I’ve just upgraded this blog to version 2.5 of Wordpress. The upgrade went smoothly, all plugins are still working!

After some soldering sessions last week I’ve (half)finished my DIY midi controller. So far I’ve only fixed 8 controls, 8 more to fix yet. I bought the box and the buttons in Akihabara, the shopping area for electronic goods in Tokyo and I’m using the Doepfer’s Pocket Electronic which makes all this quite easy to build actually.

My dealer in Akihabara!

I’m going to build my own midi controller. I’ve got almost all the components, most of them in Akihabara. And I’m waiting for the Doepfer Pocket Electronic right now. I guess I’ll get it by next week.

I hope I’ll manage to make it.

In a previous post, I said I was planning to make a hydrophone… I eventually built it yesterday! It’s nothing else as a contact microphone embedded into a box actually. It just passed the waterproof test successfully. I haven’t yet checked the sound it produces. I’ll have to find out which are the best post-effects to use on it… resonator, granulator… we’ll see.

After the update of the firmware of my sound card (M-Audio FW410), it started clipping on the line and instrument inputs… Moreover I’ve never been happy with the latency of this card. So I’m now looking at the sound cards on the market excluding M-Audio products. I want a Firewire card with at least 4 line/instrument inputs, 4 line outputs, midi in/out and as compact as possible. Some cards that fit my needs:

• Echo Audiofire 4
• Edirol FA-101
• TC Electronic Konnekt 24D
• Motu Ultralite
• RME Fireface 400

Motu and RME are too expensive. As for now my choice would go to the Konnekt 24D which has a built-in DSP that enables to run some effects like compressor and reverb. This may be a good option as my CPU gets sometimes overloaded. As TC Electronic is known for making quality product, this card looks really great. This is confirmed by a test done by Audiofanzine (in french).

Update: I ordered it…

I’m planning to make a hydrophone. A quick search on Google and I’ve got an interesting document entitled “A cheap sensitive hydrophone for monitoring cetacean vocalisations“.

A piezo ceramic disk, 2 polycarbonate sheets, a ‘o’ ring seal, a few nylon screws, a coaxial cable, some epoxy adhesive and you’re done! The critical step is definitely the soldering of the cable to the piezo disk.

Mario is an international icon and it’s funny to see how people reinterpret the myth. Here is a beautiful drawing of Mario (with the Princess who’s been giving him a lot of work through all these years!) by José “Emroca” Flores.

Mario is a source of inspiration musically too. XOC, a guy from Sacramento, has covered the complete sountrack of Super Mario World. Excellent stuff! I chose a track that fits the image above.

XOC: Castle Medley

Free download on Archive.org

The best way to control music softwares (Ableton Live for instance) is definitely midi controllers. But they are often poorly designed compare to Playstation-like game controllers. So I wanted to try using a game controller for controlling Ableton Live. I bought one and started looking for an interface that would get data from the USB port, map data to midi and then send it to Live (or any midi-enabled software). The first product I found was junXion by Steim. It covers all my needs but costs 75 Euros (old version for 25 Euros). I kept searching and eventually found a max/msp patch that basically does the same as the first version of junXion: MultiControl. The Max/MSP runtime (it’s free) needs to be installed for running the patch.

• Plug the USB controller.
• Launch the MultiControl patch.
• Press/move the controller’s buttons, the patch detects the action and assign the control to a midi channel. Press all the buttons! There are only 16 midi channels that can be assigned… x/y controls take 2 channels. Be careful, if you first press the button #2, it will be assigned to the first line, then if you press the button #1 it will be assigned to the first line as well. Do it in the right order.
• For each control assign a unique midi channel (by default they are all assigned to midi channel 1/1). In the screenshot I’ve chosen 5/1, 5/2, 5/3, etc.
• Launch your DAW (Digital Audio Worstation), in your midi settings check that MidiControl is detected.
• Select the “Midi learn” mode in the DAW, select a component to control via midi, press a controller’s button… you’re done!