http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/

And now, here are some live puppies:

What more could you want?

Today I figured out how to easily turn the rock band drum set for Wii into a MIDI drum controller:

I did this with Junxion, a program that allows you to transform USB and wireless game controller input into MIDI data. I’ve seen demos of other MIDI rock band instruments online, but with the Wii instruments already in USB form this has to be the easiest setup yet. This also seems to have the lowest latency. Junxion is not free but a demo can be downloaded here:

http://www.steim.org/steim/junxion_v3.html

I’ve also used Junxion to turn other game controllers such as DDR dance pads into instruments. I’m using the old PowerPC version 1.4, but version 3 should work fine. Junxion 3 also now works with Wii remotes.

I just used the Studio Tight Kit preset in Ultrabeat in Logic for the drum sounds. Junxion automatically makes an input port which Logic recognizes and listens to.

My setup for this demo was this:

The steps are basically this:

• Plug in the drum controller.
• Launch Junxion.
• Turn off the other devices (USB Optical Mouse, Apple Keyboard, and Apple IR default to enabled at startup)
• Start hitting the pads and watch which sensor status is triggered. Your MIDI app should be sounding or at least receiving input. If not, select Junxion Port 1 as a MIDI input.
• Drag the value of the sensor’s “Dat1″ up or down to change it to the note value you want; for example I set the bass drum to 36 (C2) which triggers the bass drum in Ultrabeat.
• I muted sensor 8 because it was always sounding on any hit.

That’s it! Details may have changed in the new versions. If you have the full version you can save your configuration.

The Rock Band guitar works with Junxion as well! Just plug the USB receiver into the computer, turn on the guitar and follow the same steps. Now I’m even happier that I bought Rock Band!

More videos here: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/112

Here is a fairly tedious method of converting a Recycle Rex file into Ultrabeat in Logic so that you can play the loop mapped to your keyboard like you can with Dr. Rex in Reason:
-Create an audio track
-Drag the rex loop into your audio track from the finder (it creates a folder with each sample slice in it matched to your tempo)
-Open your bin (‘b’)
-Click the down arrow next to the rex loop converted .aif file
-Select all of the parts (0, 1, 2, etc)
-Choose Save Regions As…and save to your audio folder
-Create a new instrument track and load Ultrabeat
-Click on a key in Ultrabeat and click on the sample button in the synthesizer section
-Above the sample button, click on the current sound file and choose Load sample
-Navigate to your audio folder and choose the first file you saved (file 0, etc). Repeat this for each sample you want mapped to the keyboard

You can now save this preset in the top menu with ‘Save Setting As…’.

The alternative is to slave Reason via rewire to logic, but this way you can have it all in one project, which is less processor intensive.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows is pretty good, I thought their pay-what-you-want selling scheme was gimmicky at first but I downloaded it for free and now that I’ve listened to it I like it and I think I’m going to buy it. (If you give them fake info first, then you can try before you buy! It’s optionally free anyway.) 15 Step gets five stars, and props for their IDM and dance influences in this album.

Stanton Moore’s Stanton Moore III album is phenomenal, it’s really chill new orleans funk/jazz with amazing drum solos. I’m trying to learn the solos from Big ‘Uns get the Ball Rolling. The whole album makes a great party mix.

Arturo Sandoval’s Stella by Starlight gets five stars by me, it’s not new but I found it recently and its solos are amazing.

I got the drum trigger idea from watching Carl Landa accompany a Skidmore dance class and make a sick one man band. He had a midi-triggered acoustic grand piano and a Roland Handsonic hooked up via MIDI to a Korg rack synth, a drum pedal on one foot, and a tambourine attached to the other. He also plays hammered dulcimer, Sitar, and this other cool amplified ceramic Indian drum I forgot the name of. But man, could he wail on the Handsonic. The Handsonic is designed as a replacement instrument for a hand drum, so it can recognize muffs, tones, slaps, mutes, and finger rolls amazingly well. It can send MIDI signals but also has its own ethnic music sound bank. Carl used it a lot to control not just hand drum triggers but cymbals, gongs, bells, and other percussion. It sounded amazing.

I was all set to go buy one until I found out that they cost an average of $900. That’s a little above my price range for a drum trigger. So I set off on a drum pad adventure for pads under $200.

The first thing I found was the Akai PD16, which came out several years ago.

I had a $100 Amazon gift certificate and Amazon was selling this for $99, so I almost bought it. It has good reviews — the pads are velocity and touch sensitive and are the same pads used in Akai’s industry standard MPC line of drum sequencers/samplers. It’s old, though–people were having MIDI timing delay issues with it and complained about its single fader, among other things. “Wait for the updated MPD24,” everyone was saying.

Next I found the Korg Padkontrol ($200) after seeing an ad in Remix magazine.

And then I found this video which made me wet my pants. You have to deal with their pop-up-windowy, we’ll-decide-that-real-player’s-the best-codec-for-you content server, but trust me, it’s worth it. Holy moly does the Korg Padkontrol blow the MPD16 and other current pads out of the water. The XY pad looks amazing, and the roll and flam buttons are unbelievable. Ok so I should be able to do flams by myself with two fingers, but the roll effect sounds better than I can produce live on a drum set, let alone live on a drum pad or even with drum programming.

The only thing about the Korg is, it looks a little gimmicky. Buttons that light up? Yeah that’s fun to play with and it will make people drool over your equipment if you play live, but they don’t seem to have any other function except to make you look like a raver. The XY pad? I could see how it could be useful, but I have a ribbon controller on my DJX (I guess that just makes it an X pad, lol) and I never use it except to show off. The XY seems like it would only be useful for the Korg’s predefined uses, such as the roll function. As for the roll function? “I never get tired of that” the guy says on the video. I think the roll function is probably enough to justify buying the Korg, but as much as I want to try it, I think I could use it once or twice in a song either while recording or in a live performance, and then I (and my audience) would get tired of it.
Still, the Korg has a good reputation for having good sensors, it comes with an impressive software and sample library, and it clearly kicks the most ass out of all current controllers. I almost bought this pad using part of my amazon gift certificate via the Musician’s Friend affiliate section of Amazon, but even though Muscian’s friend offers it, Amazon does not. Musician’s friend was doing something sneaky with the padkontrol–for a while it was saying Availability: Due [whatever today's date is]” because it was backordered, never giving you a real availability date. Calling them on the phone made them give me a more honest date. I hoped Amazon would start carrying it once Musician’s Friend had it back in stock, as the phone representative claimed, but then I realized Amazon doesn’t carry lots of Korg products that Musician’s Friend does.
Next, I found the M-audio trigger finger ($200).

I respect M-audio–I have a pair of their BXX5a studio monitors, and they’re awesome. The trigger finger was created for the electronic computer musician–it has 4 assignable faders and 8 assignable knobs along with its pressure and velocity sensitive pads. Everyone’s selling it and using it, and they have an impressive video as well. The drum samples aren’t as good as the Korg video’s, but it shows other things you can do as well, such as triggering samples, loops, and video clips, and using the knobs to control effects.

Any of these pads should be able to trigger samples or note on values, but the Trigger Finger seems to have drivers and an interface that is well supported with other programs. Software is important, or your hardware will be useless. The Korg Padkontrol says that you can control secondary synth effects by pressing down on the pads, but let’s face it–how intuitive would it be to latch and modify a continuous controller using a velocity sensitive button? The Korg does have two knobs, and I will admit that I have not used any of this equipment before, but I just don’t see how you could accurately control a mixer fader or panner using a button that at some point has to go back up. The assignable faders and knobs on the trigger finger are a nice advantage.

The problem is, I hear, that the trigger finger’s actual triggers are sub par. According to comments on youtube, comparisons on forums, and other blogs, the trigger finger has square pads attached to round sensors underneath, so even though they’re velocity and pressure sensitive, you have to hit the triggers fairly solidly in the middle of the pads for it to register. The corners of the pads don’t always trigger. Even the drum sounds in the video don’t sound as smooth or natural as the Korg padkontrol’s demo video does.

This was a deal breaker for me–I’d rather have the faderless padkontrol than a semi-responsive drum trigger.

Let me take a break from $200 drum pads to mention one other product I was considering — the Novation Remote Zero SL. ($300)

I already have a MIDI keyboard, so their other midi controllers didn’t interest me, but this one did. The reason you would buy these products is to streamline your music creation process. The faster you can get your ideas out, the more you can experiment and be productive. The more interactive it is, the more musical you can be. Half of this is going to be the hardware interface, and half of it is going to be software. Novation has been very innovative in putting the control back in your hands, making improvements in the hardware and software, with LEDs on its equipment that changes when you change instruments in Reason or DP, and auto-map software to auto-assign your faders and knobs on the fly. Having that much control over Reason does tempt me, and the additional drum triggers almost have me sold. The only things that didn’t sell me on the novation are the price, the layout of the triggers, and the smaller size of the triggers. The triggers also seem to be an added feature to the design, like an afterthought, not the featured purpose of the equipment. I would be interested in peoples’ review of the Novation drum triggers though, the product is very new and has a lot of potential.

Wow, was I wrong about this thing. Please read my post about how disappointing the MPD24 actually is so far.

Finally, we come to the product of choice, the one “everyone’s been waiting for.” The Akai MPD24 ($200).

It’s new. It’s improved. It’s the ‘cadillac of drum driggers’ as a Sweetwater sales guy called it. It has MPC highly velocity and pressure sensitive pads. It has 8 assignable 360° knobs and 6 assignable faders. It has a LED that displays a lot of information. It has 4 banks to quickly switch between while using the pads. And it has transport control, which is a nice feature none of the other pads have.

I bought one from Sweetwater, and expected it on the weekend. And then I got the call. “You actually bought a listing, not a product, the MPD24 isn’t actually shipping yet. Akai estimates October 16th but they’ve already delayed once, so we can’t guarantee it.” What??

If you google Akai MPD24, you get ad listings from Platinum Records, Sweetwater, AudioMidi, and Sam Ash, all selling it for $199. Some of them don’t even say they don’t have it! They’re competing so much to sell you this product that they don’t even admit they don’t have it yet. Sweetwater has no mention that it’s a listing only and Audio Midi didn’t either, until I complained to them via livechat. What a racket!

And yet, I’m still holding out for the MPD24, and I’ll buy it from Sweetwater. The sales guy that called me from Sweetwater was actually really knowledgeable, telling me that the MPD24 was worth the wait, that all of the units were MIDI capable as well as USB (“Midi ports are cheap, they generally put them on everything unless the item is so small that they wouldn’t fit”), that Roland makes a cheaper Handsonic HPD 10, that he agreed with me that the Novation’s drum triggers were an added feature and not worth it, that the trigger finger’s sensors weren’t great, and that the Korg padkontrol is king right now and that they can’t keep them in stock. Sweetwater evidentally started off as a recording studio in Indiana and all of their salespeople have studio experience and are very knowledgeable. So even though they have some unethical advertising, I’m still going to buy through them.

So here I am, truly becoming a capitalist consumer. I’m reviewing products without having tested any of them, and am “pre-buying” a nonexistant list item that hasn’t shipped yet based on hype and speculation. Actually though, I have seen some promising videos of the mpd24 on youtube and the word is if the MPD24 is anything like the MPD16, it’s worth the wait. I try not to consume anything that won’t help me produce later, so I’m just going to have to sit down and cross my legs and wait for this damn thing to come out.

I have tried to model squarepusher for at least 5 years, with less than moderate success using Reason and Fruityloops. I’m finding that while they have the ability to trigger samples, start and end points, and triggering to the degree I want, their editing and sequencing interfaces are maddening. Yes I know that hyper-editing like they do takes hours upon hours, but the pencil tool and envelope editor just don’t cut it in reason, and I’m not able to achieve all the effects they use just using the filters on the virtual instruments. Part of the problem may be my lack of a decent control interface, but I have a feeling I’m just using the wrong program.

While I’m dying to hear the new squarepusher album on October 16th, I’m also realizing maybe my squarepusher obsession has gotten a little unhealthy, after all it’s been 10 years since I feel like he released his best work. Since 2000 he’s released a lot of live tracks, and it’s harshly dissonant, noisy DJing that I don’t have the ears for, albeit Ultravistor was a well produced and pretty good album.

So I decided to branch out and expand my horizons. Embarrassingly, ITunes was what ‘opened my ears’ so to speak, but whatever. Their related artists brought me to AFX’s Hangable Auto Bulb, an album released in 1995. AFX turns out to be another alias for Aphex Twin, but it was still a fun album to discover.

A comment in ITunes called this type of music “drill ‘n bass”, a term I hadn’t heard before. Wikipedia has a good entry about it, it seems to appropriately describe the type of music squarepusher and aphex twin use that I have more generally referred to as IDM. I like the play on drum ‘n bass, though not enough people know what drum ‘n bass is anyway for it to catch on, and the one particular 128th note effect of repeating a note as a fill typical for this genre does sound kind of like a drill.

I’m not with the times though apparently, because drill ‘n bass is a term that has come and gone to be replaced by breakcore, which sounds kind of stupid to me.

The wikipedia article lead me to two artists though, Doormouse, which was too harsh for me, and Venetian Snares, which is brilliant. I immediately bought the album Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms. An album released this year, look at that! Venetian Snares is finally what I was looking for…An artist that took aphex twin and squarepusher’s drill ‘n bass and went further with it. He plays with 7/8, a time signature I love to use, and his fusion of classical and drill ‘n bass is something I based my undergraduate thesis on, with the concerto for drum ‘n bass and my ravel string quartet remix. He remixes Bartok a lot, which I approve of–Bartok’s string quartets are a century old but still sound fresher than most music to me, and are really emotional, meaningful pieces. And while he’s borrowed fill and effect ideas from squarepusher and aphex twin, he’s also pushed the envelope by introducing new effects and fusing it with more very original composition.

Venetian Snares is an artist I can approve of–he’s a solo artist who made a name for himself out of a studio in the middle of seemingly nowhere, in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. It makes me feel better having moved from Chicago, IL to Saratoga Springs, NY. He also has an internet presence–he released a video on youtube showing how he used Renoise to program one of his commercially released tracks.

Renoise looks like an awesome program–it’s a tracker, an old school textual ascii/hex sequencer that scrolls vertically, but is new enough to run on OS X or windows XP and use any VST instruments or plugins. I’ve used trackers before a little, particularly a freeware music emulator app that mimicked the sound of Atari, but I never really learned it. Anyway I downloaded Renoise yesterday and am excited to learn it–their demo is free and fully functional, except for high quality ASIO output and WAV rendering. They have a big tutorial base and save their files in the same extension as Reason, RNS, but they don’t seem compatible. I wonder if Renoise was intentionally named within the theme of propellerhead’s software. Anyway, the program is cheap, only 40 euros, and programmed in an open-source mentality. Finally, maybe I’ve found a program that can handle the type of meticulous editing I want to do.