What if a competition didn’t just encourage entrants to try to make a better product? What if it encouraged friendly rivalry between makers to produce entries that were also shared across the community?
That’s the idea behind Digitópia’s upcoming series of competitions, now entering its third year. Digitópia itself is based in Porto, Portugal, at the Casa da Musica. But even if Portugal isn’t exactly in your neighborhood, entrants and onlookers alike can benefit from shared, open sourced contributions.
In fact, even the prizes itself are open projects. The simple, anthropomorphic-looking controller above is a free project. It’s dead-simple, a combination of an IKEA salad bowl, a potentiometer, and ultrasonic distance sensors. But as a result, it’s also inexpensive, simple to use (particularly with the addition of Digitópia’s custom-developed software), and a flexible starting point for further work. (Actually, handling multiple ultrasonics is a bit tricky, too, relative to things like infrared, so that’s a particularly nice addition.)
First up: Max and Pd patchers, your pride is on the line.
RFID tags may have negative privacy associations when they’re used without someone’s knowledge. But embed these simple identifiers intentionally, and they can be a cheap, flexible way of tagging the world around you. Add OSC support with a free tool, and you can make anything into a basic music controller. That’s what Martin Kaltenbrunner – best known for his work on the ground-breaking ReacTable music table – has done with his own free software. It’s simple enough that you can easily make use of it, or take it as an opportunity to brush up on OSC and Pd.
This sort of odd, out-of-the-blue example is the perfect illustration of why OSC matters. Quietly, gradually, OSC is describing the world around computers in intelligent ways. In contrast to MIDI, with its resolution limits and arbitrary categories (vibrato rate?), OSC can standardize anything. What previously required advance standardization can now be truly open and even improvisational. The old way of standardizing: go in front of some sort of committee for approval. (RFID tags for music? Not likely.) The new way: go ahead and do the implementation, gather feedback, and if it works, other people will follow your specifications to ensure their stuff works with yours. In this case, Martin plans to add the RFID tagging to his TUIO2 protocol, which made what would have been just a cool one-off project (ReacTable) into a viral phenomenon of work with touch and tangible input. Martin writes:
For a generation of musicians of nearly every genre, the laptop has become an instrument. It’s easy to take for granted, but the rise of the computer for music has been remarkable. Less than twenty years ago, real-time digital synthesis and audio processing was the domain of expensive, specialized workstations. Now, $700 per seat can buy you a full-blown musical rig, with the computer hardware, gestural input courtesy the Nintendo Wii controller, and even a DIY speaker made from IKEA salad bowls. The next challenge is to make this setup as flexible and reliable as possible. Enter Linux.
According with the laptop’s graduation to instrument status, laptops orchestras have spread worldwide, inspired especially by the innovative Princeton Laptop Orchestra (“PLOrk”) directed by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook. PLOrk’s alumnus Ge Wang has even gone on to greater fame making applications for the iPhone via ocarina and T-Pain app developer Smule. The sounds of these ensembles may sometimes be strange, but by pushing laptop performance, the groups are a great place to look for how to get the most out of computer music, whatever your tastes may be.
Virginia Tech’s L2Ork’s claim to faim is that it’s a laptop orchestra powered by Linux. Why does that matter? For one, it makes a big difference on cost. By using Linux-powered netbooks, they’ve slashed the per-student cost from that of the Mac laptops used in some other ensembles, on a machine that’s more compact. Far from making sacrifices to save money, the result is actually greater reliability, flexibility, efficiency, and audio performance.
As with the PLOrk ensemble, L2Ork combines expressive input with open-ended digital sound making production, localizing the sound near the computer itself using hemispherical speakers. In this way, the laptop instrument can attempt to learn something from acoustic instruments, which are played with human gestures and have sound sources that are positioned physically where the instrument is.
You don’t have to enroll at Virginia Tech to apply these lessons to your own music making, however. You can apply the lessons of the L2Ork ensemble to put together your own Linux audio machine. They’ve even further-documented the process of making PLOrk’s signature “salad bowl” speakers. And you can do it all without breaking the bank.
monome creator Brian Crabtree at an early Handmade Music at Etsy Labs. Brian will perform under his name tehn, joining other artists with grids and patches and felt to talk about and play with alternative controllers at the in/out Fest. Photo (CC).
It’s the most wonderful time of the year in New York. Mark your (advent) calendars. And for non-New Yorkers, let me know – who do you want interviewed? What do you want covered? Whose music do you want us to podcast? Our gift to you will be coverage of these events. New Yorkers and metro-area residents of the Northeast US’ Megapolis, I hope to see you there.
Wednesday, December 2: CDM 5th Anniversary Party. At Love Nightclub, CDM celebrates its 5th anniversary at Love Nightclub with Philly’s own King Britt, David Last joined by Brazilian baile funk vocalist Zuzuka Poderosa, laptronica artist and CDMer Ganucheau, and IJ Catling DJing, all one one of the city’s best sound systems. Compete in Twister and you could walk home with a new laptop yourself (HP Envy 15’s Beats Limited Edition). Free + open bar, Manhattan. (Facebook)
Thursday, December 3: TurboTax. Our friends at XLR8R Magazine continue their monthly with future-bass Dub War resident Dave Q and friends, proof that NYC can do dubstep, too. Free + free beer, Williamsburg.
Saturday, December 5: RjDj + Pd Skill Share @ Eyebeam. Brush up your patching skills in the free and open source patching environment Pure Data (Pd) with some of its best developers, Hans-Christoph Steiner and the team behind reactive music environment RjDj. See also RjDj’s hackshop (hoping we can add some extra sprint time not opposite in/out fest) and a party for their new creation on 12/11. All events at Eyebeam. Free, Manhattan.
Friday, December 11: Saturn Never Sleeps. A live beats lineup wrangled by King Britt hits the new Knitting Factory; I’m doing live generative visuals for the evening. DUMBO, Brooklyn.
Saturday, December 12: in/out Festival at The Tank. A new entry this year, in/out Festival looks to be a packed day of unusual music control. By day, the fest features workshops on Jitter, Reaktor, Max for Live, and … felt. (Yes, the Grant Sisters are back with felt as a music controller.) I’ll talk about OSC and visualizing music and musical messages. By night, we make music and visuals, with a lineup ranging from Lori Napolean on appropriated telephone switchboard to monome creator tehn. Tix are cheap at $10 for the whole day. Tickets. Manhattan.
Thursday-Saturday, December 17-19: Blip Festival. The annual 8-bit music and visual chipfest returns with three nights of events. Gowanus, Brooklyn.
That’s just the fests and special events. I know The Glitch Mob play Webster Hall on December 10, among others.
So we have very little to complain about in NYC, and it’s my duty to bring the goodness to the world beyond our Megapolis.
The monome phenomenon in music making owes a lot to a combination of powerful elements: elegant, human-readable messages that describe button presses (using OSC), open software built with a patching environment that anyone can modify and customize, and sample-slicing audio playback mayhem with the popular MLR tool.
In one tutorial, you can learn about all of these elements. The idea here is to use the monome hardware, but this could be easily adapter to other grid controllers or a device of your own invention. You’ll also learn a bit of Pd (Pure Data), the free and open-source cousin to Max/MSP. It demonstrates that you don’t need the commercial Max for all of these applications. And that’s important even if you’re a die-hard Max lover, because Pd can run places Max can’t – meaning knowing a little of both could help you out.
By the time you’ve finished with the tutorial, you’ll have learned about OSC messages and how do to basic sample slicing in Pd – good stuff. It’s the work of Ben aka ucacjbs.
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