soundwidgets.com

Tablo - conductive fabric gesture controller

2008-05-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

Adrian Freed's "Tablo"

"As the conductive stretchable fabric... is displaced towards the bowl it shorts out different lengths of ...conductive plastic... The result is a circular array of nearly mass-less displacement sensors. The gesture-to-displacement relationship changes according to distance from the center of the bowl..." read more

A Bicycle Built for Two

2008-05-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

Daisy.mp3

Original "Daisy" Song 1961
Max Mathews, John Kelly, and Carol Lochbaum

From a Wikipedia article on Max Matthews: "In 1961, Mathews arranged the well-known song Daisy Bell ("Daisy, daisy") for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others. Arthur C. Clarke of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce at the Bell Labs Murray Hill facility at the time of this remarkable speech synthesis demonstration and was so impressed that he used it in the climactic scene of his novel and screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the HAL 9000 computer sings the same song as astronaut Dave Bowman disables his cognitive functions."

Microfiche Music Machine

2008-05-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

Here's more info about the band Microfiche

Awesome Maker Faire 2008 video

2008-05-12T04:53:00.001-07:00

So far this is the best Maker Faire 2008 summary I've seen - it captures the diversity of projects and amazing stuff quite well. Note however that even this great vid represents barely 1/10 of the actual amazingness to be found at this huge Faire.

Oh, and look for a brief shot of The Stribe at about 7:34. :)

From: curiousinventor.com

Cycling74 mentions Stribe, and Electronic Musician article

2008-05-11T13:49:00.001-07:00

Cycling74 has a nice mention of the stribe and a pic re: Maker Faire 2008

Electronic Musician May 2008: DIY Resurgence by Scott Wilkinson

The Stribe @ Maker Faire featured on hackaday.com

2008-05-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

link to article

The Stribe booth at Maker Faire 2008

2008-05-05T23:03:00.001-07:00

Some kids totally diggin' the way-out sounds

All hands on deck

Booth with stribe logo (made from construction paper)

I gave a brief presentation about the Stribe - unfortunately I was completely unprepared and I had sound driver issues - better luck next time, I hope

Me (left) and Vlad (right), showing off the latest Stribe prototype

more: Flickr

Maker Faire San Mateo, Day 1

2008-05-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the debut of the Stribe at Maker Faire, and it was amazing! A non-stop procession of fascinated people surrounded the booth for 10 straight hours. Stribe pioneer Vlad Spears totally saved the day when my MOTU interface gave up the ghost 2 hours into the demo. Just when I thought all was lost, Vlad stepped into the breach, fired up his own machine and held the crowd mesmerized with his lovely new Max 5 app, "Scalar", which made the Stribe into a wonderfully easy-to-play instrument. He manned the booth heroically and provided detailed explanations of the stribe, the monome, Max, and how it all fits together. I don't think he drank, ate, or sat down the whole time. My own demos pretty much relied on the MOTU, so without Scalar and Vlad it's hard to say what the day would have been like.

Thank You Vlad! You are a true rockstar, in every sense of the word.

I'm still a bit stunned at the level of interest and the many wonderful conversations I had with visitors and fellow Makers.

Today I hope to borrow an audio/MIDI interface from a fellow Maker and run some of my original demos, including a cool demo app written by stretta, along with a couple of my own creations.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth on Day 1. I apologize if I didn't get to chat or you caught me in a flustered moment, but the onslaught of Make fans was unrelenting (which is really great) and I was overwhelmed at times. It was cool to meet members of the Stribe community in person, and I came away feeling both grateful and proud and just plain tickled. Something tells me this is going to be quite a ride. Thanks SO much for the enthusiasm and encouragement so far - it really does keep me going.

I have some great pictures and I'll post them as soon as I can. :)

Now it's time to get ready for Maker Faire, Day 2!

stribe + MIDIbox = awesome app!!

2008-03-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

From tk of midibox.org: "...Most of you guys are using Arduino based hardware, therefore I'm not sure if you are interested in an alternative approach, which is based on the MIDIbox hardware platform and MIOS. As the name implies, the focus is on MIDI communication instead of OSC via USB, accordingly this solution covers different usecases.

"The main difference to your current approach is the autarkic firmware, which doesn't require a computer to process the sensors, handle the LEDs, and to communicate with other MIDI devices. This might make it less flexible for experimental stuff, on the other hand I can easily add a LCD, buttons, more LEDs, rotary encoders, etc... - everything which is provided by MIOS - and control my MIDI synths directly..."

[more]

red stribe wearing plexi

2008-03-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Some plexiglas test parts arrived from the Netherlands today via Xndr Industries. I assembled an all-red stribe with the new parts and it looks pretty awesome:

more pics here

rockin the T-On

2008-03-22T15:14:00.001-07:00

phineus + tenori-on + alesis micron from phineus on Vimeo.

I got a chance to play with a Tenori-On - it's pretty neat. Here I am testing out the MIDI implementation.

The Stribe goes to Maker Faire

2008-03-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

Finally emerging from the shadows, the Stribe will be at Maker Faire in San Mateo May 3 & 4, 2008. So get some sunblock and come to the Faire!

I visited the Maker Faire in Austin, Fall 2007 and it was awesome.

Fresh e-ink for the Stribe!

2008-03-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Calculator Music for Nerds via LVHRD.ORG

it's a shirt - no it's a web site

2008-03-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

Buy a t-shirt and help support the Stribe Project.

free TR 606/808/909 for Windows

2008-03-03T05:06:00.000-08:00

Who says you only get what you pay for? This donation-ware download from d-lusion is a hidden treasure for those in search of simple drum programming and great sounds on no budget. It's been around for a while but I came across it again recently and fell in love all over again with drum programming. Also check RubberDuck, a re-imagined TB-303, and the MJ Studio MP3 mixing tool. Don't forget to throw a few beans in d-lusion's Donation bucket for providing all this great stuff for free!

From the d-lusion site:

"Based on the concept of the legendary Roland drum synthesizers TR-909, TR-808 and TR-606 whose throbbing bassdrums and crashing hihats sent generations of dance-music enthusiasts into extasy, Drumstation combines cool old drum machine features with cutting-edge software synthesis technology. Drumstation is a drum software synthesizer and features 8 channels of drums (either samples or synthesized drum sounds), programmable via an easy-to-use step sequencer, effects (realtime reverb, delay, flanger, filter, distortion) for each channel, loops could be sliced and stretched.

"All this in the year 1998!
This free downloadable version also contains - beside the standalone software synthesizer - a complete set of free drum samples and effects to get you started (Roland TR-606, TR-808, TR-909, Real Drums, Sound Effects, DR-101, DPM-48, and additional Yamaha/etc. sampled sounds)."

UK Sound Square project

2008-03-02T07:35:00.001-08:00

"Input device from a matrix of IR beams set in a square. Fed into a Macintosh through a create HID interface. Processed with custom software written in Objective C and Quartz composer and fed to an MU10."

Mike Cook, in the UK, made a device similar to my Sound Square project (ca 1993), but smaller, and he went much farther with the software. Interestingly, he built it around the same time period (1994). At the time, a grid of sensors seemed like such a powerful meme to me that I assumed this type of music tech would be everywhere in no time. The fact that it HASN'T seemed to progress very far in 15 yrs was what put me on the path that eventually led to the Stribe. Well, 15 years later it seems Mike has dusted off his project as well! He has a great website and a page dedicated to the how-to of it all. Yay Mike!! Can't wait to see what comes next!

the stribe map

2008-02-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

Stockhausen on 'sounds', 1972

2008-02-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

Very interesting 1972 lecture by Karlheinz Stockhausen (August 22, 1928 – December 5, 2007). He discusses synthesizing and transforming sound via technology, and the (then) theoretical possibility of speeding up a sound or piece of music without changing it's pitch.

stribe + monome 40h + balron + DSI - Part II

2008-02-20T05:39:00.000-08:00

Create Digital Music » Hands-on, Interview: Stribe Multi-Touch Controller

2008-02-19T18:07:00.000-08:00

An An In-Depth Interview w/ ME in CDM :)

Gainer: Arduino-slayer?

2008-02-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

The Gainer controller in Valentine Red

I saw some early press on this in 2007 that looked promising but now suddenly the Gainer website has really filled-out with tons of good information. This is a really interesting controller board that has a variety of possible configurations. Very intriguing - possibly a new heart for the stribe? Arduino MINIs are expensive (~$60 + shipping for the 2 Arduino stamps). Meanwhile the Gainer is open source and relatively cheap to build (~$30 USD in parts) and includes a USB interface. http://gainer.cc/

The Gainer can be configured for a variety of applications. Check out the specs.

Their website also links to this useful table of commercially avaialable sensor interfaces which I came across but then lost again. Here it is:

Comparison table of commercially available sensor interfaces

stribe + monome 40h + balron + DSI monosynth

2008-02-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

Here's the monome 40h running "Balron" while the stribe sends CC data to the DSI. There's a bug where the stribe sends a constant barrage of CC data so it's affecting the sounds a bit but it sort of works. I really should record the sound properly because my li'l camera mic really doesn't do it justice. It sounds huge!

stretta literally rocks the monome 64

2008-02-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

monome 64 tilt from stretta on Vimeo.
The latest monome.org offering, the 64, features a built-in tilt-sensor. Here stretta makes very interesting use of the feature.

stretta + stribe

2008-01-30T09:21:00.001-08:00

A Brief Conversation Resulting in One Less Child from stretta on Vimeo.
Something beautiful, at last!

don't fence me in

2008-01-30T08:52:00.000-08:00

...mangled by monome + stribe.

This song is from my Texas friend Manda Clair's music sampler. I hope she doesn't mind. The video effects are for fun - these chunks are what my video editor thought made reasonable "scenes". I had to stack them all up to get the video to be continuous.