Commencing in about 12 hours, Visionsonic 2009 showcases Audiovisual artists from around the world. The Thursday show is “for Young Audiences”, but I’ll definitely be watching The Odyssey of Rick the Cube.

L’Odyssée de Rick le cube (extraits du spectacle) from Jesse Lucas on Vimeo.

The festival program has 20 artists performing over Friday and Saturday, which you can view on the Visionsonic TV page, or load the WMV stream in your media player of choice (VLC works beautifully).

There are plenty of reasons to go to live performances, to be in the same physical location as the artists, and to experience them without any technology or production getting in the way. Of course, if the performance is happening on the other side of the planet, then streaming may be the only feasible way to get there. CDM has dabbled in internationally-streamed performance before with NetLag, which attempted to put together a “festival” featuring artists performing from various locations. This was great fun, but beset with various problems, as technical and especially bandwidth limitations are keeping us from the “everything streaming live in HD” world the mainstream media seems to think we inhabit. These limitations are falling away quickly though, so it just remains for us to figure out the most compelling ways to capture live performance for streaming.

For watching the stream? Well I’ve got a big stereo, a projector, a copy of VLC, and a weekend’s entertainment all planned out for me.

Autonomous bassline generators? Wireless, modular, infrared sync? Tiny drum machines networking together? Welcome to Texas, and the minds of Eric Archer, Bleep Labs, 4ms Pedals, the Church of the Friendly Ghost, and Andromeda Space Rockers.

One look at a floor full of blinking circuits, and most ladies and gentleman might assume they’ve stumbled upon some alien technology. “Imagine the things we could learn from this civilization – advancements far beyond our own,” as the stock line from sci fi goes. “Man and woman are not meant to learn such things. You’re meddling in things beyond your comprehension.”

In other words, you couldn’t build something like this, right?

Or could you?

In Austin, Texas, Eric, Dann, and Dr. Bleep are launching a new Handmade Music series, kicking it off with kits and classes so that anyone – including beginners – can start building stuff. For the 101 crowd, there’s a free beginner class even if you’ve never touched a soldering iron, so you can build your own analog drum. “I’m no n00b,” you say, “impress me.” Sure – the “upper division” gets to talk more advanced synth design and walks through the full-blown modular, networkable kit.

At the end of it all is an open jam and featured performance.

If you’re anywhere near Austin, Texas – or can find a bargain plane fare – you’ll want to clear your calendar for October 18!

Full Event Details, October 18 Handmade Music in Austin [Handmade Music @noisepages]

That’s just the first of more events to come, so stay glued to the Handmade Music site for events in Austin, New York, Portugal, Germany, and beyond.

“That’s right / you’re not from Texas / Texas wants you anyway.” For those of us in New York, Lisbon, Rio, Sydney, and Jakarta, there’s still hope. The kits will be online, and I”m looking at ways of putting together a full Handmade Music curriculum of projects online for all of us on the site we’re developing this fall, noisepages – ideas welcome.

I certainly didn’t expect to get deep into these geekier topics in high school while I was busily trying to fail Calculus and screw up science lab results in ways that baffled my teachers. But it’s a glorious age we live in, in which we get to assimilate alien technology as our own. Stay tuned.

Husband-and-wife synth duo — and Moog superfans — Nick and Anna Montoya were helping out at the Moog Music booth this year and NAMM. Their greatest responsibility: making sure synthy good vibrations emanated from all that hardware through the day. We picked up a bit of their performance, which was able to rise above the din of the trade show floor.

You may have spotted Anna modeling the Minimoog Oldschool for us. Assuming everyone, as I do, has the Moog Musician Trading Cards — yeah, I’ve even got rookie cards for Keith Emerson and Walter Carlos — I figured our readers knew Anna (and Nick, for that matter) are very taken. When some folks decided Anna was hot and wondered if the Old School was not, Nick chimed in:

I spent all weekend with the OS prototypes… They sound dope !!

And even though it has the same analog board as the Voyager, it does sound a bit closer to the Model D. Somewhere in between the two.

And BTW, yes my wife IS VERY HOT !!!!

Steve Fortner did a short Music Makers piece on the duo:

The Volt Per Octaves

See more videos of the Octaves on YouTube (in better, non-trade show environs)

We did hear in comments that, as always, the current generation of Moog synths aren’t for everyone. But, of course, we know people can be passionate about any tool to make music – witness the Reaktor and Reason tattoos.

Synths and space: they go together like chocolate and your mouth, like Sun Ra and aliens. So, it was with a heavy heart that I had to report the electronic awesomeness of Yuri’s Night, the party in celebration of space exploration at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Telefon Tel Aviv, Plaid, and circuit-bent Touch & Tells and keytars were there, but I was not. And maybe neither were you.

 NASA Yuri’s Night Rave: Space is the Place

Enough of that, though. Organized Matt Ganucheau writes to say this year will be bigger, better, “twice the art and twice the music.” 2008 will make 2007 look like a side party at Burning Man. So, in the interest of making sure your calendar is marked and your project is submitted, here’s a call for works — and hope to see you there.

What is Yuri’s Night?

Yuri’s Night World Space Parties celebrate humankind’s first venture into space by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on
April 12, 1961, and the launch of the first Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981. The event is a unique convergence of artists,
scientists, astronauts, performers, technologists, and musicians to pay tribute to our shared global heritage in space
exploration. Through simultaneous celebrations worldwide, Yuri’s Night is a collaboration of creative thinkers from all
fields to ignite excitement about what is new on the horizon in space exploration and to remind us of the inspiring
possibilities that humanity can achieve. In 2008, NASA’s 50th Anniversary, the NASA Ames Research Center will host the
largest Yuri’s Night event ever held.

We invite artists and scientists to investigate and demonstrate our culture’s radical new technology, art and
vision for sustaining our future.

We’re looking for visionaries of the sciences and arts to join our celebration: artists who love science, scientists who love
art, and those who blur the line between all disciplines. Exhibit or demonstrate your works in the spacious NASA hangars
or adjoining tarmac and structures.

Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 will be held in two large hangars, totaling 80,000 square feet and extending over 400,000
square feet on the adjoining open tarmac. The rare access to expansive combined indoor and outdoor spaces
encourages large-scale installations and the potential for unusual works and performances showcased on the adjoining
tarmac. The main music stage will be at the far end of the tarmac, leaving the largest hangar exclusively for installations,
performances and demonstrations.

This is an exciting opportunity for unique collaboration between the science world and the art world. We encourage
partnerships between scientific and artistic minds and may be able to assist in partnering.

What we are looking for:

New installations of all sizes and types, interactive works, sound works, light works, large-scale sculpture, live
demonstrations, working models, table top demonstrations, prototypes, new technology, presentations, impromptu
lectures, and unique performances from international and local artists. We are also seeking new video works
documenting arts, humanities, performances, installations and microgravity works.

We encourage all applicants to think of ways to make their projects more ecologically friendly and sustainable. This may
include the use of recycled or reused materials, the incorporation of renewable power sources, demonstrations of green
technology, or just a plan for transporting the project that reduces gasoline use. Please let us know in your application if
your project has been planned or will be presented with any such features.

Full submission guidelines and details here:

2008 Call for Artists [PDF]

Continuing our performance series, with assistance from Make Magazine and Etsy.com, we had some special guests last Sunday at openhousegallery in SoHo, New York: the Mister Resistor Ensemble. Headed by Ranjit Bhatnagar, the inventive sound artist who brought us robotic Theremins and MIDI ironing boards, this group of students from Parsons is lucky enough to spend a whole semester building fun instruments with hardware and software. The results are clearly experimental, but that’s the point. Some informal video clips:

Handmade Music: Mister Resistor from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

A big thanks to our beverage sponsor, Function Drinks, and the lovely venue, openhousegallery New York, for making the event possible!

In this case, students and far more to do than simply show off a nifty gadget, science fair-style. They had to turn them into music. Divided into smaller groups, they came up with various inventive approaches covering a range of sounds. (I can imagine, given time, people finding ways to play jazz covers of Caravan or re-orchestrations of Mozart, given enough effort and musicianship.) The lineup:

D.V. Caputo: percussion-controlled speech synthesizer, and homemade video synthesizer
Ji Yeon Choi: microcontroller-based synthesizer controlled by optical proximity sensor; circuit bent toy keyboard
Daniel Herskowitz: tape bow "violin": cassette tape loops attached to a violin-like bow to be played by hand
Hsiang Ju Hung: vocals, modified vocals (singing through voice-changing toys), homemade slide guitar
Glendon Jones: homemade overtone "cello"
Kan Yang Li: mobile robot with optical sensor to play tunes; conductive socks linked to microcontroller synth
Meha Pande: homemade drums.  Meha is a trained tabla player
Michael Perkins: sine wave interference synthesizer made from 1960s electric guessing game, microprocessor, electronics
Elie Stevenson: toy robots, circuit-bent
Ramsay Stirling: miked plucked strings and rainstick
Samuel Strick: the Beat Grinder: crank-operated mechanical MIDI sequencer
Ohal Wofford: electronic synthesizer with optical controls
Yelena Avanesova: modified cassette walkmans and homemade tape loops

Ranjit shares some details on how the class was put together and some of the juicier projects that students made:

Yelena was actually "scratching" cassette tape by applying finger pressure to motors and pulleys in her vivisected walkmans.

Glendon’s overtone cello had the pickups (an old humbucker, I believe) on the opposite side of the bridge from the bow, and fingered and bowed the strings to emphasize the overtones rather than the fundamental. The two strings (piano strings! because the instrument is too long for guitar or bass strings) were usually tuned to within a few cents of each other to produce beats.

One of Elie’s circuit-bent robots bit the dust just before the performance, but he put the other robot to fine use.

Sam’s Beat Grinder was partly inspired by a book of simple mechanical automata I lent him: <http://www.cabaret.co.uk/education/book.htm> I need to remind him to bring it back to me! By the way, Beat Grinder is the best name ever.

Speaking of books, we did a lot of exercises in class from Nic Collins’ excellent book Handmade Electronic Music: <http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_routledge_handmade/> Ohal’s optical synth and my electric bassoon and one of D.V.’s tone generators were all based partly on Collins’ circuits.

It was interesting to me that circuit bending didn’t end up being a big part of the students’ final performance. They enjoyed the circuit-bending labs in the class but most of them went on to make stuff from scratch, whether acoustic, microcontroller (arduino in every case), or discrete circuitry. I also liked that good old magnetic tape showed up in several designs. (Glendon was also working on a tape-based instrument but ended up concentrating on the overtone cello.) The class was originally advertised as a circuit-bending class but I tried to encourage experimentation with (miked) acoustic instruments by devoting a few labs to that kind of stuff.

Elsewhere:

Parsons Students Rock Out at Handmade Music Event [Matrixsynth]

Mister Resistor [Networked Music Review]

Event Photos by Melissa Hom, fotki.com

We see all kinds of novel controllers and input devices for music on CDM, but don’t always get the chance to see how these are used in actual music making. Uraguay-based Gustavo Bravetti is a master of live laptop performance with alternative controllers. (See previous video of him from Colombia.) He talks to Liz (aka Quantazelle, a laptop virtuoso herself) about the scene on the other side of the Americas and how he’s able to fire up crowds with unusual performance techniques, via three-axis light control and the P5 interactive glove. And, really, we didn’t put him up to all the plugs for this site — I’m much more excited to find out how people are able to use some of these resources in front of an audience! So, Gustavo, we’re thrilled to learn about what you’re doing. Take it away, Liz. -PK

What’s the scene like in Montevideo / Uruguay? How does it compare to other locations? Is it conducive for you to work?

Uruguay is a very small country, we have just 4 million people, and the electronic scene is growing and getting smarter. I think that thanks to the internet, we are updated in what concerns to music and technology, we also are well informed on the global scene, that wouldn’t be possible without the invaluable tool that is the internet. Anyway, the Internet is a double sided weapon, and must be handled with care.

I’m a very positive person. I think that any scene is conductive for my work, especially in “your own city’s scene.” I mean, if they know you from the neighborhood, they will be harder to impress, and therefore will be more people that will criticize you, but if you take the good part of this, it would be positive for your work.
Tell me about your “alternative controllers.” Which are your favorites? What inspired you to make them?

I don’t have a favorite one, it depends on the moment and what I want to achieve.

What did inspire me to start working with them was my morning journal, the one that I read with my morning coffee, yes… it was “Create Digital Music” who inspired me for that.

For many years, I used to work with my MC-505’s d-Beam. This device converts your hand’s vertical movement over the MC505 in a value that you can use to drive a synthesizer parameter, etc. People love that because it is more visual than rotating a knob with your fingers, so I was trying to buy or build more d-Beams for my setup to be able to handle more parameters at the same time, and/or use both hands to drive parameters. I was searching the web for an alternative when I reached “Create Digital Music,” and after reading many great articles I found one about PMIDIC from Ben X Tan.

Immediately I thought “This is great! An “almost free” three axis wireless MIDI controller that you can drive with a light and people will love it.” But I didn’t stop there, I continued researching and searching, then I found some article about the P5 Glove. In that moment I decided to use both the PMIDIC and P5 Glove on my studio and live performances. Ben X Tan is a talented programmer from Australia. He helps me a lot doing some modifications to the original PMIDIC to fit some of my Live PA needs. Now I’m kind of like Ben’s advisor, and if we have time, we discuss new features, improvements, etc., and about the weather and furniture too.

The electronic drum is one of the favorites of the crowd, I guess because besides being very visual, it is easy for the crowd to associate what they see with what they hear. It’s not truly an alternative controller, but after ten years of using it in a traditional way I decided to give it an alternative approach, so I started playing melodies and doing unusual stuff, like, for example, driving the frequency of a bandpass filter applied to a white noise… things like that.

For that kind of thing it is good to have as many pads as possible– I use a TrapKat from Alternate Mode, it has 24 pads.

So what about that glove-controller? How does it work?

The Glove is a very interesting piece of hardware. It allows me to manipulate 8 independent parameters at the same time in the simplest configuration. If you want to do that with knobs you need a lot of thumbs, I have only two that’s why the glove is great for me.

From the technical side, the glove is a standard “P5 glove” from “Essential Reality”. Ed.: you may be on your own on eBay, etc., finding one, but I think there are some still floating around. After trying the software that was around for converting P5 data on MIDI, I decided to create my own way.

Basically I use “GlovePIE” for the initial data, then I use a complex algorithm that I created in Synthmaker and Reaktor to transform that data. In that way I can do whatever I want with the P5. I can, for example, trigger different clips in Live using a finger, or play a musical scale with my thumb, and bend the pinky to rise a noise, then open a gate when it is bended over the 50% and launch the next scene when it is 80% bended, I can perform complex actions, like for example: launch “that” scene only when I bend all my fingers over 80%.

I try not to use hand position tracking with the P5, I prefer to use PMIDIC since PMIDIC is pretty fast.

Which of these get the best reactions from the audience?

I think the best reactions come when I play some well known melodies on my TrapKat. People also love PMIDIC and the blue light–I do very explicit effects with PMIDIC, and the blue led has its charms too. The P5 glove is a bit more complex to understand unless you perform very simple things with it, but always there will be some guys in the crowd, who knows about synthesis and music production and get fascinated with the glove, because they realize what I’m doing with it.

How did you make them? What other software / drivers / plugins did you need to write to get them to work? Around how much did they cost to make?

As I explained before I didn’t construct the hardware by itself with exception of the “Led handler” to be used with PMIDIC. I’m very proud of it. I had to figured how to have a led light in my fingers that wont bother me if I have to play a controller or move a slider, plus a mechanical system that allows me to turn it on and off in a fast and easily way. After a few hours I designed a compact and functional “led handler.” I will upload soon on Youtube a step by step guide so you can make your own. This “led handler” is very cheap, less than 4 USD, that’s why I said that PMIDIC is an “almost free three axis wireless MIDI controller”.

For PMIDIC you need a PC video camera with a good VGA for a faster response, the middle and high end models from Logitech do the job. You need also a light source that can be a standard led with a coin battery. PMIDIC is 100% free so you have a great three axis wireless MIDI controller and more, with less than 4 USD! (if you already have a good PC video camera).
The glove as I said is a standard P5 glove from Essential Reality, I got one from about 120 USD. I use GlovePIE to convert P5 data to MIDI data. GlovePIE is 100% free too. If you don’t want to write your own script on “GlovePIE”, there are other free software alternatives that convert P5 data on MIDI.
The electronic drum is a TrapKat from Alternate Mode, I bought it more than ten years ago, and I’d paid 1,200 USD, I’m very happy now because it costs 1,500 USD. It is the only electronic thing I’d buy that doesn’t lower its price a half (or more) each year. It was a very good investment– it has a lot of pads, and outstanding sensibility, I can play it with sticks, with my hands or even with spoons.

Basically all this gear generates MIDI that is handled by middleware software, and then goes to Ableton’s Live.

What always happens at some point is that I want to do something that by default is not possible, so I have to create that kind of tools or extensions as I call them, to add extra features and new possibilities to my studio/live setup. For that I use Synthmaker, CPS and Reaktor among others, in this way I can convert MIDI messages in real time, from anything to anything.

For example: I can smooth a series of MIDI CCs produced by the light’s movement, or quantize those MIDI CCs to a scale or even to the music. I cangenerate MIDI CCs with my drum, MIDI notes with the P5 glove, and SYS EX with a light through PMIDIC to control external gear.

What is CPS? I’m not familiar with it.

CPS is a usefull tool to develop synthesis algorithms and or audio applications, is like Reaktor, but it exports a C++ code that with the appropriate SDK your project can be compiled on a stand alone executable file ,I mostly do MIDI transforms there, but is a powerful developer tool, even I’m developing a video game audio engine wth CPS. You can get more info here: http://cps.bonneville.nl/

I also have a Remote 25SL from Novation, I think that is the best controller for Live PA of its kind. Now I’m focusing on not being reliant on my laptop’s mouse and keyboard”?] For that I’m creating functions that allow me to navigate, copy, paste, etc.,by using the Remote 25SL and middleware software.

Which middleware do you use for this? This seems like a very ambitious project! Can you tell me more?

The middleware consist of little algorithms that I programmed for this purpose. I have plans to release these tools soon so I prefer to not enter on technical details for now.

Fair enough. Tell me about Pushandpull–how did you make it? What inspired it?

I created Pushandpull to encourage a friend to use Live in his DJ sets. I’d had the idea running around in my head but when a friend told me that he won’t use Live just because he loves to play with vinyl, and it was too hard for him to beat-match from vinyl to Live, I decided to program Pushandpull.

Pushandpull makes it easier to beat-match Live with an external music source.Pushandpull does to Live’s master TEMPO, what we do to a turntable’s RPM when we slightly push or pull the vinyl.

With Pushandpull you can use two keys/buttons to temporary nudge Live’s master TEMPO by +-5% (gradually) from the actual tempo, like the + and – “pitchbend” buttons on any standard CDJ, also it allows you to change Live’s master TEMPO in little steps to do fine adjustments, using another two keys/buttons.

I programmed Pushandpull using Synthmaker by Outsim. Synthmaker is a great developer tool for audio/MIDI related applications. The workflow is like in Reaktor but you can compile your work to a VST or a stand alone .exe, plus you have many elements to give a professional look to your application without the needs to type any code or deal with compilers etc. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t type some code in there!

After testing it with success, I decided to create the Smartextensions company and then release Pushandpull for free through Smartextensions for Live’s users.

Today almost all my live performance is generated in Live so I use Pushandpull mostly to interact with other DJs.

What’s next for your software company, Smartextensions?

The first in the list for Smartextensions is the new Pushandpull version. Pushandpull has been a great success, with about 3000 downloads and very good feedback from the users, but there is a problem with Pushandpull, it runs only on MS Windows based systems and many OS X users are constantly reminding me of that.

So the next Pushandpull version beside the new exiting features, has to run on OS X based systems. The problem is that with my gigs, music production, and the time I spend teaching, I haven’t enough time to get in the OS X programming world. I have the new Pushandpull algorithms ready; I’m just waiting for a partner that takes care of the OS X GUI.

My problem is that I want to keep it free or at least donationware and that makes it a bit harder, but I hope to find my partner soon.

In other matters I have many ideas that at some time will be released through Smartextensions.They range from useful extensions that will add new features and extra power to your actual hardware/software, to innovative audio effects and virtual instruments, and even I have planned educational software for DJs/producers.The idea with Smartextensions is not to create a better version of things that already exist, but create completely new and innovative software.

Also I will unveil my personal record label in the next two months, and I will do a pre-release of my new musical productions through www.djvox.com.

What do you think about the Live PA scene in general? What do you think is in store for the future?The LivePA scene is growing and going mad and I love it. There are many people getting their hands dirty creating crazy alternative controllers like interactive tables, circuit bending, and stuff like that. I think that using a new hardware that lets you create sounds or modulate music in a different approach than the existent ones, is very positive in regards to to music composition and/or live performance. I’m using PMIDIC and P5 even in my studio because I can drive many parameters at the same time. Yes it is true that you can drive many parameters programming the correspondent envelopes, but the musical results won’t be the same. It is like programming a melody using your mouse and PC’s keyboard compared to recording a melody with a sensitive MIDI controller. I’m not saying that one is better than the other; just that different approaches lead to different results and that gives you a wide palette to paint your music. I wishI had more time to get on hardware too, but not all is possible so I will stay on the programming side, at least for now.

When I started to create music in the early nineties, hardware was a must. If you want to make music then you had to spend a lot of money in synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers. Years have passed and technology gets better and cheaper every day (with the exception of my TrapKat). Today you can produce quality stuff with a single computer, which is great; today you have not to be rich to produce electronic music.

I think that soon they will become very common and I think they will be a better and flexible alternative, to the Monome and similar interfaces that are gaining a lot of popularity these days .

Music itself may be ephemeral, but it’s deeply connected to the spaces in which it’s performed and heard. You’ll notice that space all the more readily if it’s, say, a giant, cavernous grain silo, and you can access the space not only in person but over the Internet. And, really, you can’t call yourself an audiophile if you don’t have a grain silo handy for listening.

JollyRogered writes with this gem from the Audiooddities list. It’s a chance to hear an online performance of the digitally-connected grain silo, the Silophone:

Announcing a special online performance by Lee Rosevere, scheduled for July 16, 2007 at 9:30pm EST.

The performance will be an exclusive live internet event, where Lee will perform new original material from his home studio and stream it to the Silophone.

The Silo #5 is an abandoned grain storage facility in the port of Montréal. From the website:

“Silophone makes use of the incredible acoustics of Silo #5 by introducing sounds, collected from around the world using various communication technologies, into a physical space to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art. Sounds arrive inside Silo #5 by telephone or internet. They are then broadcast into the vast concrete grain storage chambers inside the Silo. They are transformed, reverberated, and coloured by the remarkable acoustics of the structure, yielding a stunningly beautiful echo. This sound is captured by microphones and rebroadcast back to its sender, to other listeners and to a sound installation outside the building. Anyone may contribute material of their own, filling the instrument with increasingly varied sounds.”

Musicians have created pieces for the Silo in the past, but in this event, an exciting element that makes this even more unique is the fact that anyone who is at the Silophone website can contribute to the concert, either by playing recorded content provided by the websites users, or by phoning or uploading individual sounds. These sounds will be heard simultaneously with Lee’s performance, making it a truly unique performance. The performance should last 35-40 minutes.

The results of the show will be recorded and released via archive.org. We encourage you to log on to Silophone at 9:30pm EST on July 16, 2007 for this event and we also encourage anyone to participate in the performance. (Real audio required to listen, Flash required to participate) .

To call the Silophone from North America: 1.514.844.5555 From the rest of the world: 001.514.844. 5555 Wait until the second ring, then start talking.

Silophone.net Site, including the ability to play the Silophone online, and lots of documentation

Cee-lo will like it, I think. Watch to the end for an unusual Google + Wikipedia salute to the genius of Leon Theremin. (Yep, Google is your friend.)

Thanks to (corrected link) Jason at boozhoundlabs.com, and SNAG.

These guys are also doing a whole Theremin video series — we’ll be watching. (Check out their full description at the YouTube page.)

Robosonic Eclectic: Morton Subotnik, They Might Be Giants, and robotic musical instruments on the same bill? That … doesn’t happen very often. But it does happen this weekend, starting tonight.

With a lineup that includes They Might Be Giants, JG Thirlwell, Mort Subotnick, George Lewis, R. Luke DuBois and J. Brendan Adamson, Lemurplex is kicking off what looks like a really packed couple of weeks of music and research into new instruments here in New York this weekend. Check out the TMBG video and JG Thirwell clip for a teaser of what’s to come. I’ll be there, so say hi if you, uh, know what I look like. (And thanks to all of you who’ve been saying hello at various events. It’s always great to know who’s out there reading.)

League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots

Lemurplex, incidentally, is a terrific place to go learn this stuff if you can find a way to come to New York — not only musical robotics, but music tech in general. See also Harvestworks, which regularly has people in from other lands around the world for residencies / learning / etc. Not everything happens in New York, of course; I hope to put together an up-to-date list of educational venues beyond academia around the globe soon.

Flyer after the jump.

If you are in the Bay Area, or coming into town for the awesomeness that is the Maker Faire, we would love to invite you to the party.

What: Chips + Fish + Music Party, the Maker Faire “after party”
Brought to you by: MAKE:Magazine and CDM
Who: Anyone making their own music with chips (little chips, big chips, Intel Core Duo chips), or anyone who loves to eat chips and/or fish. Makers from the Faire, locals, visitors all welcome.
When: Saturday, May 19. 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm: featured music sets. 9:30 pm – whenever: hang, DIY musical show-and-tell, eat fish and/or chips.
Where: Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary St. San Francisco, CA. 415-885-4074. (5pm – 2 am; map.)
Why: Because we love DIY music, whether it’s customized hardware, self-made software, or just lovingly-programmed commercial gear and apps.

And there’s more: I’m looking for a couple of additional featured sets, lots more partygoers, and also have a music lineup to share Friday night at Robotspeak (more performances than party there):

Featured sets and show-and-tells wanted: We still have a couple of slots left for short (20-30 minute) featured sets in the featured block, and I’d like to open that to CDMers and Maker Faire participants. If you have a set you’d like to share, and you’re an international celebrity or an obscure loner, drop me a line. (peter AT createdigitalmusic *dot* com.)

If you have a small DIY project you’d like to show and tell and, for instance, it wasn’t quite ready for the Maker Faire, bring it along. Especially handy: mobile devices, like your latest Nintendo DS / Game Boy / GP2X / Palm tracker set. We’ll be sharing stuff during the 9:30 hang. There’s also live music at the space, some of which sounds great, so I expect some people will go listen to that.

If you like fish and chips, we’ll have a pre-order form ready to make sure it’s there when you get there. I’m told they’re hooked up with the best fish & chips supplier in San Francisco.

I’ll be sure to post a reminder and details next week closer to the event, including travel instructions if you’re in San Mateo for Maker Faire like me.

Plus a Friday night Robotspeak party: Robotspeak has put together a really amazing lineup that I’m thrilled to be part of, with short music sets and artist Q&A. In the lineup, aside from me: Pineresin (Dielectric), Chachi Jones, and Daedalus (Plug Research / Ninja Tune). They’ve created a beautiful poster, too, which implies that while Daedalus is on Ninja Tune, I’m on … Mac World. (I’m guessing that’s because of my occasional contributions to Macworld Magazine. Though I may have to call up Chris Breen and see if he wants to start a Macworld record label.) Anyway, don’t be phased by that — if you get to stop by, the event is Friday at 589.5 Haight Street, at Steiner, at Robotspeak. I say that like I have any idea where that is. Happily, Google Maps knows (and now even has BART stops). That flyer really is nice: