Results for LEGO

Some interesting things I found recently:

# PERSPECTIVE LYRIQUE via Make:Blog

An interactive architectural mapping.
Fete des Lumieres / Lyon / France / 2010

A mapping by 1024 Architecture, projected on the facade of former Lyrical theater the “Celestins”. The building deformations and figures were controlled by the audience, using a microphone and an audio analysis algorythm.

More info at 1024architecture.net and 1024d.wordpress.com

# Thumbs Up for Madrona Labs AALTO Software Synthesizer (Modulate This! – A Blog for Electronic Music Artists)

Mark Mosher shares some info on the Aalto semi-modular software synth.

Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music did a post on a new synth by Madrona Labs last month. Even though I wasn’t in the market for a new synth right now I ended up buying this Aalto within an hour or so of downloading the demo so I wanted to pass this along and help promote Madrona’s great work. At $99 this is an incredible value.

# Flickr: LEGO Album Covers via wire to the ear

# Talking About The Upcoming Sound Packs With Elliott Fienberg

Nick of Nick’s Tutorials:

I just finished recording a really enjoyable conversation with Elliott Fienberg, the man behind the Wobble Tech Radio podcast.

We chatted about some recording industry news and talked a bit about my upcoming Ableton Live packs that I’ll start releasing in the next month or so.

Check out the recording here, and be sure to check out Elliott’s other episodes: http://mixlr.com/mrtunes/wobble-tech-radio-10-with-the-ableton-tutor

# Open-Source Rockit 8-bit Synth Kit Coming

Peter at Create Digital Music:
Chicago-based hacker and synthesist Matt Heins is working on an open source synth kit. As a co-creator of the MeeBlip open source-synth hardware, I’m biased — I want more open synth hardware! So this is looking like some great company. The instrument is 8-bit, with analog filter circuitry, coded in C.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Nerdle Theremin Video

Wayne and Layne:

One of the unique features of the Nerdle kit is the use of touch-sensitive capacitive-sense buttons, made from copper foil pads inside the case. While meeting with the camp directors to prepare these activities, we decided to try linking the raw information from the capacitive sensors to the on-board piezo speaker.

We added two lines of code, uploaded, and jaws dropped. It sounded like the computers of the future were supposed to sound.

# The Chipophone

The Chipophone is a homemade 8-bit synthesizer, especially suited for live chiptune playing. It has been built inside an old electronic organ.

All the original tone-generating parts have been disconnected, and the keys, pedals, knobs and switches rerouted to a microcontroller which transforms them into MIDI signals. Those are then parsed by a second microcontroller, which acts as a synthesizer.

# :: soundcloud dj player 1.0 beta

Musikame has a beta of the souncloud dj player, the easiest way to dj your soundcloud tracks, allowing you to mix tracks from SoundCloud.

The soundcloud dj player includes various controls like pitch control, dj fx, looping, etc.

At this stage all the mixing is done automatically by the app itself: the user just picks the tracks and the length of the crossfade between them. While it's not actually possible to beat-match tracks as yet, the software does have pitch control with adjustable range, FX, looping and reverse capabilities, hinting at more advanced functionality in the future.

via MusicRadar

# NXT-606 LEGO Drum Machine

A new video from Peter Cocteau’s 8bits Sample Based LEGO Drum Machine.

# CDM: Griid, iPad Ableton Controller

Create Digital Music has some exclusive photos of Griid, the controller for iPad that offers four fluid ways to navigate clips in your Ableton Live set.

Peter Kirn writes:

The developers of Griid, the Ableton Live controller on iPad created in association with Richie Hawtin, have shared photos and screen captures early with CDM to give us a look at the upcoming app. Just over a decade after its original inception, Ableton Live itself remains a ground-breaking user interface design. Love it or hate it, it’s a benchmark in thinking about how music apps might look.

Griid is compelling in part because it re-imagines how that central Session View and clip launching might work, now in the context of a touch tablet. Personally, I like the results. As on the Lemur, bold, saturated colors and contrast on a black background are central, of course. It’s also nice to see extraneous visual information removed. And for anyone with epic-sized sets of clips in Live, you’ll like the massive overview.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# NXT-606 Lego Drum Machine

Peter Cocteau wrote in to let us know about his real LEGO drum machine that will make you dance !!!

I’ ve just put online my LEGO drum machine’s video. I’ ve made this MOC in August 2008.

The NXT-606 is a monophonic sample based drum machine with 24 percussion and fx sounds.

You can download the NXT-606 program from the nxtasy.org forums

# World Percussion Preview – Free Download!

The Loop Loft is offering some free percussion samples.

We're currently putting the finishing touches on our next major release at The Loop Loft, "World Percussion Loops", and we wanted to give you a sneak peek (or listen) of what we think is one of our greatest packs to date. Loaded full of a wide mix of ethnic percussion, including cajons, udu drums, frame drums and a variety of shakers, this loop pack is a must-have for anyone looking to round out their percussion library with authentic sounds and grooves.

Download available in AIFF, REX2, and Wav formats.

# Sample Fodder: ZX Spectrum Games In Your Browser

Need 8bit sounds? Tom Shear at Waveformless has a good tip:

In need of some stylish 8-bit chip sounds, but don’t have any of the old classic machines on hand to sample? No problem! zxspectrum.net is an online emulation of the old Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer complete with a huge selection of games to choose from. Load up Audio Hijack or any other program that lets you record a computer’s audio, fire up your browser, and before you know it, you’ll have a whole ton of classic 8-bit sounds ready to be edited into your own custom sample kits.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Make: Online : Open source hardware 2009

Make’s definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009.

Welcome to definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009. First up – What is open source hardware? These are projects in which the creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and "board" files to recreate the hardware – they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware centric.

Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 125 unique projects/kits in 19 categories, up from about 60 in 2008, more than doubling the projects out there! – it’s incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (shipping over 100,000 units, estimated) but there are many other projects just as exciting and filled with amazing communities – we think we’ve captured nearly all of them in this list. Some of these projects and kits are available from MAKE others from the makers themselves or other hardware manufacturers – but since it’s open source hardware you can make any of these yourself, start a business, everything is available, that’s the point.

# fridgebuzzz electronics MK1 MIDI controller

The MK1 prototype is a user programmable midi controller featuring 32 LED pushbutton switches and 6 touch sensitive copper plate switches.

# satrap activ portable analog synthesizer (YouTube)

Flo Kaufmann shows his “satrap activ” portable analog synthesizer made out of a vacuum cleaner.

It contains 2 cmos based VCO’s , a Moog ladder filter, a 555 based ADSR, a cmos based 8 step sequencer, a PIC based vc to midi interface and a PIC based auto trigger unit. There are 4 tunable knobs on top, mostly to play base lines, and 2 conductable wires, which act as voltage dividers to generate variable tones. the wires do not vibrate. so it is not a cord instrument. satrap activ can also control other synthesizers either by midi or cv/gate interface.

# Percussa Audio Cubes: Lights & Tangible Interface with Ableton Live and Alchemy

Mark Mosher writes about his Audio Cubes:

I recently added Percussa AudioCubes to my studio and performance rig.

While I’m planning a longer post offering an overview of how AudioCubes work, this is a quick post to mention two applications of AudioCube technology I’ve been experimenting with.

# Larry Cotton’s MIDI Marimba

Larry Cotton’s 3-octave “player marimba” was featured in MAKE, Volume 4. Larry added two MD24 MIDI Decoders and the marimba can now be controlled by any MIDI sequencer or keyboard.

# An Orchestra of Linux Laptops, and How to Make Your Own Laptop Instrument

Peter Kirn @ Create Digital Music:

For a generation of musicians of nearly every genre, the laptop has become an instrument. It’s easy to take for granted, but the rise of the computer for music has been remarkable. Less than twenty years ago, real-time digital synthesis and audio processing was the domain of expensive, specialized workstations. Now, $700 per seat can buy you a full-blown musical rig, with the computer hardware, gestural input courtesy the Nintendo Wii controller, and even a DIY speaker made from IKEA salad bowls. The next challenge is to make this setup as flexible and reliable as possible. Enter Linux.

# Marblephone

g000ze @ Let's Make Robots writes:

Inspired by Animusic's bodacious films, I was wondering whether a music robot in a much more simple way would be possible to make. Here is what my little boys and I created.

Still unfinished, but already working. Thank you Animusic for activating my imagination building the music machine that I am calling Marblephone.

PongThatBeat! (Vimeo)

PingPong sequencer made with max/msp and processing.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Dance music with MindStorms sounds

organfairy writes:

It has been a while since I made music on the MindStorms bricks. But now I present the longest and most complicated piece of MindStorms music I have ever made. The title of the melody is “the Future Child” and the idea is to make a cheerfull bleepy melody with the NXT’s tones and use the other sounds as effects while an organ and a synthesizer supplies the orchestra. Most of the pictures are robots made by myself. The rest is something I photographed at the First LEGO League competition in Herning back in 2007. The screenshots are from the NXT-G PC programming tools.

# Tic Tac Tunes – Now with Tic Tac Beat Box

AndyGadget @ Instructables created a Micro-organ and drum-kit in a Tic Tac box

This tiny box will give you hours of fun composing your own tunes. You can vary the tune tempo and switch between a pentatonic and blues scale as well as producing a variety of percussion sounds.
Load up a different program and it will compose its own percussion rhythms(Tic Tac Beat Box) or play with half a dozen different musical scales (Tic Tac Scales). Another cool feature is no power switch – It will hibernate when it's not being used.

There are great musicians around . . . and then there's me with no musical talent at all, but even I can get some great sounding tunes out of this. Watch the video and have a listen to the MP3 files to get an idea of what this little marvel can do.

# Water drop sequencer

The Water drop sequencer is an interactive sound installation. It creates sound by water drops falling on suspended iron bars with piezo elements attached. The viewer or performer can control which tones will be played by placing water bottles upside down in holes that are centred over the iron bars. It is also possible to control the speed of the dripping.

# Zio by Glenn Marshall

An interactive generative art visualizer from award winning computer animator and software designer Glenn Marshall.

Explore and interact with an endlessly generating world of organic visuals.
- Use drag and pinch to pan, move and rotate through space.
- Pause / play, save snaphots to your photo library.
- Switch on audio reactive visuals (for devices with mic only).
- Comes with 3 unique preset Zio worlds.- Shake to shuffle between presets.

Using the same Zio animation technology, Glenn collaborated with Peter Gabriel to create The Nest That Sailed The Sky music video which won at Prix Ars Electronica 2009, one of the biggest computer arts festivals in the world.

via Synthtopia

# Warped Piano, Zone Shift, and Sidechained Delay

Loudon Sterns writes:

Hello everyone, a student posted in one of my classes asking about this cool warped ambient piano he heard on a recording. It seemed like a cool challenge so I tried to make an instrument that would give a wide variety of spooky warped piano sounds. I created a really cool patch and used some of the more advanced features in Sampler and Instrument racks, so here is the video explaining it all.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Awesome collection of DIY video-glitch hardware

From Make: Online:

The "tools" section of media artist Karl Klomp's website documents an impressive amount of bent, hacked and homebrew hardware for video manipulation. Devices such as the Failter (seen above) series go through a number of incarnations while Karl experiments with different hardware and uncovers its glitch-ability. The retro-simple feel of the enclosures give give it all a nicely 'scientific' almost medical feel.

# MPC2500 Gutted & Deconstructed (Vimeo) via Crate Kings

Hopefully most Akai owners will never have to witness their beloved music machine being gutted like this MPC2500 was. It’s not exactly pretty sight, but fascinating stuff for those that have been curious about the innards of a sampler/sequencer/drum machine.

# 279 / nanopedal via CDM

Marcus Fischer of dust breeding turned a Korg nanoKEY into a foot controller.

Marcus writes:

i’ve been wanting a compact usb midi foot pedal for a long time. i built one out of a usb number pad last year but it was less than ideal. tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well. i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished.

i think it turned out pretty well. not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

# Going Mobile: Nintendo DS-10 Comes to North America

Peter Kirn @ CDM writes:

Fans of the Nintendo DS in North America, the Korg DS-10 Plus synthesizer for Big N’s game system is now coming to your side of the Pacific Ocean. (That also bodes well, I think, for other parts of the world.) The DS-10 I think really deserves some credit for making a straight-up music title a hit on gaming platforms, and its success certainly surpassed my own expectations. It’s not a game, it’s not an interactive experience, it’s not a music game – it’s actually a synth and music workstation that happens to run on a game platform. The DS-10 Plus beefs up the original’s features, though it now has a commercially-available rival in the form of Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP.