Blog
Liveset in weimar16.11.2008 13:27:26
I played at neo ouija's relaunch party in Weimar, after Nosral Flow and Deer's excellent performances. Deer managed to catch the first 1h30 of my set, hope you enjoy :) This is MachineDrum Mk1 UW + MonoMachine Mk1 + MidiCommand + KaossPad Mini.
New MIDI Command Firmware Features13.11.2008 01:01:39
After some weeks touring, being ill and getting back on track, here is a new video showing some new features of the MIDI Command.
Also, we are busy producing the new version of the MIDI Command and the MonoJoystick, which is a completely overhauled revision, with much bigger CPU, graphical display, and much more. Here is the announcement mail I sent to people who preordered the device:
While building the firmwares, we noticed that the monojoystick and midicommand were a bit "too restrained" for all the new features we were coming up with, so we decided to make a new design, which is currently under production. It will take a bit longer, but it has amazing new features. I'm going to post a more detailed update soon, along with some software to make you people wait, but here is a list: Hardware: - graphical display (like the MD or MnM) (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) - 8 encoders (MidiCommand) - 8 MB storage space (MidiCommand) - 2 midi in and out (MidiCommand) - 2 midi in, one midi out (MonoJoystick) - USB (MidiCommand) Software: - Tempo-synchronzied Tweak Record (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) - Midi Learn (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) - Midi LFOs (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) - MachineDrum Notes (MidiCommand) - MachineDrum/MonoMachine storage space (MidiCommand) - Randomizer (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) - open development environment (MidiCommand, MonoJoystick) and of course a host of new applications in the future! :)
Generating african rhythms using the euclidean algorithm24.10.2008 14:55:43
Last week, I stumbled upon the amazing paper by Godfried Toussaint called The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms, which shows how the euclidean algorithm used for example for timing systems in neutron accelerators can generate most of the traditional european and african rhythms. It is about distributing a set amount of pulses (which Godfried calls n) over a discrete amount of timing intervals (called k). The goal is to distribute these pulses most equidistantly, for example, 3 over 8 would give the pattern X . . X . . X . (with X being a pulse, and . being none). Those of you listening to ragga or rocknroll or playing djembe will recognize that rhythm immediately, it is called the "tresillo" and is used in almost every dance music :) It sounds like this (using Ableton simpler, I added a bassdrum for the standard techno pulse).
You can do the same with for example distributing 5 over 8, giving X . X X . X X . It sounds like this:
You can then go over to more complicated rhythms, for example distributing 6 over 9, and using different sounds for it, which creates the following pattern:
OOOPS!23.10.2008 20:39:18
I want to publicly apologize for a misunderstanding that has been brought to my attention regarding Nils from Humatic and his osxmidi wrapper MMJ, which we based osxmidispi on. When I was helping with the development of the Nomad editor, I had an issue with MMJ (which Nils very quickly fixed), and fixed it by reusing his class structure. I completely forgot about the fact that osxmidispi is based on MMJ and didn't attribute Nils the credit he is due, for which I am sorry. In doing this i have broken Nils' CC license, for which I am very sorry. I removed osxmidispi from the website and redirect you to Nils' MMJ.
Tweaking the MachineDrum Delay18.10.2008 09:06:23
Just a quick video showing a few of the ways I use the MachineDrum delay. It can be used with almost any delay in fact. Being able to use the delay outside of the MachineDrum has completely changed the way I use the machine :)
