Multi-touch controller goodness is now as close as your nearest iPod Touch or iPhone; all that remains is to hook it up to some creative music, visuals, or others. (I would prefer the iPod Touch for this reason; then you don’t have to worry about using it as a phone — draining the battery in the process — or needing AT&T service.)

Olle Holmberg has a new solution for using the Touch/iPhone as a controller, by translating input to OpenSoundControl (OSC) and, if you prefer, MIDI messages. He writes:

I was searching everywhere for a way to get my new iPod Touch to work like a wireless touch controller to Pd (and hence to everything else), but couldn’t find one — so I made one. It’s really just an OSC mapping for routing the default Mrmr “Performance.mmr” interface, but if you’re interested it would save you heaps of time, even though it’s not really anything difficult to make.

Mrmr is an “open protocol for mobile devices” for dynamically creating interfaces; we’ve covered it on Create Digital Motion, where vade has interviewed the creator, and we’ve seen it in action coupled with upcoming visual app 3L. Those solutions used proprietary software like Max/MSP/Jitter, though, whereas this works with the free and open source Pd. (We love Max, but having an alternative is good, especially if you just want to hook up your iPod Touch to Ableton Live or Reaktor, etc.) As far as I know, this should also mean compatibility with Windows and Linux, but maybe someone can verify that.

The Pd patch is below — homely but functional, and you can extend it if it doesn’t do what you need.

For more information and download of the first release:

PdiPod - Mrmr to Pd on iPhone & iPod Touch [on pissypaws.tumblr, Olle's blog]
Pd Forum Announcement and Discussion
Files/download

As the Monome, the sustainably-produced open controller hardware, spreads, it’s going from one-person gimmick (i.e., “look what I’ve got!”) to club and community (”let’s get together and monomate!”). Laptop circles like Share in New York have already introduced the digital drum circle, but Monome owners may soon be converging, as well. Last weekend, Monome users met up in Princeton, New Jersey. Kempton writes::

A quick recap, there was a little show and tell, a few instructional sessions showing what people do, and several jam sessions during which people walked around and were able to watch each other in action. MLR was the most used app, though many others were used, including some homemade apps. Everyone seemed to be coming from different genres, which created a wild mix. I think everyone walked away saying that we need to do it again, so hopefully you can make the next get together!

Monome users in other places, how about you? Perhaps a Monomefest in the device’s hometown of Philadelphia?

Here’s a time-lapse video of the NJ meetup. Granted, not any big win for, um, diversity (not visibly, anyway), but that, too, may change with time — and any time we get out of our bedroom studios and together with other folks is a welcome change:

East Coast Monome Jam (4/19/2008) from makingthenoise on Vimeo.
More Monome Meetup Videos From Around the US

Also on Vimeo:
See the Portland Monome meetup
and the Los Angeles Monome meetup — with none other than Monome celebrity Daedelus. (Daedelus, I like to think of you as Monome’s Keith Emerson.)

West Coast vs. East Coast Monome — fight!

Everywhere I go, people bug me about when they’ll see better support for OpenSoundControl (OSC) in applications. Why use fancy-schmancy OSC when MIDI does the job? Well, OSC supports higher resolutions of data when needed, maps variables elegantly (when you’re controlling something like visuals and descriptions like musical pitch or filter cutoff make no sense), and plays nice over networks and with multiple computers. In other words, go ahead and use MIDI when it does the job — but we need something else when it doesn’t.

Here’s one way to get OSC from your favorite app: hack it in. Spotted today as Gav tells Create Digital Motion about gluing together Isadora and Ableton Live, the OSCGlue plug-in is a simple VST insert that listens to MIDI and sends OSC.

Want to make music and motion with unusual inputs, like Wii controllers, Lemur multi-touch touchscreens, Monomes, and (now) 3D mice? OSCulator is a wonderful app that supports OpenSoundControl and sends MIDI events, with support for some hardware that can’t be supported any other way. The new 2.5 version adds new stuff:

• SpaceNavigator 3D mouse device support
• Mouse support
• Raw IR data from the Wiimote controller (Nintendo Wii)
• AppleScripting
• OSC Forward
• Keyboard combos
• “Meta events”

Software like Max/MSP and Reaktor will support OSC natively, but using MIDI input and output, you can hook up Kyma workstations and any MIDI software under the sun.

Software is pay-what-you-will, with a US$29 minimum.

Osculator page and manual

Camille Troillard is the wonderful musician you can thank for this tool, a member of the band Neimo which evidently is coming stateside, so stay tuned!

From ribbons to multi-touch, musicians are looking for expressive controllers, ones that allow continuous control for performance.

Oh, yeah, and it’s like totally super-cool on the original Star Trek when people run their hands over the Transporter controls and the blinky lights move. I mean, like still super-cool, even in 2008. (Hint: try to look completely chilled out like Spock when you do it.)

So, one of the things I noticed when the Monome was first introduced was, excellent as that open controller is, you’ve got buttons and no continuous controls. Ever wished another nice square box could sit next to it and give you multiple touch controllers? Good news: Stribe is here.

The Stribe is an 8-channel multi-touch controller for music or video software. 1024 individually-addressable LEDs provide animated visual feedback.

The low-resolution (16 x 64) LED display is controlled in real time by either firmware or host software, or both. MIDI or OSC communication to compatible hardware and software is achieved via patches written in Max/MSP.
Touchstrips down the center of each channel trigger events in the software and the firmware, which drive the display, creating a haptic feedback loop. Each of these eight “channels” has two 64-led-tall columns, e.g. a left and a right.

The Stribe can act as a touch controlled meter bridge, or as an interactive, animated16 x 64 led display. Oriented horizontally, the Stribe can more intuitively interface with step-sequencer type applications, or allow direct manipulation of granular synthesis sampling, or allow the user to perform “scratch” like gestures

or…?

The iPhone and iPod Touch have big, pretty screens, plenty of space for touch control, and fit in your pocket for lots of other useful things (like, you know, calls or music or whatever these things were invented for).

So, why not put them to use in performance? Just this week, Create Digital Motion has picked up two new solutions for doing just that, free:

MIDI Control with iPhone and iPod Touch: i3L MIDI Bridge

Mrmr : iPhone + 10.5 + Quartz Composer = Wireless VJ Nirvana

Mrmr’s support of OSC is geared for VJ apps, but something similar could be applied to OSC-supporting music tools like Max/MSP, Traktor, Reaktor, and others. And i3L’s support of MIDI, of course, will work with anything. I could see it cuing up scenes in Ableton Live or changing instrument patches, etc.

No iPhone? No problem. One quick note: if you don’t have the cash for a new iPod or iPhone, there are always alternatives. Jason Kramer’s Bluetooth MIDI solution works just fine with that free phone you got with your plan — maybe even one you recently retired. Much as we love all this flashy new stuff, there’s nothing quite like giving your toxic technological leftovers a new lease on life!

Control Music Software with a Bluetooth Cell Phone / PDA (Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic Pro)
LiveController [Jason R. Kramer]

The original Monome 40h music (and other media) controller has been replaced by new models, led by the new 256, a 16×16 grid. The buttons are smaller, retaining the approximate size and form factor of the original, but you get more buttons, a wooden case, and other improvements. Pre-orders are set for September 26. Lots more info on the Monome site, but most of all, I want to share two things of beauty. First, there’s Kelli’s gorgeous box design, which may qualify as the prettiest musical instrument packaging I’ve ever seen. (I think it needs a Mycelium-inspired Processing sketch to go with it.)

Second, there’s Brian (tehn) playing a really lovely piece entirely built of Wurlitzer samples. I’m really into his musical imagination, and the instrument design seems to perfectly compliment it.

tehn with two fifty six from tehn on Vimeo.

I think we’ll get to see Brian (hopefully also Kelli) and the 256 in person at the next Handmade Music night from CDM, Etsy Labs, and Make, on Thursday, September 27. I’ll be sure to get some photos and/or video, as well. Locals, keep your eyes peeled for coverage in the next issue of Time Out New York of that event — quite a lineup we’ve got emerging (and, of course, as always everyone is welcome to show up with projects and surprise us).

Chris O’Shea sends along his latest project, a collaboration with sound designer and composer Owen Lloyd called Drop Spin Fade. Part of the Future of Sound tour, Drop Spin Fade allows users to position, sculpt, and play with sound in a 3D environment using gestural control.

Drop Spin Fade

The music/sound environment: Through a series of iterations, Chris and Owen have started simple and built increasingly-sophisticated sonic control using the setup, manipulating granular samples by spinning and bouncing them around the space. It’s not just positioning at work here: you can actually shape the sounds you’re hearing by interacting with the geometric forms in the environment. Eventually, the designers hope to give users more compositional control, making this into a kind of 3D sequencer.

The guts behind the scenes: The work was built to showcase the Illustrious positional sound system, which can use positioning data to create 3D sound environments. For control, the project uses the Gametrak game controller hardware, which you may have seen used in inexpensive golf and other sport games. It happens to be a very nice gestural controller, as well, with extremely low latency when compared to video camera tracking solutions. Visuals and hardware interface are performed in Adobe Director, routing positional control to Illustrious via MIDI and playing a live sound patch built in Max/MSP via OpenSoundControl data. There will be yet another piece as work proceeds on support for the Nintendo Wii controller.

I’m actually quite surprised that more work hasn’t been done with 3D interfaces — though I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, as it’s extremely labor intensive! 3D has focused largely on positioning, but with powerful hardware and software capabilities bring 3D to the masses, 3D interfaces are surely next. Iterations and shared research are vitally important to any medium advancing, so I hope we’ll have more projects in this area. (I happen to be working on something different but related in the 3D space in my own research, which I’ll share when I’m ready.)

Previously from Chris O’Shea land: Muon Speakers, with Processing Visuals