days off don’t mean brain/network/music off

those precious days will be used carefully for:
- taking care of my family
- making music
- designing courses
- designing workshops packages
- making music
- designing THE gear
- making music
- designing the protodeck workshop for Marseille and translate it for New York
- making music
- design a sound performance with audiocubes
and probably more.

it can sounds like if they wouldn’t be days off, but they will.

I’ll answer by email & be connected too

Does Griid fill the gap between humans & Ableton Live software?

With the iPad release and the huge number of possibilities with it, surfing the web & read book, but more as a multitouch/big screen hardware, came Griid.

Griid is an iphone OS application that provides clips matrix control for Ableton Live.

It uses Ableton Live Control Surfaces scripts (of course) to connect to Ableton Live through the Grid connector (it is described here)

So it could be a nice add-on, if it was a little bit more open and not only business made-for…
It is a bit annoying to see it is available only for MAC OSX.
Probably to close tighter the stuff.

Developping interface for Ableton Live is very easy (if you know how to do that, of course)
I mean, Ableton provided a FULL official API to do that… controlling parameters, read the clip matrix, interact with clips even notes through max for live.

Griid can be understood as a complete package for people who doesn’t want to build anything else than music (and spend money for that without doing anything)
It is very respectable.

But (the famous but… there is always one But or even more) really… it is done to constraint more the system, the interface design etc.
You buy it, you use it. You want more, you can’t customize it.
If they wanted an open system, of course, they wouldn’t have chosen only OSX, but provided another kind of API with their system. nothing like that. only hardcoded stuff.
Even if I could be happy to see new interfaces, I’m not completely with griid.

If I wanted to put a little kidding here, I would say:
I’ll provide a FREE stuff for you iphone, using OSC.
Because the system I made and available through the protodeck page is a real strong but opensource system. Made with JS, useable with the protodeck, and with ALL system that could speak MIDI, OSC or even other language over the wire!

Some people would write: Julien is jealous or even he’s stupid because he didn’t sell the protodeck.
Firstly, who said I didn’t sell it?
Secondly, if I was jealous I’d try to make a griid killer.
Thirdly, never believe people talking about me, THEY are jealous

So to answer the question, this app + device is a nice interface.
For my opinion, interface SHOULD BE provided with API.
It is the proper sense of an interface.
Especially in our domains, art & technology.
We NEED to customize, even just a little bit.
We NEED to feel that we can build over what we buy
We NEED to give to people real tools, not only buttons.

Designing hardware Printed Circuit Board…

I’m using KiCAD.
It is a pretty nice and complete software, opensource & free.
You can check it and download it here

The most annoying thing is : finding the right components,ok!
Eagle seems to provide much more libraries. But Eagle is expensive if you plan to make a big PCB (by the way, 100 x 80 mm is quite ok for a lot of us. I needed more, so..)

Component in Kicad or even in Eagle are 2 files:
- the schematics (diagrams with pins, logic only)
- the modules (physical trace with correct sizes)

So there are at least 3 solutions for finding the right components:
- looking for here: http://www.kicadlib.org/ or http://per.launay.free.fr/kicad/kicad_php/composant.php
- making your own (it is the best solution. Not too difficult to make schematics & traces. traces should be done with datasheet in hands)
- using a conversion script inside eagle (called an ulp script) : eagle2kicad-0.9b.ulp

for the last way, you have to open the lib you want to convert in Eagle.
Choose ulp in the toolbar, choose the right script (eagle2kicad-0.9b.ulp) & give the 2 names & paths.
Sometimes, it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
as these files (sch & mod) are all full text, I had sometimes to edit them a bit to make them working fine.
but, let’s say… you want to succeed or not ?! so you have to work a bit

some could ask “why do you use kicad yet because you already did the protodeck?”
I’d answer them.

making the controller or not?

a LOT of people writes me about the protodeck.
they want their own.

so should I build a kind of protodeck lite or not?
it could be sold with:
- full patch & scripts to make it plug and play with live
- full apps to use it like a pure monome

the strong point would be the apps provided with that, the compactness, the rgb leds and the great amount of knobs and … shhhh.

how could this be profitable to make it possible ?

(the secret message in that means: guys, prepare your liveset, a new controller will be created soon and let me know if you’re interested!)

My company website

Like other posts, it isn’t a secret: my company is Design the Media… or I’m Design the Media.

Its URL is : http://designthemedia.com