Mike Abb, aka Abboriginal is an Austin, TX based producer, visualist, Livid Product Rep, and all around good guy. Join The Studio visited his studio where he gave them a tour of his setup using Ohm64 + Live + TouchOSC.
My dad was a dentist, but in his heart he was a tinkerer, and in his tinkering, he found various ways to improve his work. One of the fruits of his imagination was the “dental bed,” which was a replacement for one of the two chairs in the modest practice. Flat like a bed, with no articulating back, the advantage of the bed was that it had fewer moving parts, placed “the work” in a better place for him to get into the patient’s mouth, and better fit patients that were taller or wider than average. Having been to several other dentists since he retired many years ago, I still wonder why this was never really adopted as a standard.
One of my dad’s other inventions that did find wider acceptance and an actual market, was the color-coded instrument ring. Made of high-temperature tolerant silicone rubber, these rings came in seven different colors, and were used to color code instruments for easier tool arrangement by assistants, provide instrument sequences for different procedures, easier identification of tools, and made to resist the tortures of instrument sterilization. The realities of the modern marketplace tanked that business sometime in the 90′s for him, but the genius of color-coding has stayed with me.
So you can imagine that I’m pretty happy that we at Livid are announcing the release of the OhmRGB. We’ve had a lot of users ask for multiple LEDs for each button and custom LED layouts, so we’re really happy that we can offer not just two colors on each button, but seven, and done so in a way that is flexible, thoughtful, and useful. With seven color choices on each button, there’s a lot of efficiency to be gained in better presentation of information, reducing possible error during a critical live show, and increasing focus in the controller, erasing the barrier between ideas and reality.
Of course, it looks really bitchin’ too:
That’s a result of using the OhmRGBEditor’s LED panel, using a quicktime movie mixed with a scrolling message. HD, 3D, Cinema Display: that’s all really nice, but there’s still a lot of fun in 8×8 resolution and 3-bit color!
So what else can you do with the OhmRGB besides trip out on the pretty colors? Like its singled-colored brother, you can create different presets for the LED arrangements, and organize your buttons for better feedback for different songs, scenarios, or parts of a set. You could also create a “score” in the form of a quicktime movie, and let that play in the movie player, and dictate how you use the controller over time!
The most popular software among our user base is Abelton Live. It also has the most challenging control surface setup, at least when it comes to creating the sort of sophisticated controller and software pairing that our users want. With those things in mind, we started with a clean slate, looked at the various ways you can use a controller with Live, and created the three-page OhmModes Live Remote script. This lets you mix, play, and DJ with your Ohm controller, using the crossfader buttons to instantly re-map the Ohm to Live so it works as needed. It’s like having three controllers, without taking up all your studio space, and we’ve made the mapping pretty intuitive and easy, so it won’t take several trips to the manual to learn it.
We also get a lot of requests to customize and modify controllers for people. “Can you make me an Ohm, but with more knobs?”, “I’d love to put some touch strips on the Ohm”, “I need more controls for Sends and EQ” are among the popular requests. Sometimes we take these mods on, but we have a whole line of products in our Builder series for building your own custom controllers. We recently introduced the expansion jack on our block controller so users can expand it with additional analog sensors and foot controllers, without having to add another MIDI device to their setup. We’ve added this to the OhmRGB to further encourage experimentation and expansion of digital media controllers, and make sure that our users can fully express themselves and control their shows. With two jacks for off-the-shelf foot controllers, you can make your feet do some work, and stop wasting those valuable extremities for mere standing and dancing around! And with a ribbon cable and a few boards from our Builder series, you can knock out a special module that does that one thing that you REALLY need, and free up the entire controller for playing.
These first tools with the release of the OhmRGB are, of course, just a start. We like to keep our controllers “living” and will add to the arsenal of tricks with integration into other software products, like our own CellDNA, Propellerhead’s Reason, Native Instruments Tracktor, Renoise, and others. You can get started on playing with the RGB colors in Cycling74′s Max5 because our Editor is an open source Max patch. Our community of users will no doubt continue to spark our imaginations with clever uses and mappings. We can’t wait to see what happens when this controller starts to get into your hands, so, with that, I gotta end this wordy blog post and get back to work so we can start shipping!
We’ve been working with good people over at Liine for some controller/app integration, so when I saw this video from Ohm64 user Dudu Aram (aka Ali Disco B) using the Ohm64, Griid, and Live, I had some questions about integration. His mashups look well conceived and his setup is very compact. He’s using the Ohm64 as his customized “instrument”, which is precisely why we created it in the first place. I thought it might be beneficial for me to share our discussion publicly, and turn it into a QA session.
I recently saw your video mashups on the forums using the Ohm64. Looks like you were using Griid, and Live? Can you tell us more about your setup?
Well before that setup I tried a lot of different gear, especially controllers. I believe i found my favorite setup using a macbook pro running Ableton Live 8 (I like to use only original Live plugins to keep the computer in a good CPU usage), an M-box soundcard using just 2 outputs, and a controller. I love the Livid Ohm64 and the Ipad running Liine Griid. Sometimes i carry a synth with me. The Mopho Keyboard, or for smaller setups, the Korg Monotron.
How do you pick songs for your mashups?
The first thing is i need to enjoy the son. The second thing is a classic song for dancers to understand what a dj can do remixing the tracks live. Sometimes electronic music gets boring for me, and I like to mix it up with Hip-hop, rock’n'roll, pop, disco… and vice-versa. So i decide on tracks and chop only the cool parts that I like. I don’t need to play the full song, just my favorite parts. After that, i analyze the keys using “Mixed in Key” (www.mixedinkey.com).Before using Mixed in Key i used to find the key with the piano, which is a very slow process. So after choosing, choping the cool parts, and analyzing the keys, i like to make a very organized session in Ableton Live. The way I organize the songs it is very helpfull to see the songs on the Ipad running Griid. Sometimes i do need to remaster the pieces i’ve chopped. I like to “equalize” the songs with distortion and use very high compression, this is what makes old songs modern.
How does Griid interact with the Ohm64, or does it at all?
Before working with the Ohm64 i tried TouchOsc with an Ipad, which is really cool for knobs and faders, or note buttons. But when you use the buttons to play it like a drum machine or an MPC, the Ipad has latency. So, i prefer to use the buttons on the Ohm64 for the drum kits or fx i would play like a MPC because there’s no latency. Most of the people use those buttons to launch the clips. I like to work the fx and the percussions, or scratch songs in this space on my Ohm64. I like to launch my clips in Griid so i can read the name of the music I’m lauching. Most of my live technique takes place on the Ohm64, like live glitches, fx interaction, crossfades, etc… With these two controllers I recreate live remixes and mashups. Both controllers have very cool interactions on the stage. I don’t have problems with this setup running at the same time. It’s perfect.
What kind of controls are you using the iPad for vs. the Ohm64? How do you find the work flow between the two?
On the Ohm64 i just have controls for mix and fx. I can’t launch clips on the Ohm’s clip bank because i use the buttons for fx and work flow. With the Ohm64 editor i change the 32 central buttons for “Ctl” and the other 32 I still leave in note mode. In Ableton i did my macros with 8 fx chain for channels. So in the buttons 1,2,3,4, 9,10,11,12 (image 1) are the fx chain of my rack in Channel 1. For each of the 4 channels i have one fx chain with 8 fx to push buttons. (Image 2). In that fx chain i just turn on the fx when the button is pressed. When i release the button the fx stops. With this i can make live glitches with a lot of different fx, and play the fxs like ”percussion”, completely changing the song. The other 32 central buttons i use for samples, which can be drum kits, scratch sounds, or vocal pieces to play and record live loops. In the other side, the Ipad is very helpfull to find the clips I want to build my live mashups. Liine Griid is my sample library, and the Livid Ohm64 in my mixer and fx control.
Where can we see/hear more of your work?
I have this blog about technology, music, video, future, nature… http://alidiscob.com/ and I update it everyday. As Dj producer “Ali Disco B” you can find more things on Itunes, Beatport, and a lot of my tracks can be download for free here in my http://soundcloud.com/alidiscob . Also my Vimeo page http://www.vimeo.com/duduaram is where I upload things I do as Dj and commercially. In my http://www.youtube.com/alidiscob I have my test stuff like my video studies. I’m starting VJing on the side with my Dj gigs now. So I preparing my live shows using Ableton 8 and Modul8 (www.garagecube.com/modul8/) controlling via Ohm64. In these websites I will upload the stuff I’m producing right now. My page on http://www.facebook.com/duduaram is still pretty new. As you can see i have a life on the web where is easy to find me, so everybody can message me that i will reply.
We’ve seen a lot of iterations with mixing realtime audio and visuals in the past ten years. Our controllers for one are built as generic ”instruments” for media mixing, and there are many different uses from Live to Resolume. The marriage of visualist and musician in one software package (or one person) hasn’t really materialized on a large scale yet. Up to this point our own VJ software Cell and Cell DNA work well with our controllers and Live, but we wanted to take it a step further and make them work well in Live.
