Dan Lipert

The MCRPv2 is kind of over, and here is my track:

MCRP V2 ayuh aka the easterislandhead - spoiled fruit basket  by  easterislandhead But although it seemed like a good idea to have this available to work on during the holidays since people typically have off and that sort of thing, it turned out nobody had time to work on it after all, so its being extended by a week. I might do some more work on mine but for the most part I think its done. I used completely new production techniques, so while I’m not super thrilled with how it came out, I have lots of ideas for future tracks. I’ll post again when all the tracks are in! Also I’ll do an ‘article’ post later since I am signed up for project52.

In several of my videos and entries I have already made reference to either the monome or the arduinome project, without saying much about what it is all about. So, with my participation in the upcoming Monome Community Remix Project (v2), I thought I’d share some thoughts on the monome and my experiences.

First of all, the creators of the monome are amazing. They have designed an amazing project, and helped build a strong community of musicians and designers, financially supporting themselves in the process. Not only that, but they have shared their hard work with the world, open-sourcing the design and the software, enabling others like myself to DIY and save about $250 off their (totally worth it) $500 hand-made instrument. While I lean toward the more hacktivismo open-source anti-capitalist side of things, I have appreciate the quality that they have been able to achieve, and if anyone deserves to profit off of a creation, its them.

But, I can only speak from others’ experiences as I have yet to hold a ‘real’ monome in my hands, instead working with an arduinome that I assembled last summer. I think I was one of the first few to have a completed arduinome up and running, although there aren’t a whole lot of them in existence yet. And why? Because building this thing is not easy! It probably took me over a hundred hours total, including the time I had to resolder half the breakoff board connections because I read an old diagram, and having to try and reglue the boards twice (never did get them to stick together right, anyway). But all in all, it was worth it.

Now I get to participate in a truly unique community. There are some seriously geeky musicians out there, and they have been writing amazing code, all of which I can use for free. Unfortunately, with the advent of Max for Live, this might not be true anymore. Nonetheless, I stand on the shoulders of giants when I load up mlr and soyuz and polygome.

In about of week the MCRPv2 will be over, so I really need to get on mangling those samples up. I’m probably going to try for a non-monomey sounding track, instead chopping up the clips to make some tech-house style music. I’ll post the results here, as well as another entry on the monome and my workflow.

As someone who enjoys making music, its so easy to fall into the trap of endlessly pursuing new equipment. “If only I had the Dave Smith Rackmount Poly Evolver, then my leads would really shine…” This sucky phenomenon is often referred to as “gear lust”.

As I started getting into music production, I pirated a copy of Ableton Live as well as some VSTs like Massive and Absynth, and started making… something. Almost entirely it sucked. But then, I figured I would wait until I got a midi keyboard, and then I would really be rocking. So I got the keyboard, and made some more music and it still was pretty awful. So then I waited until I got an LSDJ and a prosound-modded gameboy. And I still sucked. THEN, I found out about the Electribe Series from Korg, and the Kaossilator, and the Kaoss Pad, so I waited until I got all of those. And then I was getting better.

But it sure wasn’t the equipment that was helping. In fact, every time I got new equipment and VSTs, sure the sounds were original. But maybe that wasn’t what I was looking for. I honestly have no idea how to create patches from scratch on a 6 Oscillator synth. But using some free VSTs like the U-No-6 I am getting those oldschool house and techno sounds that I have been looking for for so long. I have sold off most of my equipment, and now just use my Arduinome and a midi-keyboard. Sure, a full-size midi keyboard would be nice, but for now, the limits I have are certainly improving my technique rather than restricting.

The incredible amount of electronic music out there uses few samples for a reason. Today we are spoiled by a seemingly infinite amount of instruments, and you can get amazing sounds out of modern VSTs with a single keypress. But now that I am working from the basics, my productions speak for themselves, and I can honestly say that it is me writing the music, not a sound designer from Native Instruments.

I did a short “tenminmix” for YouTube today. Since I’m kind of staying indoors alot in this Toledo winter, it’s tough to keep up on music for me. Usually I’ll put a couple of albums on the iPod and try and digest them away from the computer before I start mixing them. But anyway, this mix was recorded live with my arduinome interfaced with the pages app and Ableton Live.

Marek Bareza created an amazing, free groovebox app for both the iPhone and for Mac OS X 10.5.  It’s a really fun little program named Thump, reminiscent of a Korg Electribe stripped down to the bare essentials.  I made a screencast of me playing with some really simple patterns in a Detroit Electro style.

Easterislandhead monomemix typhoon season 09 by easterislandhead

My latest mix, made in Japan around the typhoon season that kept us locked indoors for a good week. Recorded live into ableton with the monome app Pages.