Jan 29, 2015 0
What Will You Explore If You Win This Drone?
OpenExplorer is offering free drones to intrepid adventurers with goals of science and discovery.
Jan 29, 2015 0
DiResta: Sawhorses
I needed new shop horses to manage different projects and locations in my shop. I went to buy them, but realized they were too big.
Jan 29, 2015 0
Gorgeous Glow-in-the-Dark CNC Map Table
If you’re a fan of coffee tables, geography, and stuff that glows, you’ll love this table by Chris Finklea. It features a beautiful finish, and is assembled using CNC-cut hexagons with a map of the world cut into them. To fill in the land masses, Chris decided to fill […]
Jan 29, 2015 0
Pats Fan Builds Mini Stadium for Super Bowl Spread
Using a CNC router, vinyl cutter, laser cutter, strip heater, and $200 in materials from Home Depot, Boston area inventor and builder Christian Reed constructed an awesomely detailed table-top stadium to hold the provisions for Sunday’s festivities. I got this idea for this project from a good friend of […]
Jan 29, 2015 0
OSCiLLOT is a $99 Virtual Modular Rig for Ableton Live – No Cables Needed
The renaissance in modular synthesis has sent a strong message. Open-ended sound design, made by connecting sonic capabilities, can inspire musicians’ imagination.
Now, part of the joy of racks of modular gear is the chance to feel these connections in your hand – plugging cables, turning knobs. But that doesn’t mean that the required hardware is always the most convenient or accessible way to work. Why not have the same sorts of powers in your laptop, too? And why not work in an environment that is itself already modular? And why not choose between using just software or connecting your software to hardware?
If you’ve ever asked those questions, OSCiLLOT might be for you. From the lovely Max development house Max for Cats, OSCiLLOT is a toybox full of useful sound-making modules.
This isn’t a faux hardware modular – think of it more like a toolset of Ableton-ish soundmakers (from drum machines to convolution reverbs to synths) that build on their digital construction – but that you can use in the sorts of ways you might use hardware.
Running software alone has some benefits. You only need a hundred bucks, assuming you’ve got Live Suite (Max for Live is required). You don’t run out of cables. You don’t run out of space.
But this software will also play with hardware if you’ve got it. With compatible audio interfaces, you can route signal in and out of your computer to analog modular hardware, too, taking advantage of all the Eurorack goodness we saw at NAMM. (CDM has a round-up to make sense of all that coming soon, by the way – we figured you already had seen the news, but could use a handy field guide that brings it together.)
There’s a lot in this package:
Oscillators
Filters
Mixers
Modulators
Amplifiers
Sequencers
With those, you can build, say the makers, “FM, additive, or subtractive synthesizers, as well as filters, convolution reverbs, mixers, frequency shifters, sequencers, drum machines, and compressors” – and more from there.
There are already some pre-patched instruments and effects. You can use them as presets, or start tearing them apart to hack them into your own creations – a nice way to learn.
And in case you forget this is software, there’s also six-voice polyphony, patch annotation and saving, and the ability to neaten up or hide the display of patch cords.
Oh, yeah, one more thing – don’t forget, this is Max/MSP. So you aren’t limited to these modules. There’s an “SDK” that lets you build your own modules in Max.
All in all, this offers an interesting rival to running something like Native Instruments’ Reaktor inside Live. Reaktor has its own library of pre-built, higher-level modules – which, in turn, you can combine and re-patch and so on. Now, what’s unique in OSCiLLOT is that you can re-patch on the fly, modular style, and easily add in hardware. I can certainly see a place for each (or for more traditional Max patching and the like), really dependent on your workflow and aims.
This deserves a review. Guess I know what’s on my desk for February.
To add hardware, you need a non-DC coupled audio interface. (Hmmm… time to do a new listing of which interfaces work.)
http://www.ableton.com/en/packs/oscillot/
The post OSCiLLOT is a $99 Virtual Modular Rig for Ableton Live – No Cables Needed appeared first on Create Digital Music.
Jan 29, 2015 0
FIRST Robotics Season: Part 4 Breakdown Of The Game
In this game, an ideal alliance would consist of robots that each specialize in different tasks working together
Jan 28, 2015 0
Why It’s Good for Everyone When Your Makerspace Is More Inclusive
There is a rather large gender gap in the makerspace community; one that has mirrored the well-documented gaps in various STEM fields, and while some proactive spaces have increased their efforts to support inclusivity, it has proven to be an uphill battle for others. It’s achievable though, with many examples (such […]
Jan 28, 2015 0
Listen To Music Composed By A Pillow
Hungarian design student Zsanett Szirmay and Hungarian cimbalom player Bálint Tárkány-Kovács turn traditional embroidery into musical compositions in a collaborative project called “Sound Weaving.”
Jan 28, 2015 0
BomeBox Lets You Connect MIDI, and Transform It, Any Way You Want
?MIDI is a magical lingua franca between, well, sort of everything. But that’s only if you get it connected. And then once you do have it connected, you might want to tame its messages so they accomplish what you want.
Now, the buzz is wearing off following last week’s avalanche of new music gear announcements. You might realize you don’t have $30,000 for a modular. But then, in the wake of that gear, comes one that flew under the radar – and it’s one of the most powerful-looking bits of kit we’ve seen recently.
For years, Bome’s Midi Translator has been the secret sauce used by drummers and beatboxers and other performers to make their MIDI gear perform amazing tricks. The software’s approach is simple – get messages in, do something to them, send messages out. But by providing an insanely powerful set of rule-based operations on those messages, it has been the one piece of software that solves your needs when others can’t.
And now it’s hardware.
Yes, the Bome Box is a device that loads up MIDI Translator Pro project files and does all these MIDI-mangling tricks without a computer required.
And more than that, it’s hardware that connects MIDI via whatever you want. In and out, of course, low latency, of course. But there’s also a USB host – necessary for all these USB devices that lack MIDI DIN ports. And there are two Ethernet ports, for long-distance network cabling of MIDI.
And there’s WiFi, too.
BomeBox is also the first hardware I’ve seen to advertise itself as HD-ready. No, we’re not talking televisions – we’re talking the next generation of MIDI. The MIDI makers are near to releasing the HD version of their protocol, which will happily make use of the added bandwidth of these connections with higher-resolution data (among other new features – more on that soon).
BomeBox is due in spring. No pricing yet.
I love boxes that solve problems – even if not terribly sexy problems. And BomeBox looks very intriguing, indeed. We’ll have an eye on this box.
http://www.bome.com/products/bomebox
The post BomeBox Lets You Connect MIDI, and Transform It, Any Way You Want appeared first on Create Digital Music.
Jan 28, 2015 0
Detecting 3D Printed Guns and Other Highlights from the Museum of Science and Industry Manchester
The Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) occupies the site of the Liverpool Road Station, the world’s first railway station. It served as the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), an important route ferrying commercial and public traffic between these two key cities. Exhibits at MOSI include […]
