Discover a new instrument in this live-stream and learn their design story.

Based in Tallinn, Estonia, the Mash Machine team has put together a kit version of the Reactable. While it looks similar to the Barcelona instrument, the software and sound engine is different. Mash Machine is designed as a social instrument, playing and meshing loops as physical objects are drawn onto the board.

Meet the founders in this live-stream and learn more about the technology and design process.

Participate and build your own Mash Machine loops!

Create loops and send them to Mash Machine at hello@mashmachines.com, they will be used during the presentation! Detailed instructions on producing content for Mash Machine – here

https://www.facebook.com/TheMashMachine

https://www.youtube.com/user/MashMachines

Sound designer and musician Stefano Lucato started creating solo string libraries in 2003, and has been on a quest ever since to create the most accurate reproduction of acoustic instrument sounds, to be available in plug-in format. He teamed up with software developer Emanuele Parravicini to build a technology that they used together to release software versions of nearly all orchestral instruments.

Stefano and Emanuele created Audio Modeling in 2017, and run the business from a small village in Lombardy, Italy, between Milan and Lake Como. Their software instruments are used all over the world by composers and producers in the studio, as well as live.

On the 18th June, I will interview Emanuele Parravicini about Audio Modeling’s journey and projects, and we’ll hear demonstrations of the instruments live. Tune in on Facebook and YouTube.

If you’ve been making music for more than 15 years, you might remember the first touch screen controller destined for music application, Jazz Mutant’s Lemur. Originally launched in 2005, the Lemur was a highly customisable multi-touch screen controller, designed to create your own control user interface. The Lemur offered high definition of control by sending data over OSC, an audacious move that no major MIDI controller manufacturers ever dared to make.

I won’t dive too much in the story of the Lemur, Peter Kirn did a great job at writing its obituary 10 years ago, and you can find it here. Suffice to say that it found its demise shortly after the launch of the iPad in 2010.

Pascal Joguet was the founder of JazzMutant, and the Lemur wasn’t the last design he had in him. A few years ago, Pascal co-founded Joué, aiming to create expressive instrument with a playful design, to lower the barriers of music production.

With a successful Kisckstarter campaign on the way (ending 9th June), Joué will be launching the Joué Play and accessories in October 2020. On Monday 8th June, we will host Pascal Joguet for a livestream, where he will retrace the story of his designs in the past 20 years. Here’s the Kicktstarter video of the Joué Play.

Tim Exile has worked with live looping and sampling as an artist for a decade before building his own plug-ins, released by Native Instruments. His unique methods and concepts developed for live performance inspired him to build a music making flow, Endlesss, that would allow musicians to create music collaboratively.

Tim and the Endless team are preparing a special announcement on 2nd June. Our session takes place two days after, where Tim will share his journey from musician to entrepreneur, and the vision that led him to create the Endlesss app.

About Tim Exile

Musician and technologist Tim Exile founded Endlesss to bring the joy of spontaneous collaborative creativity to music-making in the way TikTok and Instagram did with other media. These platforms empowered their users to create regular short-form work in an open social space.

As a seasoned musician and producer, Tim missed the elements of spontaneity, creativity and community in his long solo studio sessions. He set out to develop his ‘Flow Machine’ instrument for electronic improvisation which would become the DNA of Endlesss. Tim saw the potential of what he’d built to unlock a new purpose for music-making – a fast-paced, live-action, game-like alternative to the complexities of music production and the competitive music industry. Tim has developed software instrument products with Native Instruments and released records on Warp Records. He’s performed live in every continent with his ‘Flow Machine’, collaborated with a diverse range of artists such as Nile Rodgers, Imogen Heap and Beardyman and has spoken multiple times at TED and TEDx conferences about music and improvisation.

Download Endlesss here (iOS only)

We cover Max/MSP and Jitter a lot, as it is the most popular visual programming environment, especially if you want to hack audio and video in your own way. But it isn’t the only visual programming language out there. We found out recently about Tweakable, and it turns out to be quite remarkable.

First, it is entirely online. No downloads, no sign-up, the URL above takes you directly to a web page, where Tweakable runs. You might think that you are launching a video when you click on the usual triangle, but in fact you’re turning the engine on, and everything turns out to be editable. And you can build a user interface, too!

I’ve managed to extract an example with Julian’s help, see below. The original patch is available here.

[Update] Julian has added a share option that exports the code of a patch for easy embed. Wow.

Tweakable has a collection of simple examples to get you started, such as the one above, and it can get pretty complex. It’s made for musical applications so it has examples of algorithmic compositions, canon, fugue, jazz etc.

It gets better. It also supports video, through a similar patching system. The possibilities are super interesting. You can design your own audio/video project and encapsulate it onto your webpage, and visitors can also experiment with it.

The author of this software is Julian Woodward. Based in Britain, Julian (Visual Systems Ltd) began developing Tweakable five years ago as a side project, and is now working on it full time. Julian will join us for a first public discovery of Tweakable on Monday 18th May. Ask questions on the live chat or on the forum.