In our monster MeeBlip round-up the other day, I mentioned the stunning enclosure Michael Roebbeling made for his DIY synth kit. But that’s not all Michael has built. He’s also created a lovely, simple step sequencer with Arduino. It’s a beautiful combination of all open-source hardware, MeeBlip and Arduino. Surprisingly, it’s his first try at all of this:

After my first successful experience in electronics, building the MeeBlip, I was hooked. So I decided to buy an Arduino and dive a bit deeper. My first project was a rudimentary sequencer to work together with my MeeBlip. It took me 3 days to figure out the schematiks and code the program.

With projects like Arduino taking out some of the headaches of getting started, this is further proof that understanding computation allows you to do anything, from hardware to software, on any platform.

Michael’s project represents a simple, afternoon project, but the Arduino can also become the basis of more sophisticated gear – and some more complex groove-making. I’ll look at some of those options here, like Steve Cooley’s beatseqr, here making some grooves with an iPad running Korg’s iMS-20 soft synth and Reason running on the MacBook Pro.

There are plenty of Arduino step sequencer projects – it’s a nice project to try – but what I especially like is that Michael’s design is really minimal, meaning it could be a good starting point for your own project. He provides full code and (via a terrific prototyping tool called Fritzing), easy-to-read, colorful schematics.

If you’ve never done this before, some basic knowledge of how to read the parts, an Arduino, and some copy-and-paste skill is all you need to get going. I’m going to set aside some time to build one myself.

SimplenZAR [Blog post documentation at Carvin' Calamari]

But while we’re on the topic – and since having step sequencers around is a terrific tool for making musical patterns with all your music gear – let’s take a quick look at what else is out there.

littlescale is a must-read for musical Arduino makings, so a good first stop. He’s got his full list of projects, including a microtonal step sequencer, seen below.

http://arduino.milkcrate.com.au/

Johan Larsby has a terrific project, complete with screen, with loads of details and source. You can build the whole thing for under $50 in parts, and his page is also a useful set of references to working with MIDI, physical controls, and the display.

Arduino Step Sequencer… ASS. Fine. Funny enough. But you lose out on bonus points for not making it a recursive acronym.

Mr Speaker goes through the process of how to construct MIDI step sequencers on Arduino in a blog post, as well.

That’s not a complete list, but now onto some fancier projects…

Steve Cooley’s beatseqr, created with Derek Scott, evolves from simple hardware “sketch” into full-blown, feature-packed sequencer, but it’s still got an Arduino (Mega) at its heart. Accordingly, Steve talks through the behind-the-scenes tech details on the Arduino forum.

And, oh yeah, it goes great with Reason. (That in turn means this and an older laptop could be a nice little groove station set up in a studio, to keep your machines out of the closet of retirement.)

Beatseqr v3 — arduino mega based step sequencer [Arduino Forum]

Official site: http://www.beatseqr.com/

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome MiniCommand by Ruin & Wesen. It doesn’t in fact have an Arduino board inside, but it does use the Arduino development environment for a custom MIDI firmware framework called MIDI-CTRL. Say wha? Basically, you can use Arduino-style syntax to reprogram this little box to perform whatever MIDI magic you wish. It’s utterly insane, and perhaps a little overlooked because it’s generally associated with the Machinedrum. I’m not going to say any more now, as I know Wesen is getting some time off to work on it, and I hope to talk more about this project over the coming months.

http://ruinwesen.com/products

Result: Euclid pattern generators. (I’m working on some code that does something similar, with visualization; stay tuned while I … um, finish it, in fact.)

So there you go. If it seems overwhelming, just remember, take it one step at a time – and start with the first step. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

As I said, the place to begin is doing something like what Michael did – and you can hook up his project in a few minutes.

If you give this a try, let us know! Sounds like a fun weekend project.

You buy a box. You unwrap the box. You plug it in. You read the manual to learn what it does. Or you bring a box home, and meanwhile a community of people – possibly including you – works to imagine new possibilities for what the box can do and share them with each other. It’s clear that the idea of open hardware (free hardware?) has a lot of potential. But it’s a matter of finding products that realize that vision. And today alone, I’ve got a lot of good news on that front.

There’s some wonderfully good news for fans of DIY music tech. And the homebrewed, open, hackable tools often outshine commercially-available options. For developers, they’re a change to hack on something, but they serve as end-user products, too. The GorF step sequencer and minicommand — the latter tough to describe but a sort of do-everything magical box o’ MIDI — are each nearing shipment, complete with preorders. And the folks at BUG Labs have added sound capabilities, which is already turning into some interesting prototypes of alternative mobile music devices.

Back-to-Basics, DIY Step Sequencer Kit

The GorF step sequencer appeared in a video demo a few weeks ago. But if you were intrigued by the YouTube rendition of GorF, the time to get your own is nearing. PCBs have arrived and, in a DIY Valentine’s Day present, there’s a poll about interest.

Black Box Performer

GorF is impressive, and I like its elegant, simple step interface. But the tool that’s been really blowing my mind is the minicommand. At first, it looks like just a simple, compact controller – nice knobs, and a screen you can customize. That’s all well and good. But the minicommand is better understood as a do-everything, magical black box. Programmable with the Arduino environment, the minicommand can become a controller, an arpeggiator, a Euclidian polyrhythm maker… out of the box, it’ll already have a ton of firmware tools, alone. Maker wesen writes:

- standard midi controller firmware
- machinedrum notes (hook up a keyboard to the machinedrum). The device has an additional MIDI IN for that kind of purposes
- monomachine firmware (revert to kit, etc…)
- supatrigga for the machinedrum
- genetic patch mutation firmware for machiinedrum and monomachine
- polyrhythmic sequencer (with MIDI CLOCK slave or master function)
- arpeggiator
- much more…

It’s like what a lot of people do with Max or AudioMulch patches, but in a hardware box, with tight timing, that you can either plug into your computer or into hardware synths. It’s like MIDI hardware for the year 2009. You might wind up just using it as a reliable clock source for your software with hardware controls, or you might drive hardware with it, or you might control visuals – it’ll become whatever you like.

Oh, and by the way, while the Akai APC is cool, I’d love to see an ultra-compact setup with one of the minicommands and perhaps a Faderfox or two. Time to dust off your 5-pin MIDI cables, huh?

If you’re interested in preordering yourself, you can get on the (limited) first production run by placing an order at:
http://ruinwesen.com/preorder

US$275/EUR220 including shipping.

Hack-a-Pod: BUGsound

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the folks at BUG Labs have added a sound input/output module to their hot-swappable, LEGO-esque modular mobile gadgets. The BUG is basically a modular computer that runs an open source OS and Java stack and is pretty intelligent about talking to sensors and the Web. As readers have noted, it’s not cheap, but I think it’s best understood as a prototyping device. As such, it has some competition from even devices like Google’s Android, but with a key difference: you have total control over the OS and the hardware you plug in. So, Android may also have GPS, but it doesn’t have audio input, or the ability to connect sensors or servos via bare wires, and you probably don’t want to take your 2-year-contract phone and strap it to a mobile robot.

Why prototype mobile devices? Because it becomes possible to imagine just how interesting mobile gadgets in the future could be. Instead of passive devices for consuming approved content (cough, iTunes), they become open-ended, handheld computers that do whatever you like.

And that could mean you could also prototype musical instruments with the flexibility of computers, instead of the closed-box, commercial options we have now.

BUGsound Available Today

BUGsound isn’t quite high-fidelity: the internal speaker is a simple mono speaker, though at least it makes noise, and there’s a simple, built-in electret condenser mic. But it can drive headphones, it has stereo input and output, controllable gain, and even automatic gain control. Where it gets interesting is that you can combine these features with other modules, like the accelerometer or GPS, for mashed-up gadgets. And there are some simple DSP-based sound functions on the board, too.

I’m finally blocking aside some time to work with BUGsound myself, but there’s already a cool demo app from the community called Phunky. It mixes three sound files using accelerometer data. This also demonstrates why we need to get more robust sound-crunching capabilities going (Pd, perhaps) so the applications can get more interesting.

I’m really excited about all three projects. You know where to stay tuned for more. And by the way, we might just have some new ways of covering these kinds of projects and helping folks collaborate … soon.