I wrote a python script last night for the FBV Shortboard MKII that lets me control live with my FBV.  It is based very heavily on the work of Hanz Petrov who has done so much work documenting the LiveAPI that the code is pretty trivial to write now.  My code draws a red box around the tracks I am working with exactly like the APC40 does, and basically makes the FBV a physical extension of what is going on in Ableton Live.  This basically gives me the ability to create snapshots of all of my virtual instruments, mixer settings, etc. with Kapture, and then I can stomp on a pedal to switch between them.  My hands are free to play instruments, and my feet control Ableton.  Pro tools may be the industry standard, but this flexibility and stability makes it feel like a dinosaur.  I can do almost anything I can think of with this software.  It’s incredible.  Python is kind of a glue language, and that is exactly how I used it.  I glued some hardware to a neat Max/MSP app and have something better than what I was trying to write earlier.  I learned a lot writing my old setup though so it isn’t a total wash.

This functionality has obvious live music implications, but it turns out that it is so efficient that I can probably use it when recording and mixing too.  I barely have to touch my laptop which is awesome.  I am now working on getting my Maschine integrated with everything and I should have a really flexible setup with a pretty minimal effort.

I am cleaning up the code now and I am going to try it out over the next few weeks.  I’ll post the code if anyone wants it, but for now I am going to play with it a bit first to make sure it all works as expected.

I built a MAX/MSP patch for MAX for Live that will allow you to use the ddrum4 hi-hat controller with basically any drum sample library you can find.  This may not sound like a big deal, but this controller came out in ’94 and has been discontinued for years despite it kicking the shit out of every controller before or since it was created.  The patch does what it does by taking the CC:4 messages that the ddrum4 uses to determine hi-hat position to control which note actually gets sent to the drum sample library you are using.

You tell it the closed note for the hi-hat, the open-hat note, set the threshold you want to use, and it does the rest.  You can see your pedal position on the Hi-Hat Current Value slider and you can see what note it is sending to your drum sampler in the Output After Processing keyboard.

What this means is that you can use the ddrum4 hi-hat (which is my favorite hi-hat controller ever made, suck it Roland) to control whatever sample library you use without having to do all kind of insane configuration of your drum library.  I got sick of using BFD2 and jumping through hoops to get it to work and then having it all be for nothing if I wanted to use kontakt or some other library that had standard keyboard mappings.  You use this, set up your ddrum4 brain to send regular keyboard mappings, and rock out with your cock out (as much as you can playing midi drums in your bedroom).

At some point I plan to had another feature so you can get the tones of playing the hat with just the pedal with no stick.  It kind of works right now, but it could be better.  I was going to program it to do a splash as well so that if you stomp it and release it real quick it will make a sound.  I’ve found though that it already does that like a real hi-hat with the existing code because it’s using a real hi-hat stand and the abrupt stop of the pedal is what causes the splash… yet another perk of the ddrum hardware.  It just works.

Here is a screenshot of the actual “code” and here is the actual code if you are one of the 10 people on the planet who still use this hardware and want to use it with Max for Live.  Good luck and let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

I’ll come out and say that I am not a big fan of Microsoft on a lot of things; however, Vista does kick ass. The people whining about how it is slow and doesn’t run on their ancient computer need to suck it up. It wasn’t built for old computers. If you have an old computer then stick with XP. XP is solid. Run Ubuntu if you want, it’s cool too (if you don’t need exchange and don’t mind spending time getting it set up to do what you need to do). If you have the means though, Vista kicks ass. It runs fast as hell on my laptop. It’s snappy. It looks good. Gadgets are way cooler than I thought they would be. It’s just good.

I do a lot of development in Python using PyQt for Gui design and Eclipse as an IDE and I have not had a single problem with any of it. It all runs great, it looks good (a testament to Qt as well). I don’t know what else to say. I am pretty critical of software and gadgets that make big promises and then punk out on them and so far Vista hasn’t pissed me off. People complain about it always asking permission to do things; however, that only happens when an app is doing something it probably shouldn’t be. Well written apps behave. If I could talk Microsoft into changing anything it would be the way the networking configuration is set up. Opening 5 windows to change my IP is a drag; however, how often do I really need to do that?

Anyway, since Microsoft is building an entire ad campaign on this idea I am not going to go into tons of detail as to why I am happy with Vista. I suppose I have been so busy getting things done that I haven’t had time to write up anything on Vista. That is a good sign. Microsoft seems to be on track and lately they are coming around to the open source community (ironpython actually works, they are throwing money at apache, etc). Microsoft out from under Bill Gates might be a company that people get can excited about without feeling dirty.

These is the first of two examples:

Promotional materials that come with the Hula Chair say that a “fat waist and belly are caused by the lack of sports and accumulation of fat on these parts.” That is exactly my problem: No sports and fat on my waist have resulted in, well, a fat waist.

This one is pretty good too:

But working your muscles isn’t supposed to be comfortable, right? That’s the point. No pain, no gain.

I’m just not sure a diaper rash is the right kind of pain. One of the days I tested the Hula Chair I wore a skirt with a rough texture. Add the friction of an hour’s worth of gyrating movement on the chair’s seat and a little sweat and the next morning I was digging through a cupboard for an old jug of baby powder. Clothing wasn’t on the manufacturer’s list of 27 “safety points for attention,” but it did warn away those with “serious bleeding wounds,” people with “equipment trapped inside” and “persons that need a rest cure” from using it. Also, stay off it when you’re wet. Word to that.

Awesome article with the icing on the cake being the sweet video of this poor girl getting her ass kicked by the chair.

1. Why can’t anyone build a portable media player that is both easy to use, elegant, and not crippled by DRM or tied to crappy software in some way?  I have a tiny Samsung flash based player that is smaller than the ipod shuffle, has an lcd, lets me listen to the radio, lets me record the radio if I want, and allows me to load mp3s on it without using itunes or anything else.  I love it.  It is ridiculously complicated for what it does though.
2. Ipods are cool for being severely limited in what apple allows you to do with them; however, you have to have itunes in order to use them (unless you want to hack it and make it more complicated).  Itunes would be cool if it didn’t require me to do a 70MB download every time I open it.  Oh yea, and itunes is packaged with Quicktime and now Safari.  If you want one of the three and not the others then you have to jump through hoops.  That’s retarded.  I have actually made a conscious effort to not use apple products anymore because of this seemingly minor complaint.  I can’t tell you how calming it has been.  I actually payed $20 for winamp and every time I open it and it doesn’t comsume all of my computers resources and tell me it needs to update I smile.
3. Another piece of software that loves to update is Adobe Acrobat.  This one is unforgivable.  There is no reason that this ridiculously enormous program should borg my computer immediately on boot up and require as much interaction as it does.  Every time I need to open a pdf file I have to close or acknowledge 3 or 4 dialog boxes worth of crap.  I uninstalled it and am running a program called Foxit Reader.  It is everything Acrobat should be.
4. Where is the software for Blackberries that can stream internet radio and Pandora?  I know you can show me examples of it but it won’t be easy to get running on a blackberry.  Thus far I have found nothing that actually works.  Why is everything hard to do on cel phones for that matter?  What a sea change it would be if cel phone companies got the networking in place to compete with cable companies for streaming media and providing internet.  Oh that is right, Cel phone companies want complete control over what I do with my phone that I pay for and the software and services that I pay for and are willing to cripple their product to protect that.  I pay for it jackoffs, let me do what I want with it and let developers build cool software that will do what I want to do.  That brings me to Comcast.
5. Comcast throttles my internet that I pay $50 a month for on top of the other $150 I pay for other services.  I get 300kbps uploads for about a minute before it throttles back to 45kbps.  I hate Comcast for this.  It makes it very hard to do my job which often requires uploading of very large files.  I am leaving these bastards the instant I have another option (cel phones should be able to stream video and do internet by now and it should be easy… cables companies should be scrambling to keep customers and I look forward to the day when they have to be nice to me because their competition is putting them out of business).
6. Logitech Squeezebox is a cool idea.  It is completely overpriced and starts chopping audio and becoming unresponsive after a few hours.  My wife’s salon had what should have been the perfect device.  Logitech support blamed the router.  It’s an internet device guys, you better have the router thing sorted out, especially when all you’re doing is streaming audio.
7. Digidesign’s 002 is a wonderful piece of hardware if you use ProTools.  If you want to use any other ASIO software on it though you’re in for frustration.  I tried using Ableton Live 7 through it and couldn’t get the clock to stay constant.  It jumped around constantly while recording and the latency had to be up really high to even get it to behave a little bit.  I tried it with 2 different other ASIO firewire devices and could set the latency to 128 samples without so much as a hickup.  Why do companies insist of crippling their product in some way if you use it with another vendor’s product?  I will be weaning myself from ProTools over the next year.
8. All virus software is worse than the viruses they try to stop.  They don’t actually do anything and they slow down people’s computers to where they are nearly unusable.  I run windows XP.  I have been running it on at least 3 computers in my house for almost 7 years.  I’ve never had a virus.  I’ve had some spyware but the security holes in browsers that caused that have been fixed.  People should quit buying this crap learn how to identify shady sofware and not install it.

That is all I can think of off the top of my head that has annoyed me lately.  As I think of more I will post them.  Maybe I’ll post a list of software and gadgets that kick ass too.  Feel free to post about products that don’t do what they should.