI ins and outs. That means you aren’t only restricted to using them with software, as soillodge illustrates here with an Access Virus B and SU10 sampler, plus a noise swash pedal from the brilliant 4ms pedals.

Visuals

The Ohm64 was designed first and foremost by visualists, so it’s naturally a nice controller for those applications, not just Livid’s own Cell DNA, which comes free in the box.

As covered on CDMotion, the GrandVJ guys have automapped the Ohm to their software, and legendary live visualist Johnny DeKam has a really drool-worthy rig combining the Ohm with a ViXiD video mixer and his custom Vidvox VDMX setup. (Vidvox? Livid? VDMX? Vixid? Vidmx? Vidvid? Vidxvidvidvid? Yeah, it’s tough to keep straight, but it’s my job.)

It’s even possible to display very simple, low-resolution images on the Ohm’s grid.

Pictures on the Ohm64 from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

Got tips of your own?

To me, all of this variety strikes home an important point: we talk a lot about of-the-box integration, but hardware is cooler when it works with more than just one piece of software. Even if you’re not a power user, your own personal needs may be different from someone else’s. In fact, if you’re not a power user, you’re even more likely to expect to be able to connect a piece of control hardware to more than one thing and have it work. We’ve seen that desire not only with the Livid line, but with gear like the KORG nano series and even devices marketed for use with one app, like the Novation Launchpad and Akai APC. That says to me that smarter control and open devices that allow users to easily contribute their own ideas make sense.

The above compilation isn’t even complete. For more on the hardware and techniques for using it:
http://www.lividinstruments.com/
Lots of good discussion, tips, and the latest scripts live on the forums: http://blog.lividinstruments.com/forum/
And for more video tutorials, see Livid’s Vimeo account.

I’ve tried to feature some of the ideas from the community here, but of course the Livid gang have done the most videos, and I’m sure there are plenty I’ve missed. Are you a Livid owner with your own custom rig? Want to share your impressions, tips, templates, etc.? Let us know.

For computers, digital tech means the ability to turn anything into numbers. For humans, it means a chance to translate between gestures, ideas, sounds, and images. We can interface with musical, visual creations intuitively and collaboratively – now with ubiquitous, cheap touch and electronics. Two events take on that idea on the two coasts of the US; if you’re nearby, hopefully you can drop by, and if not, we’ll have plenty to share.

Multi-user Art, Networked OSC Workshops in NYC

Here in New York, mobile touch is put to the test in a gallery show in Brooklyn, with two workshops that can help you make your own work. Multi-User Art (image, top) uses the open platform mrmr and OSC protocol to allow visitors with mobile devices to manipulate installations. Step up, and a layout of controls is automatically pushed to your device, so you can push buttons, slide faders, draw, and otherwise control what you see — even with multiple users at a time. (For now, we’re stuck with the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad only, but I’m working on Android and browser-based ports for anyone interested.)

The artwork includes installations by myself, by mrmr creator Eric Redlinger, Superdraw artist Joshue Ott, and, using mirrors and light in place of projection, Chris Jordan. They range from three-dimensional, collaborative drawing to reflected light to moonscapes. The opening is free on Friday night:

But what if you want to learn to harness some of these same tools in your own work? We have two workshops Saturday, too.

Friday, 4/9: Opening, free – 7p; see exhibition information

Saturday, 4/10
11a-12p, free, Eric Redlinger presents an introduction to mrmr, a demonstration of how to use an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad for control via OSC.

1p-4p, Joshue Ott and I will teach an in-depth workshop on using OSC for networked communication with free tools, focusing on Processing and Pure Data. We’ll talk about how Zeroconf (implemented by Apple as Bonjour) can create zero-configuration, automatic connections – no IP numbers to type. We’ll look at how you can use OSC to make software and hardware communicate across networks, for sound and visuals. And we’ll talk about how you can use tools like mrmr on mobile devices. $75. Class information, signup required!

All information:
Devotion Gallery, Brooklyn

Physical Controls with Arduino, Max, Pd in LA

Touch controls a bit too insubstantial for you? Prefer the tactile feel of a physical encoder in your hand? We’ve got you covered there, too.

Kevin Nelson writes us to share some new events he’s setting up at LA’s new CrashSpace hackerspace. (About time LA got a new, proper hack spot!)

There’s a free workshop Wednesday, using Max (though translating to other environments like Pd shouldn’t be hard), plus a more advanced intensive in May. Details:

First, I’m going to be giving a high-level talk this Wednesday, April 7 at 8pm on using a Monome to control things in the real world by integrating an Arduino with Max/MSP. The talk is free for members of the space, with a $10 suggested donation for non-members.

Flamethrowers! Arduinos! Monomes! This Wednesday, April 7th [CrashSpace]

Second, I’ll be teaching a course on building user interfaces with the Arduino and dataflow languages (I’m trying to make the emphasis on pd because it’s open source, but depending on the audience, Max and Max for Live might slip in there too). The curriculum and description haven’t been posted yet, but should be done and up by the end of the week.

The basic idea of the course is to target musicians who have dabbled in electronics and give them the tools necessary to empower themselves to build their own interfaces and instruments. It’s a two day intensive (8+ hrs/day) on May 15 and 16. We’ll be covering basic electronics & sensors, Arduino programming, serial communication between Arduino and pd/Max, and basic pd patching for midi routing or sound generation. The course is $150 for CrashSpace members, and $250 for non-members, and both prices include an Arduino and selection of sensors & misc components for the project.

http://csarduinodataflow.eventbrite.com/

What’s the Best Way to Document?

What do you prefer for documentation of these courses, for those of you not in NY or LA who want to follow along at home? (And hey, I can’t be accused of being too specialized geography-wise — I’m teaching a similar course in Portugal this spring.)

I’ve (ahem) sometimes promised more documentation than I’ve actually delivered, but in the meantime, I have been gradually refining some examples in Processing, Pd, and the like, so I’m feeling less shy about sharing them.

Suggestions? The more specific, the more likely I am to implement them. What do you want to see? In what format? Any sites you’ve found useful for this sort of sharing?

The more we can share this sort of specific knowledge, the more we as a community can help each other build our skills.

Before evolutionary adaptation comes mutation. Some of the weirdest stuff, in other words, could be the future – just ask biology. That was the conversation I had with folks like artist Rosa Menkman in Old Amsterdam (the one in Holland). So, as we gather back in New Amsterdam (NYC), we get a chance to celebrate the unusual.

Wherever you are in the world, here’s a look at some of those new mutations: a sewing machine converted into a musical instrument, an expressive audiovisual instrument borrowing ideas from the trumpet, and an electro-country band that covers classic honky-tonk American hits.

If you are in the sliver of our audience who live in the NYC area, of course, you can catch these folks live in a variety show-meets-science fair format. We don’t charge admission for the weird, and you can buy beer. Thanks to our new home at Galapagos Art Space, the NYC edition of Handmade Music can offer a proper stage and a lineup of live performances, along with the noisemaking and friendly atmosphere.

Live, Monday, March 8
Where: Galapagos Art Space, DUMBO Brooklyn [directions]
When: Doors open 7p
Cost: FREE
Highlights online for the rest of the planet here, later

Augmented Sewing Machine + Ensemble

Circuit Bending Orchestra: Lara Grant at Diana Eng’s Fairytale Fashion Show, Eyebeam NYC / SML from See-ming Lee ??? SML on Vimeo.

Lara Grant’s Augmented Sewing Machine, entitled “16TH AND MISSION,” takes the workings of the device and transforms it into musical control. Contact between needle and fabric and onboard switches and knobs (with help from Arduino and Max/MSP) make it a novel controller.

Lara joins myself and Matt Ganucheau providing additional electronic sounds (and possibly a surprise DIY creation or two from me), forming three quarters of the ensemble we formed to play a wearable technology fashion show. The Fairytale Fashion show, by Diana Eng, is documented below by MAKE’s/Adafruit’s Phil Torrone, with our group’s live (PA) music in the background. (See also an extensive photoblog of the designs by designer-technology See-ming Lee.)

fairytale fashion 2010 from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Missing but rejoining me next week in San Francisco is Lara’s sister Sarah Grant. Together, the Grant Sisters work on conductive fabric sound. If you’re interested in how to work with textiles in sonic electronics, they’ve promised to share more of what they’re doing:
http://fsp.fm

The TOOB: An Audiovisual Hypertrumpet

How do you build on the idea of a trumpet? Give it digital control and control over audio and visuals, of course:

Arvid Tomayko-Peters plays The TOOB – a unique wireless electronic wind instrument that gives the performer a vast but intuitive and malleable range of sonic material, allowing creative freedom in solo or group improvisation. The instrument senses breath, finger pressure, tilt and acceleration and utilizes sound captured and processed on the fly to create expressive soundscapes ranging from comic to tragic to “a force of nature” and abstract live video.

At top, a recent short audiovisual improvisation recorded on the instrument, provided to CDM by the artist. The TOOB even made an appearance at SIGGRAPH, the geektastic visual conference. More information:

Short live video from SIGGRAPH:
http://arvidtp.net/music.php#siggraph2009

How it works:
http://arvidtp.net/portfolio/instruments.php

Performance with the TOOB:
http://arvidtp.net/portfolio/index.php#toob

And here’s what the creation looks like. Notice the clever use of a project enclosure, tubing, and force sensing resistors. (Getting the job done always earns bonus points in my book.)

Owen Lake, Electro-Country, and New Handmade Instrument Designs

They call it electro-country. This isn’t modern, top-of-the-charts, watered down Nashville pop. Think covers of classic 1950s honky-tonk, covered on modular synths and custom electronic instruments. The instrumental lineup for Owen Lake:

Owen Lake (jeff snyder) – voice and manta
Penny Hunt (kate soper) – voice and synthesizer
Tommy Byrd (matt hough) – voice and guitar
Frank Arnold (spencer russell) – bass
Buck Flash (alex ness) – live video

But alongside his love of country music, bandleader Jeff Snyder moonlights as inventor. His Manta is a fascinating new small-run, boutique touch controller with a hexagonal layout. I had been meaning to check out the Manta anyway. (Its design has caught the eye of folks like Cycling ’74 engineer Darwin Grosse, one of the key minds behind Max.) Now I get to see it in person, with a full electro-country band behind it. Expect a full report thereafter.

Just don’t get too rowdy with the beers and start tossing them at the band in excitement, like that scene from The Blues Brothers. (Ah, though maybe we should put all these players together and try to cover “Stand By Your Man.”)

The hardware project:
http://www.snyderphonics.com/

The band project:
http://www.owenlake.com/

Gesture-Controller Exploration, by Matt + Lisa

Gesture-Control Deomonstration from Mouse & the Billionaire on Vimeo.

M Bethancourt wowed us at a previous event with an elegantly-designed gestural controller. Such devices are hardly new, fundamentally, but the GCe3 is beautifully refined, in a gorgeous wood housing. Since then, Mouse and the Billionaire (aka Matt + Lisa, though I’m not sure which one is which) have been practicing – because it’s not only the invention of the thing, but practicing on it to get good. Here’s what they’re up to:

The Gesture-Controller Exploration is a study of innovative musical instrument / controllers that investigates the relationship between movement, physical space and musical performance. The most recent incarnation, the GCe3, combines a musical software suite built in Max/Msp with an intuitive physical form to create a rich musical experience. Dipping, swinging, swaying, tilting, and turning the The Gesture-Controller sends signals to the computer running the audio software, informing its sound-making functions. This allows for a more satisfying performance, leveraging the power of the computer and helping the electronic musician to use physical means to create and manipulate digital electronic sounds in new and interesting ways.

http://www.mouseandthebillionaire.com/gce/
http://vimeo.com/tag:gesturecontrolexploration

The Event

Event details

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

on Facebook

Bonus! Saturday we’re hanging out with Babycastles, the indie arcade, and the folks of Loud Objects, chip-programming sound scientists. Bring a soldering iron (if you own one; if not, it’s a worthy investment), and stop in for hacking controllers and making one-button objects. Previous details | on Facebook

Being a digital musician requires a new set of skills, a precise tack between the forces of engineering and creativity. Robert Henke aka Monolake is always someone I find thought-provoking, not only because he’s so open and articulate, but because he seems uniquely focused on balancing those two sides of his personality. As a media artist and producer, his work relies heavily on his own technological invention, but he is also able to keep true to his own aesthetic compass.

For acoustic evidence of where Robert’s mind is exploring, his full-length album Silence, released last month on his own Imbalance label, reverberates with clarity. To my own ears, its crystalline rhythms and finely-honed, always-foreground timbres and textures recall all the best of Monolake through the years, back to the early, pre-Ableton collaboration between Robert and (now Ableton CEO) Gerhard Behles. (For an eloquent review, see Fact Magazine’s take.)

As far as engineering in the sense of recording and production, Robert did a terrific interview with engineer/musician Caro Snatch for her blog; she gets some fascinating answers out of him and they even talk about his technique of avoiding compression on electronic sources. But I was interested in how engineering can work in the compositional sense: with open-ended tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP, how do you create compositional systems? How do you wrestle with the potential of Max inside Live? Where do you draw limits?

As always, Robert has some sharp ideas – whether fodder for inspiration or disagreement, I think you’ll find things worth talking about. And indeed, while technology figures prominently, I think you’ll find some ideas that are really fundamentally about music, about compositional intent, thinking about sound, and thinking about rhythm.

PK: It seems that you’ve always had a really particular approach to timbre, and that it’s especially focused and evolved on this record. There’s a certain purity of tone to which you tend to gravitate, as I hear it. Can you talk a bit about how you approach timbral color?

RH: I can only nail it down to personal taste. I enjoy timbres with inharmonic content, and I like the contrast between very sharp transients and very lush, airy sounds.

I know that Silence, as with your other work, combines synthesized and found sounds. There is a sense that you get to an almost atomic level with each, however, that the synthesized are becoming organic and the recorded sounds are deconstructed to the point that become almost primitive and synthesized. Is there a different approach to each of these, or is that something that happens naturally?

The ambiguity of sonic events always fascinates me. That border between ‘real’ and ‘synthetic’ is a quite interesting one, not only in sound design, but also in visual arts. Working with synthetic sound generation sharpens my senses for the real sounds around me, and often I am surprised by how much they can blend. We are not talking any more of sound generation with a single square wave oscillator and a lowpass filter, but methods that are capable of creating highly complex and rich timbres. Those methods’ sonic definition matches the complexity of real sounds and this is where the fun starts. I like to place a recording of a metal thing next to a physical model of a metal thing next to a processed sample next to an FM timbre and see how they become a nice ensemble of similar sounds.

What’s your workflow like now in Ableton Live? On some level, it’s a tool that does things that you have conceived or asked for, or that reworks things you’ve created. On another, of course, it’s also this commercial tool that has been adapted to a generalized audience. Are there areas of it that you tend to work in most? Are there areas or features you tend to ignore or even avoid?

I try to avoid ‘content’. I am not interested in ‘throwing beat loops together’. I do not use presets from other people when it comes to synthesis, this all is just not my way of thinking. Why should I leave that great part of composition which is coming up with interesting timbres, to someone else? I am also not using time stretching / warping as a tool to match beats. I don’t like time stretch artefacts, unless I drive it in the very extreme as a special effect. I don’t need factory groove templates, in fact I never you groove at all, if i want to achieve it, I move notes by hand.

Apart from that, I’d say I use everything Live has to offer. There is not typical workflow, it highly depends on what I want to do. The most significant difference to the old pre-Live times is to me that I can make lots of sketches without any special idea in mind, just let go, and save the result once I am bored with it. And much later I can open all those sketches, and see if anything in there is of interest. Then I grab that element and continue working on the basis of this. I have a lot of complex tree structures of fragments on my hard-disk, and this a great source of material and inspiration.

Recently, you shared some of your early, personal Max patches as Max for Live creations. Were any of these patches used on Silence?

I don’t mean to focus exclusively on the technology, but it seems that these Max patches – even more than any element of Live – really embody some of your aesthetic and taste, yes? They’re a bit like experiencing a Monolake album interactively. Do you conceive them in that way, as a sort of compositional thought formed into a tool?

The tools have a strong influence on the result. Take the Monolake PX-18 sequencer. Its way of expanding a one bar loop into something that repeats in longer cycles is based on such a rigid concept, that it enforces a quite specific rhythmical approach. Some patterns are simply not possible, some are very easy to achieve. This is exciting and this is very musical; a piano is an instrument which makes it very easy to treat all twelve notes of a well tempered scale the same. And it is an instrument which makes it impossible to play with any notes that do not fit in such a scale. This is exactly the same interesting tension between enabling and inhibiting expression as with the rhythmical limitation of the PX-18.

There is an interesting interaction going on between developing tools and achieving musical results. The whole process is far from being linear and entirely result orientated. The idea at the beginning is shaped by first results and experiences gained from playing with a simple prototype of a part of the functionality, this drives the further development of the tool, but also influences the musical idea. If I try to build a granular time freezer, and after initial tests I figure out that I need a lot of overlapping grains to get the sound I want, I can also start thinking in swarms of particles, and this might lead to musical ideas that shape how I try to improve the grain thing. Working this way often provides far more interesting results than sticking to an initial plan. As an interesting side note, this way of thinking also finds its way more and more into general software/hardware development and interface/functionality design. The tools of the future need to _feel_ right. One cannot design a multi touch screen application on a piece of paper, implement it and think it will work. It would, technically, but it might not be inspiring to use and therefor most likely not a success in a competitive market.

A few years ago, when you were in New York, you made a couple of comments that stuck with me. One was that you thought that the tech press sometimes wasn’t critical enough of technology, that, for instance, they weren’t saying critical things about Ableton Live. Another was that you felt like there was less need for Max/MSP partly because of what Live itself does. I’m curious if you have any new thoughts on either of those?

I find myself doing a lot of things in Max these days, since the integration in Live made it so easy and rewarding. When I made that Max statement in NYC, I felt that coding is a trap when it comes to actually creating music. One simply does spend to much time with non-musical problems.In many ways, Max 5 and Max for Live reduced the time needed to get results. And this makes the whole package very attractive again.

I started teaching sound design at the Berlin University of Arts a year ago. I can show my students how to create a simple two-operator FM synthesizer with an interesting random modulation within fifteen minutes and the result is a Live set including the Max for Live part, which I can save and send to the students as an email so they can open it again an continue working on it. If stuff can be done that fast, it leaves enough headroom to actually use it in a musical context. In retrospective a lot of 90s IDM music was way to much driven by exploring technology. At some point one has to step back and say: okay, now lets actually have a look at the composition and not only at the technical complexity of the algorithm.

So, what’s the role of the press in this? One experience I gain from reading the Ableton user forum and from talking with students is that there is a great amount of insecurity about which technology to use. It’s the abundance paradox. Which software sounds best? Which compressor do i need to use? Which plugins do I need for mastering housy dub music with a hint of pop and some acoustic guitar? Having the choice between 5000 compressor plugins whilst not understanding what makes a compressor really sound the way it does it pretty much my idea of hell. So often I have that impulse telling the world: hey, you can use the sidechain input of the compressor you already have in Live, and you can feed that sidechain with a slightly delayed version of the original signal. You could also apply saturation, filtering, or even reverb or again an instance of the compressor in that side chain signal to shape its timing and response to its input. This will have a result of the compression curve, and this means you can build anything from a very normal compressor up to the most exotic effect you can imagine. And you can store those structures for later re-use. You can automate every single aspect of it. You can use ten or twenty instances of it in a song. Are you guys aware that you have more power right in front of you than the best music producers and hardware designers just ten years ago would have dreamed off?

I simply do not want to read any more articles about new compressor, be it hardware or software, unless it provides insight into the amazing possibilities we already have. I don’t want to read anymore sound quality discussions that deal with the last bit of a 24-bit file in a world where people listen to mp3 over mobile phones and enjoy those artefacts.

The most exciting new music comes from young kids guys running some audio software in a bedroom, listening to the result over a shitty hi-fi and use Melodyne all the way wrong. Those folks do not read gear magazines, they could not care less about yet another mastering EQ, but create the most stunning beauty. If people talk too much about gear I usually do not expect too much good music. I am often trapped in this twilight zone between engineer and composer too, so I know what I am talking about here…

As far as your own music, do you find you need some critical distance from a tool as an artist? Or does that fall away once you’re in the process of actually making the record? (It seems, after all, we’re all a bit spoiled by the various excellent tools we have at our disposal.)

Deadlines help. If I know that a project needs to be finished, I simply stop investing time in technology at some point, and instead use what’s there. Its a question of discipline and experience too. I try to teach my students that if they are working on a technically challenging project they need to define a deadline for the technical side. If not, they might work till the very last moment on technical stuff and loose focus on the artistic part. At the end, the result counts, not the beautiful MAX patch, which could possible create a nice result.

And have you ever considered trying to return to just building something simple in, say, Max, and limiting yourself to that? Or are you able to find necessary formal limitations in the tools you have?

I am constantly limiting myself. I set up a multi-dimensional network of constraints and bounce off its walls. Exhausting but it helps getting stuff done. A typical constraint: No more patching in Max till that project is finished, or try to get all Melodyne processing done in one afternoon and use those results.

I’m particularly interested in how you conceive rhythm. It seems like some of the ideas about sequencing rhythm in ATOM are also present here. Some of these rhythms are relatively symmetrical, pulse-like. Then you have these stuttering rhythms, as though a vibration has been set in motion and is naturally playing itself out in space. How do you work rhythmically?

I contrast totally straight 16th grooves with material that itself constitutes a rhythmical quality off that grid. In ‘Silence’ obviously I often used gravity driven processes with their inherent accelerations. Or I played notes with an arpeggiator that is not synced to song time but where I control its rate with a slider. Something Gerhard already did on the very first Monolake track ‘Cyan’ in 1995. Silence offers quite a few hidden connections to Monolake history. My general approach to groove is simple: I change things in time till it feels right.

What was your compositional process like, generally, for these works? Did they start with some of those sounds? With a rhythmic motive?

There is no general rule. I often just open Live to explore an idea, and end up doing something else because I found an interesting detail along the way. Or I have to work on a highly specific project, and have to discard a lot of the results because they do not work in a given context. Instead of throwing them away, I keep them and this might form the basis for another composition.

The title, “Silence,” certainly recalls John Cage. Was that intentional? Were there other meanings here? In an album that’s not silent, what is the role of silence?

Silence is such a great concept. There is no silence, unless in a vacuum, its that great mystic world which cannot exist in our world. Also, in music the time between the musical events is as important as the events itself. But I really leave it up to the associations of the listener to make sense of the title. And of the liner notes and the photographs and the music. I think there is a lot of room for all sorts of connections and connotations.

When we talked at the end of last year, we got to reflect a bit about winter. I’m editing this as I watch a snowstorm here in Manhattan, having come from snowstorms in Stockolm. It seems that winter is again a thread on this record. How did winter play into the album?

I grew up in the Bavarian countryside. Winter there equals silence, introversion, deep thinking, and general inwards focus. I like this.

http://monolake.de/
Free Max for Live patch downloads: http://monolake.de/technology/m4l.html
Silence: http://monolake.de/releases/ml-025.html

More software is speaking timecode, opening up control of digital sound to real, physical vinyl on turntables. The latest addition: Time TunnelXL is a pair of externals that decodes Native Instruments’ Traktor Scratch vinyl and scratches not only sound, but visuals or anything you can make in the open development environment Max.

Right now, it supports Max/MSP (and thus Max for Live) on the Mac, but support for Linux and Windows and the open-source Pure Data as well as Max are planned.

I’m actually hopeful a lot of these efforts can support Pd, too. Pd does some things more effectively than Max, just as Max does some things more effectively than Pd, and by supporting Linux, you can have a flexible computer rig running on an OS you can optimize and tune. It brings virtual vinyl full circle, too: the first commercial product ran on BeOS and Linux before Windows or Mac.

Of course, Max support and Max for Live can help DJs and turntablists invent their own live performance rigs in the Ableton environment, too.

Project site:
Time Tunnel XL @ komika.org

What happens when an interface is no longer locked to the screen? What about making control simply work from your hand, on a different screen, with awareness of the world around it? Simple as the early implementations may be, that’s really the vision behind mobile control applications for music and visuals.

c74 is a lovely iPhone-based app that uses a Max/MSP patch to generate interfaces from a patch that run on your handheld. It isn’t just a control surface, though; access to native APIs on the phone also provide other features.

• GPS for specific location. (How you use that is up to you; I recommend the ability to switch between “West Coast” and “East Coast” beats.)
• Accelerometer data, and specific “shake” gestures.
• Compass orientation.
• Proximity. (That means your proximity to the device, though it’d also be fun with mobile to use Bluetooth to tell when different devices are nearby.)

The external is free. It’s currently Mac OS X-only. (If people respond well, perhaps we can see about a Windows build.) The app itself is paid, but see below — Mac and Max/MSP users, I’ve got some codes to give away.

The app is called c74, but it’s entirely unofficial, the work of Dutch developer Leo van der Veen. (The site even has the cheeky name nr74.org; Cycling ’74, I’d say you have a fan. And, um, I’m glad you’re a small company rather than a litigious big one – that’s better for everyone.)

This isn’t the only app to attempt something like this. The iPhone app Mrmr attempts to produce an entire interface protocol for exchanging templates; I’m collaborating now with the developer of that app on … something. I won’t jinx it by saying more for now; stay tuned. (It’s nothing earth-shaking; I just want to finish it!) The idea of Mrmr is that a performer could beam a control template to a friend, or you could walk up to an art installation and grab the template on your own mobile; eventually, it could even work on different devices (not just Apple ones).

c74 is distinct from that effort in a couple of ways. It’s very specific to the iPhone APIs. It’s really specific to Max, and focuses on generating those templates from a Max patch in a flexible manner. It doesn’t actually even use OpenSoundControl, though the principle is the same – it opens a network socket and communicates wirelessly. (In fact, just as you can represent MIDI messages without using a 5-pin MIDI DIN cable, you can use OSC-formatted messages without needing the whole protocol. And underneath OSC is really just a bunch of standard networking protocols – that’s part of the point. So we almost need another name for general-purpose, open “networking.” Actually, maybe the word “networking” works.)

Right now, there isn’t a whole lot of interoperability between different development environments, different mobile devices (there is a big world beyond iPhone), and different template apps (which are growing in number by the day). But I’m not overly concerned about that. Right now, I think it’s just as well that people try a lot of different experiments.

As that evolves, the next step could really be finding ways of communicating template information in standard ways, based on the real-world experience of how these apps work. TUIO has already caught on as a way of describing multitouch input, as seen first on the ReacTable. What that protocol does is actually fairly cool: it just takes a set of practices used by real artists, and builds the standard protocol around those practices, rather than the other way around. I think it should be possible to continue to expand on these kinds of descriptions.

Want a copy of c74 for your iPhone / iPod touch and your Max 5-running Mac? I have just ten copies to give away. So tell us in comments what Max patch project you’d like to run with this, and convince me that you’ll send us a short video of the results. I’ll take the first ten compelling comments and email you a code. (That means you DO need to leave an email in the comment form; only the site admins and I can see it.)

I’m in touch with Leo, as well, so we’ll certainly keep this discussion going about control in general.

Project site:
http://www.nr74.org/c74.html

Update – important – US ONLY for codes.

What if a competition didn’t just encourage entrants to try to make a better product? What if it encouraged friendly rivalry between makers to produce entries that were also shared across the community?

That’s the idea behind Digitópia’s upcoming series of competitions, now entering its third year. Digitópia itself is based in Porto, Portugal, at the Casa da Musica. But even if Portugal isn’t exactly in your neighborhood, entrants and onlookers alike can benefit from shared, open sourced contributions.

In fact, even the prizes itself are open projects. The simple, anthropomorphic-looking controller above is a free project. It’s dead-simple, a combination of an IKEA salad bowl, a potentiometer, and ultrasonic distance sensors. But as a result, it’s also inexpensive, simple to use (particularly with the addition of Digitópia’s custom-developed software), and a flexible starting point for further work. (Actually, handling multiple ultrasonics is a bit tricky, too, relative to things like infrared, so that’s a particularly nice addition.)

First up: Max and Pd patchers, your pride is on the line.

Think your Max/MSP or Pure Data multimedia patch is the most original around? Prove it. An international competition will find the best patches, and all of them (whether made in Max or Pd) will be released under a free software license. A panel will judge the results, led by Pedro Rebelo, composer, digital artist and Director of Education at the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast. New deadline: February 14. (That’s right, polish off your best patch, send it into battle, and then take your pumped-up sense of masculinity / femininity out for a fantastic Valentine’s Day dinner.)

There are other competitions, too. The third-annual Musical Miniatures Competition is looking for musical works or “gestures” of 15 seconds or less. (If you’ve ignored other calls for works, this one should leave you no excuse.) The sounds will be licensed under a Creative Commons license for freesound.org, adding to that communal repository of sounds. Bram de Jong, legendary developer and freesound.org guru, will judge the results. Deadline: May 28.

Produce the best sound or the best patch, and you get the controller above and accompanying software. But the for third competition, you get the futuristic controller of your dreams. You submit the idea, and Digitópia builds the results. The entrants are judged on “innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential.” (Yes, it needs to be feasible in order for them to build it — no electronic music equivalents of The Homer.)

Oh, yes, and the Dreams Competition has me as the judge. Deadline: April 3. Keep a dream journal.

The beauty of all of this is that these are contests that give back. We’ll have sounds, patches, inventions, and hardware documentation for the prize and the entrants; stay tuned as that documentation becomes available.

Speaking of getting something out of this for yourself… don’t have any dream ideas? No good at Max and Pd patching? For an absurdly-cheap €15 for three whole days of seminars, Digitópia will teach you patching skills in these two tools. Jeez, for that price, you could afford a flight to beautiful Portugal and still come out ahead. No details on the new seminars for spring up yet, but I’ll put up a notice when they are. (I’m also teaching a seminar at Digitópia the first week of June.)

Digitópia Competitions 2010

Digitópia – Platform for the Development of Digital Music Communities

Ms. Pinky Revised from Mastah Lee on Vimeo.

What should DJing in Ableton Live look like? How could conventional vinyl cueing and scratching be integrated with the Live environment? Serato and Ableton gave us one possible answer to that question last week with The Bridge. Their solution: use your Serato DJ set normally, and simply sync the transport of Ableton Live when the two run simultaneously.

That solution could be ideal for some users, but it falls short of what many expected, which was the ability to scratch audio elements from Live as though they were on vinyl. Scratching Live clips would seem to be the best of both worlds: you get all the live sequencing features of Live, but you can still manipulate sound as you would on a turntable.

Enter Ms. Pinky. The vinyl control system has long been a highly-precise, solid-performing alternative to better-known names. Its ace in the hole has long been open control from your own custom patches, via an external object for the graphical programming language Max/MSP. The results have ranged from custom visual performance to a vibrating chaise lounge controlled by a turntable. With Max patches now able to interact more deeply with Live through Max for Live, that opens up the chance to build your own DJ-Ableton integration.

Ms. Pinky and Max for Live user Lee Goodrich has just done that. We saw an early version of the patch last month, but a new version irons vastly expands on the integration with Live, making this a truly complete solution for digital DJing.
Post on the patch with download
Information on the update

Some of the tasty features you get:

• Set Ms. Pinky to any track and use clips in that track
• Trigger a clip as you would normally, and it cues right into Ms. Pinky for scratching (see Lee in comments for more, but do note that the catch is that Ms Pinky actually loads the original file, because clips in Live don’t yet provide access to their playhead)
• Trigger different sequences of audio clips using a pattern contained in a MIDI clip (essentially automated cueing)
• Record clips using Live’s recording facility
• Scratch away with control vinyl

In relative mode, you can proceed directly to the beginning of the next clip without back-cueing.

The net result of all of this: Ms. Pinky acts like a scratch-anything device you can drop right into your existing Live set. With clever use of sampling and re-sampling, that opens up integration with any synths or external audio sources, not just audio clips.

Ironically, this is much closer to what I had predicted the Serato – Ableton collaboration would resemble.

Lee shares some comments about his experience:

I understand the concern people have about the one big caveat of Max For Live programming (You gotta pay to play, and no free runtime limits potential casual users), but honestly I think Max for Live is a slick enough product to overcome this. Making Max For Live patches has been the most fun programming I’ve ever had, and it is amazing how much you can do and how easy it is to do it. If other programmers are having as much fun as I am, then the bevy of awesome patches that come out of this product will end up being worth paying $300 at the door.

Perhaps the only other thing I’d like to say is that I’m not actually affiliated with Ms. Pinky at all, just another customer who wanted some functionality and due to the versatility of the software was able to extend it. So big thanks to Down Low Pinkstah and whoever else has worked on Ms. Pinky to make it so easily extensible.

Thanks, Lee! It’ll be interesting to see where else this may lead.

If you start using this in your sets, let us know – and get some photos / videos / mixes / whatever.

Oh, yeah, and I want to see a vibrating chaise lounge interface inside Ableton, too.

http://www.mspinky.com/

For anyone whose complaint about OSC aka OpenSoundControl is that it lacks broad hardware support, I have one word for you:

Unicorns.

OSC now runs on magical unicorns. (Would a unicorn not want high-resolution, human-readable messages encoded with time-stamps? I think they would. And because OSC is transport-independent, it can absolutely run on magical Unicorn Beams.)

No idea what this post is about? Don’t worry — I’ll have a talking unicorn narrate a proper, sophisticated, complete introduction to OSC for beginners soon. They’re magical, so they can make complex topics lucid to any audience.

Yesterday, I wrote, entirely tongue in cheek and not expecting anything to actually come of it:

I think maybe I’ll start running screaming headlines with things I want in them, if only for good luck. Tomorrow on CDM: “You Know What Annoys Me? The Fact That We Don’t Have Unicorns. Magic Unicorns. Who Speak OSC.”

Today, via Twitter, Max patcher and audiovisual Merlock Andrew Lovett-Barron of Toronto wrote to me:

@peterkirn I made you a unicorn that speaks OSC.

And here it is, for your enjoyment, in Max 5 patch format:

http://andrewlb.com/max/Oscicorn_for_CDM.maxpat

This is, of course, very silly. But it’s an excuse to pitch Andrew’s site, which has lots of patching and coding goodies and visual creations:

http://andrewlb.com/

And perhaps more importantly, OSC now has a mascot. That means t-shirts, plushies, costumes, the lot. Your job: what should the name of this unicorn be?

All MIDI has is an antiquated DIN cable. Oh, yeah, that and millions of compatible devices. We hope OSC support won’t be as rare as unicorns.

Side note: please don’t troll this post, tempting as that may be. It’ll make the unicorn cry.