So, what exactly is a MiXem?

Good question! MiXem blinks, MiXem makes noise, but is it an instrument? Is it a game? Is there food in it? (I'm not joking, a kind old lady on the subway asked me this) The answer is, none of the above. MiXem does many things, but you certainly cannot eat it.


MiXem is a physical interface for sequencing music loops, and it's a lot of fun to play.


The original idea for MiXem was to create a performance tool for musicians, but somewhere along the way our team -- Heejin Joo, Jose Olivares, Dave Spector, Tymm Twillman, and myself, Matt Young -- came to the agreement that MiXem should be inviting, usable, and fun for both musicians AND people with absolutely no musical talent (like me) to enjoy. Thus, playing MiXem is as easy as touching the blinking LED touch pads to pick out your instruments and loops and letting Ableton Live worry about synching them up for you. Anybody can do it!


How we got from those early discussions to our first prototype is charted in this blog, so if you're interested in how we programmed our LED drivers, best practices we learned for soldering onto copper clad, or how to interface MIDI protocol with Ableton Live software, please read on. And we've posted some videos and pictures in case you're like my parents and just here to see MiXem blink and make noise. In either case, comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your support and we hope you enjoy!


-Matt


Monday, November 5, 2007

sound cubes, redux

Hi all -- and welcome to Round II of Heejin, Jose, and Matt's sound cubes project for their Physical Computing midterm. I'm Matt, and from this point forward I'll post in first-person only. I promise. For Round I notes on this project, check out our midterm blog, which is helplessly out of date.

If you like movies, and I know you do, check this out: video

Anyways, big changes this time around. First and foremost, we're welcoming a fourth member into our group, Tymm (picture forthcoming). Tymm's got some great ideas, and when we all met today we decided on blowing out this project. Changes to come:

1) We're going to focus on making this a sequencer rather than an instrument. This is important, because it will allow us greater flexibility in incorporating both audio and video.

2) Yes, we're going to incorporate video, or some sort of visual interface (most likely Processing sketches for now, which Heejin is working on).

3) We're gonna be tinkering around with better magnets and their effects, along with RFID tagging, as long as neither becomes cumbersome to the functionality of the sequencer.

4) Everyone gets a free taco! (pending Taco Bell's sponsorship).


Anyways, that's where we've been and where we're planning on going. Check back often for pictures, updates, and celebrity gossip.
Posted by at 2:15 PM

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