I will explore the ways in which music is influenced by making and hacking, including a whistle-stop tour of some key points in music hacking history. This starts with 1940s Musique Concrete and Daphne Oram’s work on early electronic music at the BBC, and blossoms into the strange and wonderful projects coming out of the modern music hacker scenes in London and Berlin, including a pipe organ made of Furbies, a sound art marble run, robotic music machines, gesture controlled moon cellos, and singing circuit sculptures. I'll also be sharing some of own work, plus my favourite new ways to make embedded instruments, including plenty of amazing Open Source hardware and software.
 Music Fantastic that you all are here actually since it's all teared down moment and still we have enough we have lots of people here interesting this is as well an interesting talk because it's Helen Lee who's going to present us actually give us an overview actually about what hackers you know in music meant actually in the history so it's a given overview I understood as well she gives a certain examples and I think she's gonna kick this a little bit further because she's gonna talk a little bit about our current work and future objectives so I would fast and seed bells I would say if yes Helen Lee give her warm applause hello yep so I'm Helen this is if you want to follow my stuff or download any of my things that I mentioned in the talk I've got GitHub and various I put lots of my work on Twitter so okay right I am going to talk to you today about we're gonna give you a story I'm gonna give you a story about how a group of music hackers in the 1940s changed the face of music technology forever and how they didn't know anything that by what they were doing but they still managed to do some incredibly cool things by just disregarding and being really awesome hardware hackers and I'm also gonna give you an overview of some of the coolest projects coming out of London and Berlin at the moment and so I've been I'm living in Berlin at the moment but I was active in the music hacking scene in London for a long time as well so I'm gonna show you some cool projects but before I start off on my story and cool projects I'm going to just introduce myself and I am a creative technologist which is a ridiculous buzzword but people like to put you in a box but I'm basically in massive nerd who really likes arty stuff so I like to smush them together my my favorite things to smush together are electronics and hardware and with music technologies and so with that in mind I make a lot of strange musical instrument creations usually very experimental in form I'll show you some of that as well this is one of my experimental instruments and I make sonic circuit sculpture creatures and I've taken them on residencies in London, Shenzhen and Copenhagen and I just really like experimenting with what a musical instrument looks like and not so much what it sounds like I mean I am into other people's noise art but for me I like my instruments to sound melodic but yeah form I'm very interested in experimenting with I also really like at the moment this is this is made out of brass and I've made a lot of stuff with different metals and but at the moment I'm on a big soft circuit kick and so I'm experimenting with electronic embroidery and soft robotics to make kind of kinetic sculptural squishy creature things and I'll show you some of that later too now obviously this doesn't pay my rent shockingly and so I also do some product design and a lot of curriculum based things and I'm a writer as well so this is a product that I designed that's actually my hand on the box very exciting and it's a wearable instrument for children sold by P. Maroney and Adafruit and you know etc and it's a DIY wearable gesture-based instrument for children to learn how to code with and I designed that with Imogen Heap and I'll tell you about that cool project later but that's something I do and I also do a lot of writing this is a still from one of my books I wrote recently last year it came out and one called the crafty kids guide to DIY electronics where I teach basic electronics through the medium of papercraft, origami, sewing and kind of like DIY robotics as well I also write for Hackaday I've written for blah blah blah it doesn't matter I write words for many sometimes anyway that's me I am gonna tell you one of my favorite stories of music tech history I'm gonna start off here with this rather pretentious quote from a rather pretentious man who I still kind of love it's a guy called John Cage who most people know him for his experimental compositions and his and his many and varied writings on on the subject of what is signed and what signed art is but he was also a pretty early on a hardware hacker he made experimental instruments actually one of his first famous pieces was him like smashing up a piano and changing that so he was a composer but he was also an experimental hardware artist and then he said this there is no noise there is only sound and the reason I put this quote up there is to kind of make you that remind you that all music is made up okay all instruments are inventions the violin wasn't a violin until probably the 13th century when various instruments that came before it converged and someone using new techniques new tools and it starts and it keeps evolving through the ages right and I think you could think of an instrument as a as a specific thing but it's really not we've been messing around with science since we've been humans basically and ditto with compositions you might think of classical music mainstays like Stravinsky strice or debut see as as these kind of like boring establishment figures but actually in their day they were seen as avant-garde people walked out of their performances they were hit pieces about them in the males you know the Daily Mail of the time and so basically anything that sounds strange to you now or something that's experimental to us could well have an influence in a long-reaching way and so yes who are you I'm gonna tell you about my favorite conspiracy theory as well so even dying to the note a 440 Hertz Middle A and it's it was not even it was not the latter sorry it was not 440 Hertz until the 1950s when a group of dudes met up in one room in London and everybody signed this agreement saying okay now a is a 440 Hertz before that a flutin Italy might sound different to a flute in France you'd have like these small tonic tonal variations and so it wasn't until yet the 1950s that it became actually the letter a there's a wonderful series of conspiracy theories around this that actually that they chose 440 Hertz because it's a method of population mind control and there are alternative websites out there now you can literally go if you search for like and 440 Hertz conspiracies there are websites that are campaigning like groups that are campaigning for it to be changed for the whole of modern music to be to be changed there's one at 432 and there's one at 438 and if you're in the 438 camp because they were opposing camps as well so if you're in a 438 camp you're in luck because someone's made a music adjuster okay so you can take your track that you've done and you can put it into a converter and it will convert all of your music into 438 so you can do that if you like and there's even a radical fringe group calling for the middle a to be 538 which is absolutely insane but there we are I love it and so if you ever want to go down to conspiracy theory YouTube black hole which you probably will do we're all at camp and you know who you can't Congress not camp and you can you can look at that then but basically my point here is that music is all made up right and instruments are all inventions so you know there are no rules and I'm gonna take you through and one of the paths one of the many paths of music history and music hacking and we're gonna look at one piece of hacked technology and how people who played with it and did things with it that they weren't supposed to do changed modern history modern music production this is the magnetic tape recorder and it's a lovely device and it was used popularized in World War two by the Nazis who used it to chop up propaganda and so and the and after the World War and after the World War and the BBC took on it took a ticket on themselves to try and develop a version of this so this is relatively modern technology so in the 40s and 50s that started become becoming popular and it was used for real-to-real broadcasting right so before this it was gramophones and but and a bunch of so they were used in music studios and they were relatively expensive as it became cheaper and a bunch of music hackers and saw its potential to do something more than just line it up so these hackers and got their hands on a bunch of these a bunch of these magnetic tape recorders and and as people are wants to do with technology that they get had their hands on it they started to fuck with it in a new and very exciting ways and what they did is they they and as a movement in in Paris and then early 1940s called music concret which was the first group of people who were doing this aside from one lonely guy in Egypt as well but there was like the epicenter of this was in is in Paris and what you do is you see that the the actual tape there you use a razor blade to cut it and then you can for example flip it over tape it back together and then you've got one piece that's backwards right okay and using that technique I'll show you how actually you okay so not only can you chop things up and turn them around you can speed them up and slow them down this gives you this seems so basically if you do it faster it will give you a higher tone and if you do it slower if you slow it down it will be lower okay we all know this kind of instinctually now but back then this was fellow this was completely revolutionary you could make sounds that were not existing in nature and take for example the plucking of a violin string okay you pluck a violin string and it comes on quick it's like boom and then if you let it die off there's a long so what we call that in music is this a sharp attack and a long delay and that's how a lot of musical instruments or natural sounds will work okay they will fade off okay but using this technology you could switch it around so it had the the opposite effect around warm the long attack and a short delay so you could create sounds that are not found in nature now which is extraordinary and at the same time there was the advent of something called field recording which was you could go outside instead of having to record in a studio you could have a physical piece of equipment that you could carry around with you and and and a microphone so you could go and record sounds outside found sound is what we call it and then you could take it back to the studio chop it up with a scalpel sellotape it back together re-record it and you could create this is just you know it's just a huge vast new set of tools that you can work with as somebody who's making music now the first people doing this were as I say these these French guys in in Paris and in music Concret and they were doing it and due to modern music digital preservation techniques you can hear these the signs that they were making on YouTube you can spend some time and listen to that and I won't lie they sound pretty awful and nobody wants to listen to that I mean unless you're a true enthusiast and but it's not it's not that the music they were making is where the techniques that they were creating their experimentation sounded terrible but actually was incredibly influential and we use sampling now as just an ordinary thing but this was the technology behind it and it really came to a head in the 1960s when and beetle the Beatles were the first people to use this technique on tomorrow never knows now normally I well I would play this but when I did a talk similar to this at the Hackaday Super Conference they and they pulled my livestream because there was a 10-second snippet of the Beatles so I've decided not to risk it today and you can look up tomorrow who never knows and you can hear these kind of signs and that's actually flipped that's just flipped signs so that all of the Beatles brought in signs from their home they flipped it around speeded it up and slowed it down there's a famous like very high-pitched signed in that song and it's just Paul McCartney laughing and they've manipulated using sticky tape and scalpels anyway so that was the beginning of these new production techniques right you can use these in modern music you know in your Ableton or your logic or whatever you know those are just standard features but this was the beginning of it and it's incredibly influential I could follow it down this path and I'm actually gonna take take this to leave them to go on with their modern mainstream production and I'm gonna talk about this woman instead who was one of my favorite things about Hacker culture is the way that we learn from each other and the way that we riff off of each other's work and so I'm gonna go slightly sideways and talk about this artist and engineer's her name is Daphne Orham and who's heard of Daphne Orham all right about ten of you which is more than usual actually to be honest and so Daphne Orham is everyone should know her name and that's why I never shut up about her and she was a musician and physicist and electronics engineer who was unfortunate enough to be a woman and was has a pretty tragic work history but she she's one of the iconic figures of early electronic music she should be as well known as you know any of the as Moog or whatever but anyway so she's a trained musician and she got a job at the BBC queuing up these real-to-real magnetic tape recorders which is actually a pretty big deal at the time for a woman as well so she would she went on a training course to Paris and just studio recording techniques you know standard corporate training right and and while she was there and I believe she met some of the people behind the music concrete and she was basically and they showed her what she they were doing and it totally blew her mind she was like oh my god I'm gonna take this back to the BBC it's gonna be so cool I'm gonna revolutionize everything it's gonna be awesome and she took it back there and predict a bill now five years like no go back to pressing buttons so she did but she also would run around the BBC late at night after hours and stealing bits of equipment from other people's studios and wheeling them into her own studio and she would experiment with all these music congrats methods there's even she and as an as an electronics person as well and she was one of the first people in the world to make purely electronic music but she she was one of the first instances of someone who recorded her oscilloscope and then started using that for compositional purposes as well and she was doing this for maybe five six seven years and and at the end of that she started to get some interest she managed finally to convince somebody to give her a commission to create some incidental music for a piece of for a show and and and it was a success and also people hated it of course and but enough people wanted her to repeat it that eventually the BBC gave her own studio which is like absolutely you know out of the question for someone in the 50s for a woman in the 50s and so she she was starting to make this but and she and fortunately at this point it's called the BBC radio phonic workshop which is one of the most iconic sound design workshops and studios in the whole history of music technology so she starts this workshop the BBC radio phonic workshops but a year later she leaves and to start her own artist practice because they they said she said they wanted my ideas and they wanted my work but they didn't want me and so she had to leave her life's work and she was largely erased actually from everything that she did even though she found it this iconic this absolutely iconic workshop and she went off and created you know she didn't have a sad life after that but she she went off and created in this wild synthesizer which is in the London Science Museum now it was like instead of she she loved looking at waveforms of music so she thought she would use watercolor to draw the waveforms and then have a synthesizer interpret those waveforms and that's called the Oramix machine it's like absolutely wild you can look that up on the internet as well it's cool to look at so yeah she's becoming a bit more popular now because of the work of some of the guys at the radio phonic workshop who still exist some of the old guys who go around telling cool stories about them and but also because of the woman she helped bring in and who stayed after she left and she's quite famous now because of something I'll show you it's this lady and this is Delia Derbyshire and who's head of Delia Derbyshire a lot more of you I thought so I do a Derbyshire again the same she's got a maths and music degree she couldn't get a job but she ended up basically pestering them into letting her do some interning at the radio phonic workshop and eventually got a job there and then she was the arranger and made the instrumentation for this and now I'm gonna play this for you before I do I want you to think about the facts that at the time every sound had to be physically cut and sticky taped together every sync not and I'm not and there's no multi-track recorders back then either okay so you have to it's an absolutely enormous process of recording the sound stretching the sign cutting the sign sticking it back together making it on a real recording that onto a separate real then you've got this and then you add more signs and then you have like several tapes that you have to condense into each other without multi-track technology okay they're literally on different machines shouting go at each other and that's how they were charged multi-track and but she was very blasé about it was kind of amusing because it seems ridiculous to me now to be able to compose a piece of music like that and like a jigsaw puzzle and but she she just shrugged and said well seem to work and I'm kind of charming and but yeah so that's oh no why didn't it play oh no well I'm gonna play it for you anyway oh it'sannoying to the and she also needs rollin No, no, no. No ceramic, no synthesizers exist. This was literally just a mix. And she also made her own hensher, she recorded including my favourite, which was a little walkulator. And that doesn't work. Good name. Yeah, so, they actually used a lot of electronic engineering gear in their work, it was very fun. Anyway, we don't have any more speakers, I don't want to get an electrical radiation, so let's move on. I did actually want to play one of her own songs, so that's her commercial work, but she was also an electronic experimental musician of her own. I think you kind of forget that music in the 50s and 60s actually kind of was wild as well. Let's see if we... This is one of her tracks from the 60s. It's kind of a Bion. Oh, it's... Nessie, nessie, nessie, nessie, nessie. But anyway, we recognised this track because we did sample it. So, the answer literally just wrapped over the top of this, and the rest is as a track. She made this for a science fiction show that was based on an Azimov story, and this remains for the Azimov story that it was made for has been deleted from the BBC archives, which I find to be an absolute tragedy. I would love to watch that. If you flip it back, the robotic sounds are singing praise to the master. Thank you, Daphne. So, that's my story of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but I wanted to leave you with a quote from one of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop engineers, unfortunately, unnamed in the documentary that I watched. I just thought this was kind of a cute sentiment. Because they were making things up, they weren't the experts in the room. They didn't know what they couldn't do. So, they just basically managed to mess around with stuff and ended up with something really special and really cool, and something that was just iconic. Some of the biggest electronic music acts in the world today still say that the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of their big influences in life as well. So, yeah, that's the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. And I think it's really important that we allow for ridiculousness in technology, and we allow for ugly noises, and we allow for stupid things that don't fully...you don't really see what they're for. Like, the power of allowing for experimentation that isn't very successful at first, or doesn't sound successful to the outside ear is really important. So, outsiders. That was at golden age. We've got the invention of a new technology, or just a democratization, the availability of a new technology to a reasonable number of people led to this amazing sea change and the way that people made music, made digital music, and well, analog back then, but the way that we make music was changed by these experimenters. It was definitely a golden age for new techniques, but I think that we're currently in a golden age for people who are working with experimental instruments and experimental sound in general. And I think that we've got loads and loads of really exciting new technologies that are available. We've got cheap microcontrollers, we can make our own PCBs, we can make our own synthesizers, we can access people, which is really crucial. Think about it, Daphne, she didn't learn about music concurrently, she didn't find the BBC Radio Phonic workshop until she had a spark of an idea from somebody else. So, really, it's learning tools, learning techniques, gaining access to tools, learning techniques, and being inspired by other people is really, really critical for anything to really change and to really happen. But I think that at the moment, we've got really, really cool, accessible new technologies that more and more people are learning how to use and more and more are becoming much simpler as well. And crucially, people are more accessible. So, people share, particularly in our community, people share their knowledge very freely, and you don't have to be in the same room to do this. I know a bunch of people are listening on the live stream right now, so you don't have to be here to learn about things. And you don't have to be in the room to attend a workshop with somebody, right? There's these wonderful YouTube tutorials now for sharing information. And these communities are just way more accessible through online places. We've got incredible community and events as well. So, this is, I mean, I shouldn't have put the slide in here, but it doesn't matter. So, this is one of my old hackerspaces. It's a machines room in London. And it was where the music technology, one of the places where the music tech community in London was centered. They did some, it was there and the London Hack Space, but we did a lot of things with, there's a community called a Hack U-Stick that I was involved with, and we used to do a lot of events there. I'm saying that the reason I put this slide in was just to show that hackerspaces and makerspaces often have some kind of music technology partnerships. And those kind of central spaces where you can share things, share knowledge and get inspired by each other's work and also hold events is really, really crucial. Actually, I do know why I put this slide in. So, this slide, this was a wonderful space for three years. And then the landlord raised the rent four times. And this amazing community of artists and designers and music hackers was removed. And at the same time, the London Hack Space moved from central London to west London. And a bunch of other hackerspaces and fab labs closed as well just because of how expensive the center of London had become. And there's this, and as a direct result of that, I moved to Berlin. And by aligning this kind of gentrification of our hackerspaces, we actually do destroy community as much as we can create community online as well, like this. So, this is an example of awesome online community. This is a YouTube video from someone from the London music tech hacker scene, probably the most famous person from it. And it's called Sam, who goes by look-m-no-computer on the Internet. And he's an electronic engineer and general purpose weirdo, which is why I like him. And this is one of his creations. He made a Furby synth, which is as horrific as you imagine, if not more so. So, don't look that up. I mean, do look that up. But it's genuinely, be prepared to not have a nice time. But he doesn't just show his instruments. He doesn't just perform with them. He does really awesome electronics, tear-dance as well. He learned a bunch of stuff from watching his videos and looking at actually how he's done them. And that's something that's really exciting. I mean, like maybe 20 years ago, I wouldn't have had access to this kind of knowledge. I just would have, and I probably wouldn't have even known that I like this kind of stuff. You know, I wouldn't have been exposed to it. And then I certainly would have, you know, I've been going down my local pub saying, hey, who wants to work on a weird Furby instrument with me? And they'd be like, what? No? So it's kind of nice to be able to share your weird passions with other people on the Internet. And then, of course, we have, we're at one of these. This is me and my friend Phoenix. We've done a fair bit of music tech hacking together. And this is actually the British version of Kongra, an EMF camp. I guess it's the version of Chaos Camp, actually. So EMF camp, which is actually in 2020 this year. So, yeah, so it's a really cool, small hacker festival. But these kind of spaces and these kind of events really allow, I mean, I've learned so much just by being here the last couple of days. And every time we do this, we should cherish the hacker spaces and the events. And we should also support people like Sam, who makes his living through Patreon and YouTube. So it's by supporting, to make spaces and events, and also by supporting individual people who are putting the effort into create and share work, I think we can cherish this community. Okay, on to the final bit. I'm going to show you some of the cool projects that I've been working on with other people. But the reason I've chosen the ones that I'm showing you is because they're also using some of my favorite ways that you can hack on instruments. So I figured I'd show you a project, but also show you how to make, you know, how you can have a go at it. So recently I've lived in London and Berlin, and one of my favorite things to do is when I'm in a space, is to make an instrument in the context of two people's work, two or more people's work. I always find like my work is always way better if I'm collaborating with somebody else. So, you know, what they do and what I do are smushed together to create something that's better than either of us could have done on our own. And I think this is a good example if it will play. This is one of my first Sonic Circuit Sculpture creatures. This started off as a hack, just overnight hack, with my composer friend Andrew Hockey and Truth Vestini from Osh Park. And myself, obviously, and we worked together overnight to create this. So, a circuit sculpture, if you don't know what circuit sculpture is, it's basically, instead of putting your circuit inside of a box, all of the parts or the key parts of it are shown and are actually celebrated as art in their own right. So that's what circuit sculpture is. And there's a couple of wonderful people, and this is a guy called Mohit, who makes really beautiful things, and who's living in San Francisco, and then there's a guy called Jiri, who is in Prague, I want to say, and they make really, really awesome, tiny, neat things. But I'm not tiny and neat, so I make big, massive, messy things. So this is the first one I made. It was really interesting to me. I really like Capacitive Touch as a technology. It can be unreliable, but I find it kind of really fun to work with. And it's very intuitive for a musician. And then that led to me developing a second creature. I'm really inspired by kind of utopian science fiction, and I wanted to make a series of creatures that inhabited the same world and sung when you touched them. So this was the second in the series. This is a more traditional instrument. I mean, obviously, it's still weird. It's more traditional in that the first one was generative in some way, like semi-generative. And this one is more like one note per limb with two modes of modulation. This is a bass. So that's my bass creature, which I'm actually developing for a real musician now. This woman, an amazing bassist called Isaih Hassan, who is the bassist for the Savages, and just was on tour with the Pixies. And I'm making her a stage presence one, so she's going to be able to play. But that's going to be more generation-based as well. But it's kind of interesting to try and create something that in its functionality is very traditional, but in its form is really weird, and that was kind of fun to play with. But now my latest one is another creature. But this is kind of like an abstract cephalopod. It's going to be human-sized, and each of the limbs will pay a different part of the choral arrangement. And then there's like some kind of like sunlight feature at the top where you can modulate it by touching the copper rods. I've actually made a prototype which you can listen to. So this is the latest version of one of the limbs of the tentacle, which I made. It just made it for the form, but then everybody seems to really like cuddling it. It's very comforting, so I decided to make it purr after I'd finished prototyping it. So if you want to listen to my purring tentacle afterwards, you can. It does sometimes work. But I should say, actually, hello. This is machine embroidered conductive thread. So that is able then to detect capacity. That's a capacitive touch sensor, essentially. It's a tentacle. So yeah, you can listen to that afterwards if you want. It mostly works. I made it yesterday. So yeah, that's quite fun. But again, I would not have been able to create the intricate signs with the help of my composer friend. And I would not be able to get the implementation I wanted onto the Beagle board without Drew. So it's really nice to kind of like sit together and mash up your skills. Now, these all use one of these. This is another one of my instruments. This is a wearable, flexible PCB. It's going to be a vocoder, but it's not finished yet. But the reason I'm showing you that is because that's the sensor that I use. They call it the trill. It's essentially like if anybody have used capacitive touch before, you've probably used an NPR121 sensor. This is like an NPR121 sensor plus plus. It's much more, they've got, A has got like 20 something pins, which is wild. And it's way more sensitive as well. So I find it really, really great. If anybody is doing stuff with capacitive touch and they're having some problems with it, A, make sure you're grounded and B, have a go on that trill. It's like 10 euros, I think, that sensor. And it's done by Bella. You can see one of their boards there. Now I'm going to do a whole slide about Bella and fun girl about them because they're my favourite technology at the moment to use for embedded systems, for embedded instruments. This is like the size, this is this big. It's based on the pocket Beagle, which is the size of a small Altoids tin. It's very, very small, but it runs, it's a full Linux computer. And it's really, really awesome, super responsive, super low latency, which is really important when you're creating instruments. But also the cool thing is it runs this. This is pure data. It's a visual programming language for sound creation. Now a lot of artists and sound designers and music creators, they use this already. This is very similar to something called Max, actually made by the same guy, but this one's open source. Yeah, so that's Bella and pure data. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in instrument design. The reason the battle is special is because of the low latency, but also because no other, so you can't get a microcontroller that will run pure data. Except, so the Raspberry Pi does, but the latency on the Raspberry Pi is like, me. So I would always suggest if you're doing something, the baller and pure data is a nice combo. Okay, that's that one. Then the other project I wanted to talk to you briefly about is this is Ariana Grande, who you probably don't know who she is, but anyone under the age of 13 certainly will. And here she is demoing something called a Mimuglev. It's a gesture control. She's controlling, she's doing looping, she's doing effects, using, obviously, various gestures. Thank you, Ariana. So that's the, this is what she's using here. And this is coming out of London, but of the music tech company called Mimu, that was originated by Imogen Heap, if you know her. And I saw that Ariana video, and something I didn't mention is I actually do quite a lot of teaching as well. When I saw that Ariana video, I just thought, oh, my God, if I showed this to a 12-year-old girl and told them we could make one, they were going to lose their mind. So these cost like five grand, though. So I don't think I could get one for using the classroom. So I just messaged Imogen and asked her if I could make a children's version. And so I did. She said yes. And she, this is a wonderful piece of technology called the Microbit. And it's a DIY, it's like my first microcontroller that is made by the BBC. It's like 10 pounds. It's very, very cheap. It doesn't do a lot, but what it does, it does very well and very simply. And I was able to make an approximation of a $5,000 glove with a $10 microcontroller, which is what the core of the product that I made is actually. But I haven't got time to talk to you about that. That's my leather robot unicorn, like gesture control. But I can't tell you about that. This is another artist, got no time for that. So we're going on to this last one. So basically, I was able to, with one bridge, one microbit and a little bit of code, get it to work on professional music software. And this is a musician called Bishie, who's really awesome. And this is her using my $10 hack to do a very similar thing to a $5,000. And of course that's not stadium level. Ariana Grande couldn't use that on tour. But it was a fun project that we hacked together. And that is, that's my time. I have done, by the way, all of this, how I did that, that's all on my GitHub, all of the code. If you've already got on microbit, you can do it yourself. Or you can get the kits like 30 bucks. It's not very expensive. So all of that's on my GitHub, along with some weird factory signs of things. And you can follow along on my weird electronic adventures on my Twitter. I'm pretty reactive. So say hi to me. And I'll be hanging around here if you want to listen to my tentacle. So the end. Okay. Ellen Lee, whoa. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen, for this fantastic presentation. I'm wondering actually how are we going to play that thing there with the slime. Are there questions here? No? Yes, yes, online, of course. They're far more speedy than we shoot. So the question from the internet is, have you ever considered creating music without human interaction? Yes. Okay, then next one. Thank you. Good night. No, I mean, personally, I'm a very tactile person. So I like creating instruments that you stroke that are affectionate almost and kind. I like giving the things that I create some kind of persona and that you interact with them. However, a lot of people, there's a lot of people doing really interesting things with generative, non-human interactive art. In fact, the composer friend that I was talking about, Andrew Hockey, he's done a lovely, he's hacked a musical marble run. It's just automated. When the marbles go down the marble run, it will trigger generative science, which is really, really cool. There's lots of people doing it, but for me personally, I just, I know, I like touching the objects that I make. And the kind of strange person who walks around a craft store with a multimeter kind of like touching things and like figuring it out if they're conductive. Like adequately conductive. So you're measuring, I thought. So for example, in fabric stores, there might be something that's conductive that's not actually billed as conductive. Or I'll often go to art stores and craft stores or architectural supply stores. And you can find, you know, you don't have to go to Conrad. You can go to modular with your multimeter. In fact, it's actually, it's either, it's either conductive or it's not, right? You know? We believe you. I'm just imagining you there. Oh yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah. I've had some strange looks. A question here from number two, please here in the front. Have you also created instruments that actually work with the physicality of the object that you have built instead of triggering sound processing? So actually, you mean, in what way? If the tentacle itself, the sound it produces would be amplified and somehow that's the base of the processing of the actual sound that comes out. Yes, actually when the tentacle is done, it will have some kind of physical feedback loop in it that will be reactive to its, to its space, to its personal space even as well. So actually the cool thing about capacitive touch technology is if you get the thresholding right, you can not just sense touch, you can sense proximity. And that kind of also varies on how many people are in the room as well. So you can get it to react quite, not uniformly, but you can get it to react quite nicely to its environment and also the way that people are manipulating it as well. And you can also code some cool things into that as well, so basically based on the number of touches, how often people have played with it, and how people have played with it. Get that to feed back in to the music that it's making in a generative fashion. There's lots of cool things that I want to do with this next sculpture. Thanks. I'm so sad. I really have a spoiler here. I really, we have to shut this now and I would like you to ask to talk to her personally here next to the stage. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you, and a little leave for this fantastic presentation. Thank you.
 Music  Fantastic that you all are here actually since it's all teared down moment and  still we have enough we have lots of people here interesting this is as well  an interesting talk because it's Helen Lee who's going to present us actually  give us an overview actually about what hackers you know in music meant  actually in the history so it's a given overview I understood as well she gives  a certain examples and I think she's gonna kick this a little bit further  because she's gonna talk a little bit about our current work and future  objectives so I would fast and seed bells I would say if yes Helen Lee give  her warm applause  hello yep so I'm Helen this is if you want to follow my stuff or download any  of my things that I mentioned in the talk I've got GitHub and various I put  lots of my work on Twitter so okay right I am going to talk to you today  about we're gonna give you a story I'm gonna give you a story about how a group  of music hackers in the 1940s changed the face of music technology forever and  how they didn't know anything that by what they were doing but they still  managed to do some incredibly cool things by just disregarding and being  really awesome hardware hackers and I'm also gonna give you an overview of some  of the coolest projects coming out of London and Berlin at the moment and so  I've been I'm living in Berlin at the moment but I was active in the music  hacking scene in London for a long time as well so I'm gonna show you some cool  projects but before I start off on my story and cool projects I'm going to  just introduce myself and I am a creative technologist which is a  ridiculous buzzword but people like to put you in a box but I'm basically in  massive nerd who really likes arty stuff so I like to smush them together my  my favorite things to smush together are electronics and hardware and with music  technologies and so with that in mind I make a lot of strange musical instrument  creations usually very experimental in form I'll show you some of that as well  this is one of my experimental instruments and I make sonic circuit  sculpture creatures and I've taken them on residencies in London, Shenzhen and  Copenhagen and I just really like experimenting with what a musical  instrument looks like and not so much what it sounds like I mean I am into  other people's noise art but for me I like my instruments to sound melodic  but yeah form I'm very interested in experimenting with I also really like at  the moment this is this is made out of brass and I've made a lot of stuff with  different metals and but at the moment I'm on a big soft circuit kick and so I'm  experimenting with electronic embroidery and soft robotics to make kind of  kinetic sculptural squishy creature things and I'll show you some of that later  too now obviously this doesn't pay my rent shockingly and so I also do some  product design and a lot of curriculum based things and I'm a writer as well  so this is a product that I designed that's actually my hand on the box very  exciting and it's a wearable instrument for children sold by P. Maroney and  Adafruit and you know etc and it's a DIY wearable gesture-based instrument for  children to learn how to code with and I designed that with Imogen Heap and I'll  tell you about that cool project later but that's something I do and I also do  a lot of writing this is a still from one of my books I wrote recently last  year it came out and one called the crafty kids guide to DIY electronics  where I teach basic electronics through the medium of papercraft, origami, sewing  and kind of like DIY robotics as well I also write for Hackaday I've written  for blah blah blah it doesn't matter I write words for many sometimes anyway  that's me I am gonna tell you one of my favorite stories of music tech history  I'm gonna start off here with this rather pretentious quote from a rather  pretentious man who I still kind of love it's a guy called John Cage who most  people know him for his experimental compositions and his and his many and  varied writings on on the subject of what is signed and what signed art is but  he was also a pretty early on a hardware hacker he made experimental  instruments actually one of his first famous pieces was him like smashing up  a piano and changing that so he was a composer but he was also an experimental  hardware artist and then he said this there is no noise there is only sound  and the reason I put this quote up there is to kind of make you that remind you  that all music is made up okay all instruments are inventions the violin  wasn't a violin until probably the 13th century when various instruments that  came before it converged and someone using new techniques new tools and it  starts and it keeps evolving through the ages right and I think you could think  of an instrument as a as a specific thing but it's really not we've been  messing around with science since we've been humans basically and ditto with  compositions you might think of classical music mainstays like  Stravinsky strice or debut see as as these kind of like boring establishment  figures but actually in their day they were seen as avant-garde people walked  out of their performances they were hit pieces about them in the males you know  the Daily Mail of the time and so basically anything that sounds strange  to you now or something that's experimental to us could well have an  influence in a long-reaching way and so yes who are you I'm gonna tell you about  my favorite conspiracy theory as well so even dying to the note a 440 Hertz  Middle A and it's it was not even it was not the latter sorry it was not 440  Hertz until the 1950s when a group of dudes met up in one room in London and  everybody signed this agreement saying okay now a is a 440 Hertz before that a  flutin Italy might sound different to a flute in France you'd have like these  small tonic tonal variations and so it wasn't until yet the 1950s that it  became actually the letter a there's a wonderful series of conspiracy theories  around this that actually that they chose 440 Hertz because it's a method of  population mind control and there are alternative websites out there now you  can literally go if you search for like and 440 Hertz conspiracies there are  websites that are campaigning like groups that are campaigning for it to be  changed for the whole of modern music to be to be changed there's one at 432  and there's one at 438 and if you're in the 438 camp because they were opposing  camps as well so if you're in a 438 camp you're in luck because someone's made a  music adjuster okay so you can take your track that you've done and you can put it  into a converter and it will convert all of your music into 438 so you can do  that if you like and there's even a radical fringe group calling for the  middle a to be 538 which is absolutely insane but there we are I love it and so  if you ever want to go down to conspiracy theory YouTube black hole  which you probably will do we're all at camp and you know who you can't Congress  not camp and you can you can look at that then but basically my point here is  that music is all made up right and instruments are all inventions so you  know there are no rules and I'm gonna take you through and one of the paths  one of the many paths of music history and music hacking and we're gonna look  at one piece of hacked technology and how people who played with it and did  things with it that they weren't supposed to do changed modern history  modern music production this is the magnetic tape recorder and it's a lovely  device and it was used popularized in World War two by the Nazis who used it  to chop up propaganda and so and the and after the World War and after the World  War and the BBC took on it took a ticket on themselves to try and develop a  version of this so this is relatively modern technology so in the 40s and 50s  that started become becoming popular and it was used for real-to-real  broadcasting right so before this it was gramophones and but and a bunch of so  they were used in music studios and they were relatively expensive as it became  cheaper and a bunch of music hackers and saw its potential to do something more  than just line it up so these hackers and got their hands on a bunch of these a  bunch of these magnetic tape recorders and and as people are wants to do with  technology that they get had their hands on it they started to fuck with it in a  new and very exciting ways and what they did is they they and as a movement in  in Paris and then early 1940s called music concret which was the first group  of people who were doing this aside from one lonely guy in Egypt as well but  there was like the epicenter of this was in is in Paris and what you do is you  see that the the actual tape there you use a razor blade to cut it and then you  can for example flip it over tape it back together and then you've got one  piece that's backwards right okay and using that technique I'll show you how  actually you okay so not only can you chop things up and turn them around you  can speed them up and slow them down this gives you this seems so basically if  you do it faster it will give you a higher tone and if you do it slower if  you slow it down it will be lower okay we all know this kind of instinctually  now but back then this was fellow this was completely revolutionary you could  make sounds that were not existing in nature and take for example the plucking  of a violin string okay you pluck a violin string and it comes on quick  it's like boom and then if you let it die off there's a long so what we call  that in music is this a sharp attack and a long delay and that's how a lot of  musical instruments or natural sounds will work okay they will fade off okay  but using this technology you could switch it around so it had the the  opposite effect around warm the long attack and a short delay so you could  create sounds that are not found in nature now which is extraordinary and at  the same time there was the advent of something called field recording which  was you could go outside instead of having to record in a studio you could  have a physical piece of equipment that you could carry around with you and and  and a microphone so you could go and record sounds outside found sound is what  we call it and then you could take it back to the studio chop it up with a  scalpel sellotape it back together re-record it and you could create this  is just you know it's just a huge vast new set of tools that you can work with  as somebody who's making music now the first people doing this were as I say  these these French guys in in Paris and in music Concret and they were doing it  and due to modern music digital preservation techniques you can hear  these the signs that they were making on YouTube you can spend some time and  listen to that and I won't lie they sound pretty awful and nobody wants to  listen to that I mean unless you're a true enthusiast and but it's not it's not  that the music they were making is where the techniques that they were creating  their experimentation sounded terrible but actually was incredibly influential  and we use sampling now as just an ordinary thing but this was the  technology behind it and it really came to a head in the 1960s when and beetle  the Beatles were the first people to use this technique on tomorrow never knows  now normally I well I would play this but when I did a talk similar to this at  the Hackaday Super Conference they and they pulled my livestream because there  was a 10-second snippet of the Beatles so I've decided not to risk it today and  you can look up tomorrow who never knows and you can hear these kind of  signs and that's actually flipped that's just flipped signs so that all of the  Beatles brought in signs from their home they flipped it around speeded it up  and slowed it down there's a famous like very high-pitched signed in that song  and it's just Paul McCartney laughing and they've manipulated using sticky tape  and scalpels anyway so that was the beginning of these new production  techniques right you can use these in modern music you know in your Ableton  or your logic or whatever you know those are just standard features but this was  the beginning of it and it's incredibly influential I could follow it down this  path and I'm actually gonna take take this to leave them to go on with their  modern mainstream production and I'm gonna talk about this woman instead who  was one of my favorite things about Hacker culture is the way that we learn  from each other and the way that we riff off of each other's work and so I'm  gonna go slightly sideways and talk about this artist and engineer's her name  is Daphne Orham and who's heard of Daphne Orham all right about ten of you  which is more than usual actually to be honest and so Daphne Orham is everyone  should know her name and that's why I never shut up about her and she was a  musician and physicist and electronics engineer who was unfortunate enough to  be a woman and was has a pretty tragic work history but she she's one of the  iconic figures of early electronic music she should be as well known as you  know any of the as Moog or whatever but anyway so she's a trained musician and  she got a job at the BBC queuing up these real-to-real magnetic tape  recorders which is actually a pretty big deal at the time for a woman as well so  she would she went on a training course to Paris and just studio recording  techniques you know standard corporate training right and and while she was  there and I believe she met some of the people behind the music concrete and she  was basically and they showed her what she they were doing and it totally blew  her mind she was like oh my god I'm gonna take this back to the BBC it's gonna be  so cool I'm gonna revolutionize everything it's gonna be awesome and she  took it back there and predict a bill now five years like no go back to pressing  buttons so she did but she also would run around the BBC late at night after  hours and stealing bits of equipment from other people's studios and wheeling  them into her own studio and she would experiment with all these music  congrats methods there's even she and as an as an electronics person as well and  she was one of the first people in the world to make purely electronic music  but she she was one of the first instances of someone who recorded her  oscilloscope and then started using that for compositional purposes as well and  she was doing this for maybe five six seven years and and at the end of that  she started to get some interest she managed finally to convince somebody to  give her a commission to create some incidental music for a piece of for a  show and and and it was a success and also people hated it of course and but  enough people wanted her to repeat it that eventually the BBC gave her own  studio which is like absolutely you know out of the question for someone in the  50s for a woman in the 50s and so she she was starting to make this but and she  and fortunately at this point it's called the BBC radio phonic workshop which  is one of the most iconic sound design workshops and studios in the whole  history of music technology so she starts this workshop the BBC radio phonic  workshops but a year later she leaves and to start her own artist practice  because they they said she said they wanted my ideas and they wanted my  work but they didn't want me and so she had to leave her life's work and she  was largely erased actually from everything that she did even though  she found it this iconic this absolutely iconic workshop and she went  off and created you know she didn't have a sad life after that but she she went  off and created in this wild synthesizer which is in the London Science Museum  now it was like instead of she she loved looking at waveforms of music so she  thought she would use watercolor to draw the waveforms and then have a  synthesizer interpret those waveforms and that's called the Oramix machine it's  like absolutely wild you can look that up on the internet as well it's cool to  look at so yeah she's becoming a bit more popular now because of the work of  some of the guys at the radio phonic workshop who still exist some of the  old guys who go around telling cool stories about them and but also because  of the woman she helped bring in and who stayed after she left and she's quite  famous now because of something I'll show you it's this lady and this is  Delia Derbyshire and who's head of Delia Derbyshire a lot more of you I  thought so I do a Derbyshire again the same she's got a maths and music degree  she couldn't get a job but she ended up basically pestering them into letting her  do some interning at the radio phonic workshop and eventually got a job  there and then she was the arranger and made the instrumentation for this and  now I'm gonna play this for you before I do I want you to think about the facts  that at the time every sound had to be physically cut and sticky taped together  every sync not and I'm not and there's no multi-track recorders back then either  okay so you have to it's an absolutely enormous process of recording the  sound stretching the sign cutting the sign sticking it back together making  it on a real recording that onto a separate real then you've got this and  then you add more signs and then you have like several tapes that you have to  condense into each other without multi-track technology okay they're  literally on different machines shouting go at each other and that's how  they were charged multi-track and but she was very blasé about it was kind of  amusing because it seems ridiculous to me now to be able to compose a piece of  music like that and like a jigsaw puzzle and but she she just shrugged and said  well seem to work and I'm kind of charming and but yeah so that's oh no  why didn't it play  oh no well I'm gonna play it for you anyway  oh it'sannoying to the  and she also needs rollin  No, no, no. No ceramic, no synthesizers exist. This was literally just a mix.  And she also made her own hensher, she recorded including my favourite, which was a little  walkulator. And that doesn't work.  Good name.  Yeah, so, they actually used a lot of electronic engineering gear in their work, it was very  fun. Anyway, we don't have any more speakers, I don't want to get an electrical radiation,  so let's move on.  I did actually want to play one of her own songs, so that's her commercial work, but  she was also an electronic experimental musician of her own. I think you kind of forget that  music in the 50s and 60s actually kind of was wild as well.  Let's see if we...  This is one of her tracks from the 60s.  It's kind of a Bion.  Oh, it's...  Nessie, nessie, nessie, nessie, nessie.  But anyway, we recognised this track because we did sample it.  So, the answer literally just wrapped over the top of this, and the rest is as a track.  She made this for a science fiction show that was based on an Azimov story, and this remains  for the Azimov story that it was made for has been deleted from the BBC archives, which  I find to be an absolute tragedy. I would love to watch that.  If you flip it back, the robotic sounds are singing praise to the master.  Thank you, Daphne.  So, that's my story of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but I wanted to leave you with a  quote from one of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop engineers, unfortunately, unnamed in the  documentary that I watched. I just thought this was kind of a cute sentiment.  Because they were making things up, they weren't the experts in the room. They didn't know  what they couldn't do. So, they just basically managed to mess around with stuff and ended  up with something really special and really cool, and something that was just iconic.  Some of the biggest electronic music acts in the world today still say that the work of  the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of their big influences in life as well.  So, yeah, that's the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  And I think it's really important that we allow for ridiculousness in technology, and  we allow for ugly noises, and we allow for stupid things that don't fully...you don't  really see what they're for. Like, the power of allowing for experimentation that isn't  very successful at first, or doesn't sound successful to the outside ear is really important.  So, outsiders. That was at golden age.  We've got the invention of a new technology, or just a democratization, the availability  of a new technology to a reasonable number of people led to this amazing sea change and  the way that people made music, made digital music, and well, analog back then, but the  way that we make music was changed by these experimenters.  It was definitely a golden age for new techniques, but I think that we're currently in a golden  age for people who are working with experimental instruments and experimental sound in general.  And I think that we've got loads and loads of really exciting new technologies that are  available. We've got cheap microcontrollers, we can make our own PCBs, we can make our  own synthesizers, we can access people, which is really crucial.  Think about it, Daphne, she didn't learn about music concurrently, she didn't find the BBC  Radio Phonic workshop until she had a spark of an idea from somebody else.  So, really, it's learning tools, learning techniques, gaining access to tools, learning  techniques, and being inspired by other people is really, really critical for anything to  really change and to really happen.  But I think that at the moment, we've got really, really cool, accessible new technologies  that more and more people are learning how to use and more and more are becoming much  simpler as well.  And crucially, people are more accessible.  So, people share, particularly in our community, people share their knowledge very freely,  and you don't have to be in the same room to do this.  I know a bunch of people are listening on the live stream right now, so you don't have  to be here to learn about things.  And you don't have to be in the room to attend a workshop with somebody, right?  There's these wonderful YouTube tutorials now for sharing information.  And these communities are just way more accessible through online places.  We've got incredible community and events as well.  So, this is, I mean, I shouldn't have put the slide in here, but it doesn't matter.  So, this is one of my old hackerspaces.  It's a machines room in London.  And it was where the music technology, one of the places where the music tech community  in London was centered.  They did some, it was there and the London Hack Space, but we did a lot of things with,  there's a community called a Hack U-Stick that I was involved with, and we used to do a lot  of events there.  I'm saying that the reason I put this slide in was just to show that hackerspaces and  makerspaces often have some kind of music technology partnerships.  And those kind of central spaces where you can share things, share knowledge and get inspired  by each other's work and also hold events is really, really crucial.  Actually, I do know why I put this slide in.  So, this slide, this was a wonderful space for three years.  And then the landlord raised the rent four times.  And this amazing community of artists and designers and music hackers was removed.  And at the same time, the London Hack Space moved from central London to west London.  And a bunch of other hackerspaces and fab labs closed as well just because of how expensive  the center of London had become.  And there's this, and as a direct result of that, I moved to Berlin.  And by aligning this kind of gentrification of our hackerspaces, we actually do destroy  community as much as we can create community online as well, like this.  So, this is an example of awesome online community.  This is a YouTube video from someone from the London music tech hacker scene, probably  the most famous person from it.  And it's called Sam, who goes by look-m-no-computer on the Internet.  And he's an electronic engineer and general purpose weirdo, which is why I like him.  And this is one of his creations.  He made a Furby synth, which is as horrific as you imagine, if not more so.  So, don't look that up.  I mean, do look that up.  But it's genuinely, be prepared to not have a nice time.  But he doesn't just show his instruments.  He doesn't just perform with them.  He does really awesome electronics, tear-dance as well.  He learned a bunch of stuff from watching his videos and looking at actually how he's done them.  And that's something that's really exciting.  I mean, like maybe 20 years ago, I wouldn't have had access to this kind of knowledge.  I just would have, and I probably wouldn't have even known that I like this kind of stuff.  You know, I wouldn't have been exposed to it.  And then I certainly would have, you know, I've been going down my local pub saying,  hey, who wants to work on a weird Furby instrument with me?  And they'd be like, what?  No?  So it's kind of nice to be able to share your weird passions with other people on the Internet.  And then, of course, we have, we're at one of these.  This is me and my friend Phoenix.  We've done a fair bit of music tech hacking together.  And this is actually the British version of Kongra, an EMF camp.  I guess it's the version of Chaos Camp, actually.  So EMF camp, which is actually in 2020 this year.  So, yeah, so it's a really cool, small hacker festival.  But these kind of spaces and these kind of events really allow, I mean, I've learned so much just by being here the last couple of days.  And every time we do this, we should cherish the hacker spaces and the events.  And we should also support people like Sam, who makes his living through Patreon and YouTube.  So it's by supporting, to make spaces and events, and also by supporting individual people who are putting the effort into create and share work,  I think we can cherish this community.  Okay, on to the final bit.  I'm going to show you some of the cool projects that I've been working on with other people.  But the reason I've chosen the ones that I'm showing you is because they're also using some of my favorite ways that you can hack on instruments.  So I figured I'd show you a project, but also show you how to make, you know, how you can have a go at it.  So recently I've lived in London and Berlin, and one of my favorite things to do is when I'm in a space,  is to make an instrument in the context of two people's work, two or more people's work.  I always find like my work is always way better if I'm collaborating with somebody else.  So, you know, what they do and what I do are smushed together to create something that's better than either of us could have done on our own.  And I think this is a good example if it will play.  This is one of my first Sonic Circuit Sculpture creatures.  This started off as a hack, just overnight hack, with my composer friend Andrew Hockey and Truth Vestini from Osh Park.  And myself, obviously, and we worked together overnight to create this.  So, a circuit sculpture, if you don't know what circuit sculpture is, it's basically, instead of putting your circuit inside of a box,  all of the parts or the key parts of it are shown and are actually celebrated as art in their own right.  So that's what circuit sculpture is.  And there's a couple of wonderful people, and this is a guy called Mohit, who makes really beautiful things,  and who's living in San Francisco, and then there's a guy called Jiri, who is in Prague, I want to say,  and they make really, really awesome, tiny, neat things.  But I'm not tiny and neat, so I make big, massive, messy things.  So this is the first one I made.  It was really interesting to me.  I really like Capacitive Touch as a technology.  It can be unreliable, but I find it kind of really fun to work with.  And it's very intuitive for a musician.  And then that led to me developing a second creature.  I'm really inspired by kind of utopian science fiction, and I wanted to make a series of creatures that inhabited the same world  and sung when you touched them.  So this was the second in the series.  This is a more traditional instrument.  I mean, obviously, it's still weird.  It's more traditional in that the first one was generative in some way, like semi-generative.  And this one is more like one note per limb with two modes of modulation.  This is a bass.  So that's my bass creature, which I'm actually developing for a real musician now.  This woman, an amazing bassist called Isaih Hassan, who is the bassist for the Savages,  and just was on tour with the Pixies.  And I'm making her a stage presence one, so she's going to be able to play.  But that's going to be more generation-based as well.  But it's kind of interesting to try and create something that in its functionality is very traditional,  but in its form is really weird, and that was kind of fun to play with.  But now my latest one is another creature.  But this is kind of like an abstract cephalopod.  It's going to be human-sized, and each of the limbs will pay a different part of the choral arrangement.  And then there's like some kind of like sunlight feature at the top where you can modulate it by touching the copper rods.  I've actually made a prototype which you can listen to.  So this is the latest version of one of the limbs of the tentacle, which I made.  It just made it for the form, but then everybody seems to really like cuddling it.  It's very comforting, so I decided to make it purr after I'd finished prototyping it.  So if you want to listen to my purring tentacle afterwards, you can.  It does sometimes work.  But I should say, actually, hello.  This is machine embroidered conductive thread.  So that is able then to detect capacity.  That's a capacitive touch sensor, essentially.  It's a tentacle.  So yeah, you can listen to that afterwards if you want.  It mostly works.  I made it yesterday.  So yeah, that's quite fun.  But again, I would not have been able to create the intricate signs with the help of my composer friend.  And I would not be able to get the implementation I wanted onto the Beagle board without Drew.  So it's really nice to kind of like sit together and mash up your skills.  Now, these all use one of these.  This is another one of my instruments.  This is a wearable, flexible PCB.  It's going to be a vocoder, but it's not finished yet.  But the reason I'm showing you that is because that's the sensor that I use.  They call it the trill.  It's essentially like if anybody have used capacitive touch before, you've probably used an NPR121 sensor.  This is like an NPR121 sensor plus plus.  It's much more, they've got, A has got like 20 something pins, which is wild.  And it's way more sensitive as well.  So I find it really, really great.  If anybody is doing stuff with capacitive touch and they're having some problems with it,  A, make sure you're grounded and B, have a go on that trill.  It's like 10 euros, I think, that sensor.  And it's done by Bella.  You can see one of their boards there.  Now I'm going to do a whole slide about Bella and fun girl about them because they're my favourite technology at the moment to use for embedded systems, for embedded instruments.  This is like the size, this is this big.  It's based on the pocket Beagle, which is the size of a small Altoids tin.  It's very, very small, but it runs, it's a full Linux computer.  And it's really, really awesome, super responsive, super low latency, which is really important when you're creating instruments.  But also the cool thing is it runs this.  This is pure data.  It's a visual programming language for sound creation.  Now a lot of artists and sound designers and music creators, they use this already.  This is very similar to something called Max, actually made by the same guy, but this one's open source.  Yeah, so that's Bella and pure data.  Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in instrument design.  The reason the battle is special is because of the low latency, but also because no other, so you can't get a microcontroller that will run pure data.  Except, so the Raspberry Pi does, but the latency on the Raspberry Pi is like, me.  So I would always suggest if you're doing something, the baller and pure data is a nice combo.  Okay, that's that one.  Then the other project I wanted to talk to you briefly about is this is Ariana Grande, who you probably don't know who she is, but anyone under the age of 13 certainly will.  And here she is demoing something called a Mimuglev.  It's a gesture control. She's controlling, she's doing looping, she's doing effects, using, obviously, various gestures.  Thank you, Ariana.  So that's the, this is what she's using here.  And this is coming out of London, but of the music tech company called Mimu, that was originated by Imogen Heap, if you know her.  And I saw that Ariana video, and something I didn't mention is I actually do quite a lot of teaching as well.  When I saw that Ariana video, I just thought, oh, my God, if I showed this to a 12-year-old girl and told them we could make one, they were going to lose their mind.  So these cost like five grand, though.  So I don't think I could get one for using the classroom.  So I just messaged Imogen and asked her if I could make a children's version.  And so I did.  She said yes.  And she, this is a wonderful piece of technology called the Microbit.  And it's a DIY, it's like my first microcontroller that is made by the BBC.  It's like 10 pounds.  It's very, very cheap.  It doesn't do a lot, but what it does, it does very well and very simply.  And I was able to make an approximation of a $5,000 glove with a $10 microcontroller, which is what the core of the product that I made is actually.  But I haven't got time to talk to you about that.  That's my leather robot unicorn, like gesture control.  But I can't tell you about that.  This is another artist, got no time for that.  So we're going on to this last one.  So basically, I was able to, with one bridge, one microbit and a little bit of code, get it to work on professional music software.  And this is a musician called Bishie, who's really awesome.  And this is her using my $10 hack to do a very similar thing to a $5,000.  And of course that's not stadium level.  Ariana Grande couldn't use that on tour.  But it was a fun project that we hacked together.  And that is, that's my time.  I have done, by the way, all of this, how I did that, that's all on my GitHub, all of the code.  If you've already got on microbit, you can do it yourself.  Or you can get the kits like 30 bucks.  It's not very expensive.  So all of that's on my GitHub, along with some weird factory signs of things.  And you can follow along on my weird electronic adventures on my Twitter.  I'm pretty reactive.  So say hi to me.  And I'll be hanging around here if you want to listen to my tentacle.  So the end.  Okay.  Ellen Lee, whoa.  Thank you.  Thank you, Ellen, for this fantastic presentation.  I'm wondering actually how are we going to play that thing there with the slime.  Are there questions here?  No?  Yes, yes, online, of course.  They're far more speedy than we shoot.  So the question from the internet is, have you ever considered creating music without human interaction?  Yes.  Okay, then next one.  Thank you. Good night.  No, I mean, personally, I'm a very tactile person.  So I like creating instruments that you stroke that are affectionate almost and kind.  I like giving the things that I create some kind of persona and that you interact with them.  However, a lot of people, there's a lot of people doing really interesting things with generative, non-human interactive art.  In fact, the composer friend that I was talking about, Andrew Hockey, he's done a lovely, he's hacked a musical marble run.  It's just automated.  When the marbles go down the marble run, it will trigger generative science, which is really, really cool.  There's lots of people doing it, but for me personally, I just, I know, I like touching the objects that I make.  And the kind of strange person who walks around a craft store with a multimeter kind of like touching things and like figuring it out if they're conductive.  Like adequately conductive.  So you're measuring, I thought.  So for example, in fabric stores, there might be something that's conductive that's not actually billed as conductive.  Or I'll often go to art stores and craft stores or architectural supply stores.  And you can find, you know, you don't have to go to Conrad.  You can go to modular with your multimeter.  In fact, it's actually, it's either, it's either conductive or it's not, right?  You know?  We believe you.  I'm just imagining you there.  Oh yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah.  I've had some strange looks.  A question here from number two, please here in the front.  Have you also created instruments that actually work with the physicality of the object that you have built instead of triggering sound processing?  So actually, you mean, in what way?  If the tentacle itself, the sound it produces would be amplified and somehow that's the base of the processing of the actual sound that comes out.  Yes, actually when the tentacle is done, it will have some kind of physical feedback loop in it that will be reactive to its, to its space, to its personal space even as well.  So actually the cool thing about capacitive touch technology is if you get the thresholding right, you can not just sense touch, you can sense proximity.  And that kind of also varies on how many people are in the room as well.  So you can get it to react quite, not uniformly, but you can get it to react quite nicely to its environment and also the way that people are manipulating it as well.  And you can also code some cool things into that as well, so basically based on the number of touches, how often people have played with it, and how people have played with it.  Get that to feed back in to the music that it's making in a generative fashion.  There's lots of cool things that I want to do with this next sculpture.  Thanks.  I'm so sad. I really have a spoiler here.  I really, we have to shut this now and I would like you to ask to talk to her personally here next to the stage.  Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you, and a little leave for this fantastic presentation.  Thank you.
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