stryd_one's MBlog

The Home of Southpaw MIDIboxing ;)

Here I plan to blog my progress on all things MIOS from now on. There are two areas I'll be focussing on, for now - stock MIDIBoxes, and a customized sequencer that I have been planning off and on for a couple of years now.

I had a bit of a disaster recently and lost pretty much everything I owned, so I really have to start from scratch all over again. I hope that by sharing my experiences in building starting from nothing, I will lend some experience to others starting out later on. This is where the stock MIDIBoxes come into play. I'll be breaking it down into these sections:

I've never done an electronic project on a scale anywhere near this, but I have been in the IT industry for over 12 years, and I'm rather partial to mechanical stuff (particularly aeronautical) and in my time I have learned a few things which I KNOW are going to apply here. As with all things, you get out what you put in - and that starts from the very beginning. It's important to start building from a good foundation,

• Preparation - This will be mostly about tools required to do all of the projects, from soldering iron to wire strippers to Internet Explorer, and everything else I come across

These projects will be built as standard applications as per ucapps.de … But to call any DIY project “stock” is misleading, because every project will differ a little. I will surely do customised casing and control surfaces for most of these.

• MBHP - This section will be on the MBHP hardware required to build the following projects.

• MBSID - My first project will be an 8xSID v2. The firmware for this is not ready yet, so until then I will build a Step B V1 MBSID
• MBSeq - Next up is a stock MBSeq v2.
• MBFM - Next up is a stock MBFM with full Control Surface.

Now, I'm a very busy man, so while I'm taking my sweet time preparing for and building the above,(don't expect anything to happen too quickly around here! All my time is used up, earning money to pay for these toys hehehe) I'll also be working on my baby:

MIDIBox Sequencer vX The vX is an algorithmically controlled loop sequencer with multiple syncronised clocks and dynamic internal repatching.

Analog Switch Matrix In the somewhat distant future I will work on a digitally controlled analog switch matrix.

While I continue building my toolkit I am also working with other MIDIBoxers on a few other bits and pieces:

• MIDIBox Guitar - Ribbon controller based MIDI guitar. Concept by Wilba. Not to be confused with the midibox axe, which is a seriously hot-rodded toy guitar with a few buttons for pitch, this design is based on ribbon controllers. Ask me if you're interested in this, at this stage it is too early to write about it here.

• MIDIBox SpeakJet - MIDIBox based speech synthesiser. TK is cooking this one up at the moment.

• MBFX - MIDIBox controlled audio FX. Concept by any one of about 5 billion people ;) Could also be adapted to other purposes where digitally controlled resistors or voltage dividers, or digitally controlled switching, is required. MIDI up your favourite amp head, stomp box, analog synth or individual modular synth modules

• Keyboard - a large velocity sensitive scanning matrix for driving a set of piano-style keys.

• MIDIbox Relative MIDI Controller - a MIDI Controller which sends notes locked to scales using relative positioning

• MIDIBox Master Keys - a MIDI filter/router/remapper designed to enhance MIDI Master Keyboard Controllers

• MIDIBox Drums - There are murmurs of a drum controller based on midibox

• Standalone Arpeggiator - I intended to use the arp code from the vX stripped down for this, and a few other people have made some suggestions now too… No final featureset has been decided upon as yet.