I got to get up close and personal with the just-deliver Ohm from Livid Instruments. It’s a new MIDI controller with a 6×6 grid of on/off pads, two times four knobs + four faders (that is, eight total of each), lots of custom buttons, and a DJ-style crossfader with a lovely wooden handle. Price is US$750, but it comes bundled with Livid’s full VJ software, Union, for Mac and PC.

Livid is first and foremost a visual software developer, and the controller is unusually well-suited to visuals, so it was a natural for Create Digital Motion:

Hands-On: Livid’s New Ohm Controller, Custom Control Geared for Visualists

Music folks have been equally interested, though, which raises the question of how to use it.

As a DJ controller, or Ableton Live controller, it looks very interesting. You could use the 6×6 pads as clip triggers or sample triggers, then assign the mixing functions. In fact, while initially it appears to be short on knobs, the fact that you have eight faders means you could assign a combination of effects and mix levels to cross-faders — or just set up a basic two- or four-channel mix and focus on effects and other settings.

Readers were split on its potential when they first saw it last year, as you can see in comments. But I’ll be interested to hear how people actually using it respond. I was very impressed with the physical feel and handcrafted design in my hands-on — not enough to shake me from my own favorite controllers, but then, I think the future of controllers is more choice, not less.

And if you think you can do better than the Livid team, keep your eyes glued for the MIDI DIY. It’s the control board / brain of the Ohm, ready to be turned into any project you desire. (With 128 note contacts and 32 control changes, you can do something pretty hefty.) More on that when it ships. It won’t be for the first-time DIYer, but I know we have some advanced readers out there.

Audiovisual performance has a history stretching back through the decades — from the 90s Japan audiovisual scene to 60s Acid Tests and whole heck of a lot of other places. Heck, I’m fairly certain people were shooting up on morphine or getting happy with the opium and chilling out to magic lanterns and colored lights at the end of the 19th Century. But there’s a new excitement brewing globally around live music and visuals. That’s important, because it could push the scene forward — a critical mass of performers could pressure more venues into better projection, from avant-garde to club, and raise the level of chops and artistry in the medium. And you won’t even need opium.

The growing interest in A/V performance was part of what made us so excited about Serato’s VIDEO-SL, as seen in our exclusive hands-on with dj rndm. It’s unquestionably the best (well, even arguably the only) true, integrated DVJ tool in computer software form, certainly as far as digital vinyl control.

But curiously, one of the tools at the center of this movement isn’t really a DJ app in the traditional sense, has no scratching capabilities for audio let alone video, only limited video support, no live video triggering support, and no projection support. It’d be as though, collectively, the world decided in 1965 everyone was going to build flying moon buggies by first buying themselves Chevy Novas.

That’d make no sense whatsoever, except the app in question is Ableton Live.

And suddenly, it’s a natural choice: Live is a favorite tool for slicing and dicing sound live, so why not visuals — even if only by transmitting MIDI to a dedicated visual app? There are a number of approaches.

Squarely in the “things Ableton Live was not necessarily built to do”: animating visuals, one frame at a time.

Cousin Throckmorton whipped up a retro visual feast of Space Invaders, Pong, and other games classics, using MIDI to step through frames individually.

You can MIDI sequence Live’s locators to jump between frames, thereby giving the effect of animation. Sprites/frames are drawn using blank MIDI clips; unfortunately, the resolution is limited by the Y-axis size, as Live doesn’t allow you to resize that. Live’s skins are somewhat tied to MIDI already, so you can “ride” the skins field to change background colors (it updates on midi notes on(?) Audio track is made of samples of video games, trails effect at end achieved via hacked Live skin. Sets/skins available for you to toy with at my myspace: myspace.com/cousinthrockmorton

Mind you, this is unlikely to shake the visualists on Create Digital Motion from specialized tools for visuals — and you could just as easily (uh, scratch that for far more easily) use MIDI to trigger a visual app. But the work is really incredible, and I think as Live grows in ubiquity, users will increasingly show their Live chops by hacking harder than ever before.

And for the record, this is the same Throckmorton who gave us a ribbon controller made from a drivers’ license, a drum made from a laser, and pennies as drum pads, among others. More MIDI-as-visual-control tips, too:

db3ll Channel

Prescient spam comment: “i am so lonely, i just broke up with my ex” says cutechick90201. Worry not, uh, imaginary cutechick. You’ll be surrounded by boys as you seduce them with the siren song of your drivers’ license.

Thanks, Cousin!

The convergence of visuals and sound on virtual vinyl has been a long time coming, but it’s awaited the perfect tool for controlling both. Serato’s VIDEO-SL promised to be that tool. We’ve gotten the crossfader in the capable hands of dj rndm and Robotkid to find out for Create Digital Motion. Here’s what the results look like, mixing:

… and scratching:

The review isn’t without the odd caveat: for one, you’ll need to pluck down a couple grand to get the complete setup because the Rane mixer employed is required, though rndm ultimately says that’s worth it for the integration payoff. And available transitions and effects are limited in range and prefer to run on dedicated GPUs (think MacBook Pro, or a PC laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA or ATI card). But as you can see, the results are incredibly slick, and there’s no question video on vinyl now has a tool to beat. Check out the complete review and technical details on our visualist sister site:

Hands-on Review: Serato’s VIDEO-SL for Visual Vinyl Turntablism

Karate Kid AV Remix from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

A major highlight of the party CDM held last weekend with our friends at TRASH_AUDIO and VJKungFu.tv: a live remix of The Karate Kid. Momo the Monster mangled the video while Shane Hazelton and Stephan Vankov did music. The whole event was powered by some clever MIDI sync that managed to wrangle the gear — enough hardware that it seemed like the crew had just raided a Guitar Center — and sync up the video.

Sure, the remix may sound silly — and it was. (Deliciously so.) But the interplay between the three, punctuated by ridiculous live vocals by Shane, really put it over the top. Adding some MIDI intelligence to your digital trio could help all kinds of performances, not just this one We’ll have to get Momo to share what he did.

Momo has more over on Create Digital Motion, complete with technical details:

Karate Kid AV Remix

But this clip should give you an idea of just how live the vocals were — in a moment that captures, shall we say, the brutish masculine power of the film:

Karate Kid live remixing music performance from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Friday we’re pleased to co-host a party with trash_audio and vjkungfu.tv in Mid-City Los Angeles. If you’re in LA or visiting NAMM in Anaheim, you won’t want to miss this - Richard Devine headlining, terrific music and live visuals, and workshops.

If you don’t know the other two sites, by the way, trash_audio (featuring Richard, Justin, and Deep Element) is a fantastic blog that regularly profiles creative workspaces for music. vjkungfu.tv, helmed by VJ momo the monster, has in-depth video tutorials for live visualists; we hope to feature it more on createdigitalmotion.com in the near future.

Here’s the lineup:

1. MAKE + MINGLE. 8:00pm.

• Bring your own DIY music or motion creations and other hardware toys and geek out with an international crowd of hipster-nerdsters! All projects welcome (space first come, first served — think small, bring portable speakers if you can
• Put together free kits to make your own ribbon controllers without soldering
• Learn how Bryant Davis Place (future-tense-cpu) built his own DIY VJ sequencer for M8 using the Lemur multi-touch controller.
• Learn about the wonders of wireless MIDI sync in AV Performance with Acid&Bass&Momo producing a live remix of Karate Kid.

2. MIX + MASH. 9:30pm.

RICHARD DEVINE
The Deep Element
Justin McGrath
Liz Revision (Quantazelle)
Moldover
dj halon (Fake Science, False Profit)

Visuals:
Image8nineteen (Mat Hale)
Momo the Monster
Peter Kirn

Some readers on this site — wisely, perhaps — cautioned last year against doing a second "Create Digital …" site for interactive visuals, live visuals, and VJing. But to us, the connection between musical performance and technology and visual performance and technology is really essential. I’m pleased to announce that now, following a two-week sojourn on the Australian content, we’re finally kicking createdigitalmotion.com into high gear and lining up what we want the mature site to be. If you haven’t been reading lately, here’s a bit of what you’ve missed:

• Video scratching with Serato: At long last, one of the leaders in digital control vinyl has added video scratching as well as audio via a new plug-in called VIDEO-SL, now in beta; we’re planning our own test but already have one hands-on.
• We’ve got a big list of video and visual goodies we like. Is it a practical holiday shopping guide? Erm … bits of it are. It’s all drool-worthy, at least. And you’ll really want vintage, gigantic planetarium projections. Lay out some cots, and play that four hour ambient electronic set you’ve been working up.
• Want to learn this stuff yourself? vade has some nice online workshops and tutorials for working with visuals in Pure Data (Pd) and Processing. Both also work well for music, so if you want to dabble in custom-programmed audiovisuals (I swear, anyone can do it with some dedication!) this could be a good place to start. We’ve also got tips for inexpensive high-speed photography and not one but two CDMo tutorials on the free Quartz Composer tool in OS X Tiger and Leopard. See Keith’s report on what’s new in the Leopard release of Quartz Composer, plus a beginner-friendly tutorial for driving 3D cubes with audio courtesy VJ Kung Fu’s momo the monster. The latter should be ideal for whipping up some quick sound-driven visuals for your band; you can even host those visuals in the live music host Rax. Incidentally, our CDMo New Years’ Resolution: make more work, post more tutorials.
• Open jamming for visualists: Just as with music, the best way to practice your chops and share your work is to get out of your bedroom/studio and out to an open jam. We’ve got a full report on the Perth, Australia Plug and Play, an ideal example of how such an event could work, as part of their Byte Me! Festival I attended earlier this month. See the video below, and watch for more video soon - Jaymis and I are editing hours of video footage now.

Plug N Play - ByteMe Festival - Perth from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

If you want to keep up-to-date on Create Digital Motion, you can add the feeds for the site:

RSS Feed (or subscribe via email)

Create Digital Motion Flickr pool

We’re also posting weekend inspiration each week, back next weekend post-holiday break.

From the whole CDM team, very happy holidays. (Yep, New Year’s Eve is among them — we’ll be cracking on 2007-in-review!)