Hey, just testing out a wordpress plugin I’m writing to embed etsy items into wordpress posts… it’s working pretty well, and there’s room for improvement, but here we go:
Beatseqr is an arduino mega based computer interface. It is aimed at electronic musicians and visualists. By itself, it connects to a desktop app that runs on mac or windows and can send out OSC messages to arbitrary network ports. However, combine beatseqr with a tightly integrated sequencer like Dajis Systems' Steppa (included in the price) and you have a powerful interface to create a MIDI loop which you can use to control sounds from pretty much any music software that accepts incoming midi data. We've tested it out with Logic, Live, Reason, Quartz Composer, Max/MSP, PureData, and Processing. It works great!
The source code for the arduino firmware, the processing app, and the max/msp patch are all available for you to modify, customize, and improve as your skills will allow. You don't have to be technical to use beatseqr, but it will certainly help if you're thinking about modifying the firmware. You'll be using the free and open source Arduino IDE to do that. And hey, you'll be getting an Arduino Mega that you can take out of the beatseqr hardware and use for whatever you want.
Loads of photos, videos, and a small but growing library of documentation is available on http://beatseqr.com
Notes about the photos... photos 1-4 are by myself, photo #5 is by my friend Donald Bell. Photo 4 is a size comparison next to a Roland TR909, but it's not included in this sale. Also, other photos feature laptops... they're also not included. Duh, right? :)
Shipping will be insured and with tracking numbers.
Here’s part 1 of 2 of our set from Radio Integrated… the first portion of the recording is a nice DJ set from Alixr, so check it out as well. Our portion begins with an interview with Sean Ocean, so check the waveform for the low part about 2/3 in..
our band Haptic Synapses did a live show using 3 beatseqrs at Radio Integrated in alameda on january 29th, 2010. Our friend Donald Bell stopped by for a test drive and took some nice photos, which are here:
Welp, we had a blast at our live set in Alameda at Radio Integrated, as usual. They’re awesome. We really appreciate them inviting us out to play and so generously giving us some time for an interview, too. Here’s part 2 of 2. Part 1 should be showing up soon.
I’ve changed the daily digest to a weekly digest. That should be much nicer.
I, like every blogger alive prior to the advent of Twitter and Facebook, am still trying to figure out how to keep my content on my site while participating in the modern age. So, it’s obvious that Twitter is a preferred mode of being pithy by many, and facebook is really where people I know go to comment on tweets, that seems to leave blog posts out in the cold to some degree, doesn’t it?
But, I’ve been craving a bit more than the short attention span that Twitter allows, and the overwhelming force of a thousand pieces of marginally meaningful information that facebook throws at you all day long… so if you want to participate everywhere, you have to learn how to be more prolific.
Right now, my brain is enjoying being able to say things without having to say it in 140 characters, and being able to string two whole sentences together without worrying about them showing up backwards from the intended order of meaning. It’s kind of sad to feel like you’ve fallen into such a restricted confinement, not by choice, but by the nature of the fact that everyone else is doing it. Oh well. I will say that twitter forces you to edit your idea to its core. That probably counts for something.
Joel is an old friend of mine from back when I lived in southern California and was going out with friends to listen to excellent DJs and stay up all night. Joel was one of those DJs. He was a trusted guide during an age of exploration of both music and mind. That was in the early 90’s and we’d lost touch until fairly recently. The internet makes it easy to reconnect, so I was really excited to see that he’s produced an awesome project for expressive musical performance that he’s calling AirDeck. Check out his website for all of the details: http://mojosdojo.com/
Behold:
What I love about this project is that he’s taken the concept beyond an initial first step of a direct manipulation input for tone control to being an abstract control for arbitrary expression. As you can see in the video, he starts off doing a lovely Star Trek theme excerpt, and then moves on to using the controls to manipulate the forward and reverse velocity of an audio sample for a DJ scratch type of control. It’s not hard to imagine a system like this being used by dancers, for instance, to collaborate with sound artists to create new types of hybrid performance art.
It’s the kind of thing science fiction movies told us the future would be like, but realized now.
I've been hurt by jj abrams before, and I learned my lesson. that's all I'll say. 
Bravo, man! 
