Results for monome

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Toy Piano Rescue Project

Ranjit Bhatnager bought a toy piano on eBay, but it got damaged in transport.

For Awesome August I'm trying to make something of this ebay toy piano that got smashed by UPS. The music is Philip Glass's "Modern Love Waltz," inspired by toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan. (I used it previously)

More info: Ranjit Bhatnager / Awesome August

# DOWNLOADMYDRUMS

Dan "Danno" Miller recently posted about my samples on his website. He is running a music production blog that offers free, downloadable, royalty free, high quality, one shot wav file, drum samples with virtually no restrictions of use.

Dan writes:

Whether you’re just dabbling in music production or you’re the hottest mega-producer in the game, you will always need new, crisp, high quality, punch you in the mouth drum samples. Most producers are very secretive with their drum samples. They spend a lot of time and money tweaking their kicks, hats, and snares to try to come up with their signature sounds. While I do feel that developing your sound is important and I would encourage all producers to do so, it’s also important to expand you drum collection so you have a buttload of options. I look at it like this; just because you give two painters the same paints, doesn’t mean they’ll paint the same picture. So I’m sharing my drums, presets, tips, etc. with the hope that someday a producer will come along, be inspired by what i’ve given away for free, think outside the box, and create music that’s completely different.

# ArpShift by Edward Loveall

ArpShift is a melodic, interval based, poly-rhythmic arpeggiator. It’s relatively simplistic in nature with only 3 pages and 7 lanes. However, it is flexible in it’s simplicity, and is able to take stagnant melodies and turn them into flowing, never repeating music.

# Contexture Design: 45 Nano

45 Nano Cases are made from reclaimed cassette tapes, gutted, routered and rebuilt to fit your 4th generation iPod nano.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# MIDI Controller/Sequencer

Lennon Luks writes:

While I was earning my BS at Western Carolina University, one of the requirements was a Senior Design Project. For this project, I designed and constructed a MIDI controller/sequencer. I chose this as a project because I am a musician and I am very much interested in electronic music and electronic musical instruments/controllers. This project was ideal for me, as it allowed me to combine my passions for engineering and music.

# Build Your Own Marimba!

RocketScientist @ Instructables:

I am a mallet percussionist who loves the marimba. About four years ago I had a problem. Though I loved percussion, I had no way of practicing at home. There were cheap options. I could have bought a bell kit. But I hate the sounds they make. I wanted a very large five octave marimba but didn't have the money to simply purchase one (7000+ dollars). So I decided against all common sense I would build one.

# Warp20

Warp commemorates its 20th anniversary with a deluxe special-edition of music and art (Box Set).

The package features new songs, older previously unreleased material from Warp artists, tracks selected as some of his personal favorites by co-founder Steve Beckett and the top ten pieces voted for by Warp fans on Warp20.net. It also includes a beautifully produced book showcasing the label’s rich design history, along with an exclusive hour-long mix and a locked-groove vinyl set.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# The Stretta Procedure: obo

Matthew writes:

There was a recent request on the monome forums for an application that does what the popular tonematrix does, which itself is inspired by the tenori-on. I took some parts out of my residue application for the monome (it's full of techno! DD103!) and added a simple four voice internal sine wave synth.

If you like tonematrix, but would prefer something standalone, with MIDI output, sync and tweakable note assignments, you can download this standalone application for MacOS X. It is free! Enjoy!

Then, maybe at some point I'll get around to adapting it to the monome.

# FL Studio’s FPC, room for improvement?

FL Studio user Survei petitions for a better FPC (FL Pad Controller).

Simply put, compared to the layering sound design possibilities in the Step Sequencer, the FPC is extremely limited, because it doesn’t have many layer-specific controls. For instance, it doesn’t have any envelopes for the LAYERS within the pads. But the FPC would be awesome and fill a void in my production if the individual waveforms were like Sampler Channels, in that you can click on EACH and EVERY individual waveform and have a Sampler Settings window come up for every waveform. This would be an easy solution to the FPC’s problem of not having much control over the sounds of the layers. It is common in today’s production to make custom drum sounds by combining multiple drum sounds. The waveforms are our clay from which we sculpt our sounds from using tools that are in the Sampler Channels.

# Sarien.net – Instant adventure gaming – Do you have fond memories of playing Sierra’s adventure games? You can now play them online!

Welcome to Sarien.net, the portal for reliving the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. With its focus on instant fun and a unique multiplayer experience, Sarien.net hopes to win new gamers' hearts and promote the adventure game genre.

Currently available: King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge, The Black Cauldron.

# •· hypetape – Hypetape is the illegitimate lovechild of Hype Machine and Muxtape, where you can create and share playlists containing tracks other people have been talking about from around the internet.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Califaudio: Open Reel Ensemble – Califaudio posts about the Open Reel Ensemble: scratching 4 reel-to-reel analog tape recorders to make some really cool music.

They hook up a keyboard, microphones, computers loaded with Max/MSP, USB interfaces, lights and solenoids to old-school reel-to-reel decks and mic the strange sounds of their voices, singing bowls and tabla.

# Partners In Rhyme – Free Drum Loops – A nice collection of free 16bit/44kHz .wav drum loops from Partners In Rhyme (hip hop, rock, techno, drum n bass and jungle drum loops)

# Wii Drum High

HE Zhao's open source Wii peripheral drum-kit project:

With Nintendo Wii remote, Nunchuk and Wii Balance Board, it is easy to produce drum kit sounds from programming of their acceleration, joystick and weight data. These data can be transmitted from Wii controllers via Bluetooth to PC or Mac without Wii consoles. Wii Drum High integrates all three kinds of Wii controllers to stimulate a complete drum set of Hi-hat, Snare, Base drum, Crash cymbal, Ride cymbal, Mid tom and Low tom. Up to 4 sets of Wii remote and nunchuk can be used at the same time. (one of my colleague succeeded in connecting 5 wiimotes to a PC, but I've never tried)

# SevenUpLive for the Monome 40h and 64 – a Java application that combines 8 different monome applications into one interface. With it, your monome communicates with Ableton Live 7 via MIDI and allows MLR-like functionality along with other goodies like sliders, sequencing melodies, creating patterns of beats, saving/loading/queueing your songs, and more.

Some interesting things I found on August 20th, 2008:

# AtomoSynth: New Mochika2. MIDI Sync

Mochika2 features

• One square and saw waveform VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) with a huge pitch range, from subsonic to ultrasonic sound.
• One square and triangle waveform LFO (low frequency oscillator), that modulates the VCO for the vibrato effect creating old school arcade Atari-like sounds.
• White noise generator that triggers the VCO and can create percussion like sounds.
• 8 step Sequencer with note on/off switch and pitch knob for each step .
• It has a 1/4 inch audio output, 1/4 inch CV Output (to control other analog gear).
• A MIDI input to sync the Mochika with any midi device sending midi clock signals, the mochika can sync 1,2,4 and 8 times the tempo of the master clock midi device.
• 1 ultra bright red led that indicates the LFO Rate, and 8 red leds to indicate the step that is being played. Very useful when you play it on a dark stage.

# Negotiated Project B: Live Gigging Visualisation System – Check Luke McGowan's real-time music visualisation system.

# How-To: Hack a ThingamaKIT – The ThingamaKIT is an anthropomorphic analog synthesizer kit from Bleep Labs. Using "LEDacles", photoresistors, knobs, and switches, it generates interesting high pitched vocalizations. Bleep Labs sent us a review unit and this article shares our experiences building and using the kit. We've also included a tutorial on making some hacks, modifications, and circuit bends to it. Skip to the end to see a video of our hacked kit in action.

# Arduinome: An Arduino-Based Monome Clone, Behind the Scenes – A Monome clone based on the Arduino microcontroller.

The “Arduinome” gifts the Monome with two new possibilities. First, it’s a breakthrough on the availability front: at a time when official Monome kits are backordered, it makes it easier to make your own Monome on a budget. Second, it makes hardware hacking on the Monome far easier, by allowing people to make microcontroller-level modifications on the relatively friendly Arduino platform. (The Arduino was designed not for electrical engineers, but for artists just dipping their toes into electronics, even for the first time.)

# Cell Phone Disco – Cell Phone Disco is a surface that visualizes the electromagnetic field of an active mobile phone.

Several thousand lights illuminate when you make or recieve a phone call in the vicinity of the installation. Cell Phone Disco makes an invisible property of the environment perceptible to our senses. It reveals the communicating body of the mobile phone.

# Machinecollective.org public beta – full launch soon – Machinecollective is about physical computing, hardware prototyping, (remote) personal manufacturing, human/machine interaction and control surface development. Machinecollective is you, me and the machines, connected through this online community. Machinecollective is a public experiment, with community driven open source hardware as a foundation for further exploration and development.

# DS-10 US Preorder Available; US Ship Date 9/30 – Korg’s DS-10, a synth for your Nintendo DS handheld, is now available for preorder in the US from amazon.com.

Some interesting things I found on July 28th, 2008:

# “ohm” lo-fi cardboard sampler – “Ohm” is a series of electronic lo-fi noiseboxes/recorders made with laser cut grey cardboard.

The interface and the inner circuits are printed with a special conductive paint. By touching the printed surface the user can modify the sound in different ways.

# DIY Monome Clone – Julien Bayle uses an arduino board to create a Monome clone.

Julien writes:

At the beginning, I would like to inspire me from the big MONODECK II made by Robert Henke. I explore the BIG and powerful MIDIbox.org community and the shop site associated ucapps.de, and I found a website about a very pretty and powerful interface: monome. But the monome was only a monochromatic leds & buttons matrix. As I didn’t choose anything, I decided to build my own hardware: a multicolored monome clone.

# Korg DS-10 demo video – YouTube user Denkitribe shows a "very serious virtual analog synth".

# Open Source GigaStudio Petition: Why It’s Unlikely – Peter Kirn on the future of GigaStudio now that TASCAM put everything giga in their legacy archive.

# vvvv Adds Music Features; Get Your Synesthesia Patching On, Free on Windows – vvvv, the free-for-non-commercial-use patching environment on Windows, already has a cult following among visualists. Now, it’s looking more interesting for music, too, with the 4.0 beta 17 release.