How cool!!! Okkam-01

[Twin-X]

I am also amazed noone posted this before?

The vimeo is better quality

[reboot]

good mix!  :)

[stryd_one]

OK the music is good and hte controller is good but the really interesting part is the visualisations!

Is that in realtime?!

[stryd_one]

In case the guy in the video visits the forum (I think he does, the controller name sounds familiar!):

Hells yeh that set is bumpin! When do you play Australia? :D

I want more info! Is it 100% reaktor or are there plugins behind it? are you building the patterns on the fly, or presequencing them? do you have each pattern in a predetermined order or are you choosing them out? Same with FX etc...? Do you have a VJ, or are the visualisations automated, or postprocessed? If they're postprocessed could it be done in realtime with a 2nd set of hands? Tell us stuff :)

[DrBunsen]

The Google, she is fruitful :D

Sound On Sound - interview/article

MySpace

Well, he's an Aussie, stryd, and working with Darren Hayes amongst others, so I'd say it won't be too long till we get so hear his work Down Undah.

[Twin-X]

Sound on Sound dit not mention 1 word that the controllers guts are from midibox :(

How LAME

[stryd_one]

Seems they interviewed only the artists but not the guy who made it... I guess it was lost in the details :(

I entrusted my good friend, Tom, an electronics engineer, with soldering together a MIDI controller

[Jaicen]

Is that the thing Darren Hayes used on his last solo album?? May have been in SOS, maybe I should check the link....

[Kartoshka]

Today sees the release into the wild of the OKKAM-01. It was Winter of '05. I was feelin' deep, dark and dank down in my studio dungeon. The idea came to me in a dream...inventing a way in which you could play an entirely improvised electronic music set - and have instant control over every element in the music - without relying on pre-recorded loops and musical elements.

So was born the OKKAM-01, named after Ockham's Razor (if you don't know what it is, lookitup!). After designing the software (using Native Instruments REAKTOR) I discovered that it needed a physical interface to overcome the limitations of the mouse. So I turned to MIDIBox.org, an excellent web resource, and my electronic engineering friend, Tom Perry, to help with the circuit board layout and construction of the box. In between scraping holes in the aluminium top plate of the box (yes it's homemade - Frankenshave murdered an old video editing machine to get parts), I started using the OKKAM-01 standalone software in my studio productions. You can hear it in a lot of the songs on Darren Hayes' Album "This Delicate Thing We've Made." It's also used quite extensively on Antigone's new album (to be released).

Here's a link to the Sound On Sound article written about it.

This is the first time I have incorporated into a demonstration video the future-funky Graphical User Interface, the physical unit, and Mini-Me performing it. The music is completely improvised - you can see how some of the functions work by watching how my expert knob twiddlin' affects the graphical components on the screen behind Mini-Me. There's no "here's a little something I prepared earlier" here, folks. I did, however, use some zooms and fx on the GUI to simulate how it would look hooked up to a VJ module in live situation - where the midi messages from the box control and warp the video output as well.

It's been a long time coming, a labour of love if you will. Soon I will start work on the Okkam-02 - which will incorporate vocal looping and many other tasty additions.

But I need to have a little mad professor rest from it first...as my brain hurts...and my computer is sore from rendering far too much.

"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

Ciao for now - and remember - keep your asses kleeeeeeen.

Playfully named after the Occam’s Razor principle, generally attributed to 14th-century philosopher William of Ockham, Justin’s 01 was invented as a problem-solving device, bringing together his sample library and favourite production tricks into one user-friendly box. The software part runs on an Apple Mac and was designed using Native Instruments’ Reaktor 5 modular sound studio, in which seven distinct modules were assembled and networked. These include a sequencer, drum machine, bass section, soft synth menu, a sample library and ‘chordal/harmonix’ section, plus a host of effects processors, all of which are accessible via a single user interface, enabling Justin to combine them in a variety of ways and to introduce randomness into the creative process.

“I made it during a very boring and depressed winter in 2005 when there wasn’t much work. In Australia the sun would be shining so we’d have a barbecue, or be doing some shit besides sitting in the studio! I built it as a live tool, although I’ve never actually used it live because I’ve been working on Darren’s album! With Reaktor you can basically build anything in the digital realm.

“I was getting into Ableton Live but came up against performance limitations. It’s all very well triggering loops but I wanted to get inside the music while it was playing. For example, I might want to record a keyboard or bass sound, have that play along and then change the kick and snare sounds on the fly or improvise. I designed the user interface to look interesting because I was sick of shows where people were just twiddling with their laptops, so it’s intended to be projected up onto a big screen. When I turn the physical knobs, the virtual ones do the same.

“Then I realised that I could only turn one knob at a time with a mouse, so I entrusted my good friend, Tom, an electronics engineer, with soldering together a MIDI controller with about 60 knobs, 20 sliders and lots of buttons and flashing lights.â€

Over a 10-year period Justin had amassed quite a collection of samples, which he wanted to be able to access in a dynamic and creative way. His Okkam design provided him with a way to do that. “The harmonix section basically references a massive sample bank of chords played on various different instruments. It includes filtered stuff and weird sounds I’ve produced over the years. You draw on an X-Y grid and that determines which particular sample will play at that time. Every sound is mine but it provides a new way of realising it. You can also draw in the matrix and it will come up with different chord sequences that you’d never have played yourself.

“There’s also a random thing contained within a knob which shifts the entire sample bank up and down. For example, if you turn this knob it still plays the same rhythm but it will reference a completely different area of the sample bank.â€

Justin specifically designed the Okkam to include all his favourite dance production tricks, and has certain pre-configured routings set up for fast use. “I’ve got this side-chaining thing coming in from the drum machine inside the Okkam which affects the way the samples play, so you can change the attacks, the decays and filters. I have control over the actual start point of the sample triggering within separate samples, so there is an infinite variety of stuff that you can do just by twiddling a couple of knobs. If something sounds completely shit I can turn the knob, get something new and start again. I never tire of the sounds because I’m frequently updating the sample map or the way things are digitally joined up inside.

“The Okkam is self-contained and designed so that an entire track can be run out of its two outputs. You need a very fast processor to run it. ‘Me Myself And I’ is an example of using the whole instrument to produce a track. On some of the other tracks I just used the drum or the chordal or bass line bits. The idea is that when I’m doing it live I can have a whole track in front of me and reference any part of it at any time — tweak the bass drum, snare, or change the chords by pressing a few buttons.â€