If you think culture has become too disconnected from the Earth, “Harvest” and the Terrafon instrument surely count as a shock to the system. A traditional ensemble picks up an enormous tone arm and transducer and, through back-breaking labor, drag it across arable fields. It’s part sound art and performance, part agriculture. But it certainly counts as a gramophone – it’s just a really big one that reads the grooves of the earth.

Beat juggling with two of these I’m guessing is largely out of the question.

One half of the artistic creative team, Olle Cornéer, writes with a description:

Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the new instrument terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland – by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke.

In this performance Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, plays the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden) on terrafon. Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala the 6th of June 2009. Terrafon is a large agricultural version of the horn gramophone, amplifying the sounds in the track it ploughs.

There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is indeed a demanding piece.

Video illustrates what this all means in practice:

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

The artistic duo behind the work is a fascinating collaboration. Olle is a producer and musician, while partner-in-crime Martin Lübcke has a PhD in theoretical physics, specializing in superstring theory. That has been the grounds on which their other work, Bacterial Orchestra, explores ideas both of biological epidemics and multi-celled organisms and neural networks. Of course, to make it truly multi-celled, they’ve made the piece an iPhone creation. (I think some folks have found the iPhone phenomenon to be viral as is, so this seems somewhat appropriate.)

Public Epidemic No 1 from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

Every cell listens to its surroundings and picks up sounds, trying to play together in a musical way. The musical material comes from the background noise, people talking or sounds played by other cells.

Every cell has a unique DNA. Only the ones that are musical fit enough survives. If
the surroundings doesn’t meet up to its conditions – too noisy, too quiet or no distinct
pulse – the cell dies and is reborn with a new, hopefully better, set of DNA.

The result is a musical organism adapting to and changing its environment, growing and evolving with other cells and spectators.

More on that piece:
http://www.bacterialorchestra.com

It’s nice to me that, while these works are both conceptual, you might not guess they came from the same team. I wonder what will come next.

It’s round, it’s mechanically-resistant, it’s tangible, it supports multi-touch and gestures. Yep – it’s the turntable, and outdoing it would mean reinventing the wheel, literally. And so it is that more than a few Ableton fans have wondered how they might work vinyl into their software axe of choice.

Ableton and digital vinyl vendor Serato have announced they’re doing “something,” and then announced at the beginning of October that an announcement would be announced on January 14, 2010 at NAMM. Oh, and they said it will “unleash your creativity,” which sounds good. (It’s better than, say, “Ableton and Serato’s creative partnership will unleash two dozen angry badgers,” or “if you own Ableton Live, what we will say in 2010 is that we will unleash an unspeakable, nameless evil, known only to the ancients, which shall bring about the endtimes.”)

Here’s the surprise – you likely won’t have to wait for Serato to get integrated digital vinyl control. It’s already working with Ms. Pinky, and that means more choice, more DIY possibilities, and a broader variety of ways to integrate turntables and Live.

You see, there’s this little thing called Max for Live, which allows the use of Max patches inside Live as seamless instruments and effects. And one of the best – if least-known – vinyl control systems out there has long featured Max integration: Ms. Pinky. People have already made use of VST plug-in integration, but because Max for Live also connects to the Live API for control of Live itself, the functionality of the two can be expanded.

Via our friend Luthier.Lab, we get a first look at the Ms. Pinky plug-in. And this should be just the beginning, as Ms. Pinky and its Max/MSP support could be a great construction kit for building your own solution – something that may not be possible with Serato.

Ms.PinkyforLive [Luthier.Lab - en Español]
Google Translate (which has some very funny ideas about how to translate Spanish)
Discussion on the Ms. Pinky forum

While you ponder the possibilities, it’s time for a video from Daito Manabe demonstrating that not all turntablists sound quite the same.

Want to reignite interest in DJs who actually use their hands and fingers to slice up and juggle sounds? A cavalcade of “laptopists” is the ticket. Suddenly, at least in some corners, people are again interested in turntablism. It’s nice to see how a controller can integrate digital loop and cue points with a setup that still focuses on scratching. And Stanton’s SCS.3d turns out to be scriptable in the open source DJ software Mixxx. As some live PA musicians revert to a “push play” mentality, DJs can keep it interesting.

I’m generally not so interested in posting videos from manufacturers, but in this case it’s fun just watching DJ Jungleboy work behind a pair of Stanton SCS.3d controllers. These instruments seem designed for him. In a way, a lot of what he’s doing could easily be done with a sampler and drum pad, like an MPC setup, but then he’s got it mapped in a slightly unusual way, and the radial layout serves that nicely.

Oddly, what Jungleboy is doing is “DJing,” whereas some people with Traktor or Ableton Live supposedly doing “live PA” (some, not all) are basically just playing finished tracks – something you might more accurately term “iTunesing.” It’s a strange world, and what may ultimately happen is that we start to divide things between people who are making an effort to be musicians, good or bad, and people who aren’t.

These SCS.3d’s I see are now at a street price of US$200, which could make them a nice buy.

Open Source SCS.3d Scripting?

Need another reason to check out the SCS? All due respect to the folks at Serato, here’s a neat twist: you can script the SCS.3d with Mixxx, the open source DJ tool for Windows, Mac, and – yep – Linux. Serato is a terrific and solid tool, but if you’re looking for something a little different, Mixxx looks terrific.

This also demonstrates why choice makes controllers much more powerful, just as you’d want choices and versatility with a musical instrument. There’s a detailed post over at Mixxx’s blog from back in February. Basically, if you’re a power user, you can make the SCS.3d do any trick you like with its controllers, response, and lights. If you’re not, you benefit from the hard work DJ Pegasus has been doing to make this possible.

MIDI Scripting and the Stanton SCS.3d (Videos)

Now, I wonder if we’ll see this scripting applied to Akai’s APC40 soon, too, in Mixxx – my guess is yes, if that team gets their hands on one.

One thing’s for sure: the spirit behind turntablism, virtuoso manipulations of sound, lives on. And those of you just faking turning knobs? You’ll have to figure out how to live with yourselves.

Liz and Peter Dines continue to send dispatches from the epic MUTEK festival in Montreal. Stay tuned to our events.noisepages.com page for the latest. Among the new reports: various Reaktor spottings among artists, insane turntable abuse, and even a discussion of how arts events can reduce their impact on the planet. (Oddly enough, that last panel evidently included Dan Seligman, with whom I worked at the Sierra Club on international trade and human rights issues in another life of mine.)

Check out the ongoing MUTEK coverage while we wait for Liz and Peter to finish off their stack of interviews — more soon!
MUTEK @ events.noisepages.com

Since this week has become Unplanned Unofficial Vinyl Week, I might as well keep going. Vinyl with printed timecode is just one path. Here are two examples (one recent, one upcoming) of products that have found other means of connecting digital sound to the turntable. If a product like Traktor Scratch or Serato Scratch Live represent the maturation of the integrated vinyl + hardware + software solution, these two tools virtualize the turntable experience in other ways. And they demonstrate just how much control technology can change in music, turntable or no.

The Numark X2, above, as pointed out by beatfix in comments, is a hybrid of two approaches. It’s a conventional turntable (meaning you can actually hook it up to an amp and hear something, which isn’t the case with timecode-encoded vinyl). But it also uses the turntable to manipulate an MP3 CD. Now, obviously, Numark has missed the obvious next step: why not transmit control data to a computer instead of a CD? The X2, with a street well below US$1000, isn’t new; it’s been around a couple of years. But I’m still waiting for the concept to be applied to a computer output. (Anyone?)

In the opposite direction, the Stanton Control System, unveiled at NAMM in January and due to ship in June, does away with the turntable. The deck, the SCS.1d, simulates the feel of a turntable with a high-torque motorized platter and even a motorized pitch fader. Personally, I love this — and think it could be a sign of other, non-DJ controllers with tactile feedback. (You heard it here first. Uh … but I do expect that to take a while, as tactile control design is hard.)

But the turntable has some control features of its own: trigger pads, LCD scribble strips, encoders, transport controls, and preset triggers and navigation keys. They look a little odd, honestly, on a faux turntable, but it does save some space and gear.

The SCS.1m on left is a traditional mixer control surface with LCD "scribble strips" (reminds me a bit of the Novation keyboards) and endless encoders with a light-up ring (as we’ve been seeing various places.) The mixer controller is also a FireWire audio interface with mic and phono ins and dedicated headphone out, plus a footswitch input. That might win the hearts of some Ableton Live users who aren’t necessarily DJs.

This answers what Stanton has been doing post-FinalScratch. With that system defunct, what the Control System does is get you into whatever software you happen to choose. It works with Traktor Studio (the non-Scratch version of Traktor), Ableton Live, Deckadance, and MixVibes.

Cost: US$1499 for the deck, $999 for the mixer. And you can see the problem — a real turntable might be cheaper. But then, given what DJs make… hey, even a few VJ gigs might make it worth it if you really wanted it.

Part of why I find all of this interesting, even without being in the market for such a device myself, is what it says about controllers. The DJ market ought to be fairly predictable at this point, theoretically. And yet here are two examples of products that suggest that even conventional DJing, with a pre-defined set of basic techniques and hardware, can become unpredictable with the addition of a computer. As people struggle to define what a controller might look like for a laptop artist or musician using software like Ableton Live, I think the possibilities become even more wide open.

But then, that’s the fun of it.

I just want to see more high-torque motors in stuff.

Scratching with a mouse just doesn’t feel right. One solution, as in FinalScratch and other products, is to print timecode onto the vinyl. But then there’s the direct approach: strap that mouse right onto your turntable and hit the club!

That’s just what the DIY-oriented community of users of terminatorX have done. terminatorX is a fully open-source scratch synth on Linux, with support for files like OGG, MP3, and WAV, and even (recently) Linux’s open stereo plug-in format, LADSPA. terminatorX lacks fancy features like support for timecode-printed vinyl, so users take a more literal approach to melding mouse and turntable.

Practical? Well, not especially. But fun? Heck, yeah. (Added benefit: a couple of these are far lighter and smaller than a real turntable.)

Necessity is definitely the mother of invention:

• Some of the projects use a series of belts to connect rotation mechanically to the mouse apparatus
• Toqer worked with a DIY optical sensor apparatus; several of these use optical sensors on the mice to keep from touching the records (thus making these even kinder to records than an actual cartridge would be)
• A number of projects feature full-blown motors and entirely-concealed mice
• Adam King built an entire DIY turntable with a mouse connected inside the unit (pictured, top)
• My personal favorite, Fernando S. Fabreti took the brute-force approach and put a mouse directly on the tone arm. (below) Insane. Brilliant.

More projects, photos, and links to specs and how-to instructions (I imagine you could do damage with ideas like this using other software, or even applications other than turntables):

terminatorX Turntable Gallery

This should also leave you more than typically safe from stepping on any N2IT/FinalScratch patents. Thank Douglas Englebart for this one.

Digital turntablism is nothing new. But Ammobox, debuted at the first-ever CDM Futuristic Music Design Challenge, is unique in a number of ways. What creator Nathan Ramella has done differently:

1. He’s demystified digital vinyl timecode. With no previous DSP programming experience, Nathan created his own custom tool for reading vinyl timecode — and explains how he did it.

2. He’s changed the rules of scratching — it’s now polyphonic scratching. As Nathan puts it, "You get a polyphonic sampler that can layer multiple samples at the same time and scratch them all simultaneously." Yep: no more does digital vinyl simply replicate what records do normally. Here, it actually works as a digital instrument, manipulating layers of samples as you go. Check it out running in Ableton Live as a demo at top, though other hosts could work, as well, if you prefer.

3. He’s giving everything away. You’ll need some vinyl, and because the sonic wonders are all built in Reaktor, you’ll need a copy of NI’s modular mad science lab. But the ensemble itself is released under the GPL v2, which could make it a great way to learn more of the mysteries of Reaktor.

Official Ammobox Page

Download the library, free [ Direct Link ], or head to the rabbit hole that is NI’s User Library

Clarification: I should add that part of what makes Ammobox cool is actually that Nathan’s doing the timecode decoding the "wrong" way. Normally, a timecode system like Ms. Pinky or Traktor Scratch reads speed, direction, and absolute position. Position is the hard part, and the part that’s dependent on sophisticated error correction. What’s clever here is not that AmmoBox is likely to replace those systems (that’s not the point), but that by breaking the rules of how you’re supposed to do digital vinyl, Nathan’s created something different and expressive.

Nathan describes the system in greater detail:

I wrote a universal timecode decoder (universal to the extent that it seems to work with every type of timecode I’ve got, Final Scratch, Traktor Scratch, Torq, Serato, Ms. Pinky), so that I could get rotation speed/direction, then applied that to multi-timbrel samplers that are MIDI controlled. By triggering midi values you can inject a sample into the scratching stream, through voice control you can automatically choke it at a limits to avoid things getting mushy.

Samples can be loops or one-shots, any length (ram permitting)

This opens up a lot of interesting possibilities such as ’simul scratching’, the ability to scratch two or more samples at the same time, ’sequ scratching’, the ability to inject arbitrary samples quantized to the BPM of your host environment. There’s also some tricks I haven’t revealed yet that will be showing up in my next demo..

The juice of this really was getting timecode extracted in some usable form such that it could be applied to samplers / synthesizers, while this technology has existed for a while nobody that I’m aware of has applied it in the fashion I have and this is just the tip of the iceberg.  It gives live performers a lot of leverage for improv and studio knob twiddlers an unprecedented amount of control over scratching.

Nathan reports that he’s back to the labs now working on something else. (Another of his achievements: contributing to the hacked Live API.)

We’re honored to have seen him in person, at a rare live appearance (for the first time in ten years, he says), adding to the mystery of his research. Carry on, man.

Previously:

Teaser: ammoBox Project Digitally Scratches … What?

PS, since it is GPL’ed, if any of you Reaktor nuts go do something with this, hope you’ll let us know about it.

Nathan Ramella has sent us a video of a new project called ammoBox. What is it? Well, I happen to know a bit about it, but Nathan has sworn me to secrecy, so I’ll just point out:

• It claims to be the "world’s first stream scratching, simul scratching, sequ scratching"
• Nathan was a co-creator of the Unofficial Ableton Live API (which now lives on Google Code if you’ve been wondering where to find updates on that) — so we know he’s got the chops for hacking
• Yes, that’s Ableton Live … yes, that’s a turntable … no, this isn’t quite the same as other things you’ve seen using that combination.

Any guesses?

Bay Area folk, come see this at our 2:30pm competition (and at the CDM Booth) at Yuri’s Night … and everyone else, stay tuned here and on that site for more details very soon.

Stephen Haunts was inspired by the cassette-recorded 808, and writes to tell us he’s decided to give something back. He’s uploaded 22 kits from a Korg ElecTribe ER-1, a kit from a Yamaha DD-10 (pictured amusing the awkward fellow at right from the manual), and a Yamaha PSS-80. The Yamahas steal the show: they’re little toy keyboards with a decidedly lo-fi sound. I always admired the Japanese sound designers for their minimalism on these low-end hardware units. You almost don’t need to circuit bend this.

Free Drum Machine Samples by Creature [Haunted House Records]

Stephen, aka Creature, used these samples for his Distant Horizon album featured in Mike Una’s round-up of music from the forums.

Toy drums not to your liking? How about a toy music box instead?

Our friend Tom at Music Thing has repaired and sampled his Fisher Price record player music box, then uploaded the results to the open source soundware site Freesound:

Sampling a Fisher Price Music Box Record Player [Music Thing]

You may remember said Fisher Price kit from the tongue-in-cheek Fisher Price turntable “review” by DJ Tech Tool’s Ean Golden.

What’s great about both these sound collections is they’re actually different enough to give you some real inspiration musically. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to take my handheld recorder around the house and grab some other sounds.

TurntablistPC is an ongoing art project coupling a vintage turntable with a vintage PC, creating a hybrid, record-playing server that can be controlled remotely by remote websites around the world. It’s the creation of artist Mogen Jacobsen, and it’s currently being exhibited as part of a show called Webscape at the Art Museum of West Sealand, Denmark. What? You’re not planning to pass through West Sealand this fall? The museum still wants your help: embed a piece of code, and visitors to your own website will trigger manipulations of the turntable based on geographic position.

TurntablistPC Project Page
The TurntablistPC spins again! [Networked Music Review, my new favorite source for artsy music tech!]

Thanks to our artist friend Michael Una for tipping us off. I’m not sure I’ll be building anything of this sort soon, but what I do like about it conceptually is that it returns playback devices — increasingly abstract and virtual in the age of the iPod — to the realm of mechanical instrument. I think we may see all sorts of strange, new, hybrid digital/mechanical instruments in the coming years.

Of course, if you can’t figure out how to turn a turntable into a hybrid server art installation, you can always just don your black vinyl jumpsuit and strap your turntable to your back. I think Numark’s idea here was to somehow promote their turntables, but to me, they may have stumbled onto a new, futuristic couture in which we wear heavy objects as fashion statements. And for whatever reason, I’m game! (People could, you know, come up to you … I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine sorta thing?)

Making_sound grabbed this shot and sent it to our Flickr group; thanks!