I recently completed a collaboration wih the multi-talented Suniti Dernovsek and David Stein of bobbevy for 10 Tiny Dances. (Video above)

My part of the collaboration was to generate audio/music for the dancer (Suniti Dernovsek), and to create a physical object facilitating audience interaction with the sound/music for the dancer.

I used a Teensy++ , an excellent microcontroller development system created here in Portland by a friend of mine – Paul Stoffregen. It’s an AVR based microcontroller – in some ways similar to the Arduino, but utilizing a different chip with more i/o, and memory, a smaller footprint, and real USB onboard a single chip. Not really being a programmer, I used Paul’s modified Arduino IDE (Teensyduino), which allowed me to play with plenty of existing Arduino examples floating around the net. It was simple enough to get my 3 buttons, 1 switch, and 1 potentiometer to send out Midi data using Paul’s Teensyduino USBMidi library – and from there I could pipe audience interactions via those buttons, to a patch I made in Pure Data to generate the audio. I also added a couple LEDs to light when certain buttons were pressed, or the switch was on/off.

Pure Data is a FLOSS visual programming environment geared primarily towards multimedia artists. It’s the free cousin of the commercial MaxMSP. My patch for this piece was based around an example patch I made for a recent Dorkbot workshop to demonstrate classic 2-operator Chowning FM Synthesis. For this piece I used 3 similar 2 operator synthesizers, plus one subtractive synthesizer, playing back a few simple sequences that are manipulated by the buttons, switch, and pot on the box. Each switch sends a simple midi on/off, which I then use to turn running sequences on/off, or in some cases to step through sequences.

The Dancer takes her queues from the 3 different elements introduced by pressing the buttons, or flipping the switch.

I’ll put the pd patch, and teensyduino sketch online soon..

Lately I’ve been experimenting with extremely basic synthesizer circuit design. I’ve been working with designs that will soon lead to a run of kits – but in the meantime I’d like to share some of the knowledge sources I’ve been mining. I got into basic square wave experiments by way of the electro-music.com forums – and specifically the ‘lunetta’ sub-forum. It’s a great place to start looking into this stuff – and several other forum members have excellent tutoral sites here and here. The most straight-forward reference i can site is Nicholas Collin’s excellent book Handmade Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking. All of this provides solid information into building basic sound making devices utilizing inexpensive logic (cmos) chips with an absurdly low parts count. There are a lot of noisemaker boxes out there – I’m hoping to release kits that take these noisemakers a little bit further into the realm of modular synthesizers. While I obsessively build complex modular synths involving too many rare parts to keep track of – my goal is to make the modular synth world a little bit more accessible for those with less money/obsession/time but with a thirst/love/drive to build or simply play with extremely flexible – open architecture synthesizers

• what: DorkbotPDX PD (Pure Data workshop);

• who: you and your friends;

• where: PNCA room 205, 1241 NW Johnson St., Portland, OR 97209;

• when: Sunday February 21st 1-5pm

cost: $35 hardware fee – this gets you a Midi Monster - a dorkbot/Don Davis designed AVR microcontroller based sensor to USB+midi interface.*

Details:

This is the second workshop in our Pure Data series. Pd is used by artists, sound designers, DJs, VJs and a variety of audio hackers. It is free, libre, and open source software that runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. We will be focusing on interfacing PD physical world. You will use knobs, buttons, and lewd gestures to control patches within Pd. Similarly we will teach you how to reverse this process and use your Pd patch to control the entire world.

We will interface with MIDI devices, off the shelf USB devices, other computers and custom hardware/sensors using theMidi Monster designed by Don D. Davis. This workshop assumes basic pd knowledge – but if you missed our first pd workshop or otherwise need to learn the basics – prior to signing up we recommend checking out the first two chapters of this tutorial: http://www.pd-tutorial.com/

To Signup:

• Go to this page: http://www.tempusdictum.com/tdproducts.html
• Scroll down to Workshops, and select the “Interfacing Hardware to PD” “product”.
• Click “Add To Cart” and follow the instructions there.

This will secure your place in the workshop and reserve you a “Midi Monster,” the sensorUSB+MIDI unit we will be using for the workshop.

Bring to the workshop:

• A laptop with pd-extended installed: http://puredata.info/downloads
• A pair of headphones.
• A standard type A to type B USB cable.
• A thirst for danger.
• optional:
• A MIDI synthesizer or drummachine.
• A MIDI controller interface [knobs/buttons/etc].
• A USB HID device [gamepad, rockband controller, etc].

*no microcontroller programming required for this particular workshop.

Workshop Outline:

1. controlling midi devices (synths/drum machines/etc) with pd via theMidi Monster
   • what is midi – basic information and specifications
2. special midi pd objects – midi in/out (ctlin/out, notein/out, midiin/out)
3. extending this control to the rest of the (non-midi) world

• Building midi controllers – usb/midi from the Midi Monster
• read a potentiometer
• read a photocell
• read a switch
• piezo trigger
• interface with PD, make things happen!
• physical control demo
• ghetto drum demo and patches
• control over network - netsend/netreceive
• multi computer collaboration
• off the shelf devices - hid / fun with joysticks
• wiimote
• rockband drum kit