At Musikmesse 2014, Nick Batt of Sonic State caught up with Doepfer Musikelektronik’s Dieter Doepfer, who wasn’t in the mood to talk about another synth module.
Instead, he wanted to talk about a new system for controlling anything – even your coffee pot – with MIDI. It can be used to control motors, magnets or ‘up to 64 coffee machines’ via MIDI.
He also talks astronomy and the latest in Doepfer’s ‘Dark’ line – the Dark Flow. The Dark Flow is a trigger sequencer that will be available as both a module and a standalone device. It offers 8 rows of 16 steps of trigger sequencing.
He also introduces some small Eurorack cases, which are, apparently, designed to be ‘gateway drugs’ to get people hooked on modular synthesis.]
Can’t wait to get my hands on a Dark Flow. That looks like a better drum interface than the x0x boxes.
Only one question remains…
… Do those 64 coffee machines have aftertouch?
There really isn’t anything magical about MIDI. It’s just serial data at a baud rate of 31250bps, so we pretty much run most things with ‘MIDI’ already, just… you know… faster.
I love multi-channel hardware sequencers. I was trying to explain to a friend yesterday how the iOS DM1 app is much more “jammable” than an 808, ‘cos each row of triggers is visible and modifiable simultaneously. The Dark Flow and its euro equivalent will be a very playable instrument. Count me in.
I stopped watching when he shoved off the guy like he was a fly.
Excuse me GTFO. This is more important.