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Epiphone Inspired By 1964 Texan

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Few guitar brands evoke old-world images like Epiphone. The Epiphone story started late in the 19th century when a luthier and violin maker named Anastasios Stathopoulo, the son of a Greek timber merchant, moved his family to New York in search of a better life.

The ‘House of Stathopoulo’ was opened in 1873 producing lutes, violins and other instruments. In 1910 Anastasios drafted his 17-year-old son, Epaminodas (also known as ‘Epi’) into the company. The instruments produced from thereon took the son’s name and Epiphone began its road to worldwide success and notoriety.

Internal problems in the mid- 1940s led to financial problems for the company, which by this time was losing ground to the likes of Martin, Rickenbacker, Fender and Gibson. A brief phone call from Epiphone’s owner, Orphie Stathopoulo (younger brother of Epi) to Gibson’s general manager, Ted McCarty, led to Gibson taking control of Epiphone in May 1957 for $20,000.

Under new ownership, existing product lines were relaunched while budget-conscious versions of Gibson products were introduced to the range. The formula was a winning one and with the help of Messrs McCartney and Lennon, who were users of Epiphones during The Beatles’ early years, Epi took on the world.

Famously, the world’s most played, heard and covered song ever, Yesterday, was written and recorded using an Epiphone 64 Texan. Further consolidating Epiphone’s acoustic credentials, McCartney authorised the release of the Paul McCartney 1964 USA Texan in 2005, a limited run, identical slope-shouldered dreadnought. It’s reported that McCartney genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between the limited editions and his own guitar.

On review here is a more affordable version of that same guitar. Epiphone is seeking to offer a vintage-style model with traditional appointments.

Since its introduction in 1958, the Epiphone Texan has been used by a number of high profile musicians including Peter Frampton, Noel Gallagher and, of course, Paul McCartney.

The new 64 Texan is a visually striking guitar. The silver ‘E’ fitted to the big-block pickguard, the reverse bridge, the slope-shoulders and mother-of-pearl parallelogram fretboard inlays all give this guitar an air of familiarity. Opening the case gives the same feeling as meeting up with an old friend that you haven’t seen for 20 years.

Slope-shoulder dreadnoughts have a slim waist, which often leads to a more balanced tone with a clearer mid-range as well as being bell-like in shape. Structurally speaking, the 64 Texan is a well-balanced guitar and very comfortable to play.

The solid spruce top has an aged, antique hue to it that contrasts well with the bright, near-orange, mahogany back and sides of the guitar. Rosewood has been used for the fingerboard and reverse-style bridge, which holds a compensated Tusq saddle.

The two-piece mahogany neck is the same sixties-style Slim Taper D shape as the DR-500, though Epiphone has chosen to finish it in a high-gloss. This is a shame as the speedy feel of the slim neck is compromised by the ’slower’ gloss finish, and we can’t help thinking that a satin finish would have been a better choice.

We particularly like the headstock shape. Though not immediately obvious, the headstock flanks have been subtly shaped to create layered contours. Vintage-style 14:1 ratio tuners are fitted with classic, oval-shaped cream buttons. The overall aged look to the guitar is underlined by Epiphone’s use of the original 1960s blue rectangular soundhole label.

Shadow provides the powering with a Sonic NanoFlex low-impedance, undersaddle pickup. The preamp’s controls include volume, bass and treble disc-rotaries and the unit is mounted just within the upper side of the soundhole.

“Adjustments to the controls require the guitar being flipped upside down close to your face – Hendrix playing with teeth style.”

Though its positioning is discrete, we found it somewhat awkward to access. Adjustments to the controls require the guitar being flipped upside down close to your face (Hendrix playing with teeth-style) to be able to locate the correct rotary – not ideal for adjustments on the fly.

The preamp is powered by two 2032-type lithium batteries, and a useful LED battery indicator lights up 30 minutes before they are due to expire.

Overall the 64 Texan is a well presented guitar with no real concerns over construction standards or quality control.

Sounds

With a powerful mid-range, the 64 Texan packs bags of punch, volume and clarity if not character. While the string spacing isn’t particularly suited to it, finger-style benefits from a full, precise output, while the overall tone lends itself to percussive, choppy chord work.

The plugged-in tone is similar in character to its acoustic voice. The Shadow electronics throw out an in-your-face rasp well-suited to a duo/band setting. With plenty of volume and midrange, single note runs and solos ring out clearly.

In terms of tonal versatility, we found it difficult to warm things up a little, even when rolling the treble right off. While not being all things to everyone in terms of tone, what the 64 Texan does, it does well.

Epiphone, as ever, has produced a great vintage-looking guitar that benefits from a little modern technology. It might not be the most flexible guitar on the market, but what it does, it does well. And for excellent value for money too, so what’s not to like?

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Epiphone Inspired By 1964 Texan

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Interview: Jon Hopkins Talks Live, Studio Process, Habit, Instinct

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Jon Hopkins performs live at the ICA. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Matt Biddulph.

Classically trained as a pianist, musician and producer Jon Hopkins has one of the richest resumes in electronic music. He’s a frequent collaborator with Brian Eno, wand has worked with artists like Coldplay (who featured his music on their last album), Tunng, David Holmes, and Imogen Heap. He worked with director Peter Jackson, and has a sci-fi score on the way. He also has a rich set of solo releases. And we’ve seen him here recently with remix swaps with Four Tet and contributions to Eno’s upcoming Warp record.

Coming to the Electric Zoo Festival, the blowout Randall’s Island Labor Day weekend electronic party here in New York, he’s set to perform a straight-up, genuinely live set, complete with a small squadron of KAOSS Pads. You can catch him Sunday at 1pm if you’re at the event.

I got a chance to speak to Mr. Hopkins by phone from the UK, before he departed for New York and Electric Zoo. He shares here how he works live onstage and in the studio, talks about how Brian Eno got him hooked on the Kaoss Pad, and reveals his addiction to the tools he first used as a keyboard and resistance to software and hardware upgrades. I’m especially able to resonate with what he has to say about working with sound, and transitioning from a piano background to working as a producer – and I’m listening to his work from a fresh perspective after the combination.

(Don’t miss the spectacularly lo-fi film of “Insides” from Live at the ICA, London, below.)

CDM: Not having seen your live show, knowing only your studio work, I’m looking forward to seeing you at Electric Zoo. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do for live sets?

Hopkins: It’s an Ableton [Live] system at the core of it. I ran off all the separate sounds from my own studio, and kind of loaded everything up into Ableton, so I’ve got total flexibility over all the songs. Then I have separate outputs through the interface, so I can have four or five [Korg] Kaoss Pads running in sync with Ableton, where I can do sampling and looping and all kinds of crazy sounds. And then I go into a mixing desk, and I’ve got a lot of control over what’s going on. I’ve got a little MIDI keyboard up there to play stuff on and to keep things triggering. That’s kind of it, really. It’s not enormously complex, because I have to be able to travel around with it on my own.

How do you use the multiple Kaoss effects in tandem?

The card I use has 16 outputs, so I can separate sounds into different ones and have different effects running on each pad. And sometimes I put one at the end to control the master. It depends. It’s a very flexible setup that way.

In order to assemble your clips, are you simply loading stems from the tracks into Live?

Loops, stem loops, and a little bit of everything. One-shot things, longer things. It’s kind of really just about having a variety, so you can take it any way you feel. I found out recently I’m playing for an hour and half rather than an hour [at Electric Zoo], and I normally do an hour, so there may be some slightly longer pieces. I’ve got some time to prepare, so I’ll go and revisit some other songs and try to bring some new things over, as well. So it should be interesting.

Otherwise, it sounds like the live set is mostly dry; you’re doing most of the processing on the KAOSS Pads.

Yeah. Those things – the Kaoss Pad [KP3], specifically — I was working with Brian Eno over the years and he showed me the original one when it first came out, and I’ve kind of followed them as they go. And seeing from him, some of the crazy things he can do with them — I’ve just gotten really addicted to them. You can kind of make them do things they’re not supposed to do. If you record things into the delay settings, particularly the loop settings, and then speed up the tempo, the craziest effects come out. If you got that going into another one, you end up with a sound onstage that you’d never get out of a computer. It’s cool.

Hopkins at MUTEK earlier this year. Photo (CC-BY-SA) basic_sounds.

Let’s talk about the new single, and the work with Kieran [Hebden / Four Tet]. How did that come about?

Well, we met about three years ago, I think. We had quite a lot of mutual friends. I had been a bit of remixing for an artist on Domino called James Yorkston, who he’d worked with, as well. A year or two later, I signed to Domino.

We did a show together at the Natural History Museum in New York, and it was our first show together – a year and a half ago or something. And the mix of styles went quite well, I think. And we did a few more, and we did a remix swap recently. I did one for his last single, “Angel Echoes,” with the Caribou remix on the other side. And he did one for my new single, which is “Vessel.” And now we have this tour together in October, which I look forward to very much.

Angel Echoes (Jon Hopkins remix) by Four Tet

How do you approach working with his sound, or approach the remix as opposed to your solo work?

It was great, actually, because I love the original. I loved his last album [There Is Love in You] — it was fantastic. The first time I heard it, a guy from Domino played me some of the tracks in the car, way before it was out. And I heard that song, and I just had this idea for it, which was to take that vocal out of the chords he had it in, and write a completely new chord sequence on the piano — have a very natural piano sound, and then have those vocals and those beats flow back in on top of that, and really just try to rewrite the whole chord structure. And he had a live drum loop in there, and I found that if I really squashed it with a limiter … you heard every tiny detail of it. I added an extra few snares here and there, and turned it into a real 3/4 kind of thing, a dance track. And then the main sound — the track was called “Angel Echoes.” I’ve got an old Eventide DSP 4000, which has got a setting called Angel Echoes — which is a complete coincidence; he had never heard of it. I tried putting all the vocals through this Angel Echoes patch and then sent the pitches up an octave and down an octave, as you can with the Eventide in a quite interesting way. There’s this sort of enormous, floating delay. And I had that filtering up in the background while the dry vocals play over top. So you can hear a lot of that effect in the song, particularly in the end. So that was that track.

It seems like the combination really works naturally, that there’s some common aesthetic between the two of you.

There’s some common ground in there, yes. Also… my early albums are completely different than his. I think we’ve grown closer over the years. I think it’s a nice combination, because we have some areas in which we’re similar, and some in which we’re completely different.

What’s your studio setup look like, aside from obviously the aforementioned Eventide?

I’ve got quite a strange combination of things. The core of it is now a Logic system. But I’ve only had it for about a couple of months. Everything I’ve actually released so far was done on Cubase VST from about — I don’t know, 2001 edition; I can’t remember what number it was. And all the sounds I’ve made over the years have been on SoundForge, which is a program I’ve just always loved. I’ve been using it since I was 19; I just got so used to it. I guess it’s whatever program you know best is the best one there is, really. I don’t think there’s huge amounts of difference between one sound editor and another. I’m sure they all can do similar things. But I’ve loved the way SoundForge just has the one massive waveform on the screen, and you can just have infinite levels of undo on every spearate sound. And I have that going into Cubase, so you can have these sounds kind of open live, and be changing them all the way through the process of the song. Just recently, I worked on a film soundtrack, and I found that system finally couldn’t quite handle having any video, so it started crashing a lot. So I’ve got this new Logic system, but I just can’t make any of the more complex sounds on that, because it takes so long. So what I’ve done is hook them up together with an Ethernet cable so now I can drop certain sounds in a folder and have them open in SoundForge and then drop them back in Logic. So I’m using them both, really.

And that’s great. I didn’t want to just completely lose all that, because I think that is what has defined the sounds I’ve been making over the years. I don’t want to change everything in one go. It just seemed like a step backwards in some way.

There’s something psychological about it too, right, when you’ve done a lot of work to have it look familiar? It seems you feel differently about that tool.

You do, I think so, yeah. And particularly when I started on Logic and hooked the two up, I just felt quite bewildered as to how I would ever reach the complexity of editing levels that I was used to. I just operate directly on the waveform. And I love that what you see there on the screen is what you’re hearing, rather than it going through a bunch of live plug-ins. It’s just what I’m used to, really.

So, what don’t you do on the level of the waveform? At what point do you decide, okay, I’m done with that level of granularity with the waveforms and now I’m ready to work with effects and mixing?

I think initially, you go by instinct. In SoundForge, I’d have three or four variations of a loop, and then they would be open in Cubase, or now Logic. And you’d be able to operate on little micro-edits. And then at some point, you feel the drum track is ready, and it doesn’t need any more tweaks — it would be overworked. And I don’t like over-programmed electronic music; I think it had its time, really. Now I really think a solid groove is the way.

And it’s great, at that point you can stick it in Logic. I invested in some crazy plugins, so I’ve got quite a lot of fun things going on in there. Hopefully it will evolve to be the best of both worlds.

Image courtesy The Windish Agency.

And you work a lot with the keyboard, coming at this as a pianist, as well?

Yeah. I didn’t mention that the only keyboard I’ve ever used is a Korg Trinity. I’m sure there aren’t many around these days, but again, like with SoundForge I don’t think it’s about what you use, it’s about how well you know it and how long you’ve been using it. And I know that machine ridiculously well. I’ve had it again since my first setup, when I was 18. And I’ve got a few hundred sounds that I’ve made over the years. Every synth sound on all three of my albums comes from that, with the exception of a couple of bass sounds from a Nord Lead that I’ve got as well.

But it just gets enormously processed. I don’t use them as they are; I stick them into SoundForge and just mess them up, and go through a lot of processes.On the new album, a lot more of the sounds that sound like synths are actually real instruments that have been mangled. A lot of the things that sound like synth pads are actually where I was playing piano through a series of pitch things into quite a deep reverb, and I was using that with a kind of gate to make a lot of the pads and the rhythmic sounds.

You do have a piano in your studio, as well, I would imagine.

It’s, like, behind me when I’m sitting at the computer, so I can swivel around on the chair I can play it. It’s hooked up to a couple of mics, [which] goes into a nice old TL Audio valve pre-amp thing, which then goes into either SoundForge or into Logic, depending on what I’m working on.

It’s the same piano I’ve had since I was a kid, so it’s nice for me, it’s in good condition.

Do you find that piano practice or piano technique are still sort of part of your musical life?

No, unfortunately not; it’s gone. (laughs) I can only play what I need for myself. I used to be a clasically-trained pianist when I was a teenager. I guess it stopped when I was 17; I realize I wasn’t interested in pursuing that, because as a career, I wanted to make my own things.

I used to play a lot of technical stuff which is unfortunately gone. But I couldn’t really justify sitting there and practicing for two hours a day, which is what I used to do. Once you work on musica all the time, music in your spare time isn’t really something you want to do.

Having faced this very issue myself, it doesn’t sound like you feel in any way limited by that. From what I hear in your music, you have far more than enough facility to allow the keyboard to be part of what you do, even if it isn’t central. (And I enjoy that playing.)

Oh yeah. It’s very much limited to the exact thing that I need, but I can still do exactly what I want to hear on what I’m recording. The thing that hasn’t gone is the dynamic range, so I can still play very quietly if I need to, or generally stay in time. It’s just anything fast — but I would never have anything like that anyway, because it’s not really what I’m into playing-wise or writing-wise.

Do you find you draw on the Classical background that you have?

Yes it is, although in a very subliminal way. I haven’t played a Classical piece on the piano since 1998, so whatever’s left — I think I’m more influenced by film scores and what appeals in them, which in turn I guess are influenced classically. But there’s certainly no conscious reference between what I used to listen to and what I used to perform and what I write now.

Next up: a remix 12″ from Domino, with Nathan Fake and Four Tet.

So what are you listening to these days?

(pauses) My mind always goes blank when that question comes up.

Me, too — or I could say, in the last 72 hours?

(laughs) Actually I think I’ve got my iPod right here. I’ve been listening to a friend of mine, Nathan Fake of Border Communities, who did the other remix of my single. Been listening to his stuff, his album Hard Islands. I do tend to listen to stuff that people I work with or who are friends of mine. I listen to a lot of Brian Eno, very specifically the ambient series. I love all of that stuff. You kind of never get bored of that, really.

But I’m also into a lot of songs and more traditional singer stuff like Arthur Russell or Jim Martin, people like that. Proper lyrics I love, as well, almost listen to more of that than electronic stuff.

Take a listen to Nathan Fake’s remix yourself…

jon hopkins – wire (nathan fake remix) by nathan fake •official•

And then you had the experience of Monsters, the sci-fi film.

That was an amazing experience. I don’t know when it comes out in the US, but it comes out in the UK 12th of November. It was the first film I’ve worked on just on my own. Ed.: Hopkins is no stranger to film scoring by way of collaboration, having scored Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones with Brian Eno. And we’re in luck here in the US – the movie arrives October 29, on demand even sooner on September 24.

And there should be a soundtrack album that comes with that. It’s very much more cinematic style, no beats, much more pure melody and atmosphere and tension. So it doesn’t sound like any of my albums, really. It’s interesting to be pushed in different directions by whatever you’re working on.

Had you had the experience of thinking about visual ideas when you worked on music before? I know it’s very different when you have someone else’s image there in front of you.

No, that was a whole new thing, because I actually don’t tend to think particularly visually. I always wanted videos to get made – but you don’t really get those kind of budgets any more. So I don’t tend to think of anything in particular when I’m writing. I just follow the instinct of the melody and where it goes. So it’s almost like having a film in there takes an enormous part of the pressure and responsibility off, because you’re not the main focus.

How slavish were you in terms of how you lined things up?

Pretty specific. I mean, it was my first time on my own, as I said, doing it. So I pretty much was feeling my way; even simple things like how to arrange the sessions on the computer for each queue — it would have been useful to know that you should have a different session for every queue, because I was trying to do it in one and thinking, wow… (laughs) Just simple organization was quite difficult.

I guess the learning curve is administrative as well as creative!

And it went really well in the end. I was working very strange working hours of 2pm to 4am every single day, and sleeping very strange hours, and not doing anything else. It was the middle of winter, and I barely saw daylight. Life is very simple when that’s all you’re doing. You just feel like for that period of time, you’re not thinking of anything else. I manage to take care of everything else that comes up and come in every day and fight through to the end, really. It was an amazing experience.

It’s starting to pick up some great momentum, so we’re really excited about it coming out.

More Information

http://www.madeevent.com/ElectricZoo/

Official site: Jon Hopkins

Monsters Film

And one more Jon Hopkins remix…

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (Jon Hopkins Remix) by Jon Hopkins

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Interview: Jon Hopkins Talks Live, Studio Process, Habit, Instinct

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Critter and Gitari’s $150, Battery-Powered Pocket Piano

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Pocket Piano from Critter and Guitari on Vimeo.

Apologies to the immense powers of lumbering studio gear, but a new lifestyle may be forming around unique, mobile, small, simple synths. The latest entry comes from none other than Critter and Gitari, some of our favorite electronics designers, based in Philadelphia. This time, they’re touting a pocket synth. No MIDI, no control voltage – just wooden keys, some knobs, an audio out jack, and a speaker. But the killer feature is, it runs on batteries. That allows you to take it anywhere, including – as evidenced by the video – on the Staten Island Ferry.

The sounds are decidedly lo-fi, but varied in synthesis methods:

Vibrato Synth
Harmonic Sweeper
Two-Octave Arpeggiator
Octave Cascade
Mono FM Synth
FM Arpeggiator

Twist the knobs to select mode and waveform, with a colored light to give you feedback. Then play on the wooden keys, though they require a bit of what the creators describe as “a refined touch.”

Lots of additional sound samples, including some that sound like they escaped from a vintage arcade cabinet (or a really cheap alien spacecraft):
Pocket Piano

Bonus: Here’s a wonderful recorder called the Kaleidoloop from the same builders, costing $299. They’ve been documenting its many powers over the past months. It’s insanely simple – to the point that somewhere, KAOSS Pad engineers are scratching their heads — but also insanely delicious.

Kaleidoloop: Effecting a Voice Recording from Critter and Guitari on Vimeo.

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Critter and Gitari’s $150, Battery-Powered Pocket Piano

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Roland Round-up: A Mobile Juno Workstation, Realistic Piano Models, More

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Roland dropped a slew of news announcements today, from new keyboards to software. There’s a new JUNO-Gi, which takes Roland’s economical synth workstation and adds multitrack recording and BOSS effects. The virtual piano lineup has all been remade in the image of the V-Piano, with more realistic sampling tech. And there’s a set of offerings as broad as what we’re accustomed to seeing at trade shows, including one nice-looking harmonic stompbox.

Here are the highlights, focusing on what you need to know.

The JUNO that Records

A keyboard workstation, multitrack recording, and BOSS effects, mobile at just over a grand

The JUNO-Gi is the biggest headline here. Built on the JUNO-G, already a slimmed-down rendition of the Fantom in a much cheaper, more compact package, the Gi is a mobile, multi-function workstation at the recession-friendly price of US$1199. It’s a pretty complete all-in-one offering that manages to be cheap and mobile while still cramming in a lot of functionality:

Battery-powered option.
Built-in 8-track digital recorder (64 virtual tracks.
Dedicated mix faders, rhythm machine track, and recording onto a standard SD card (up to 32 GB cards.
Built-in USB audio and MIDI interface when you’re connected to a computer; SONAR LE bundled.
Rear-panel XLR mic (thank you, Roland!), guitar, and line inputs.
Built-in BOSS-GT guitar effects, vocal processing.

To me, the JUNO-Gi looks like a big winner for those who want an all-in-one keyboard workstation rather than a computer when they’re on the go, especially with the addition of real ports, faders, and guitar and vocal effects. And there’s definitely something to be said for that kind of distraction-free workflow.

For background, you can read my 2007 review of the JUNO-Gi’s “-G” predecessor for Keyboard Magazine; I lamented the fact that the “JUNO” name doesn’t really apply, but otherwise found an affordable, balanced keyboard with a friendly front panel. In fact, I really prefer these designs to some of the bigger flagships; to me, it’s like driving a sporty hatchback instead of a lumbering SUV.
Roland Juno-G [Keyboard]

I said at the time – really doubly true now with the addition of BOSS effects and multitrack interface and recording capability:

Despite its price and retro styling, the Juno-G really is a “Fantom-Xpress.” It’s got the processor and sound engine from the pricier Fantom-X line, minus some of the extra bells and whistles. You still get Fantom-class sounds, a multisampled grand piano, compatibility with Roland’s SRX expansion boards, onboard audio and MIDI recording and editing, lots of effects, and a powerful arpeggiator. That makes the Juno-G an unusually feature-packed workstation relative to other budget keyboards.

See also our CDM Q&A on the 2.0 update to the JUNO-G

Digital Pianos Go SuperNATURAL

The other story Roland is pushing is the switch of its digital pianos to a new set of sampling technologies it calls SuperNATURAL. It appears to be a big leap forward for Roland’s pianos, and given the success of the V-Piano, for digital pianos in general.

Roland boils down the technology to three techniques:

1. It’s 88 keys of stereo multi-sampling – no zones.
2. Via tech borrowed from Roland’s V-Piano, it promises smoother transitions between dynamic levels.
3. The decaying tone isn’t looped.

You can watch a video explaining the techniques. (Does anyone else find Roland’s promo videos seem like they fell through a time warp from the 80s? No matter – it’s how the piano plays that counts.)

Now, some of the comparisons Roland makes relative to software piano instruments aren’t quite as fair – a couple of instruments, through clever sampling and/or modeling, do get this right in software. But it is more unique in hardware.

There are four new digital piano products with SuperNATURAL sounds in them. Two of them you probably don’t care about; they’re geared for the home/education market and have notation views built into the music stand:
HPi-6F
HPi-7F

– I’m guessing CDM readers would rather get a keyboard they like and then prop an iPad on the music stand. (Or use this magical technology called paper.)

There’s also the FP series, with built-in speakers:
FP-7f couples the new sound tech with a redesigned keybed. It also adds looping and mic input and harmony effects as new features. US$2190, unless you want it in white, in which case it’s US$2299. Don’t ask.

The keyboard with the new tech most likely to appeal to readers of this site is this:
RD-700NX, the upgrade to Roland’s previous flagship stage piano. As with the FP, this model adds a looper, a vocal mic input with harmony effects, and a new “PHA III Ivory Feel-S Keyboard with Escapement” keybed. There’s also a new, larger LCD screen. US$2999.

The RD-700NX works nicely as a MIDI control keyboard as well as a standalone stage keyboard, so it could be one to watch. I’ll be honest: the Roland action on these keyboards, while solid, was never my favorite. I’m curious to see how the new action feels. And you really have to play simulated pianos to know if they’ve gotten the sampling tech right.

GAIA Editing Software

Part of the whole appeal of the GAIA SH-01 synth is that you work on the front panel and not in software. But I like what Roland is doing with the GAIA Synth Sound Designer – if, for no other reason, because it has an oscilloscope view so you can see the waveform. You can record and play back sound creations in Action Lists, a clever new way of working. And you can use it as an editor/librarian app for backing, organization, and storage – a category that made hardware synths more useful and has been sorely lacking.

d news: instead of providing the app for free, the software, released in October, will cost US$99. Given the GAIA’s mission of reaching out to new synth lovers, I’d rather see this bundled in box.

I’m finishing off an SH-01 review, complete with sound design tips, soon, so if you have any last-minute questions, fire away.

A new, multi-effect BOSS pitch stompbox

The BOSS PS-6 “Harmonist” pedal looks delicious. Effects include three-voice harmony, plus four pitch shift modes:

Harmony
Pitch Shifter
Detune
“Super Bend,” a brand-new mode with “shift,” “rise time,” and “fall time” (so, in other words, it’s a time-based pitch shifter)

US$241.50 in September.

More New Products

In other Roland news:
The AX-Synth is available in black, though at US$1449 list, you’d have to consider the more affordable AX-07 if you really need a shoulder keyboard. I’m finishing a review of the latter now.

The C-380 is a luxurious-looking, 2-manual modeled pipe organ. I want one, and an underground lair to go with it. (Yeah, sure, it’s the cliche, but I’ve always appreciated the lifestyle choice.)

Roland also has new CUBE-XL guitar amps, though I’ll try to examine those next to a similar announcement from Vox – it’s a good time to be in the market for inexpensive, busk-ready amps.

The Octa-Capture is a new high-res, USB 2.0 10-in, 10-out computer audio interface. Roland is going toward calling these “Roland” interfaces, instead of “Edirol,” and appears to be pushing the quality of these devices. US$699. Unfortunately, this illustrates that we need an updated USB class spec to support interfaces like this without drivers, at least from what I know; you do need the drivers to run this box, so no driver-free operation and no Linux support initially.

The BOSS ST-2 “Power Stack” is a compact pedal that simulates stack-style tube amps. US$162.

If any of this stuff strikes your fancy, let us know, and we can get questions answered for you.

http://www.rolandconnect.com/

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Roland Round-up: A Mobile Juno Workstation, Realistic Piano Models, More

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Line 6 James Tyler Variax JTV-69US

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

There’s little doubt that Line 6’s Variax was one of the most talked about guitar introductions of the past decade – the world’s first digital modelling guitar. But a major criticism of Variax wasn’t the technology, but the guitars themselves.

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While they were perfectly functional, they looked odd without magnetic pickups and felt rather ordinary – a stark contrast to the onboard technology. Over the past three years, however, a new ‘Mark II’ iteration of the Variax was being slowly planned.

This time the guitar side of things has been designed by noted LA boutique luthier James Tyler, leaving Line 6 to improve and update the technology. This is reflected in the guitar’s name, James Tyler headstock logo and a more prominent gold-edged, black Variax logo – the only Line 6 logo appears on the battery compartment’s cover.

The result is seven guitars: four USA-made models (of which we have a pre-production JTV- 69US on review) and three Korean-made models.

“Tyler’s superb neck work is well known. Here a one-piece quarter-sawn maple neck is topped off with a dark slab of rosewood.”

Tyler’s guitars are some of the most sought after in the world, but these USA-made guitars aren’t made by James. “The necks and bodies are made by Wildwood Manufacturing in northern California,” he explains. “They get painted by Fausto at Reyes Painting in southern California, then assembled, set-up and QC’d by Tim Wilson, who ran the Jackson shop for 17 years.”

Stylish and close to a Strat in overall length and width we get an off-set Jazzmaster-ish curve on the lower bout with a more angular forearm contour on the face – it’s no belly cut, just some generous rear edge radiusing. The heel area is nicely shaped and chamfered, the neck firmly held with four recessed screws.

Tyler’s superb neck work is well known. Here a one-piece quarter-sawn maple neck is topped with a dark slab of rosewood and 22 finely polished jumbo frets (approx 2.75mm wide x 1.45mm high). The fingerboard edges aren’t as heavily radiused as a typical Tyler, but are far from sharp; the thin satin coating feels almost like a smooth oil finish.

“The neck back shape is my standard ‘59′ shape,” confirms Tyler. It’s a very ‘old Fender’ big ‘C’ shape with a hint of ‘V’ in the shouldering, which always makes a neck feel thinner than it is.

“Players seem to really like that neck. Since the feel of the neck is one of the most important things about a guitar, I figured that it was a no-brainer to put a proven neck shape on these guitars.”

The two-post floating vibrato is custom-designed by Tyler too – it has a steel top plate and ‘L’-shaped saddles that hold the newly designed LR Baggs piezo elements, which take the string’s signals into the digital realm.

The strings top load into individual keyhole slots – they don’t pass through the zinc inertia block in usual Strat-style. Hipshot provides the lightweight, staggered-post Grip-Lock locking tuners. Unlike the Mark I version we get a trio of magnetic pickups controlled by the knurled volume knob and tone controls that will, on the final production samples, be Korean-made to Tyler’s specs.

A five-way lever switches them in standard Strat fashion (positions two and four are hum-cancelling; and in position two, bridge and middle, the humbucker is split to voice the forward slug coil only).

On the back we have a flip-top compartment for the lithium-ion rechargeable battery (which offers 12 hours of playing time). A small push button on the edge of the flush casing allows you to gauge the battery power status via a row of small green LEDs.

“The quality of the models is excellent, they’ll always sound a little different from the real thing, but they more than capture an accurate character.”

A larger cover-plate hides the PCB and nest of wires passing to the outputs (a standard jack and a covered Variax Digital Interface output – you can only run both magnetic and digital simultaneously hooked up to a POD X3 processor).

The Model Selector is sited, like the singlecoils, volume, tone and Alternate Tuning knob, on the tri-laminate scratchplate. When pushed in, the Model Selector is back-lit (indicating the digital mode) and allows you to select from the 12 banks of sounds, each with five sounds in each, voiced by the five-way pickup selector. When you push the Model Selector again, or initially plug in, only the trio of magnetic pickups work, along with the five-way, volume and tone controls.

Previously, any altered tunings had to be created via Line 6’s Workbench software (now included with every new Variax). The Alternate Tuning control, again back-lit, scrolls through 12 modes – 10 alternate tunings plus Standard and Model (for a full run-down of the guitar’s models and tunings visit the Tyler Variax site).

The tunings can be user-overwritten via the ‘virtual capo’ feature but, “every model can have its own alternate tuning programmed outboard via Workbench,” says Line 6. “Set to Model, the Alternate Tuning knob lets you access these alternate tunings; set to Standard, the knob overrides it to set every model to standard tuning.”

Internally, the Variax features a new dual-core processor that provides “richer and more authentic-sounding models.” Line 6 has worked with LR Baggs to improve the piezo elements within the bridge, not least the piezo ‘clang’ that was noticeable, especially at high volume levels.

Korean Deal

Alongside the USA-made Variax guitars are three models made in Korea by World Musical Instruments (the company that makes guitars for numerous brands including PRS’s SE line).

The JTV-69 replicates our reviewed guitar; the JTV-89 has a wrapover bridge and dual humbuckers; and the JTV-59 is an arched top single-cut with wrapover bridge and dual humbuckers. The technology and function of these guitars, including pickups, will be identical to the USA models.

“They’re exactly the same,” confirms Rich Renken. “You’re not making any compromises on the sound when choosing this as your weapon.”

“We’ve worked very hard with World Musical Instruments to achieve a high level of build quality on these guitars,” adds James Tyler. “Recently, someone handed me a [Korean] candy apple red JTV-69 to evaluate and I thought it was the American model at first!”

Sounds

The new version is easier to use than ever: check your battery, plug in and play. Even without charge the magnetic pickups will still work: a low output vintage humbucker married with two modern, clean singlecoils. Excellent.

Press down the Model Selector and you enter the virtual world – 10 banks and 50 sounds (plus two additional custom banks) from some 25 classic guitars. The first thing you notice is some slight background hiss, not intrusive but it’s there. Constantly referencing the digital against the magnetic sounds, you do perceive differences.

Overall the dynamics are a little more limited and bass response can sometimes seem a little clouded; conversely the high treble response can sound a little over-crisp on brighter sounds.

But the quality of the models is excellent, they’ll always sound a little different from the real thing, but they more than capture an accurate character and there are some excellent sounds onboard.

The really difficult areas are the altered tunings and 12-strings, which use sophisticated pitch-shifting. The electric 12s sound less processed to this writer’s ears than on Mark I Variax (and, of course, are much easier to play and tune than the real thing) but you do hear some slight pitch chasing and again your playing technique needs to be firm and spot-on.

The Variax doesn’t physically retune your strings – they stay in standard pitch, but when you apply an altered tuning, via pitch shifting, the outputted sounds are in the new tuning.

If, for example, you just want to add a Stones tune to your live set (or a Stones-y intro then return to standard tuning), Blues G works great. Dropped D with loads of gain is going to satisfy the modern rockers and a couple of DADGAD tunes in a Zep-style are easily possible.

The baritone setting really stretches the technology, and does sound the most synthetic, but if you just want to add some overdubs to your Americana tune, you’d probably get away with it. You can apply these tunings to any of the models, including the 12-strings.

A modern H/S/S solidbody with floating vibrato and electric strings is about as far as you can get from an old flat-top, so it’s little surprise to hear a lot of zing on the acoustic tones. Adding an LR Baggs Venue DI and tweaking the sounds creates far more realism.

Our Fishman acoustic amp and the Baggs DI also works well with jazzier electric sounds: bluesy Kenny Burrell-type tones with the ES-175 models and a really evocative Epiphone Casino neck pickup model. Be in no doubt, there are an immense amount of usable sounds here.

Overall, our impression is more than positive. The modelled sounds just seem better, likewise the acoustics, 12-strings and altered tunings. It’s a great guitar to play, stays in tune perfectly and is easy to use.

Dislikes? The back-lighting on the Model Selector and Alt Tuning knobs is fine in darker environments, less so on a bright or outdoor stage – you may have to shield the knobs to double check whether you’re in digital or magnetic modes. But this is a small price to pay for such a fantastic instrument.

Variax has definitely grown up. This JTV-69US platform is a very credible guitar in its own right, a lot better than the previous guitars and, save for the additional Alt Tuning and Model Selector knobs, looks very conventional.

The new battery system is a godsend and internal improvements have clearly raised the quality of models and the switching functions, which are very fast.

In its USA-made incarnation it will have limited appeal unless you really understand its potential and could justify it as part of your earnings. The Korean version is where most interest will be and, although we have to reserve judgement until we’ve played those, if you’re someone who appreciates and needs a variety of sounds for your recordings or live performances, we’d suggest you start saving…

touchAble, iPad meets Live: review

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

TouchAble is the latest iPad app to provide touch control of Ableton Live, or in their own words “Because Live has much more to offer, Touchable provides a complete control solution.”
The “complete control solution” is quite a claim and I have to say I was pretty skeptical having had experience of the other available apps attempting the same/similar goal (more will be mentioned later about the competition).
However after only the first 30 minutes of actually using the app all my initial skepticism had disappeared.

Getting Started

The initial setup is extremely straight forward with clear instructions on installing the touchAble server software on your main computer running Ableton. This server links Ableton with touchAble on the iPad over a Wi-Fi network (this can include an adhoc network) and after the first time of setting up everything is pretty automatic there on after.

The app has two main areas, the first is the control bar on the right that allows the user to select which function they would like to use e.g. Clips, Mixer, Devices, Keys or Pads. The second is the main screen that changes based on the above selection. The great yet simple idea with this is the fact that you are given the option to choose whether all the main screen is devoted to a single function or split in two for multiple functions. Not only this but you can decide how this appears too either on top or bottom e.g. clip grid in the top half and the Mixer in the lower half. What is clear is that someone has actually thought about using this and the need at times for access to multiple functions.

Control panels – Clip Grid

The clip grid launcher section is intuitive to use with the colours and text directly from Ableton and the navigation is simple with varying scrolling speeds too. Whilst a clip plays a moving bar within the cell moves across showing the user where it is in within the clip, this also helps with keeping track of what clips are playing too. Along side these there are track clip stop, solo and arm buttons and scene triggering again with the Ableton colours and naming.

Mixer

Next is the Mixer section that again is simple yet well thought out and the user can quickly select what parameter is to be changed i.e. Volume, Sends A, B, C, D, Toggles and Pan.
The Volume and Send controls are responsive and I was able to change all 8 volume faders simultaneous so working with multiple faders works nicely too. One really nice feature I found in the Settings menu was the ability to ensure the volume faders can never exceed 0dB, this will come as a great relief for many DJ’s and live performers.
The mixer can be configured in two alternative ways (by the touch of a virtual button) to either show 8 tracks with two different banks of faders e.g. Volume and Send A or alternatively 16 tracks with a single bank of faders i.e. only Volume or Send A not both. The toggle selection looks remarkably similar to the layout of the LaunchPad with the ability to reset Volume, Sends and Pan and also options for muting, soloing, arming and the Monitoring for each track too.

Devices

The Devices section is next and this is split across the middle showing the tracks and each device (Ableton and VST plugins) in each half of the main window. You can scroll up/down, left/right to navigate both tracks and devices (this includes the Sends and Master), then simply select the device to be used. At this point the device will appear in the form of multiple faders, each fader having in bold type the parameter name and current value, you are given the option to display 8 large faders and then select banks (if more than 8 parameters) or 32 smaller faders. Initially on selection the app will determine what is the best format depending on the number of parameters in that device. The 8 fader format is nice and clear and perfect for a live situation, however I’m not sure this can be said for the 32 fader format but this depends on the person. If it were me I would simply wrap a device with more than 32 parameters into a rack and assign macros to the parameters I most want to use, this would reduce the number of faders dramatically and speed up the access through touchAble.
Another feature in the device section that in principal looks great is the native Ableton Device templates that mimic the Ableton Devices in appearance. At the time of writing (and the version being reviewed) the only device available was the ‘EQ Eight’ but this worked really well and made the experience highly intuitive. The options available for this device included being able to modify both gain/Q and frequency for all 8 filters simultaneously, changing the type of filter and switching filters on/off as needed. From reading the touchAble website more Ableton devices are to be added on later versions and this is one of the bigger selling points from a user perspective.
Lastly a final Device feature is the ability to switch devices on and off from the initial overview in the device section on up to 8 tracks quickly. Apart from the possibility that controlling a complex device with the more fiddly 32 faders will be of use in a live situation the Device section is particularly strong and well thought out.

Keys & Pads

The Keys & Pads section provide the user the ability to play melodies/chords etc and drum racks. These two sections use MIDI to trigger the devices and the MIDI routing is setup in Ableton as any other MIDI controller would be. The MIDI channels the Keys and Pads use are defined by the user on the touchAble server that is running before the app is used.
The keys have two single octave keyboards that the user can decide which octave each will play from C-2 to C8 and the keyboard is polyphonic too i.e. assuming the VST/live instrument is polyphonic.
The pads work reasonably well all things considered and the developers have built in the ability to change the velocity of the pads too which at least acknowledges the limitation of the touch screen. However if building beats using pads is a genuine need I would seek out a hardware controller for this whereas the keys are quire adequate for controlling VST synths.

Final features

Last but not least the last two features are hidden away discretely in the bottom right hand corner and these are the Clip and Transport control.
The Clip control allows the user to select a particular clip to manipulate, once selected the clip can be switched off, looping, pitch control and the start and loop length. The clip switching and loop on/off functions work as expected but I have to say the start and loop length does not work particularly well in terms of usability. Specifically both are controlled by faders and have a maximum value of 16 bars, the problem is using these with any degree of accuracy is extremely difficult as you can go quickly from 2 beats to 2 bars before you know it. A more elegant solution would be a grid based selection with various buttons determining the length in 1/16ths, 1 beat, 2 beats, bars etc. This would really make this section more usable and powerful.
The transport control is more straight forward and gives the user some good options such as setting both the Global quantisation as well as the record quantisation and switching the OVR button on/off.

Competition

So how does touchAble compare to its competition?
Well recently another app called Griid was released that is purely a clip launcher and works pretty well with some neat tricks in terms of navigation and overview of the the Ableton set. However at £14.99 this is expensive for a single function app although Liine who develop the app do intend to build further modules
The main challenger to touchAble is LiveControl that uses the TouchOSC app in combination with scripts that allow interaction with Ableton. Having used this combination several months ago and now comparing it against touchAble I think that LiveControl has a serious contender and personally touchable was much easier to get up and running in comparison to LiveControl.
However I have also used the TouchOSC app (in conjunction with OSCulator an OSC to MIDI routing software) and although it does not have the same degree of depth when controlling Ableton it does allow you to create an entirely unique MIDI controller with as many buttons, faders, switches etc as needed. These are then manually MIDI mapped within Ableton to whatever parameter you desire so this works as a simple but flexible bespoke MIDI touch controller that can have multiple pages and functions minus the clip launching. TouchOSC definitely scores points in this department against touchAble.

Conclusion

In summary touchAble is a serious contender for the best iPad app for controlling Ableton currently and the most competent attempt so far. It is easy to setup, has flexibility with respect to access to multiple controls and so far seems very stable. Having used this for approximately a week I am already boxing up my Launchpad ready for Ebay as touchAble has already made this dedicated hardware device redundant even at this early stage of development. I think this app could be improved with better control of the clip start and length and if they could add a separate page whereby users could build there own control surface especially for live performance situations (much like TouchOSC) this would definitely make it the iPad Ableton controller to beat by a long way.

Price
13,99 €

…a serious contender for the best iPad app for controlling Ableton…

Product page

PROS

Easy to use
Flexible
Stable

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

It could make your hardware controller redundant

CONS

Some control features could be improved

More here:
touchAble, iPad meets Live: review

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Behind the Scenes of Propellerheads’ Oversized Drum Machine

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

There’s obviously something about big. In the 1988 film Big, the iconic scene featured Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia tapping their way across FAO Schwartz’s oversized piano. Now, it’s the drum machine’s turn.

David Crowder*Band drummer Bwack made the oversized stage version of an MPC-style set of drum pads, seen below and on CDM in 2008. That model featured a rack for a computer, making it a real workstation.

This week, to celebrate the launch of their new releases of Reason and Record, Swedish music developer Propellerhead had their own entry. It features not only pads big enough to dance on, Big-style, but massive architectural projections on one of the biggest buildings in Sweden.

But it wasn’t enough just to see a few minutes of this thing in action. I wanted to make sure we could find out how the team that built it put this project together.

Perhaps all of this will mark the beginning of Brobdingnag-scaled musical instruments. (That’ll be the opposite of Lilliput. It’s the one with the giants.)

Above: a 2008 huge drum machine. I smell a battle coming on.

Propellerhead’s Ryan Harlin talks to CDM about all the little details that made up this giant creation.

CDM: Can you describe the physical device? How big is it?

The physical controller surface measures 74.5 inches square (that’s 190cm for the metric folks). Each pad is 16 inches square and it’s all housed in a 1X2 inch aluminum modular frame that provides the sidewalls in which the pad buttons rest. In keeping with the Swedish company… it was like a piece of Ikea furniture on steroids – right down to the little hex bolts. We wanted to build a device that was massive but we didn’t want to lose site of its ultimate utility. It had to be danceable. If you make each pad too big then the ability to play adjacent pads becomes too difficult. Too small and it’s… well… too small! I actually started experimenting with size and choreography by dancing on my kitchen floor tiles.

The pads themselves are 1″ thick clear acrylic (plexiglas). They were sanded down with an orbital sander on both sides to give them the necessary diffusion and frosting effect. The pads were easily the heaviest part of the unit but their weight helped give a very responsive tactile feel to the controller. When you stomp on something with the full force of your legs you want to hit something that feels solid, and they certainly did!

We also had strips of LED lighting running under each pad. We set up a dual color system that kept the pads glowing blue when the button was in the off state and it turned white and twice as bright in the on state (twice as many LEDs).

From the underneath side of the dance floor we ran all our cabling to two different USB micro-controller brains. One brain handled the sensor data, while the other one powered and controlled the LED lighting via high-amperage relay switches. These two units sat beside the controller on the sidewalk. They connected to a USB hub and then into our laptop which was running Reason 5 and the new Kong Drum Designer device inside Reason – which this “Kongstrocity” (as we’re calling it around the office) was obviously mimicking in terms of the pad layout.

Top, bottom: modular framing material, with each pad base (top) standing against the wall.

How did you go about assembling the drum machine itself?

The assembly presented a few serious design challenges. First of all we had just two weeks to build it from the time we had the idea to the day we scheduled for the performance. Designing a drum machine of this size in that time required a very “leap of faith” design philosophy. We had to research our methodology and then implement it based on the blind, perhaps naive, confidence that our design would work. There would be no time in the schedule for revision. Our proof of concept had to be our final unit also and we were just fortunate that the decisions we made payed off and worked exactly as we expected.

The other major design challenge was that I was designing and building this unit in San Francisco and it needed to get to Sweden on August 16th. That meant it had to be built in such a way that I could bring it with me as checked luggage! That means it had to be somewhat modular in its design and all components had to be packed down to luggage sized parcels. Sure, I had to check 9 pieces of luggage on my flight but we pulled it off.

Once it was in Sweden we finished the final solder joints and attached the sensor bases and frame to a wooden plywood base which locked it all together as a single unit instead of a luggage-friendly modular unit.

What does it use to sense foot triggers? Were there any challenges to getting this calibrated properly and working effectively?

Under each pad is something called a “force sensitive resistor.” We considered using piezo transducers, which are popular on many DIY electronic drum tutorials. However, piezo sensors suffer from too much ambient noise that would come from adjacent pads. They measure sound energy just like a microphone. Therefore, nearby pad stomps could create false positives from a sensor-perspective. I discovered a video online of a kid who made “drum shoes” and in his description he mentioned that he used force sensitive resistors because they work better than piezos. He was right. By measuring the direct downward pressure on the sensor, we were able to create very reliable readings of when a pad was being triggered or not.

As far as calibrating and working with the sensors, it was as “plug-and-play” as anyone could hope a DIY project of this scope to be. We used a system of USB interfaces by a company called Phidgets. Phidgets are sorta like Arduino without the learning curve. They allow you to hook up a variety of analog or digital sensors to a USB interface unit and then use a variety of programming platforms to work with that data and communicate back out to the interface. Our setup used a Phidget 8/8/8 Interface connected to the computer, a force sensor under the pad, and a Phidget Voltage divider in between the two so we could scale the force readings and calibrate them so all 16 sensors behaved the same way. I can’t say enough great things about Phidgets. They were the thing that shaved our testing and learning curve down to something so small that I didn’t have to worry about it and I could rather dedicate myself to tedious tasks like 800+ solder joints and CAD drawings of frame components.

Ryan: “This is the Phidget 8/8/8 interface brain for the analog FSR sensors it also housed voltage potentiometers to scale the FSR reading for us.”

This is the Phidget 0/0/8 interface which powered and switched the LEDs on and off.

It seems in the video people responded well! What did you find, as people tried playing with their feet?

We learned a few very interesting things in the process. The first and most glaring user response we realized was that if you’re a musician, you were very quickly making beats on it. If you weren’t a musician, you tended to walk around on it making arrhythmic “sound art.” We wrongly assumed everyone would know how to make a basic beat on a controller. Boom boom crack… boom boom crack. Or just a “four on the floor” kick beat. Boom Boom Boom Boom… and then repeat. But musicians got it right away, whether they were drummers or not. As you can see in the video, some people didn’t catch on as quickly. Similarly, young people raised on Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution were also likely to catch on quickly.

The other thing we learned was that our design was surprisingly versatile. We didn’t rest our big acrylic pads directly on the sensors because the weight of them meant that downward force was always being applied to the sensor, making it difficult to get a good reading between on/off. We ended up floating the pads on springs above the sensors. This accomplished a few fortunate goals. It gave the sensors an idle reading of 0, making it easy to determine when force was being applied (when someone was stomping on it). It also had the side benefit of give some spring to our buttons and making them feel like bouncy pads. However, the third thing it accomplished was that we were able to set our trigger thresholds so low that children could dance on the pads as easily as grown adults and the controller responded just the same. We didn’t know it would work so well for that until a 6 year old tried it out and it performed perfectly for him.

“This is a closeup of the voltage potentiometers prior to getting mounted in their box.”

How did you connect the device to Reason? Any Reason-specific tweaks to set up a huge set of drum pads like this?

The Phidget interfaces allow you to program in Max/MSP [multimedia visual programming tool]. So we used Max and some Phidget objects from their website to read in the sensor data, convert it to note data, send it back to the LED lights as digital on/off messages, and communicate with Reason by setting up our Max runtime application as a controller in Reason’s preferences.

On the Reason side, it behaved just like we had plugged a keyboard into our computer. No tweaks were necessary.

Were you familiar with Bwack’s previous large-scale physical drum machine when you made this? (Now I have to get the dimensions on that to work out which really is the “biggest” in the world, though if we count the projection, I know who wins!)

I actually hadn’t seen that until I arrived in Sweden with the controller and someone in the office showed it to me. I think the world can’t have enough large-scale controllers. Playing on it reminds me of childhood visits to the “Please Touch Museum” in Philadelphia.

Who worked on this project?

The “Who” of this project is somewhat long and I’m bound to leave people out so apologies in advance. As far as the research, design, wiring, and testing… it was done largely by myself in San Francisco prior to arriving in Sweden but I had some of the brightest minds to rely on, of course. Our engineers were eager to help and help they did. When I got to Sweden I even enlisted a small soldering army to help me finish the last part of the wiring. In San Francisco, I had a lengthy meeting with Matt Ganucheau to talk about sensors and strategy. Matt helped me focus my design ideas and let me confirm that I was on the right track. I got a crash course in Max programming from a interactive media friend of mine based out of Bristol, named Duncan Speakman and he helped me wire up Phidgets to convert the sensor data to MIDI data.

Once the controller was in Sweden it became a group effort by everyone to finish wiring it, mount it, test it, and move it from location to location. As is often said, “It takes a village to raise a Kongstrocity.”

More on Reason and Record:
http://www.propellerheads.se/

Drum machines may have no soul. But if they’re big enough, they can also crush you like a monster truck, so careful what you say about them.

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Composing for 1-bit Microchip: Tristan Perich

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Tristan Perich releases music entirely as electronics, with his 1-bit Symphony, coming out next week. But before we get hung up on the novelty of the thing, take note: there’s some real musical, compositional goodness inside that jewel case frame, locked up in the circuits. To begin the conversation about that music, Primus Luta, aka David Dodson, talks to the artist for CDM.

If you are familiar with Tristan Perich’s previous work 1-Bit Music, the packaging for 1-Bit Symphony will look familiar. Housed in a standard jewel case, the CD is replaced by a series of circuits wired to a headphone jack from which the secrets of the case can be revealed. But there are visible differences between 1-Bit Music and 1-Bit Symphony, and it is not just the colors of the wires.

“The first one had a lot to do with the transparency of the circuit,” Tristan explains. ”It was meant to be very clearly laid out. The different colors represent different functions of the wire. There were the different volume knobs for left and right. A big microchip. This time I took the aesthetic decision to throw all of that out. I made everything black, used a smaller micro-chip because I didn’t need all of the extra functionality of the bigger one. Used a stereo volume knob. All of this allows me to highlight a different aspect of the circuit, which is going from left to right: the battery to the power switch to the chip on to the headphone jack.”

Tristan Perich: 1-Bit Symphony (Part 1: Overview) from Tristan Perich on Vimeo.

After plugging in headphones, a simple flip of the switch begins the journey. If you have heard 1-Bit Music, you are likely prepared for the sonic palate, but the depth and density of this new work takes the foundations laid in Music much further. It is all a result of the musical journey Tristan has been on for now over half a decade. “I never really wanted to work with electronics for music. I took programming, so there was an interest in that and also the foundations of physics and quantum mechanics. But my background is as a classical composer, working with more physical instruments. When I first started working with 1-bit sound, I fell in love with the raw, primitive, electric tonings that I could get. This very, very basic electronic sound. It provided an interesting and intricate structural framework.

“I think of this project as being very much inspired and coming out of the techniques that I have developed and learned scoring classical music. But learning to score and write music in the 21st century is already a primitive thing. Electronics have been a part of it for a while with many composers. I grew up listening to Philip Glass and The Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Steve Reich using tape loops in his pieces. In a way the definition of orchestration has different standards already. At the same time, with the first project and this one, it’s music written for stereo headphones or a stereo speaker system.”

This is a realization of what Brian Eno describes as a music that ”doesn’t exist outside of the recording,” both projects taking the notion a step further in that the music itself is not a recording. ”[Symphony] is a contrast to the music I’ve been working on for the past two years where I’ve been writing for instruments on stage with 1-bit electronics. These have one speaker on stage per channel and the speakers act like musicians. In these two albums I’m working polyphonically in this really limited medium. So in that sense it is written for the hardware.”

It’s an interesting trajectory in which, perhaps to Eno’s chagrin, performance has played an integral role in the development of this performance-less compositional format. ”1-Bit Music was my first time working with one bit sound. Only after that did I start writing pieces for 1-bit sound and instruments. I learned a lot about the character of classical instruments and electronic sound over the past few years. Returning to working with just electronic sounds has a whole different feeling than when I did it the first time. Now it’s really about just focusing on working with the electronics as a self contained system.”

When working with electronics, particularly in the manner by which Tristan approaches them, the non-musical aspect of developing a system for composition is essential. ”This was basically my first real piece of software in the Assembly language. I built it up piece by piece. First you have the code that generates a tone. Then you set up another piece of code that can change that tone every once in a while. Set up different tracks. Of course Assembly is a really sneaky language. You have to keep track of how much space the code is using, how much space the music is using up. I had to confront issues where I wanted some abilities but couldn’t implement because I literally ran out of memory. But if I deleted two elements I saved twenty bytes and could fit it on the chip,” he laughs. “That was a real retro coding experience and unusual way for me in writing music.”

With the writing of the music itself, Tristan takes compositional cues from his work with instruments. ”Sequences form melodies, and melodies get stitched together into sectional compositions. Repetition is a very core part of my music. The way that I write for instruments is very similar to how I write for electronics. So the code that I wrote mimics the structure. It’s a way for me to write sectional music that also doesn’t take up much memory on the chip, because it is so limited.

“The things that are different between writing for instruments and writing for electronics are similar to things that are idiomatic to different instruments. Wind instruments need to breathe every once in a while. Electronics have characteristics like you can’t have too much polyphony and there’s no attack, decay or any real shape to these sound waves” If it sounds limiting, you surely would not know by listening. In the same way that you rarely think about the breath limitations of the wind section of a symphonic orchestra, listening to 1-Bit Symphony, you never think of the sound waves lacking shape. The limitations of the medium never makes themselves apparent, instead one is left wondering how such a detailed composition is even possible from the circuits in your hand.

By his own admission the work is not performable so do not expect any live renditions of the music contained on the chip. But at the listening party this Friday Tristan will attempt to present another aspect of the project. ”The whole project is about how speakers are instruments specifically designed to translate electricity into sound waves. The whole 1-Bit Symphony really is turning on and off electricity and moving a speaker membrane. That’s what I really want to capture at the release party.”

The release party will be held at Roulette in New York, on Friday August 20th. The project itself will be released August 24th on Cantaloupe Music.

At the Bang on a Can / Cantaloupe store

More info:

Cantaloupe Music: cantaloupemusic.com
1-Bit Symphony: 1bitsymphony.com
Tristan Perich: tristanperich.com

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Composing for 1-bit Microchip: Tristan Perich

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Morning Reflections: Create () Music and Digital; Free ISO50 Music Mix

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Digital memory, circa 1960s NASA, would be unrecognizable to us today. But it is digital. Photo contrasts an Apollo memory core (back) with modern avionics circuitry. Photo (CC-BY) Steve Jurvetson.

The always-thoughtful Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet picks up on my tongue-in-cheek comment, in which I question my own wisdom in dubbing this site “Create Digital Music.” It’s worth reading the whole piece, as he reflects on what’s in a name, the name of this site, the name of media outlets and blogs in general, and how we label music. This line I think sums it up:

Technology and aesthetics each engender various types of practice, but they are not inherently mappable to each other in any specific one-to-one manner.

As it happens, the name “Create Digital Music” was the one I had assigned to the book project that Peachpit Press renamed Real World Digital Audio. When I started CDM, I never intended to make it an ongoing project, only a companion for the book. I hated Peachpit’s book title, in fact.

I’ll defend the title of the site. I actually take the constant references to it in comments and complaints as a sort of confirmation that it was a good choice. I like that it’s a call to action. Anyway, I’m long past the point of thinking about it. But I think it is relevant to appreciate the notion of “digital,” partly because of its broad meaning. Aside from literally deriving from the Latin for fingers – a reference to counting on your fingers – “digital” simply means something with discrete values. Over the weekend, I was watching a documentary on my DVR on the Moon missions. When the tape storage memory of the time proved too unreliable, the MIT team building Apollo’s guidance systems turned to something called core rope memory. Leagues of women literally wove values into arrays of memory, each zero or one, one at a time. You can see the pictures from the Raytheon archives. It’s a reminder that “digital” is in no way “virtual”: all of our machines are, despite outward appearances, still assemblages of matter and electricity, subject to laws of physics, and at some point the work of human minds, hands, and digits.

I also agree with what Marc says about electronica; I’d like to revive the term.

The word “electronica” in particular seems to have long since fallen from any particular favor, but to my mind, that allows for it to take on new meaning; I like to think of it as being like “Americana,” the varied ephemera of a particular territory.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: CREATE (FILL IN THE BLANK) MUSIC [disquiet]

Tangential to that discussion, I want to share this morning’s listening. ISO50, aka Scott Hansen, aka Tycho, has a new free mix up for streaming.

ISO50 Playlist 9

What I love about Scott is his pitch-perfect sense of taste and aesthetic. The music here, like his photos, crosses genres but seems sonically to have the kind of warm, saturated color and vingetted edges that mark his design. Tycho’s own music, of course, tends to crackling, wonderful ambiences, whereas here we’re treated to some dreamy rock. The collage, just as his digital designs, all works for me. Perhaps it’s not entirely unrelated to the topic above. Enjoy listening.

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Morning Reflections: Create () Music and Digital; Free ISO50 Music Mix

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Vox SSC-33

Monday, August 16th, 2010

We last looked at Vox’s all-new high-end electrics back in 2008, and we liked what we saw. The Virage SC was a scaled-up single-cutaway, and the DC a downsized ES-335-inspired design, each using a unique approach to semi-hollow construction and round-your-body contouring.

Vox is now broadening the offer in both style and price to three new series – 33, 55 and 77 – alongside updated originals. Just like the critically acclaimed Japanese-made Virage, the new guitars were designed and prototyped in the San Francisco-based G-Rok design shop.

“The SSC is generally more considered in every department, with a deeper tone and a more brazen attack for blasting, dare we say Bonamassa-type blues.”

“We develop the guitars in 3D CAD [computer assisted design] and write the CNC machine code right in our facility,” explains Rich Lasner, G-Rok’s vice president of development. “This ensures that the factory, Indonesian in this instance, will run the same programs and produce a high-quality guitar affordably.”

We’ve got our hands on the solid-bodied SSC-3 which, along with its SDC-33 cousin, acts as the entry point into the new ranges.

The SSC-33 shares its unique top contouring with the SDC, making it almost as slight with a little more girth to support the single-cutaway format. It also has a slightly larger appearance.

Around the back, the heel is scooped away, this time with a half-moon style carve that provides a comfortable area for the palm and allows good higher fret access.

On balance, both 33s differ significantly in the feel department. The SDC’s unsupported neck joins at the 19th fret in similar fashion to the Gibson SG, and fans of that design will feel right at home with the pitch of the SDC’s neck. The SSC, on the other hand, joins at around the 15th, which gives it a more solid, Les Paul-like feel in hand.

Like the SDC, the SSC is no heavyweight, measuring 43mm at the rim, but it’s perfectly manageable under any gigging rigour; it’s also decidedly less bulky than another modern single-cutaway, the PRS Singlecut, which is at 49.5mm at the rim.

Acoustically the SSC rings out with intent and you can really detect added zing emanating from the MaxConnect bridge.

We have two different sounds represented by the 33’s dual modes: clean and lead. The clean mode takes on a Fender-like stacked single-coil tone, while the lead mode is slightly narrower sounding than a classic PAF-style humbucker.

The SSC’s lead mode isn’t the hottest we’ve heard, but a little coaxing with some preamp gain brings the 33 to the rock ‘n’ roll party; that humbucker-like girth with extra sizzle around the edges and a slight percussive quality that’s due in no small part to that resonant MaxConnect bridge.

It’s clear that the SSC will easily satisfy blues-rockers or players with more modern heavy rock tastes.

Overall however, we probably prefer the double-cut 33’s tone. The SDC is marginally narrower and more compact sounding than its relative; it’s less gnarly and more polite, if you like. However, coaxing spirited and bubbling blues-rock tones from the SDC-33 is a breeze and under heavier gain the characterful zing of the MaxConnect bridge shines through and helps deliver a sprightly punch to the note.

So, these 33 Series guitars are the entry point into the 2010 Vox guitar line. Their unique styling, build and features mean they have a lot going for them. As well as being extremely well put together, they deliver an impressive range of sounds that’ll suit both modern and retro styles, and they’re super comfortable to play, too.

The SSC is generally the more considered of the two in every department with a deeper tone and a more brazen attack for blasting, dare we say Bonamassa-type blues, and heavier rock genres.

In terms of quality and value these Voxes stand up to any of the bigger brands even if, at this point in time, they can’t match their six-string heritage and reputation. With guitars as good and original as these, however, who wouldn’t want to try something new?

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Morning Reflections: Create () Music and Digital; Free ISO50 Music Mix

Vox SSC-33