Keith McMillen combines Leap Motion and Web MIDI

If you've ever fantasized about mixing with your hands similar to how you control a Theremin or in the movie Minority Report, your dreams are now closer to reality! With the latest K-Mix update, which enables sending MIDI message to fully control K-Mix, combined with the the K-Mix API and the incredible Leap Motion controller, I'll demonstrate how you can control K-Mix with only your hands and fingers, without touching K-Mix at all!. K-Mix used with the K-Mix API brings a new meaning to the term 'Programmable Mixer'

One of K-Mix's most powerful features is its ability to be programmed and controlled from any DAW. With the power of Web MIDI in your browser and the K-Mix API, K-Mix becomes the first audio mixer that's fully controllable with JavaScript. In Part 1, I'll go over the basics of using the K-Mix API and using K-Mix as a control surface for a web app.

Amplitude Modulation is a simple concept that can yield harmonically rich and bizarre timbres not easily achieved via other methods. In this article we'll expand on the topics introduced in Simple Synthesis – Amplitude Modulation and play around with the concepts behind AM Synthesis. Modulation sources do not need to be low-frequency oscillators or envelope generators.

In our first Simple Synthesis Addendum we learned how to connect a VCO to a VCA and control their 'frequency' and 'gain' AudioParams using a MIDI controller via the Web MIDI API. Good stuff! We now have a simple synth we can play. In this post we'll learn how to shape our notes by building a Envelope Generator with configurable attack, decay, sustain and release using the Web Audio API's scheduling methods. We'll also give our Envelope Generator a 'Mode' setting, which will give us the ability to create some really long envelopes to play with.

Emmett Corman has a great introductory series on the basics of synthesis (using modular synths), called Simple Synthesis. I thought it would be of value to those without access to the hardware to be able to explore and interact with the concepts that Emmett covers directly in the browser, using the Web MIDI and Web Audio APIs.

This opens up a huge variety of possibilities for not only art and music in the browser, but also allows any hardware that uses MIDI as its communication platform to control and be controlled by your browser. MIDI.org itself says "the Web-MIDI API is the most significant advancement of MIDI since… MIDI itself!"

Working in technical support for KMI, I am often confronted with requests for functionality from some of our devices that we didn't include for one reason or another. There's a variety of tools that you can use for this task, such as Max, Bome's MIDI translator or Pure Data. All of these software environments can do wonderful creative things with MIDI information, but one of them has a defining characteristic; Pure Data is free, open-source, cross platform software. This means that you can make a solution by yourself, today, for free, that can run on Mac, Windows, Linux and even on a Raspberry Pi. In this article (and maybe more) we'll look at the basics of manipulating MIDI in Pure Data to give the SoftStep2 four triggers on each pad.

The best way to unlock the hidden potential of any semi-modular synthesizer is by sequencing. This post will describe the necessary steps to use the QuNexus as a MIDI-to-CV converter along with Ableton Live to control the legendary Oberheim Synthesizer Expander Module.
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With the advent of small, portable, MIDI enabled analog synthesizers, computer musicians now have the option of controlling a lot more than VSTs. If you have a USB MIDI interface (or other means of getting MIDI from your computer to 5 Pin MIDI connections), you can leverage the sequencing power of Live to control all of the MIDI enabled parameters on your synth. In this article, we'll look at how to create a MIDI device using M4L that allows us to access all of the parameters on the Meeblip Anode, as well as how to add modulation sources to allow for more sonic options.