The great thing about making our own products in house is that we get to do whatever we want, and sometimes that means making design decisions because we think it looks cool. We recently purchased a few reels of bright red LEDs and decided they needed to be put on a controller. My dog Poquita (pictured below) spends most of her days sitting on my office chair and inspired the Diablo. She is a sweet dog who provides me with a steady supply of ripe red apples. This is a special edition block that we are only making a small run of.

The body is a new construction for the block, it is constructed from red dyed Mahogany and has a glossy VOC free clear coat.  The faceplate is cut from black anodized aluminum and only has 4 countersunk screws in the corner of the faceplate. You will notice that this is a new “frame” design so it allows us to shave a half inch of the total width and height, and the bottom of the Diablo is made of semi-transparent acrylic. Diablo is available now at lividshop.com while supplies last.

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After seeing a lot of discussions and misconceptions about the capabilities and features of the Brain, I decided to make a few small videos simplifying what you can do with the Brain. After we created the Brain we decided to create a line of do-it-yourself modular circuit boards as a lot of people wanted custom controllers with buttons, led, knobs, and faders. This really is only a small part of what you can do with the Brain. By itself the Brain can be used with foot pedals, touch sensors, motion sensors,  pulleys, wii remotes… The list goes on. You are only limited by your desire to experiment.

Recently I picked up a Roland DP-8 foot pedal and wired it to the Brain to work as a potentiometer. I am going to be building a new Viditar with the Brain, and want to add a bunch of  1/4″  jacks to use as controllers for effects. This will allow me to perform with my hands and feet at the same time. I made this simple video tutorial showing how to connect a foot pedal to the Brain. You could even make an entire controller with 64 1/4″ jacks, and have 64 pedals to play with at once. You’d need a lot of feet, but it illustrate the point that no matter how absurd your controller ideas are, the Brain can bring them to life.

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I realized that I had done a bit of recording of my video from last week’s zsalon here in San Jose when I came across the file this afternoon. I hadn’t really considered recording when I designed this add-on to CellDNA, so, of course, there’s something weird about it (too fast, only the lower left quarter was captured!), but it’s still pretty cool looking.
This is the result of a simple OpenGL and waveform animation program that I control with the Ohm64, and run the Max patch in CellDNA so I can use DNA’s effects. It’s too messy to share the patch right now, but I hope to break something out of it as a good example someday.
http://www.vimeo.com/9846138

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uncategorized by Peter

Today we announced our new product, Builder. Builder is a series of DIY parts and components created to assist musicians, artists, makers, hackers, or anyone looking to make their own MIDI controllers. I am particularly excited about this product because it is something we have been planning to do since we first started Livid in 2004. Before starting Livid I was just an artist with ideas on creating alternative interfaces, but I had zero experience with electronics and building. I started tinkering in college, creating multimedia installations with sensors and other physical controls using a DIY serial I/O board and Macromedia Director. I moved into MIDI when I created the 3rd version of the Viditar using Max/MSP, and that opened a lot of possibilities to work with other software and hardware. I could never really find a simple and easy way to connect components and parts together (well never a way that agreed with my wallet) so I would hack together parts from other controllers, keyboards, and electronics. I was also looking for something that would allow me to experiment with different controls but never had the resources to easily tinker.

Fast forward to 2007. We create the first Ohm with a board we intended to release as a DIY MIDI board but never released it as a standalone product. We were too busy with making our own products and never had the parts to spare. I also thought at the time that it still wasn’t easy enough to use, so we delayed the DIY project as we built up our production shop. Over the last few years we designed our MIDI boards we use in our second generation products (ohm64, block) with the intention of releasing it as a standalone MIDI Brain. At the same time we built our manufacturing shop out and added circuit board assembly machine, cnc machines, and an assembly line with talented like minded makers. I realized that we finally have the resources to create on demand products and that we needed to share these resources with the DIY community to make our Builder line easy to use and versatile.

So here is the fruit of these efforts… Livid Builder, centered around the Brain, a class-compliant, bi-directional, USB-powered MIDI device, and the BYOB (Build Your Own Board), a series of perforated modular circuit boards for buttons, knobs, sliders, and LEDs. Here is a brief overview of the products in video (which is part of our Quick Startguide for beginners).

We also sell various parts and components such as our rubber keypads, faders, and materials needed to create your own controller. More info can be found here. Happy building!

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Our dealer in the Netherlands, MIDI Amsterdam will be participating in Music Alive 2010.  Music ALIVE 2010 is a special EVENT around Computer Music products, Audio and Visual Performances. MUSIC ALIVE is an Open and FREE event for end-users, Dealers, Sales-crew, starting and professional musicians, producers, DJs

Come and see the latest products and technologies, soft and hardware, touch the latest Ableton controllers, watch the workshops and enjoy the music and video performances! Learn and share your experiences and enjoy an afternoon around friends in a relaxed atmosphere, that will give you inspiration for another year of creative flow…

Workshops, Exhibits, Music Performances:

ABLETON LIVE 8 – MAX FOR LIVE – PROPELLERHEAD REASON & RECORD – RESOLUME AVENUE 3 – JAZZMUTANT LEMUR (GARETH WILLIAMS) – DANKMAR KLEIN (ABLETON) – IK MULTIMEDIA (MATTHIAS ZALEPA) – SIMON GREY (PROPELLERHEAD) – CLINT MARANA (CROWDED BEATS) – BEN LIEBRAND – COEN MOLENAAR – EELCO TOPPER & PIM VAN HAM (KNOBSTICKER) – WICK VAN DEN BELT (WICKHOP) – SOUNDCLOUD – EAR PLUG – DOX RECORDS – DANCE TUNES- INTERFACE MAGAZINE – RØDE – CME – LIVID INSTRUMENTS – SAE INSTITUTE etc.

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