Until about a month ago we used to have to go to a local waterjet company to have the face plates of the Ohm cut. We have been talking for a while about brining most if not all of our manufacturing in-house, but getting our own water jet just to cut faceplates didn’t seem to make sense. We already have one CNC machine to mill wood, plastics, and soft materials, and another to assemble printed circuit boards, but really had no way to cut metal. We talked last year about cutting metal with our wood cnc machine, but that would tie it up because metal takes a long time to mill using drill bits. It would also require a coolant system, so the moisture would not play well with our wood work. Travis came up with a solution and built us our very own metal milling CNC machine that we call “Metal Bot”.

Since we plan on cutting metals only on this machine it doesn’t really matter how long it takes to cut each piece. We are currently cutting the faceplates of the Ohm64 using aluminum in about 30 minutes. There is a nice timelapse of a faceplate being cut that can be viewed here. When we finally tweaked our machine to create very accurate cuts, I shot some video of Travis explaining how it works. In this video you can see the very first faceplate being cut for our prototypes, and Travis talking about it.

Since this video was shot we built Metal Bot her very own room, and I will shoot some production video of the production faceplates being milled.

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news by Jay

I’ve been working on an FM synth where all the functions map to the Ohm64.  You can activate different modules so the knobs are directed to that module (for example, if you activate the “modulation” envelope with a button on the ohm (or by clicking on a button on screen that isn’t in the picture yet), then the left sliders and knobs will control that stuff. Other knobs/sliders are fixed to reverb and the ADSR.  The end result is a highly sculptable sound. It is an FM synth,a sound I’ve always adored, and whose complexity born of a minimum of elements has always had a sort of natural beauty to it.  (For those not versed in the details of FM synthesis, here’s a pretty good explanation: http://insidesynthesis.blogspot.com/2008/02/episode-four-fm-synthesis-part-1.html)

I was recently blessed with the good fortune of seeing the inventor of FM synthesis, John Chowning, give a talk on a piece of music he has been working on over the past few years. The timbres and his enthusiasm motivated me to uncover some FM synthesis algorithms and try to make a good instrument with it.

The idea I’m working with for the Ohm’s grid is to split it up into a couple of regions.  The top part (maybe 4-6 rows) will be a 4(6?)-track sequencer.  The idea is that you can design a sound, play a note, then press a button in the sequence to assign that sound to the row, and that note to the sequence.

The bottom rows will be notes, like on a piano keyboard.  I’ve worked out a system of selectable scales so you can play the sound with whatever notes you want.  I mine a bunch of scale data so I have a massive amount of western scales available so you can select a scale and octave, and dump it to a row on the Ohm.

The end result of this work is….an original instrument designed for the ohm that showcases a number of possibilities (synth playing, sound design, sequencing, context-sensitive control [that is, being able to change what a slider controls without changing any MIDI mappings], melodic and timbral experimentation), all with supporting Max code for you to play with. It’s also a good platform for me to figure stuff out on the Ohm, as it contains so many elements in a relatively simple package.  

I can’t wait to post some videos of it in action!

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news by Peter