A Dreamy Prototype for Ableton Live Control Finally Mimics UI

Ableton Live controllers are suddenly everywhere, in commercial products and DIY creations. But an in-progress prototype being designed by Serbia-based creator Sasa Djuric, found on the CDM Flickr pool, goes the extra distance to integrate more effectively with the software. The hardware looks more like the on-screen UI, for starters – an elusive objective for many controllers. And by working with the Mackie Control protocol, Sasa is able to make communication between hardware and software fully bi-directional, so the controller gives you essential feedback. There’s even a facility for scratching. The design is based on the popular MIDIbox platform.

Sasa writes with details of what the creation process is like. It’s all still very much in progress, so we’re really excited to see how it evolves into a finished design.

Sasa explains (with videos to follow):

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Refresh: Asides

Geek Gawking: An Opticon Podcast and a Plogue Maestro

Chris Randall of Analog Industries (and, of course, Audio Damage) is on a roll in his latest around the Interwebs roundup. Not to steal your post here, Chris, but on the off chance someone missed this, he nets both:

1. A podcast episode with music made entirely on the Optigan, Mattel’s bizarre “optical organ” of the 70s. (See Optigan.com for more on that.)

2. Stefan Goodchild’s blog, aka “Stabilizer”, who’s on Peter Gabriel’s multimedia team (nice work if you can get it), and — in addition to having lots of wonderful goodies built in Mac/Windows music patching software Plogue Bidule, is hard at work with something featuring lots of light-up buttons, evidently Monome-inspired.

I should add something to this discussion, so I’ll add this: Optigan is how you spell it, not Optigon or anything sounding like octagon. That’s it. I’m turning into a copy editor.