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Here's the deal.  Everyone in this little project submits two samples: one rhythmic, one melodic, both recorded before 1980. 

Everyone grabs the pack and creates something out of it. 

I submitted a recording of a very old time horn band I found on someone's hobby website.  He also had a recording of a jamming signal from world war II, which I thought was quirky and would probably give an interesting texture to someone.

I listened back to all the samples and picked my favorite little sections and threw them into Ableton.  A few hours later I had the basic track. 

You can listen to it here - http://theb-roll.com/?page_id=29

My track is called Lint by Sam Squarewave.

The monome people are a very creative bunch and the tracks have a lot of care put into them.

I've been working on this tutorial site for a while and finally decided to just put it up.  I've got a few videos on MainStage and will be doing some Ableton videos as well.  Enjoy!

http://www.audiopropellor.com

I put this bandcamp page up today which has a sampling of the first quarter my new musical collection.
http://samsquarewave.com

Here is my first release under the name Sam Squarewave.  It's mostly made up of things I have created over the past year with Mainstage and Ableton.
It's somewhat unconventional, but is hopefully an interesting listen.

Here is a video of a little tune I had going the other night.  Everything is inside Ableton Live, including the monome patches.  VERY fun to use.

I have a track on a netlabel release.  Download it for free...
 
Release Summary | PS015 Various Artists – Number Stations | Curated by Jon Sykes for PublicSpaces Lab | | Total Running Time 01:12:53 | 16 Tracks | Available in mp3 320 or FLAC (zip format) | | Individual mp3 files also available here | Cover Art by Rita Monteiro @ PublicSpaces Lab |
 
Release Details
 
This is a compilation album based around the theme of Numbers Stations samples.
Number Stations if you are unfamiliar are shortwave radio stations that broadcast strange and cryptic content, often ordered or seemingly random series of numbers repeated over and over again. Other stations played weird music, and other still just repeated tones over an over. They were all the rage back in the Coldwar era and are often thought to have been spying agencies means of communication.

Probably the most famous Number Station sample is from the Wilco album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, partly due to the album being named after it but maybe more so because it lead to complex legal wrangles over who “owned” the recording, eventually settled out of court.
The most authoritative collection of Numbers Stations recordings is the Conet Project by Irdial Records, who make available the entire collection under their Free Music Philosophy. There are also plenty of other places online to find other samples that can be used in recordings as samples.
The challenge was issued to an international assortment of artists, with genres ranging from Ambient, to Dub Step to Interpretive. This compilation of tracks is the result. We hope you enjoy.
Curated by Jon Sykes for PublicSpaces Lab Release Art by Rita Monteiro @ PublicSpaces Lab Cover Photo by Slightly North via Flickr under a CC License by-nc-sa Mastering and encoding by Jordi @ PublicSpaces Lab
 Source: http://lab.pubspaces.com/2010/01/ps015-va-number-stations/

You could do this with most any external midi module/synth/drum machine.  The nice thing about harware is that you don't have to worry about it not working with the latest OS or not being patched by the manufacturer or having to buy an upgrade license every flipping year. 

In this video, I hook up the Alesis Micron to Ableton Live and control it with the MicronAU plugin.  I also drop some stuff and make alot of mistakes, so you should enjoy it. 

Many moons ago I made this video using sooperlooper in mainstage. I worked up the first few parts and then layed them down and improvised the rest.

I was then contacted by colossaldj who wanted to do a remix of it.  I humbly accepted - it being my first remix offer, I was quite excited.  Here is the result!!

Be sure to check out his soundcloud - colossaldj

Max is a visual environment for making your own MIDI, audio and video contraptions.  I've been learning how to use it since I got my early present last week - Max for Ableton Live.  

Using Max, you can now interact with Ableton in ways that were either not possible, or only possible using python - a programming language for people who like to concern themselves with whitespace.

So I've been bugged that there is no way to map a MIDI message to trigger the currently selected Ableton clip.  Done.

I'd also like to be able to record enable the currently selected track.  Done. 

Map Undo and Redo to a MIDI message.  Done and done!

I had more wishes and managed to bang them out in one night by building on the Live API abstraction examples.  The result is a little max device than can navigate around the session view and record and play clips and also control volume.  The most challenging part was creating a subpatch which did a volume level 'pickup mode', so that switching between tracks and touching the volume pedal doesn't make the level jump from 0 to where the pedal is.  You need to bring the pedal down to the level of the track to 'pick it up'. 

Here's how it looks.

And the main patch - All the crap at the top is due to the mapping not working, so I had to make a big mess of connecting my midi notes from the FCB1010 to my Ableton buttons until they make the buttons work with midi notes and cc.  Makes me wonder if they actually use this stuff.

So I created a few M4L Abstractions of my own for use in this device, based on the abstractions included with the M4L product.  I present them here, zipped for your enjoyment.  Place them in a folder on your computer and in MaxMSP go to Options>File Preferences and add the directory.  You should then be able to type the name in a new object and it will be usable in your project.

Be warned, there's nothing advanced in here.

• M4L.api.ArmSelectedTrack.maxpat
• M4L.api.DisarmSelectedTrack.maxpat
• M4L.api.SetTrackVolume.maxpat
• M4L.api.ToggleArmSelectedTrack.maxpat
• M4L.api.Undo.maxpat
• M4L.api.Redo.maxpat

Here's a kit recorded by miaoux miaoux which I saw on the monome forums here

Once again, two versions: simpler and sampler. The simpler version has been been put into an instrument rack and the macro knobs are mapped to some effects. Have fun with those knobs.

Miaoux Miaoux has some music up here: http://www.myspace.com/miaouxmiaoux

I'm particularly enjoying the first track right now - hrvatski.

He also has a video up on vimeo - http://www.vimeo.com/1269911 .

Thanks for the samples mr. MM!