The getting started manual for EVOLVOR is now available To view the manual click here: http://www.percussa.com/manuals/evolvor/

EVOLVOR is a new app which we’ve created to link AudioCubes to Low Frequency Oscillators or LFOs. When you put the AudioCubes together the associated LFOs will interact to create 4 continuously changing signals which can be sent as MIDI CCs to any synth or effect, hardware or software. By changing the placement of AudioCubes and number of AudioCubes in the cube network, you can influence the resulting MIDI CC signals.

To have a complete overview of what you can do with EVOLVOR, check out the manual for EVOLVOR

You can request a download for EVOLVOR here

Please help us improve EVOLVOR and fix bugs by posting them as comments on the manuals page.

We’ve received a great video from Dr. Gregg Cannady, music teacher at the STEM Magnet Lab School at Colorado. Since almost one year, Gregg is using the Percussa AudioCubes and Mark Mosher’s 9BOX methodology in his music class. The students are thrilled about the AudioCubes, as Dr. Gregg Cannady explains in the video:

“We program the AudioCubes to let them do what we want, and that can be to kick off sound clips…It is definitely problem-based learning. It can be very high tech, if the kids are ready for that, or it can be very simple.”

“The kids can go with their phones and record something, and email me a sound clip, and I can drop it into this computer program, and we can build a composition around it. They seem to be very drawn to this technology. It somehow peeks their interest.”

For those of you who don’t know what STEM schools are, STEM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. STEM schools are public schools which are becoming more and more popular in the US. The focus of the school is on experiential learning, problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and expanding cross-curricular skills. They want to challenge the students, system and the methods, like Dr. Gregg Cannady says in the video.

It is a public school where children are selected based on a lottery system. Students are not tested, they’re just “drawn” as one of the teachers explains in the video.

Check out the video, and listen to what teachers and parents are saying about the STEM Magnet Lab School. The Percussa AudioCubes are shown throughout the whole video, and in detail at 8:51.

More information about the STEM Magnet Lab School:
website: stem.adams12.org

Related blog posts:
9BOX methodology: AudioCubes setup created by Mark Mosher
Mark Mosher’s 9BOX System for AudioCubes a hit in local school

Kim Pedersen, a musician from Denmark active in ambient music has been working on an installation project involving 12 AudioCubes in sensor mode. In case you missed the original story, you can read more here

Kim Pedersen reached out to Nick Rothwell from Cassiel to develop a custom Max/MSP patch to power the installation, and Nick reached out to me for some help with hooking up 12 AudioCubes to the patch. Nick Rothwell has been working with both MIDIBridge and the OSC server in the project, which also involves Ableton Live for playing back sounds and multiple PCs and Macs.

Because MIDIBridge only supports up to 4 cubes connected via cables to a computer, I started considering adding support for more than 4 cubes in MIDIBridge, especially since other artists such as Mark Mosher, the creator of 9Box for AudioCubes and active electronic musician and blogger, have asked for support as well. So here it is, MIDIBridge with support for up to 16 AudioCubes!

Download links for MIDIBridge2 for 16 AudioCubes (r39):

MIDIBridge2 (Mac OSX) (r39)
MIDIBridge2 (Windows) (r39)

About Kim Pedersen:

Primarily Kim Pedersen works with electronic and organic elements in the music, which often serves as a catalyst for the listener to delve into inner worlds and afterthoughts. The music under this project has been developed since he was invited to play at The National Cathedral of Denmark for the first time, which was in late 2008. On december 13th, 2009, Kim performed live on national TV (broadcasted worldwide) during the official ceremony at the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which featured, amongst others, The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu and Archbishop Rowan Williams.

Read more about Kim Pedersen’s work at http://www.dreamhub.dk/

Looking for a basic Ableton demo you’d like to use with the AudioCubes? Download now our Operator Jam Sound Pack for AudioCubes (Sound Packs & Demos) (1.0)

This is the Ableton Live set used in the demo below

The set comes in 2 versions: one for people who have Operator and one version for people who don’t. It works with Ableton Live Intro 8 and up.

Paper Prototype Audiocubes (2004)

Did you know that Bert’s idea for creating the AudioCubes started long before founding Percussa?

While studying at Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Bert developed a strong interest in hardware, engineering, electronics, and human-computer interaction. Together with two other students at Stanford Bert created a customized dance pad and a laser harp, as part of one of the assignments at CCRMA.

The laser harp very similar to Jean-Michel Jarre’s harp, but with multiple laser beams, distance sensors and special optics, giving you velocity, angle and distance, besides just a simple note-on and off.

This Laser harp project was a trigger for Bert Schiettecatte to continue this work and create his own musical interface, the Audiocubes.

In April 2004 Bert presented the concept of the AudioCubes at the CHI2004 conference in Vienna. The first prototype of the AudioCubes were used in an art installation created in collaboration with Peter Swinnen during the Champ D’Action Time Canvas festival.

prototyping system audiocubes

Bert spent several years on R&D to improve the prototype and to commercialize the product. In January 2007, the AudioCubes were launched on the market and offered online on the website of Percussa.

In the meantime, several applications have been created for the AudioCubes. It is a professional musical instrument which can be used by live performers, sound designers, music composers, and developers making interactive applications. For each of these uses an application is available.

Percussa is still working very hard on R&D to create new products and applications, and to stay the leader in tangible interface technology.

Our friends from Image Line recently released a new version of FL Studio, their digital audio workstation software. They also released Harmor, an interesting additive synth which can use images to adjust the partials of the additive synthesis process. The images can be scanned from left to right with adjustable speed, creating interesting sound textures as a starting point.

FL Studio can be used easily with AudioCubes for composition, using our new IMPROVISOR software. In case you haven’t heard about IMPROVISOR, it’s basically a  composition tool that’s available for free from our website at http://land.percussa.com/audiocubes-improvisor and which let’s you enter timing and relative pitch patterns, and then combine these patterns in various ways to generate completely new melodies. Check out a video that was made several months ago using AudioCubes and Improvisor to generate four hand piano music:

IMPROVISOR works very closely with AudioCubes – the location of the cubes determines which semitone pattern will follow which other semitone patterns, so you can have a pattern moving up slowly while another one plays on top and uses the first pattern as a “root note” to start playing from, fro example. But patterns can also follow each other, generating chaotic melodies, still resembling the initial material you put into them. Or you can have a pattern follow multiple other ones, if you put cubes next to each other …

Last but not least the orientation (rotation) of the cube determines which timing pattern (velocities) is being used to play back the relative pitch pattern (each cube can have its own timing and pitch pattern).

To get started, download and install FL Studio from http://www.flstudio.com/ (free demo available). The software cames with a demo of Harmor, which we’ll be using as sound source.

When FL Studio opens, you’ll be presented with a screen with the pattern editor in the top middle, featuring 4 tracks of percussion sounds. We don’t need those, so you can right click the little green light to the right of each channel to select the 4 channels, and then go to the CHANNELS menu and select ”delete selected channels”.

Next, click on the single channel that is left, and choose Replace > Harmor. This will insert the Harmor synth on that channel. Finally, choose Insert > Harmor and this will insert another Harmor channel.

You should now have 2 Harmor channels in the pattern editor. You can open the synths by clicking on the channel. Do this for both, and go in the top left drop down menu of the Harmor screen that appears (little arrow pointing down), to select the presets “Soft & Warm” and “Piano”.

Next step is to set up the MIDI port such that FL Studio can be controlled by our IMPROVISOR software (and the AudioCubes). If you don’t have this installed yet, go to http://nerds.de/ and get the free LoopBe1 MIDI loopback device and install it.

In FL Studio, go to OPTIONS > Midi Settings and enable LoopBe1 as MIDI input port (click on it and then click the enable checkbox).

If you don’t have IMPROVISOR yet, go to http://land.percussa.com/audiocubes-improvisor and install it (it’s a free download). Next, start IMPROVISOR, select CUBE1 using the tabs near the bottom right of the screen and draw some patterns in the timing editor and the semitone editor at the top of the screen.

Set the MIDI output port to be LoopBe1 and the MIDI Channel to 1. Enable the cube player using the checkbox on the far left (ENABLE). Do the same for CUBE2, but set the MIDI channel to channel 2 this time, and set the cube to be a FOLLOWER and set it to FOLLOW CUBE 1.

This will make the melody playing on CUBE2 to follow the melody from CUBE1. The two melodies (played by CUBE1 and CUBE2 generators) will be sent on seperate
MIDI channels to FL Studio (each playing a different Harmor preset sound).

In FL Studio, select both green lights to the right of the channels, using the mouse (right click) such that they are both lit. You can now press the big RUN checkbox at the top in IMPROVISOR, and the melodies will start playing back on the Harmor preset sounds in FL Studio.

Finally, you can start recording the melodies generated by IMPROVISOR, using the RECORD button on the transport at the top middle of the screen. Select ”record automation …” such that FL Studio will record the incoming MIDI from IMPROVISOR. When the pattern loops around you can stop recording, and you should now have recorded your first pattern in FL Studio, with notes coming from IMPROVISOR.

Add percussion, and you’re ready to start arranging your song in the playlist window of FL Studio, using song mode. In case you just want to grab the FL Studio Song, I’ve included the file for download here:

Play back what I recorded from IMPROVISOR below:

Audiocubes improvisor FL Studio 10 harmor demo 1 by percussa

Please share your thoughts, comments and questions on this quick tutorial below!

We sometimes get questions from musicians, DJs, producers, … who wonder if the AudioCubes are something created specifically for DJs.

As a reminder, the AudioCubes are a hands-on professional hardware and software tool for people who create and/or perform art, whether it is sound, music or visuals, using hardware, software and computers.

The hardware consists of smart wireless blocks, with a powerful built in signal processing computer and light source, that tells your computer where they are located and what their orientation is relative to other blocks nearby, as well as other objects such as your hands or fingers.

Your computer then takes this information, and using our freely available software applications (see http://www.percussa.com/applications/) and possibly other software or hardware you already own, into sound, music, visuals, graphics …

So in short, yes, the AudioCubes can be used when DJing, but they are not just a DJ tool. They are a powerful hardware and software toolkit that can be used in sound design, composition, music production, live performance, DJing, VJing … See for example this video that touches on sound design:

Visual feedback in this video is controlled by the AudioCubes’ sensors and MIDIBridge. Or check out this video, created using our latest app IMPROVISOR for AudioCubes (also a free download, see http://land.percussa.com/audiocubes-improvisor):

It all depends on how many AudioCubes you have, what software you use with the AudioCubes, how you set them up and which creative ideas you bring to the table If you are a DJ and are using software such as Serrato Scratch, Traktor, Deckadance or perhaps something else, you can easily connect the AudioCubes sensors to effect parameters, instantly giving you control over four different parameters using only one AudioCube. The AudioCubes sensors are short in range, but high in resolution and speed, exactly what you need as a DJ (or live performer).

The recommended application to use with your DJ or live performance software is MIDIBridge. Check it out here: http://www.percussa.com/applications/midibridge/

In case you’re wondering about how a DJ setup might look like with AudioCubes, here is an example video created by Daniel from Elektron, our friends in Sweden:

Colour feedback is controlled by the MIDI clock, coming from the DJ software and being fed into our MIDIBridge software. If you are not a DJ, but a live performer, AudioCubes again easily fit into your work and setup, and really bring your performnace to the next level. Check out this video by Mark Mosher (visit his blog at http://modulatethis.com/)

So you see, AudioCubes can be used at any point in the creative process, from the very start when you are looking for new sounds and are in exploration mode, until the very end when you are on stage performing your music.

We work many years to create next-level technology, consisting of hardware, software, example sounds and templates, and you bring your creativity, create something unique and amazing using our tools, and build a strong fan following that brings rewards and fame

As you all know, you can use your AudioCubes on whatever surface you want. However, some surfaces can sometimes be a bit slippery. For instance when putting them on your keyboard or other instruments.

To give your AudioCubes some more stability, you can add rubberized shelf liner, cut it to small pieces and use double-sided tape. A simple solution from Mark Mosher to make your AudioCubes more sticky when using them on a slippery surface.

If you have any other tips you want to share on how you can optimize the use of your AudioCubes, let us know and we will share them with you on our blog.

We noticed some people are working on a Wikipedia page about the AudioCubes. We’re very grateful to all of you contributing to this wikipedia page

Of course, the Wikipedia page about the AudioCubes is not yet complete and needs some additional information. That’s why we would like to invite you to contribute to this page.

In case you would like to limit you contribution to evaluating the Wikipedia page about the AudioCubes you can give a rating based on 4 criteria (trustworthy, objective, complete, well-written) at the bottom of the Wikipedia page.

The past month quite a few people wanted to get a set of AudioCubes, so we ran out quickly. A few people ended up missing out.

The AudioCubes have picked up a lot of interest over the past year – our free software applications let you use the AudioCubes in many different situations, such as sound design, live performance, education and research, composition, visuals, …

The AudioCubes really go beyond the traditional MIDI control paradigm, and their flexibility and multiple applications make them pay off quickly, according to the many  professionals who use them and are regularly in touch with us (Percussa is a small company, so we can easily provide one on one support).

To give everyone a chance to get a set of AudioCubes, we’ve created a waiting list at  http://land.percussa.com/live-pricing

If you’re interested in a set of AudioCubes, I suggest you get on this list as soon as possible, to avoid missing out. If you have a few AudioCubes already and were thinking of expanding to a 4, 6 or maybe 8 AudioCubes set, now is the time to join the list!