Back from San Fran a week ago.. Just about got my jet lag under control and I had to go and play at Moles Club in Bath for my monthly residency there. Nice 5:30am bed time and my body clock essentially just gave up trying I think.
On the up side I have finally finished the first draft of the Midibox PCBs that hold the illuminated switches and pots that a friend of mine has agreed to etch in return for costs + beer which was very kind of him.
If anyone has any interest at all then please feel free to take a look over them and see if you can spot any obvious errors.. These are my first ever layouts so I’ve probably made some sort of schoolboy error I’m sure…
MidiBox V3
Oh and if the headline rings bells, it means you are a fan of some pretty obscure, but excellent, electronic music.
— Edit - Updated the PDF links to a slightly altered version.
— Edit Again..- Updated the PDF links to V3.
So the 40h has gone but the monomes have released details of the future.
Different form factors and the exciting bit for me? Monome Kits
I’ve arrived in SF and it’s 3:35am local time which due to the time difference is about half past the eleven in the morning according to my body clock and I can’t sleep. I tried my usual trick of staying up until as late as I can the first day and sleeping through but something woke me up about an hour ago and now I can’t get back to sleep. I’ll try again tomorrow night I guess.
Thought I’d sketch out how my Midibox will work and be laid out (currently).
As you read through you’ll be able to tell I’ve been thinking about this for ages and I think that the initial planning is crucial when designing a controller for yourself. I’ve been using an MPD24 in the short term to prototype out the Live layout to check that what I dreamt up actually works when you are in front of a crowd and this final controller layout is the end result of months of testing.
The basic Ableton Live document will comprise of 4 channels bussed to one ‘group’ channel for the drums and percussion and 4 channels for the musical elements. Each channel will have three pots (level, and two other functions TBC) and three buttons (‘channel on/off’, start clip and stop clip) on the controller. Both group channels will have a ‘channel on/off’ button and two knobs for functions TBC. The 5th knob will control the Q of all the filters in the layout.
The three buttons under the group section will control scene up/down and scene start so I can build the tune using individual clips but also launch entire scenes if I need to.
The end line of controls is set up to control the send effect, probably a delay (a dubstation probably) so it’ll be mapped to feedback, speed and highpass. The buttons below will be things like the Loop, Sync buttons on the dubstation.
The two groups of 12 buttons under each group is the fun stuff and is is applied individually to the drum and the music group.
The first 6 of each side will control beat repeat in Live. I have it set up (and working with my MPD24 and Midipipe at the moment) so each button does two things. The first is common to all 6 buttons and the is the ‘repeat’ button in the Beat Repeat plugin. The second function is to change the speed of the repeat. This allows me to ‘play’ the repeat in a more musical way rather than relying on the random functions to create variation.
These buttons also are linked to the synced speed of an AutoPan set up as a square wave tremolo with it’s on/off button set to one of the second group of 6 buttons. This allows me to chop off the second half of the repeats to create a much more stuttery effect. It also allows me to choose a speed of trem and just engage that without doing an actual repeat.
The remaining 5 buttons will enable a further 5 effects (either momentary or toggle depending). Including the Audio Buffer glitch plogue groups I’ve made available below and probably something along the lines of a flanger / phaser and a couple of Crazy Ivan settings I’ve knocked up that do some oddness.
All the buttons are illuminated and I will use the Midi Feedback functions in Live to enable things like clip playback status, effect on/off status and things like the Trem button will flash to let me know what speed it’s currently running at etc.
One final thing that isn’t on the layout is a ‘visual click’ which will be 6 LEDs on the box somewhere that will tick from one to the next on each beat providing me with a silent reference beat when all the delays, glitch and madness that will be going on throws my internal clock. The reason it’s six is it will cover most of the time signatures I can think of in a vaguely meaningful way.
In short, whilst I’d love a monome, the limitations of that controller are what made me decide to go for a custom controller. The thing I took from the monome is that visual feedback on the controller is paramount if you want to avoid the “Checking My Email” problem.
After months of faffing I’ve finally got round to prepping, testing and uploading my first efx pack. 8 .bgrp files for Plogue Bidule users everywhere check out.
[sg_efx] Buffer Scratch
An LFO based audio buffer effect. Audio goes in, weird scratchy and odd sounds come out. The LFO speed is tempo locked with presets for a few different tempo divisions. Needs to be synced for it to work.
[sg_efx] BuffScatter
As above but weirder and less controllable. Needs to be synced for it to work.
[sg_efx] Stereo Triple LFO Buffer
An extension of Buffer Scratch. This time three non synced LFOs get busy with your buffer. Needs to be synced for it to work.
[sg_efx] S&H Filter+Comb
2 tempo locked sample and hold LFOs mess with a low pass filter and a delay unit to create filtered comb filter type effects. Needs to be synced for it to work.
[sg_efx] Stereo 6-12db Filter
Boring and bog standard, but pretty handy none the less.
[sg_mod] Log Slider
This isn’t an effect just a handy group. The slider value displayed is converted into a Log shape curve on output. Handy for filters and the like.
[sg_mod] Sync LFO
Another module, this time the Synced LFO used in the effects above. Needs to be synced for it to work.
[sg_mod] Sync S&H
A synced Sample and Hold LFO, as used in the S&H Filter+Comb group and handy to have stand alone. Needs to be synced for it to work.
How To Install
[sg_efx] Pack One
Download the .zip file linked above and expand. Drag the ‘[sg_bidule] Pack One’ folder to the Bidule groups folder. Start Bidule and with any luck it will tell you that there are 8 new groups.
There will be a new folder in your palette at the bottom called [sg]. All the new groups are in there.
Feel free to open them up and improve / hack them as they are the result of late night noodling rather than concerted clean coding so they may be a bit unpredictable, but I like that when it comes to music.
If you use them in a track please let me know.. I’d love to hear what you’ve done.
Obviously these are provided as is, no warranty etc. If you break something, lose work, blow your speakers, whatever it really isn’t my problem OK?
We’ve been running (and will continue to) a tour diary by Richard Chappell (PG’s main engineer) with some great photos taken by York Tillyer (my boss) showing the glamour (not) of the early stages of setting up a major tour.
MIDI Marimbas, two drum kits and a vast array of lust-worthy equipment is on display.
The early stages are running to a close and they will be moving to production rehearsals soon and the first date is only a couple of weeks away.
They are working to a set list in part derived from a poll we held based on charts created by our registered members which threw up some very interesting leftfield choices, encouraged by Peter himself as he wanted to try to avoid playing the same songs played over the last two tours.
As usual the decision to start the diary and the required implementation date were essentially the same day (well not really but close!) but a quick tweak of the in-house news system and some extra rewrites to handle it was all it took. This quick turnaround is the advantage of having in-house staff and custom systems that are designed from the ground up to be flexible.
