When: Thursday 20th February 2014, 7:00pm
Where: Troyganic 132 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DY

About Jean-Philippe
Jean-Philippe Rio-Py is known as a fantastic pianist, chosen at a young age to be a featured Steinway artist. He has performed at the Royal Opera House and opened the first night re-launch for the prestigious Arts Club in Mayfair. Jean-Philippe has composed music for labels such as Air-Edel, EMI and Warner, while some of his other works have recently been broadcasted worldwide, and featured in ad campaigns by Hulu, Samsung, Mercedes and many more.

The Project M
As a composer for films and production music, Jean-Philippe encounters the limitations of software instruments to reproduce the sounds of acoustic instruments, in particular string instruments. How to reproduce a string sound without hiring a violinist and going to the studio? Despite the great progress in digital audio to replicate acoustic sounds, it is still possible for a trained ear to distinguish a digitally created string instrument from a recording of the real instrument.

Jean-Philippe is in the early stages of addressing this problem, not by creating another software, but by creating a hardware to perform and amplify string sounds. Using real strings, a robotised bow and plectra, Project M will receive MIDI instructions to mechanically play string sounds, allowing for exact reproduction of acoustic recordings of strings.
Jean-Philippe has the passion and drive to take this project forward and he’s going to present his project to the Music Hackspace community, to receive feedback and create connections to build this ambitious music box.

On Thursday 12th of September, we will receive the founders of two recent successful Kickstarter projects (TouchKeys and The OWL), and discuss the next phases in their project. They will share their experience at starting the project, what it’s been like during the fund raising campaign, and finally, what’s next, now that they have the money. It is an opportunity for these two projects to find support and resources among the audience, and for the audience to get insight into community entrepreneurship.

As usual, our events are free to attend and open to everyone.

As the Music Hackspace returns to its welcoming Troyganic Café in East London after a month at the Barbican, it will also be an opportunity for multiple performances following the Kickstarter seminar.

WHERE: Troyganic, 132 Kingsland Road, London (near Hoxton station)
WHEN: Thursday 12th of September, 19:30 (seminar), 21:30 (performances)

SEMINAR SPEAKERS
Andrew McPherson, who recently successfully reached his goal to fund the production of TouchKeys. Andrew raised £46k out of his £30k target. You can find the project here on Kickstarter).

Guillaume Le Nost, part of The OWL team that smashed their target of £7k with an impressive £33k funding in late July 2013. You can find the OWL project here on Kickstarter.

PERFORMANCES
From 21.30 till 00:00

21.30 Bas Vellekoop http://www.basvellekoop.com/

22.05 diarmo Live Set. www.diarmo.co.uk

22.40 Tom Webster https://soundcloud.com/tamagazzi

23.05 Doctor Benway and Lady Hackspace A/V set

and on visuals a set each
Joe Catchpole
Blanca Regina

In the interludes raxil4
with intermission machines

After a month spent at the Barbican center, to where we moved all our events and activities for the whole month of August during Hack the Barbican event (which was a great success) we are back to Troyganic and we are not slowing down!!!

WHEN: Thursday 5th of September, 7pm
WHERE: 132 Kingsland Road, London, Troyganic (in the basement). Tube: Hoxton

The first event will feature a presentation of ‘Plug + Play’ system by Neil Merry , a recent graduate from the Design Products Course at the Royal College of Art.

‘Plug + Play’ is a new way to interact with music production software. Traditionally, electronic music requires the performer to hunch behind a laptop, synthesizer or drum machine pushing buttons and twiddling knobs. Through a series of clip on sensors and interactive lights, this portable ‘toolkit’ translates on-stage actions into audio and visual effects. It bridges this gap between the static production of digital sounds and the front-of-stage energy created by live amplified instruments. Focusing on artists that cross the boundary of music producer, DJ, and live band, Plug & Play transforms a microphone stand into a dynamic music controller, a maraca into a heavy bass line or a raised hand into a pulsating synth wave.

preview video: https://vimeo.com/68624946

 

 

To celebrate 2 years of community building, this event will showcase 2 projects supported by members of the Music Hackspace, and discuss the emergence of entrepreneurship within hackerspace communities.

WHERE: Barbican Free Stage, Penthouse 4C
Ground level by the lake side
Nearest Tube: Moorgate
Entrance by Silk Street

WHEN: Thursday 29th of August, 7:00pm

PROGRAM: The OWL, TouchKeys and a Panel

The OWL: a programmable guitar pedal. This project led by Martin Klang has raised over 400% of its target on Kickstarter and is now in production. Martin had previously released limited editions of modular synthesisers. The OWL allows to program and load your own effects onto a guitar pedal. Martin will present the OWL, the process that led to its Kickstarter campaign and the next steps of the project.

TouchKeys: This project led by Andrew McPherson is currently live on Kickstarter and to this day has reached 97% of its £30k target. The TouchKeys are a DIY sensor kit for adding multi-touch sensing to any piano keyboard. Andrew will demonstrate the TouchKeys and retrace 4 years of academic research leading to his Kickstarter campaign, and the next steps of the project.

PANEL
Martin Klang and Andrew McPherson will be joined by Charles Armstrong, founder of the Trampery and producer of Hack The Barbican, for a session on hacking, entrepreneurship and communities, moderated by Jean-Baptiste Thiebaut, co-founder of the Music Hackspace.