Compact MIDI controllers for your fingers are plentiful, but tiny foot controllers are far fewer. map~map aka Marcus Fischer decided to build his own by performing a simple but clever mod of the KORG nanoKEY. Now, personally, I find the nanoKEY the one product in the nano series that’s lacking; it feels more like a QWERTY keyboard than anything resembling a MIDI keyboard. But Marcus transforms it into the world’s most compact and portable foot controller. You may have to be somewhat delicate with your toes, but he says the solution works perfectly!

i’ve been wanting a compact usb midi foot pedal for a long time. i built one out of a usb number pad last year but it was less than ideal. tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well. i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished.
i think it turned out pretty well. not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

279 / nanopedal

Those wooden blocks look quite lovely. KORG, you may have inadvertently created a new product.

Ed.: It’s more than nostalgia that drives the dedicated chip musician with their modified Nintendo instruments. As guest writer Vijith Assar learned while interviewing Anamanaguchi, some more elemental love of digital synthesis leads these artists to deal with esoteric hardware and crashing homebrewed software. Vijith covered Anamanaguchi for New York’s Village Voice, but this trio had far more geeking than could fit in the free weekly’s pages. The band’s front man and songwriter, flanked by talented NES hacker bandmates, muses on the technology and artistic process – and on why, yes, the act did have to start with blowing on the cartridges. (Surprised?) -PK

I recently had a chance to chat with Anamanaguchi, who would probably be the boy-band teen idols of the chiptune world if the scene were to tolerate such things. Lead songwriter Pete Berkman opened up about his creative process and the digital speed bumps he hits along the way, and guitarist Ary Warnaar is on another planet when it comes to working with Game Boy synths like LSDJ and Nanoloop, but the most freakish technical bits came from bassist James DeVito. He wrote later to describe in detail the customized hardware he’s cobbling together for use on tour, which so far has involved modding the Nintendo for multiple outputs, each with a bolted-on 1/4″ jack and volume knob, and integrating a tiny high-res screen lifted from a PlayStation. He’s even considering a built-in controller for the next version.

A $50 synth that makes neat noises is fun. But a $50 synth that has a proper housing, audio jacks, and can be MIDI controlled — that’s a whole lot better. So readers were wowed last week as we saw the work MrBook did with his Gakken SX-150.

Now, by popular demand, MrBook shares his techniques with specs, instructions, and code. This isn’t a bad project to get started with if you’ve been thinking of doing something on these lines.

The basic ingredients and process:

• Find the connections on the synth for audio and control, using contact points on the board
• Build a simple circuit that adds MIDI input (control) and audio output – schematic on his site. It’s not a tough circuit at all — this could be fun soldering practice.
• Add the Arduino, the open source, dirt-cheap, accessible microcontroller project board, and some code MrBook has written for you.

That should be fun even for relative newcomers – provided you have basic soldering chops. If you want to get more advanced, there’s room to modify the Arduino code to do fun stuff, or, as MrBook is doing, add a standalone Arduino sequencer or the like to drive your synth in hardware alone. (While I’m still on a crusade to do OSC for stuff that talks to computers, I think MIDI should absolutely be used for what it’s good add – connecting hardware.)

You can also have some fun with the casing. (Someone needs to mod the drab colors on the Gakken, too, I think.)

If you do a project and document it, do let us know! And we’ll be watching for more from MrBook.

You can get your SX-150 kit from our good friends at MAKE. (Nope, I’m not getting any cash for saying that. Hmmm… okay, I need an affiliate account, don’t I? Make?)

SX-150 synth mod instructions, schematics and code [MrBook]

Tom Phillipson sends us a really lovely video in which he extends what’s possible on a ReMOTE SL keyboard from Novation by adding the touch controls of an iPod touch. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about in terms of the usefulness of the iPod and iPhone apps: they’re a perfect, reasonably affordable (US$220 for an entry-level iPod touch) means of adding interactive controls to your hardware. You can use the touch controls for parameters well-suited to touch and that layout (and see those controls in the dark onstage), and physical controls for other tasks.

Tom writes:

Rob from Hexler suggested you might be interested in this video i made. I recently made a simple yet very effective mod of my novation 25SL compact to incorporate my ipod touch, running TouchOSC.

Via the YouTube post:

TouchOSC is awesome little software, just like having a Lemur, only infinitely cheaper.. and the mod is completely reversible ..
Its extended the functionality of an already very useful keyboard. No keyboards were harmed in the making of this video
Novation 25SL Compact and TouchOSC controlling Ableton 7 and a Access virus Snow.
For my music, check out http://www.myspace.com/zumkabel
or http://www.autoflavour.com

TouchOSC by hexler (R.J. Fischer) is US$3.99 from the iTunes App Store.

See also: ReMOTE SL @ Novation Music

… which I reviewed for Keyboard Magazine

Finding the perfect controller for DJing, laptop music, and so on has tended to mean either buying an off-the-shelf solution, or building one from scratch. But a growing number of users is choosing a third way: find a nearly-perfect controller and mod it to perfection.

DJ Tech Tools, a new blog from three DJs that has grown out of stories for Remix Magazine, has a great story on adding arcade buttons to a Vestax VCI-100 controller. And yes, that’s “arcade” as in gaming — those fantastic, tactile buttons found on vintage game cabinets.

Tutorial on adding arcade buttons to a VCI-100 [djtechtools.com]

Here are a couple of examples of the results:
Sonic Boooom! VCI-100 Vs. Street Fighter
A great VCI MOD rolls off the line!

Speaking of whimsical DJ toys, djtechtools points to DJ Nu-Mark, who has replaced turntables with a “pair of learning toys meant for teething toddlers.” djtechtools can’t seem to find more details, so I turn that to the ever-knowledgeable CDM readership. And Mark, if you’re out there, give a holler. Not totally sold on his DJ name, though it is a big leap better than “DJ Bear-In-Jer.” But the set looks fantastic. (Via.) The video, with Jurassic 5 in 2006: