music
Aurora – OSEC #3
The Aurora is an open source midi mixer with built in audio reactive lights created by Matt Aldrich, Mike Garbus and Maro Sciacchitano. The mixer is designed to integrate with an existing midi based sequencer and to allow the user to interact with audio using a physical controller, bringing a physical element to electronic music performance. The Aurora doesn’t actually mix the audio signals instead its a midi controller packaged in mixer to provide a physical interface for digitally controlling music, creating a more tangible experience for both the performer and audience. Read more
Arduinome – OSEC #2
The Arduinome is an open source controller based on the Monome design, which was developed by the Arduino Monome Project, now FlipMu. It’s functionally the same as the Monome, but the big plus/minus, depending on your point of view, is that you have to put it together yourself.
The controller
The controller is essentially a square box with 64 back lit rubber buttons that can be programmed to do whatever you want. The most obvious use is to use the buttons as a step sequencer, but there are some interesting lateral-thinking approaches to the controller. My favorite has to be Boiingg. It’s a fun implementation for the controller and a great use of the LEDs to show that duration between notes is due to the bouncing lights. Read more
Open Source Electronic Controller #1 :: Introduction
I’m really interested in the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) phenomenon that’s grown off the back of the FLOSS movement. There’s a great spirit of collaboration in the air in general at the moment and some really interesting devices are being developed and their designs released. It’s amazing that the people taking the time and effort to create interesting hardware then release the plans for free to the world at large. The most prominent device to date is probably the Arduino, but there are lots of other different devices for different applications available. Where open source is really getting interesting is the area of personal fabrication with open source 3D printers like the the Makebot available, and affordable, and with the Lasersaur laser cutter currently under development. It’s going to be interesting to see what the future holds in terms of OSHW. Read more
Dublin Laptop Orchestra with This is how we fly
A video by Myles O’Reilly of last week’s Dublin Laptop Orchestra gig at Smock Alley with This is how we fly and Donal Dineen.
Irish Composition Summer School
It’s been 2 weeks since I finished a week of composing and recording as part of the Irish Composition Summer School. In the mean time I’ve had some time to take stock of the course and wanted to give a summary of my experience. The goal of the course is to compose a piece of music during the duration and have it played and recorded by a professional musicians in the final two days. This gives you 8 days to write a piece of music that will be played by professionals, a pretty scary task. Before starting the course I’d done some composition for college assignments and a bit of song writing but nothing too major, this was to be my my first major leap into the world of composition.
Floor It :: Dublin Fringe Show
Great news the Dublin Fringe festival has been announced, ta da, and most importantly as part of the Dublin Fringe there is a quirky little event called Floor It. The whole show has been put together by a group of mavericks kept going with nothing more than spit and determination, with a budget that would even make Greece wince. For any of you too lazy to click on the link here’s the summary of what’s going down at the Floor It shows: Read more