We showed off our controllers at a party on Friday the 15th, called Wham Bam Thank You Namm, put on by some friends in downtown LA. There are a couple of pictures from a slide show in the LA Weekly website that encapsulate what we are trying to do:

Finally, it’s not clear in either picture, but I’m also doing visuals above the stage using, you guessed it, an Ohm64.
This all made me very happy that the versatility of MIDI control, and our attempts at “ambiguous design” is providing a whole variety of expression and possibility. Keep it up, and if you’re doing something cool, be sure to put it in our user projects section for all to see!

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uncategorized by Peter

Recently we created a wood enclosure for superstar controllerist musician Molder. I first met Moldover in 2007 or so in NYC at a Handmade Music event. At the time he was hacking apart other controllers to perform his music and I have been following him ever since. Last year at NAMM I had the opportunity to see an early prototype of the Mojo controller, and offered to help out any way that we could. At a local event here in NJ Matt asked if we could make the bodies for his controllers and we were happy to oblige.

Moldover’s performances are about instrumentation, physical interaction, and performance. Having a controller that performs and looks like an instrument is the why we started making controllers ourselves, and the reason I started Livid in the first place. Having a controller made out of wood really adds the growing concept and perception of controllers as instruments. Some would argue that guitars are made out of wood for sound not just ascetic, but I disagree. It wouldn’t be very sexy to see B.B. King playing a headless Steinberger (though they are still made out of wood) so guitarists have a plethora of amazing designs to choose from, so why shouldn’t we? I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Dick Boak from Martin Guitars a few years ago at CMJ who designs the signature series guitar and admire not only the aesthetic of his designs, but the ergonomic thought that goes into creating a beautiful instruments that are designed with the artists playing style in mind.

The body is made from mahogany and milled using our CNC machine and finished with a VOC free water based clear coat. This is the same style finish that is on our controller line, and  is created made with the same techniques that go into guitar building.  Last week at NAMM we performed at an after-party where Moldover was performing and managed to shoot some video. *Note the audio isn’t great but you get the idea.

For more info visit on Moldover and to order his Mojo controller visit moldover.com

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news by Jay

For my video set at Friday’s party (see pvs. posts), I’ll be using an extension I built for CellDNA. It produces minimalist animations in OpenGL, all controlled w/ the Ohm64. This looks cool here, but it’s going to be GREAT projected large, with loud, strange music! The advantage to embedding the patch in DNA is that I can then twist the animation with DNA’s effects…

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Just a VST jam I had on the Ohm64 a few days ago. Sorta falls into the “acid breakcore” genre i guess.

This post was submitted by hitori tori.

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projects by hitori tori

Soon we will begin public beta testing on our ControllerDIY board. The direct wiring to the board testing seems to be working as expected. You can wire 64 analog controls, 16 buttons, and 14 LED’s right to the board (ribbon cable method preferred). This is a class compliant MIDI device, USB powered with MIDI in and out jacks. For a demo I wired a slide potentiometer to the board. I tried to make it short, but I wanted to explain a few things in the intro, skip to 2:47 where the wiring demo begins if you want to get right to the point.

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news by Jay