2Second(fuse) - Gear 19

drmArm
9/12/07 01:26 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Seth Elalouf of Spacesuitgroup has released a fun and funky rhythm application with extra doses of beat-breaking grit and synthesis mojo. You can create crazy (good crazy!) bleep-laden rhythmic structures using just this application and a hardware controller. And when you're done, you'll find yourself setting up to do it again. And again. drmArm is addictive.

drmArm features:

- Five different building blocks for synthetic percussion: shaker, hit (aka snare), tine 1 & 2 (aka bloop and blip) and kick. Each have a graphic volume envelope and various other parameters for shaping the sound.

- x0x sequencing grid with MIDI triggerable sequence slots for shifting between various beats on the fly.

- An audio-chopping sample player for live rocking of sliced waveforms.

- Global effects: delay, filter, pan and a nice beat-breaker for triggering glitches and stuttering repetitions.

- MIDI learn for almost everything. drmArm was designed to be tweaked live with a controller.

- Beautifully minimal and concise PDF manual.

- ReWire, full screen mode, tap tempo and more.

I made the Spacerx source loop for Daevlmakr's current 1dot9 sample set using drmArm. I've been playing with it for a couple months now, and just can't stop. Created in Max/MSP then wrapped up as a stand-alone application, drmArm is hands-down one of the best Max built apps I've used.

drmArm is a free download at spacesuitgroup.com. If you dig it, grace them with some patronage and/or spread the word so more sweet tools like this one will fall out of the airlock.

Retracted Landing Gear
6/20/07 01:46 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Daevlmakr is moving to a gorgeous live/work loft in San Francisco's Potrero Hill district, and I'm moving with it. The majority of the heavy studio gear has now been air-lifted over. Stragglers will be rolling in tomorrow afternoon via industrial earth-moving equipment.

Some of the gear, lined up and ready to move out. I need a fisheye shot to capture the whole studio in the new location. I've a Blue Deceiver site evolving fins right now and am planning a studio section as part of it.

Some of the studio, lined up and ready to move out.

Miles of audio. There's a mountain of MIDI twine nearby. You don't even want to imagine their companion snakepit of standard power cables.

Many little boxes of go. I think wall-warts are parthenogenetic. I look away to focus on a mix for five minutes and I swear they double in population.

There may come a day when I lay my deep and abiding love of hardware to rest and embrace the minimalist nirvana of laptopian omphaloskepsis.

That day is not yet.

Major Malfunction
2/23/07 23:12 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Dan Nigrin, sonic headmaster at Defective Records, has developed something special in Major Malfunction: an intuitive, multi-effect embodiment of disorderly conduct for Ableton Live. It's fairly bristling with experimentation and fun FSU.

I'm currently at work on an ultra-top secret project for Sir Jeremy Logickal, and have been using Major Malfunction extensively on rhythm beds and layered string-like tracks. Definitely slap it on basslines for instant click and cut.

Major Malfunction mangles source audio by triggering 5 effects plus a pass-through and random effect choice in an adjustable 64 step, bpm-synchronized sequencing grid. In the image below I've shortened the grid to 16 steps and am adding entropy with the brilliant random effect in the last track.

Major Malfunction from Defective Records - partial screenshot.

Full screenshot from the Defective Records site.

The effects sequencing above rotated a slightly pitched down Casio SK1 disco rhythm from cultural repetition to artistically unrepeatable:

Casio SK-1 Major Malfunked (0:24, 44.1KHz, 128bpms, 565k)

Major Malfunction is massive FSU packed inside a single, very inexpensive plug-in. If you're an Ableton Live user into glitchy, mangled audio, Defective Records has a downloadable demo waiting for you right now.

Grooving New Gear
2/10/07 23:52 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Kristin Kalter has a written a cute article on the Monome 40h and its creators for the Columbia Chronicle, a student publication at Chicago's Columbia College.

The illustration accompanying the piece is actually a nice likeness of Brian Crabtree, the originator of the device.

Pool Of 40h
6/1/06 09:04 - permalink - email - category: Gear

The Monome Flickr Pool, 14 members strong as of this writing, has many good shots from [The Box] obsessives. Here's one from my table:

This is the Monome 40h running an interactive FM synth app I've been working on in spare moments. The bag is a WaterField Mac Mini case from sfbags.com... fits the 40h like a glove.

Monome!
4/23/06 23:27 - permalink - email - category: Gear

On April 21st I attended the Monome Release Party at Asphodel.

Sonification came by way of performances from the Monome crew. Tehn cultured us all with a set including a beautiful version of the infectiously structured Mancini sample track you hear in the recent Monome demo video; the Gowns flowed out gorgeous, droning somnabulance; Daedalus brought epic anarchy to the lab and the Portable Sunsets rocked out the ultimate funktronic lo-fi. All used the Monome as an interface. If anyone had any questions regarding the Monome's fitness to purpose, they were most surely dispelled.

A Friday well spent for the music alone, but a skyride when I brought a Monome back to my studio.

A shot of the startup pattern, 1 through 8 in binary representation:

The Monome is a deceptively simple device. An 8 x 8 grid of rubber pads lit by green LEDs, communicating and drawing power over USB. The unit is a little over 17 centimeters (6.75 inches) square, with the pads measuring a perfect finger width. This control density is one of the Monome's greatest strengths, packing 64 points of manipulation into the active spread of two hands.

Brushed aluminum front panel, inviting soft-touch pads, rubberized housing to minimize surface slips while performing... the quality level is much higher than most mass-production commercial endeavors. Designed to be used, this device is light but solid. I feel no worries packing it into my already zipper-testing travel backpack.

A wonderfully refreshing experience: there are no markings of any kind on the device. Its functions are left to the user, and so need no labeling. Even the single USB port has no indicator: the developers assume you can think for yourself. There is no corporate logo or company name silk-screened into your mind with each and every use. The Monome is pure, minimal functionalism at your fingertips.

A blank canvas for your controller desires, the pads and indicator lights are decoupled for access to the full range of this device as both manipulator and indicator. Two-way communication with musical applications is accomplished by Open Sound Control messages. Several purpose-specific Max/MSP patches are already available at Monome.org, with more to come. The developers have open-sourced their personal Max performance patches under the Gnu GPL, such as Tehn's mlr (a loop dividing beat breaker) and step (a fun take on xox style rhythm programming). Once the May 1st ship date arrives and more Monomes find their way into the larger world, I've a feeling the Max action will go crazy. I've already started customizing my own Monome environment, and will release it back to the developers and other users once it matures. I'm sure many others will do the same. You won't need Max chops to take advantage of the Monome's endless possibilities, though. Mapd, an application to facilitate Maxless mapping of the Monome to other apps like Live, Digital Performer, Reason, is forthcoming.

The Monome was created by a small group of people who actually make music with it, not a corporation intent on profit margins and planned obsolescence. Care was obviously taken to create a device of the highest quality, using the most environmentally sustainable and economically sound practices. Local suppliers and tradespeople were employed when possible; the devices are assembled by hand and are RoHS compliant to ensure a greener world. The Monome's software, firmware and hardware are all open source.

I've known for some time this interface would revolutionize my musical creation, both in studio and out. It is. After two days, I've leapt into my sonic future and love what I hear. Isn't moving us forward the purpose of well-wrought design and sustainability?

Built by forward looking people, the Monome is a future device available right now.

Update: This post was picked up by CreateDigitalMusic and spawned excellent discussion of the Monome and its makers, planned obsolescence versus sustainable design and doing the right thing.

Monome Coalescence
4/11/06 21:54 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Developing the Daevlplugs suite, a nice buzz of composition itch and excitement has been building for me. My current plan is to finish the Daevlplugs, then rock out my backlog of music. As I've watched the Monome 40h progress to completion, the itch has exponentially increased and my nice buzz is now an undeniable urge.

A newly released promo video shows the 40h and a few of the bundled apps being put through their paces:

I'll be breaking from the final Daevlplugs push to attend the Asphodel Release Party on April 21st and actually place hands on a unit at the Maker Faire on April 22nd and 23rd.

Those 64 ectoplasmic green buttons are coalescing beneath my digits even as I type.

Related: Waiting For Monome

Casio VL(ad)-Tone
1/26/06 23:30 - permalink - email - category: Gear

While searching out replacement keys for my ailing Casio SK-1, I've edged up close to several other 80s consumer keyboards. A mint VL-Tone caught my eye and wouldn't let go, and I'm now proudly co-habitating with the first keyboard ever made by Casio. It's in excellent condition: nothing broken, no discoloration, no scratches, and it sounds freshly arrived from 1979.

The VL-Tone's funky rhythm sound was immortalized by Trio in "Da Da Da," and its baby synthesis has been used by Devo, The Fall, The Human League and Moby, among many others.

For me, in my endless analysis of culture and creation as choices building upon themselves, the VL-Tone is a wormhole from the past into the present into the future. Something clicks into proper place in my heart when I source sounds from the past, sounds resonant in collective memory, the foundations of what we now hear everyday. It's a method of time travel, of helping something live in a form it was never conceived for, of growth through punctuated evolution, direct intervention in a sound's chronology.

This little toy keyboard with a built-in calculator was created in a world that had no idea I would someday be processing its sound through an immeasurably more complex Max/MSP patch, on a laptop computer dwarfing the processing power of its day. I reached out to the 70s and 80s, grasped, and pulled it straight into the now.

It has been sleeping in a thin vinyl case for 25 years.

I'm making it young again, here in the modern world.

I can tell, just by the recontextualized blips and bleeps of its output... this tiny synth is grooving on 2006.

Waiting For Monome
1/19/06 23:40 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I create music and video with a variety of controllers: lots of knobs, sliders, drum pads, qwerty buttons, mice, and, of course, synthesizers and keyboards everywhere.

My main working programs are Max/MSP/Jitter and Live 5. All the controllers above are useful in my production methods with these two apps, but I've been wishing for something closer to perfect for what I do.

The Monome 40h may be the ticket:

The above shot is cropped from a pic on the Flickr feed.

The 40h is described by its developers as "a grid of internally lit tactile pushbuttons." The 8 x 8 lights are under software control, and can be uncoupled from button presses for visual feedback in any fashion. I could stay up all night describing uses for this device in my studio: sequencer, beat pad, video launcher, interactive composition tool giving me feedback on repetition count and blink-suggesting alternatives, one half of an incredible opto-theremin bank with just a bit of soldering and rigging...

I've been following the Monome interface's development since the first prototype, The Box, and have been lusting after one for a good year. Not only is the 40h looking like my favorite controller for its vast functionality, its developers have designed with high-quality, environmentally conscious components and local industry.

Release date is theoretically in March, so close I can already feel those 64 buttons beneath my fingertips.

URLwell
1/18/06 22:35 - permalink - email - category: Gear

In Contextual Link Queue I pined for a system integrated application that would allow me to queue up web links for later browsing, without leaving email to cut and paste URLs into a separate document.

Tonight Mgoa Bloom pointed me to my wish almost come true.

URLwell from Enigmarelle Development is a small menubar application for OS X. It does one thing, really well: storing URLs you drag and drop on it for later viewing, with a checked list to indicate visited sites.

It doesn't do contextual menus, which my RSI twisted wrists favor, but the drop down interface-on-demand is a better implementation than my original suggestion. The checked queue gives me great feedback on what I have and haven't visited yet, and there's even a leaner, more efficient preference setting for simply removing URLs from the list once they've been browsed.

Bonus: I've discovered it handles any type of link, including email addresses. I can queue a list of email reminders and then work down the line.

Thanks Mgoa, for remembering, and thanks Enigmarelle... this rocks!

My Casio SK-1
1/13/06 22:40 - permalink - email - category: Gear

My trusty Casio SK-1 has two broken keys: middle B and high A#. I'm crazy with electronic music-geek grief. Until these plastic ivories are restored all will not be right with my studio world.

I am a confirmed hardware junky, and this particular SK-1 is the first synthesizer I placed fingers on. In the swirling mists of history, I wrote several cassettes worth of baby songs with this bad boy, at first using multiple bounces on dueling stereo tape decks, later graduating to a Yamaha 4-track once I'd become a "Serious Musician." The sentimental value this machine holds for me is absolutely priceless.

I've carried the SK-1 with me through thick and thin: relationships, lack of relationships, bands, theatres, travels... it has always pulled through. It's met my blood relatives, snarling at most of them using its full 8 bit, 9.38KHz sampling capability. I've fallen asleep with it.

In every track I write now, I use some piece of SK-1 sound, if just a single, manipulated percussion hit. It's unbelievable how much sonic warping can impart new life to the cheesiest 80s consumer synth sounds using a tool like Ableton Live or Max/MSP. Layering a bassline with manipulated SK-1 Brass Ensemble == seriously thick and juicy.

I've thought about bending the device, but it seems somehow blasphemous to consider modification of this particular keyboard. I've no qualms about turning other SK-1s into alien noise boxes, but this one... it's my history, my present and my future.

I'll soon be installing highlyliquid.com's MIDISpeak retrofit in one of my Speak 'n' Spells, and then will try their SK-1 MIDI conversion kit. Something tells me I've not truly lived until I've triggered my SK-1 from my Access Virus kb.

The MIDI conversion will make the SK-1 playable again, but until I scavenge some replacement keys, it won't be whole.

Ableton Live 5 Alive
8/3/05 21:00 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Live has been in my music-making arsenal since version 1.5 and it just keeps getting better. Once Ableton added MIDI to the mix Live basically replaced Digital Performer as my studio's heartbeat. Every release adds new capabilities without sacrificing immediacy of use. Amazingly, Ableton created Live barebones and added major features in a series of well-wrought steps, forging the program into a conceptually designed masterpiece without direct sacrifice to the perceived whims of a "me too" marketplace.

Live 5 continues the refinement...

Clip Freeze - I take digital audio and turn it into something else. I stretch, mangle, warp, destroy, re-fry, transmogrify until I end up with something so far from previous form you would be hard pressed to even admit the possibility of connection. This, my friends, requires serious processing power. The kind of power which will reduce your CPU to molten tears and keep your caffeine of choice steaming by simply placing mug near chip. Ableton's brilliantly managed Clip Freeze will turn an entire column of massively effexored clips into static samples, in place and with a single contextual menu click. I can then continue compositional mayhem using the frozen clips. A later tweak to the effects chain is as simple as unfreezing the track.

Launchable Arrangement Locators - Drop them all over your track at key locations, assign MIDI or qwerty keys to them and then play the broad arcs of your music, with quantization, in real time. You will never create arrangements the same way again.

Live Clips - Save a library of individual bits and pieces of sound, with all the effects, settings, audio or softsynths gathered into one Live Clip. Drop the Live Clip into a new track and it's all there, just as you made it.

And that's only the first few stairsteps up the mountain to the sky. New effects like Beat Repeat, Saturator and the customizable Arpeggiator, new ways of auditioning portions of audio, new ways of packaging sets of sounds and settings in Live Packs, batch pre-analysis of entire directories of audio... more unexpected fun than I realized I wasn't having in many moons.

Tigerized
7/1/05 19:59 - permalink - email - category: Gear

Last I night Tigerized. I'd been putting it off until the project plate was slightly less full, but Panther had been flakey of late and, honestly, is there ever a time when my project plate is not beginning to crack from its burden?

I imaged the drive yesterday, and so armed opted for a standard upgrade in situ, rather than the theoretically cleaner "archive and install" option. Aside from the glacial timeframes disk imaging lives within, the upgrade itself only took about 45 minutes. I doodled and plotted world domination on index cards while watching the upgrade scripts do their thing.

Everything seems to be rocking post-install, with minimal effort:

Max/MSP/Jitter needed upgraded PACE extensions
A minor issue with my wireless network of preference not automatically connecting on boot or awakening was dealt with by simply duplicating network settings and deleting the old slot
Printing wasn't happening: reset the printing system, repair disk permissions and I'm sorted

F12ing to the Dashboard for basic tasks like hitting wikipedia, working out international times, searching maxobjects.com or dictionary.com, tailing the system log... one of the best Apple innovations ever. I'm hooked. Then there's the Oblique Strategies widget getting thorough use. Spotlight == wonderful. It's already saved me at least an hour searching for various bits of code, emails and Max abstractions.

I wasn't planning on upgrading for at least another month, but now I'm sorry I waited.

SY77
6/17/05 03:37 - permalink - email - category: Gear

If I have a favorite hardware synthesizer, it would have to be my Yamaha SY77. It's not the most used synthesizer in my studio but I have a special bond with it, and a similar connection with its FM-only sibling, the DX11.

I use my SY77 for everything from pads and basses to glitch and percussion. It throws out a seriously mean synth kick. It's one of those synthesizers which houses such vast possibility, you expand beyond your own preconceptions just by tweaking the controls for awhile.

I purchased this SY77 sight unseen some years ago, through a seller on eBay. Of my many eBay synth purchases, only two have been problematic in any way. The Virus kB was difficult to pry free from someone who, unbeknownst to me at the time of bidding, had been absconding with lots of buyers' cash. It eventually showed up in pristine condition after several months of lesser black magic over IM. But this SY77, billed as "immaculate, perfect, like new" was in bad shape. It came out of the box with a layer of grime and filth so thick text on the chassis was unreadable. The LCD was kaput and, worst of all, low C was broken and unplayable.

But it turned on. And sound came out. And I was taken.

After extensive dismantling, disinfecting and parts replacement, I had a keyboard that actually was in pristine condition again and I now knew inside and out. After saving its life, I have to look after it, and it looks after me.

gleetchLAB
6/7/05 10:53 - permalink - email - category: Gear

1950s scientist concocting an audio potion.

Giorgio Sancristoforo's concocted a wonderful sonic experimenter's toolbox in Max/MSP/Jitter. He's wrapped it up as a stand-alone program in the form of gleetchLAB.

It has the usual crazy interface created from native Max/MSP controls, but don't let that frighten you. It's fun and easy once you get past the lack of commercial slickness. If you're already a Max/MSP user, you'll feel right at home.

four audio loop players
a fifth looper with wavetable synthesis and "ectoplasm generator"
granular, ring mod, reduction, eq, randomization, distortion from hell effects
a modular routing matrix to connect anything to anything

I can't begin to describe how cool this app is. Sancristoforo has built it as a lab environment for immediate experimentation and recording. There's no saving of patches, no banks of presets... nothing but your own audio and creativity which is then recorded to file. And it's perfect like this.

It's freeware, but there's a PayPal account with a suggestion of nine euros. I've been playing with it all morning, and can honestly say I haven't had this much audio sculpting fun for such a small price since I bent my first Speak 'n' Spell.

Oblique Widget
6/4/05 13:00 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I noticed the search string "oblique widget" in my logs and found others were also searching for an Oblique Strategies widget for OS X 10.4. My OS upgrade is getting closer by the inch of finished projects, so I did a quick search and boom! Just what I was looking for.

Guy Drieghe D. has created what appears to be an excellent implementation of Eno's creative unstucking tool, with options to use any of the existing versions.

One more reason to head for Tiger!

Oblique To The Side Of The Head
5/26/05 20:19 - permalink - email - category: Gear

When I am pushing against the boulder which separates me from my goals, and it's having a good laugh by sitting there weighing several immovable tons, I turn to random influence. Chaos and I are old friends and frequent collaborators.

Here's the pair of tools for divine generation I use most often.

An old-school favorite of creative unstuckers, Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt is with me in three forms: a hand-made set of cards from the mists of yesteryear, a version I patched up as part of my Max/MSP/Jitter control panel, and the nicely implemented software from CurvedSpace which lives in my dock.

It's not only used for song-writing decisions, either. Bare minutes ago it solved a particularly vexing decision over how to structure my life to realize some larger creative goals:

Oblique Strategy - Look at the order in which you do things.

The above says it all for my trouble of the moment.

I'm in the midst of several projects, so my copy of Tiger is still in the shrink. If someone doesn't create an Oblique Strategies widget by the time I'm ready to upgrade, I might have to make it myself. Oblique Strategies, if followed either literally or metaphorically, always yield good results.

Roger von Oech's Creative Whack Pack... a whack to the side of your head!

The other half of my kick-start pair is Roger von Oech's Creative Whack Pack. I've been using von Oech's masterpiece since the early 90s and it has brought me no end of delight and inspiration. Similar in design to the Strategies, this set of cards gives you an instructional missive such as Slay A Dragon, Exaggerate or Focus On The Real Truth, then follows up with a small story to provide a contextual guide for you to work on your own problem.

Somewhere in my ToDo database is the conversion of these cards to software, but for now Roger von Oech's website CreativeThink will give you a random card from the Whack Pack. Just refresh the page for another one.

Some people call it cheating, I call it working with the universe as another aspect of my own mind. As without, so within, which then leaves home to stand on its own as the new without... and the cycle repeats. Like Tarot and I Ching, utilizing random processes with these tools to aid in making creative decisions is just another way of holding a conversation with oneself.

3x5Second(fuse)
4/30/05 22:22 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I've always been a note-maker and a note-giver. Recently I've traded my PDA and spiral-bound for pocket pads of various kinds. The durable and portable moleskine notebook suits my task. It goes everywhere, fits in my pockets and I can even sit on it without fear of breaking screens and fizzing circuitry. I like the traditional pocket notebook variety and the new flip-open reporter style. Aside from still writing in Palm Graffiti strokes, my only trouble is the remorse I feel ripping out pages to give someone information that won't fit on a business card.

I'm remorseful no more. Inspired by the custom 3x5 creations of Adam Gurno and Scott Lawrence, I've made my own:

Six fit nicely in the accordian pocket of a moleskine. Six card layers is, by the way, roughly the thickness of the human neocortex.

Have Sound Will Mobile
4/23/05 14:28 - permalink - email - category: Gear

I'm one hardcore laptopian. It goes everywhere with me, as inseparable as my heartbeat. I write this weblog, communicate with the world, design and disseminate from from the high-wire platform of my PowerBook. While I ultimately end up in the studio for the final steps of the process, and often enter it to record hardware synths to disk, I work on musical tracks everywhere.

Ideas may start:

in the studio
in the laptop
in a conversation on a Financial District street corner as a single rasped syllable opens a dimensional window through which comes flying an entire composition
in a dream and into life in the middle of the night

Once the song-writing process meant being surrounded by dozens of keyboards, samplers and drum machines. These days, I can bring songs to just short of the final mix and master wherever I am. With the recent acquisition of a tiny Edirol controller I am rigged for immediate musical endeavor.

The studio is the world is the studio. My mobile rig, aka What's In My Bag:

Apple PowerBook 17" loaded with Live, Digital Performer, custom Max/MSP/Jitter apps, patches and plug-ins, plus a slew of other audio frying tools
Edirol PCR-M1 USB controller with integrated MIDI interface
Logitech Dual Action Gamepad (for controlling some of those custom Max/MSP/Jitter apps)
80GB Firewire 800 drive for extended recording, dumps of raw tracks and regular rsyncx backups
Sony MiniDisc recorder with Core-sound stealth mics
Original Nintendo GameBoy running Nanoloop cartridge
Droid-3 using custom audio/midi control interface written in Max/MSP

I bring audio from the MiniDisc, Nanoloop and Droid-3 in via the PowerBook's on-board line-in jack. From there it goes through edits, processing, conversion and all ends up in Live where the groove is gotten on.

iPod (lots of tunes, scratch and demo tracks, extra hard drive in a pinch)
Headphones and earbuds of the moment
Moleskine pocket notebook (grid, 9 x 14 cm) and a couple mechanical pencils
1GB jump drive on my keychain (sneaker net forever!)
Canon PowerShot
Various audio and MIDI cables so it all interconnects and also connects to everything else
15' extension power cable, PSUs for everything
The bag itself is a Tom Bihn Smart Alec with an added snap-in Monolith case for the PowerBook. Comfortable to carry, spacious yet sleek, waterproof (even the zipper!) and tough. This is, by far, the absolute best laptop carrier I've ever used.

Any time, any place, my groove and I are one.

Related: V(m)KB?