Archive for September, 2008

Jeremy Kaminski from France sent in this cool video of using AudioCubes to control arpeggiators in Live:

A very quick example(all improvisation…) of new features of the lovely cubes! Note control (here in Ableton Live with Plasticz, arpeggio and Effectrix)

Thanks Jeremy! More info about Jeremy’s work here:

http://www.myspace.com/fractaldeath
http://www.famouswhendead.com

Be sure to visit his websites, Jeremy has some fantastic artwork!

We just returned from the Producers Conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam where we showed AudioCubes with Ableton Live, Propellerheads Reason, and with a new sound design application by Percussa, which works directly with the AudioCubes interface and which is capable of outputting sound to any sequencer through ReWire. Keep a close eye on this blog for some news about this application in the next weeks.

We met a lot of cool people, such as the guys from Alpha 2.1 and Dan Lacksman (Telex), and had a great time! Check out the photos at Flickr here: http://flickr.com/photos/percussa/sets/72157607492049663/

More information about the Producers Conference is available from http://www.theproducersconference.com/

Propellerheads’ Reason 4 contains a powerful arpeggiator module, the RPG-8. It can be triggered using MIDI notes, and it can easily control the many synths in Reason. Using AudioCubes, you can control the arpeggiator simply using your fingers in front of the cube’s 4 sensors. When your fingers cross a threshold, the AudioCubes’ MIDIBridge software sends note on/off messages to the arpeggiator. One of the new features of the MIDIBridge software is the capability to send note messages at the same time as a MIDI controller message, using the same sensor! This lets you trigger the arpeggiator and at the same time control filter cutoff/resonance of the synth the arpeggiator is driving, for example. Watch the video below:

The Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, a Hollywood Oscar winner, was live on Buenafuente’s Show a while ago, presenting his new CD titled “12 segundos de oscuridad”. He was accompanied by two musicians with laptops and several control surfaces. The AudioCubes were also part of the setup! Drexler demonstrates the passion for his work by using the most advanced technology to compose and show his music. Thanks to Daniel from Citriq for the story.

See the video here:

The AudioCubes manuals are now available in French. Oh la la! You can read the manuals here: http://manuals.percussa.com/

Thanks a lot to Guillaume Evrard from Puce Muse Espace Musical.

Our good friend DJ D’dread (Dirk Kuntze) from Germany is going to perform in Kiev, Ukraine with the AudioCubes on September 26th. If you happen to be in Kiev, be sure to come check it out. See this earlier post about Dirk’s work: http://blog.percussa.com/2008/08/19/audiocubes-at-grande-massife-germany/

A while ago I was browsing YouTube and I found some videos by Splurt, a crazy guy who was using all kinds of portable music technology to create his own “mobile studio”. This included a boom box and Korg Kaossilator, among other things.

Seeing the video I was very impressed with how creative he was with a limited amount of portable devices, which shows that you don’t need a big studio full of gear anymore today to create interesting sound and music. These days you can do it all on a computer with software and a musical interface that stimulates your creativity as you use it.

Splurt lives in New York, and happened to be visiting his home country Sweden this summer, so it was an great opportunity to invite him over to Belgium and hear about his music career, his obsession with portable devices, his opinion about music technology in general and of course, about the AudioCubes. Here is the video series. Enjoy!

Some background info about Splurt’s work in music:

I began as a DJ on college radio, then started a live soundsystem and paid and arm and a leg to ship all my vinyls and speakers to Hawaii . I heard some early jungle records from some japanese DJs and found myself back in New York City at some drum and bass clubs. I worked as a drum and bass MC and got to travel to some interesting places with the music. At that time I was purchasing samplers and drum machines and experimenting with music production. I ended up in sweden, scored a few hit tunes and eventually a record deal. Then came 911, so things kind of crumbled. I went back to Sweden and re-invented myself as Splurt. Lately I have been experimenting with music technology and started a YouTube channel called Splurt Technology. I coined the term nanoband and have begun to give lectures at schools and seminars about the future of music interactivity. I also am busy managing a reggae singer and perform myself on ocassion, both moonlighting as a reggae artist and a live electro DJ act.

Some older videos:

More info about Splurt:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SplurtySplurt
http://www.myspace.com/splurt

We just did a new sound pack for Ableton Live 7 and the AudioCubes, the third in the series now! The title is ‘Progressions’. The pack contains an exhaustive collection of progressive house loops, breaks and samples, over 120Mb of content, light pattern preset clips and FX racks.

The included audio loops are in WAV file format, which means the sounds work with most audio software, such as Apple’s Logic, Steinberg’s Cubase, Sony’s ACID Pro, etc.

This pack has been designed to give the AudioCubes enthusiast some authentic content and some awesome control patches designed specifically to work within Ableton Live.

In case you mised the previous sound packs, see:

AudioCubes Sound Pack 01: Drum n Bass for Live 7, feat. Loopmasters Samples (http://www.percussa.com/isounds.php)

AudioCubes Sound Pack 02: Urbano Lounge for Reason 4 (http://shop.percussa.com/audiocubes-sp02-urbano-lounge.html)

DJ Top Bill sent us some nice photos and videos from the Max/MSP User Group in Japan, where he showed AudioCubes with the new cube widget we released a few weeks ago, while introducing OSC support for the cubes through Max/MSP.

Morley-san, who performed with the cubes at the Reason Producers Conference at the Super Club in Tokyo some months ago, was also there to talk about his performance.

Videos from the user group:

Videos from Morley-san performing at Reason Producers Conference in Tokyo:

More information about DJ Top Bill:

http://mi7store.exblog.jp/
http://www.myspace.com/djtopbill

Information about AudioCubes in Japan:

http://www.mi7.co.jp/cubes/

We’re looking for some AudioCubes enthousiasts from France to translate the manuals to french. If you are interested to help you can get on the AudioCubes forum here and post a message:

http://forum.percussa.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45

You can read the manuals here: http://manuals.percussa.com/