In a world of disposable computers and electronics, making something “custom” is an antidote to throwaway hardware, a way of putting one’s own handiwork, care, and attention into the object with which you play music. Of course, it’s one thing to say it, and another thing to do it, but Nick Francis falls squarely in the “doer” camp. A jazz-focused radio broadcaster from Seattle’s KPLU, Nick says he’s been chopping up audio since he was doing it with razor blades and tape. Naturally, his digital music controller has the kind of craft in wood that you’d normally find on an acoustic instrument – and his music remixes of choice tend toward artists like Coltrane.

Nick’s work also combines resources from the Web. He says he got started because of a post here on CDM, then went to Livid’s DIY solution, the Builder DIY system, and DJ TechTools’ arcade buttons.

Nick has build details on DJ TechTools, as posted in March:
The Chopper Tone – Classic Arcade Custom Controller [DJ Tech Tools]

Updated: Livid, whose Builder series powered the guts of the project and made it possible, did an extensive Q&A.

And today, he shared his work on his own KPLU radio station site, sharing how he works with remixing classic jazz tunes on the controller.

Mix it up: KPLU music director invents ‘The Choppertone’

Nick shares some additional thoughts for CDM – and I reproduce them, really, because just as he feels indebted to CDM, I feel personally indebted to everyone who shares their work with us on this site and in this community in general:

This project never would’ve happened had I not stumbled upon your website in 2009 or so. I really love your wide-open approach to this whole world of geeks, tinkerers, engineers and artists who make up the core of your community.

Regarding the actual build of the Choppertone, I pretty much covered it in detail in my initial postings to the forums at Livid and DJTT. The whole build process was really challenging, yet extremely rewarding. Nothing beats the feeling of spending months of detailed work on a project, finally getting it done, and then seeing it work!

I basically recorded the video for a few friends who had no idea what controllers were about. I tried to find something simple enough musically to demonstrate it. One of the fun things about jazz is that historically, from the get-go, these musicians were the original “remixers”; they could take a melody, tune or phrase, and tweak it, rearrange it and make it their own. I had been lately been listening to a lot of Fats Waller, so “Honeysuckle Rose” was a good fit. I found at least 20 versions of it in the KPLU library, and chose four that were close to the original key and tempo. From there it was just a few days of chopping everything into 4 bar phrases, then finding the ones that seemed to play well with the others.

As for how I thought the video would be received by the midi controller community, I had no idea. I sensed that this project was going to come off as either really cool…or really stupid. All I knew is that it worked for me.

The positive response to the video has simply blown my mind, and the video’s reach has extended far beyond what I imagined. I could not believe my eyes when I received an email from the Ableton offices in Berlin a few weeks ago. That was so incredibly cool. I’m also quite amused by the many comments regarding my age; I have to tell you that my creative spirit is as vibrant now (at 61) as it was when I was an aspiring film student at UCLA at 21. These days, I’m quite aware that my days on earth are limited and that the present moment is to be savored. That’s all you got.

I imagine a number of the sentiments there will be familiar – and I certainly find interests in our wider community that transcend age (and other) barriers.

Nick says he’s woodshedding so that this is something he can use in live sets. He also says he welcomes questions, so readers, if you’ve got them, let’s hear!

For all that latest plug-in may perform every kind of synthesis ever, much of electronic sound boils down to a few basic techniques. Perhaps that’s part of the appeal of DIY electronics: it’s a chance to do less.

What strikes me about Brian McNamara’s work is how elegant it is: simple boxes interconnect with basic functions. These are digital instruments – inside those black boxes, the soul of the thing is a microcontroller – but tightly focused on a simple task. I asked Brian to walk us through his favorite projects. You may have seen the Wicks Looper before, but it’s just as nice to see these three side by side. The common theme: finding a single, focused idea, and executing it in an object whose design makes its function clear and accessible.

Here’s Brian describing his work.

Swooftronic Pi

The Swooftronic Pi was the first sound project I made that was fully my own design. It consists of two small boxes joined by a cable. One box goes in each hand. Each box has a light sensor in the top; as you let more light into the right hand sensor, you increase the frequency (pitch). As you let more light onto the left hand sensor, you increase the length of the note played. At the heart of the Swooftronic Pi is a Picaxe microcontroller; it is used for the two analog inputs and the stereo sound outputs.

Wicks Looper

The Wicks Looper is probably my most popular project. It’s a very simple device that allows you to build up sound loops using a push button and a rotary potentiometer. When the write button is pressed, a sound is written into memory, corresponding to the position of the pitch control. The sound is then replayed next time the loop is run. Once you have built up the loop you want, you can adjust the tempo control to make the loop go as fast or slow as you like.

EM-Tronic

The EM-Tronic is one of my more recent projects. It’s a super simple synth that has 2 controls — one for the frequency and one for how fast the sound is repeated. This device creates some really interesting sounds from the delay circuit when the speed and pitch are increased together. The speed control also allows modes to be selected that change the sound of the basic tone.

The inspiration for all of my projects is my interest in electronics and music. Until I started building these projects as a business, I always worked in electronics workshops and played in bands in my spare time. Building these projects seemed like a good mix of the two. You can find more info about my projects at my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/rarebeasts and project site: http://www.freewebs.com/rarebeasts/index.htm

Peter Cocteau’s NXT-606, an 8-bit, sample-based drum machine built on LEGO’s Mindstorms prototyping platforming, has already been making the geek blog rounds. But let’s consider it here as more than just novelty. First, there’s a new video which better demonstrates the instrument, how it functions, and how it was developed.

Second, there are design features of this project that I think are worth admiring beyond the sheer “because you can” achievement (which is, I’ll admit, formidable, as well).

• Brilliant, minimal design: Peter cleverly consolidates controls on two knobs, as seen in the new video, without requiring laborious menu navigation or making multiple functions of those knobs confusing. Some major manufacturers could learn something from the efficiency of the design here.
• Friendly housing: Apple’s 80s-model computer designs were a model of making case designs friendly and approachable. We’ve rarely seen that “read” as well with musical instruments. Here, a combination of slick LEGO parts and clever layout get that feeling on an instrument.
• Focused utility: Part of the reason the housing and interface don’t get overwhelming is because the NXT-606 doesn’t try to do too much. It’s just a simple, sampled drum machine and not more, which makes it more drool-worthy, not less.
• Rapid prototyping and visually-developed software. I’d be a little happier with LEGO if the Mindstorms and NXT were more open, but it’s clear to see the advantages of this solution, as well. Check out the rapid, visual programming that went into the software development. There’s plenty that more open projects could learn. (This is doubly exciting after the revelation of the new AppInventor project for Android, though we may have to wait some time before we get to play with that.

All in all, kudos to Peter. And don’t be surprised when everyone wants these.

See also the original video, which also includes detailed specs, as well as the forum post. And if you have an NXT, you can try this out yourself.

Updated: I asked creator Peter about his work. Here’s what he has to say about a design that has been a childhood dream — literally:

I think I was 6 years old first time I thought about making a LEGO synth. I didn’t know a lot about synths; I had only seen them on television and just knew they could make sounds when you turned their knobs. I was young but not stupid, and already knew it was impossible to make synths with LEGO. But this idea was already in my brain.

Another childhood memory is when I saw someone, on television, making robots with electronics and LEGO. It was about 1984. I just said to myself, “I want to do the same thing!” and stole my father’s “electrical switch” to control a few LEGO motors. I’ve played with batteries and speakers too, and stole my brother’s electronics kit to make a radio, a synth, and things like that. I also made my own Jean-Michel Jarre-style synth by replacing switches with optical resistors.

Well, I’ve talked a lot about childhood, but it determines many things in our life. And I have to say, as an adult, it is really pleasant to inspire children’s dreams.

Growing older, I became a musician, forming a “New Wave” band with a school friend. And once again, I stole my brother’s toy — an Atari 1040 STE [computer] to connect to my synth. The era of computing and audio began..

I began to work a few years later as an audio editor, and quickly became a sound engineer. (I work now on movies and cartoon soundtracks for majors.) I’ve also composed a lot of house music and have a few releases and remixes under the name “Swan.”

In 2000, when I discovered LEGO Mindstorms, I fell in love again. Those products were what I’d dreamt about 15 years earlier. Since 2000, I’ve created a few robots (as seen in the end of the video), shown at a technology exhibition, a LEGO exhibition, robotics shops … and given some Robotics lessons in engineering schools.

I like LEGO Mindstorms because of the unlimited number of possibilities with the help of all the compatible bricks.

It was only in 2006, when the new NXT LEGO computer arrived, that I knew it was possible to make a very cool LEGO instrument. But for technical reasons, it became possible to make a real sequencer only in 2007. I’ve worked a lot to make the application and gave up two or three times.The difficult thing is that the NXT does only one thing at once, so it’s not easy to make real-time drum machine.

In fact, the NXT-606 became real in 2008. I didn’t talk about it on the Web at this time.

The future? I don’t know exactly. Maybe I’ll wait to see people’s interest in this kind of creation, but yeah, I have to say I have already many ideas..

The NXT-606 sound in video is equalized on CR-1605 Mackie and compressed thru DBX compressor.

Here are a few links to my other LEGO creations, in pictures:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/chrismaker/SuperTechRobot/h022.jpg

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=947165

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/chrismaker/LEGOTIC-Hand/handvid1.gif

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/chrismaker/LEGOTIC-Hand/handvid2.gif

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/chrismaker/LEGOTIC-Hand/hand1.jpg

Peter also notes that people have expressed an interest in buying this device; it sounds like he’ll entertain specific commissions to build a limited number.

Thanks to Peter for this insight. I really love getting the story from childhood dream to reality; it’s a story that’s familiar to many of us, I’m sure.

Guitarist Joey Mariano is making a unique hybrid sound, blending guitar chops with sonic techniques borrowed from 8-bit chip music. His latest adventure filters the sound of the guitar through pulse width filtering, the likes of which are used to modulate the sound of pulse/rectangle waves in chip music composition.

The invention he’s devised to do this, though, is likely to appeal to anyone wanting to work with CV. Using the Arduino platform, it’s an elegant design for a control voltage sequencer, as seen on classic modulars like the Moog. And since he’s posted full specs and Arduino code, you could easily build one yourself – the design is efficient enough that it wouldn’t make a bad intermediate build.

Joey tells CDM, “It’s just a little CV sequencer, but it adds a lot of depth to the chipmusic guitar sound i’m trying to develop. It’s a really simple device, but some of your readers might find it interesting and $$ saving if they have some compatible analog gear.”

More detailed description of the project, and helpful contributors:

Thanks to Vblank and Batsly Adams for their help. Vblank gave me some programming lessons and Batsly helped me choose the correct components to use.

http://www.waitforvblank.com
http://www.batslyadams.com

Thanks to Bucky from http://youtube.com/explod2A03 for being my camera man on this one.

Thanks to Part Time (my cat) for trying to get into every video i post. …gives me chiptune street cred yo.

This a CV sequencer i built (with an arduino microcontroller). It Sequences the pulse width of my guitar. I got the idea from tracking (composing) in famitracker, LSDJ and Goattracker. When you compose for the NES or the Gameboy, there are tons of effects you can choose from to make square waves more complex and interesting sounding. So, once i saw that the Pulsemonger pedal had a CV input for the pulsewidth i had to buy it. There are a couple reasons i built this with an arduino: I wanted to make it expandable. In the future, I may add some tap tempo functionality or i thought maybe it might be fun to actually hook the sequencer up to my Gameboy (through the linker port) so the sequencing would happen in relation to the tempo of the song i’m playing.

Full details, specs, code:
http://filefreakout.com/animalstyle/?page_id=880
http://animal-style.com

WalkSX from Gijs on Vimeo.

As the Sony Walkman turns 30, many of the mobile cassette’s fans wax nostalgic. But it takes Gijs Gieskes to wire up a new Rube Goldberg-style musical instrument based on the Walkman’s simple tape playback.

Follow along carefully through the signal flow of this unusual instrument:

1. The Walkman has audio on the tape itself, sampled from a Roland TR-808 drum machine.

2. Because a compact cassette has two tracks (left and right, for stereo), one track is dedicated to the drums, another to the rim shot.

3. The rim shot track is fed as a mono audio input to an Arduino (the open-source microcontroller platform). The Arduino responds to the audio level, so each time a rim shot hit occurs, it ….

4. …sends a sequence event to the Gakken SX-150. That means that you can adjust the speed of the whole contraption by…

5. …adjusting the speed of the tape. (Bless you, analog playback!)

It takes Gijs to think that way somehow: put together, these elements are actually fairly simple, but strikingly effective. Fortunately, if this does inspire new ideas, Gijs has posted all his Arduino code, so you can check this out and try something yourself.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=walksx

Design in music in a digital world can be about the object as the sound – musical ideas translate from one medium to many others. And just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone comes up with a new visual metaphor, a new creation for manipulating music.

OTTO is a functioning prototype combining interactive hardware and computer software, the invention of Luca De Rosso. He produced the design as a thesis project for his masters’ degree in Visual and Multimedia Communications at IUAV University of Venice. It uses the Arduino open source hardware platform and Cycling ’74′s Max/MSP software, and Luca accordingly is quick to credit the assistance of those two communities. In that sense, two, I think it points to lots of new design in the field of integrated hardware and software – not just standalone hardware or standalone software or generic controllers for anything, but hardware that itself behaves like software.

All photos here courtesy Luca and used by permission; see his Flickr account.

OTTO ~ demo.01 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.

Luca sends along some more details of the behind-the-scenes workings just for us. (Thanks, mate!)

Luca actually had assistance from his father working on the case. (I love that – father-son collaboration!) All the electronics are on a single Arduino board, and the patch works in Max. (Max has features that make it well worth using, but it’d be nice to see a Pd port, too, making the whole setup open source – and giving you an easy way to run it on Linux.)

OTTO ~ Getting Started from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.

Luca sends us a view of the innards of this device – you saw it here first:

The first prototype is done, says Luca, with three more coming in coming days as he heads to a festival in Croatia. Plans for the future: no commercial availability yet, but Luca says he’d be happy to hear from anyone interested in manufacturing. (Capital remains the big challenge, even as fabrication gets easier.)

I also love the way he’s designed the documentation. Music tech industry, please, this is how it should be done – with all due respect and without naming names, we really would love if you just showed us your gear and didn’t have some swarmy dude gushing about lots of hype. In fact, we’d be equally happy to buy your gear if the design spoke for itself rather than having your name and circuit diagrams and random text plastered all over it.

But this is really visually inspiring, creative work. And to top it off, it looks insanely fun to play. Putting the beats in a circle opens up all kinds of other possibilities, and suggests thinking in terms of cycles rather than the grids we see on other hardware. As with the monome, you can imagine other software applications that would hook into this basic, minimal hardware design. I hope we see more of this design and concept.

http://www.lucaderosso.com/otto/otto

More videos:

OTTO ~ demo.02 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.

OTTO ~ demo.03 from Luca De Rosso on Vimeo.

Artists Gijs Gieskes’ sequencers are almost like physical, mechanical software, an expression of musical structure in object form. As such, even as they make strange sounds, they become musical sculpture. His latest Servo Sequencer combines optical and mechanical process, as frequency circles spin on a turntable and tone arms float above them.

The Servo Sequencer is built for exhibition use – meaning, yes, he’s brave enough to let you play with this contraption. Sequence the arms using buttons, then adjust the volume mix and placement of each arm using the joystick.

Serv Seq from Gijs on Vimeo.

This project is unusually well-documented. Gijs provides complete specs, the script that controls the arms, and even a little web app that generates those lovely patterns.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=serv-seq

But for those of you near the Netherlands, you should go check this out in person. Updated: The piece will be part of an exhibition in Breda through August 23, with multiple opening events featuring local artists from Eindhoven and Breda, plus live performances and concerts including Gijs and his talented brethren and neighbors.

Here & There Exhibition, mu.nl [Info in English]

The events:
Opening Part 1:
KOP, Breda
Thursday 25/06 08.00 pm

MU, Eindhoven
Friday 26/06 08.00 pm

(It’s a bit confusing as the events swap between Breda and Eindhoven — there’s a second opening Saturday July 25. Gijs explains “the first [opening] is in breda (thursday), then a day later (friday) in eindhoven, where my machine will be. and then a month later its the other way around.”)

You know, Breda. Like, right … here. We’ve got a number of readers in the area (whom I suspect know more or less exactly where this is); let us know if you make it!

Forget NAMM — one of a handful of hardware I’m most excited about in 2009 is all DIY, the 8-step GorF step sequencer. (I’m hoping for follow-ups like a Forg or Grof. Kermit (Muppet) fans know what I’m talking about.)

With four sequences with parameters, steps with pitch, gate, and Control Change, sequencing controls, legato mode, and the planned ability to both send and receive clock, this is one useful-looking device. And from the video above, it looks like it’s progressing really nicely.

In fact, if you think about it, it’s kind of puzzling that there isn’t a simple, cheap, commercial device that does this. As a kit, though, people could hack in features others might not imagine, it could be combined with other DIY and open source synth and music projects, and it makes a great kit and learning tool — meaning it’s more fun, anyway. And if you want a pink case, you can do that, too, but you can decide whether you want it more salmon or fuchsia.

Paul, do keep us posted!

Via musatkl / nostromo.

Here’s something I’d very much like to see: a hackable, kit step sequencer.

nostromo tips us off to a blog item on his site on the project. The creation of Monowave maker Paul Maddox, the 8-step sequencer is based on an Atmel Mega16 micro chip. The whole thing is looking very compact, which could make a nice little unit or might integrate well with other projects (like a synth).

The other good news to me: new DIY hardware could be a great way to run clock into software. Previously, that job has fallen to somewhat dull consumer drum machines. With DIY projects, even software lovers may soon be hacking new features into hardware and manipulating software sequences with that.

Planned features include “rock-solid timing” (sounds good), plus:

• 4 sequences with parameters
• Steps with pitch, velocity, gate on/off, and two Control Change messages (CC1/CC2) on a selectable channel
• Adjust tempo, base note (including via MIDI), sequence and step length
• Legato mode
• Send MIDI clock out, MIDI sync in (currently input isn’t done – input is usually trickier than output, but output may actually be more interesting to people)

nostromo already has some ideas for how to make this interesting when combined with chip trackers like LSDJ and LPGT, so worth reading his original post (thanks!):

Meet Gorf [mustakl]
GorF Project Page at Paul’s site Vaco Loco

Anyone out there worked on a similar project? (I’d sure love to have a DIY sequencer or two at our Handmade Music events in NYC!)

It’s hard to write the first line of this, because in this case any reference to Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” is wildly redundant. This is a calculator. He is the operator. This is a real, working HP48 graphing calculator playing MIDI events. You can go, like, graph stuff with it afterwards, do some Calculus. And we can thank a few people responding in a mobile music poll on this site for making it happen.

Andrew Turley, who has previously built a microfiche MIDI machine (thus making his way through arcane academic equipment as MIDI controllers), describes the project:

This is a demo of a project I built so that I could use my HP 48 to play a MIDI keyboard. The calculator is running a program that sends data to a Parallax Stamp Basic microcontroller over the built-in serial port whenever I press a button. The microcontroller is running software that converts the message from the calculator into a MIDI noteon or noteoff message that is then sent to the keyboard. This is a response to a createdigitalmusic.com poll in which a (small) number of users said they wanted the site to cover more calculator music.

Brilliant work, Andrew. And I have to say, now that you’ve done it, it’s a pretty practical little object to us as a controller.

Other calculator work, anyone?