Moldover has made an appearance on MTV’s “How To Show”, showing off you how to turn an oxygen 8 or any other keyboard into your own expressive controllerist musical instrument. With only a handful of items you can easily find around the household and using the similar techniques to that used on his own Novation Remote-25 SL keyboard, Moldover shows in three simple steps how easy it is to become a controllerist armed with just a oxygen8 and a copy Ableton live.
Tag Archive for 'DIY Projects'
Our new dj tech tools mantra for this week is:
“we go through the annoying stuff so you dont have to”
That certainly applies to my current attempt to offer a simple, inexpensive midi controller that most people could find useful. In the end I succeeded, but it required some serious investigation and re-thinking the fundamental concepts. This design is not meant to be sold or duplicated but rather to show the basic steps required in building your own midi accessory or moding an existing controller.
Those touch sensors from the first DIY $100 controller didn’t work out so well- so the design has been updated with some good old knobs borrowed from a spare vci-100. I have filmed the DIY tutorial but editing is taking much longer than anticipated so the final step by step guide will be up on Monday. In the mean time that gives you a chance to go buy all the parts you want and plan your $100 controller over the weekend. Sliders, more buttons- its all game but try and keep it simple.
Bonus:
Those LEDS wont work with the HID interface device I eventually used for the project but I still found a cool way to wire them directly to the knobs so as the knob gets turned up-they get brighter. Its simple stuff but useful and fun to do, so you might want to pick up a few LEDS at the same time.
Have you found the perfect MIDI controller yet? Chances are the answer is “no,” and you can’t entirely blame it on the manufacturers either. In this fast-paced DIY world, where technology morphs at light speeds, big manufacturers’ R&D cycles will never be able to keep up with your imagination. So stop waiting around for a company to release the perfect controller, and make your own! You may be thinking, “That will take way too much time,” “I have no idea how to do that,” and, “Where would I start?” Those are all legitimate roadblocks, but with a little know-how and a soft push in the right direction, you may find it’s not as hard as you think. Here are two simple ways you can customize your own interface, depending on how much time you want to spend.
Hardware, software, your local grocery store- everything is going open source! Why not a dj midi controller? That’s what the guys at Aurora mixers thought, so they have created an open source mixer which you can build on or modify yourself.
Dj TechTools spoke with the Aurora Team last week about this new concept and this is what they had to say about the project: Continue reading ‘Open Source Midi Controller’
In the search for a perfect tactile button you need not look further than your local arcade. More than over 20 years of R&D by millions of teenage boys has proven arcade buttons to be reliable, fun and rapid fire fast. So its not surprising that the concept has started to take off after I posted my arcade button tutorial many months back. One of our readers duplicated the mod flawlessly and even added a few faders. MidiFidler is making a small run of arcade button midi controllers for the Dj TT community. Now I noticed this brilliant mixer based on the DIY MIDIBox64 kit that takes all of them to the next level.
Last month BentoSan posted a great tutorial about routing Traktor audio into Live in Windows. It’s here and I recommend you at least skim his article if you haven’t already read it, it has plenty of relevant links. Here is how to do exactly the same thing on a Mac, using free software.
What to expect:
- Routing of the audio of each Traktor deck into Live.
- MIDI clock sync from Traktor to Live. Allows to use Live VST beat synced. Allows to start armed clips in Live on the beat.
- Record your set in audio directly in Live.
- Low latency and excellent stability.
This has been tested on OS X 10.5.2, with Traktor 3.2.2 and Live 7.05. Hardware is a 2.14 GHz Dual Core iMac
What you need:
Continue reading ‘Smart Mixing Traktor into Ableton - 4 Mac’
The basic principles of this technique will not require a rocket science degree. I know we usually just turn over the TKS file but in this case I would like to walk you through the basics so you can learn the principles yourself. I was asked the other day “why guitar hero”? The answer is simple, its a medium that the audience can relate to. Tapping on arcade buttons or keyboards may look cool and in many cases work much better but unless the audience can understand and relate to what your doing, they just wont get it. At this point just about everyone has either seen or played guitar hero so when you bust it out in the club the learning curve just got a lot shorter.
This DIY mod wins several awards including: most useless mod, easiest to perform mod, and most instant gratification bang for your buck mod. Adding a pair of 7″ records to your vci-100 does not make too much sense as you loose functionality of the fine pitch faders, nearly 16 buttons and you must remove the input fader knobs. Then again, its fun to do and looks great. You can also fantasize what it might be like to actually have 7″ record midi platters which would be sick! Vestax briefly brought out a mock up of a single 7″ record midi controller with motorized platter and basic controls. It was a mechanical mock up that didn’t exactly wow the crowds at NAMM 2008 but I cant think of anyone that does not like 7″ records. So here are the basic steps required to add a few to your VCI-100.
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