There's been a lot of press and radio lately about FM3 or FM-3 (a duo, not sure of the spelling) and their "Buddha Machine", which is a great concept and something I really love the idea of, and am happy to have received as a gift, but am very much disappointed with in so many ways. Funny, that.
First off, it does bother me, and in a petty way I'll admit, that suddenly FM3 is suddenly getting all sorts of press and attention for basically taking a thousand year old idea and practice, and on top of that not even basing it on that but simply an existing modern version of it, and making their own version and cashing in heavily on it (trust me, the cost of these suckers to make is nothing compared to what they're selling for.) And their one claim to originality is that the sound loops in their Buddha Box/Machine is that the loops are ones they supposedly came up with themselves - which really doesn't make sense, in that even if they supposedly listened to each loop of the nine loops total "non-stop for 15-20 days each, tweaking them until they were just right" (from a Public Radio "Studio 360" interview) - well, why would you do that when the existing sounds from the Buddhist versions of the same exact device they're selling are based on those many hundreds of years of development?
This is a great example of something that piques people's interest after they read raving review after review and you figure you want one. Expect to pay a lot more than this thing costs to make, as while it's simple enough it should be fine, it's cheaply made.
For starters, it's hardly environmentally friendly ("green"), coming with batteries manufactured by a Chinese company with a terrible environmental track record. And as they run out, you'll be adding double AA batteries to the landfill at least once or twice a week if you use this as intended, although I doubt you will.
It's simple enough to operate: a dial for volume for the built-in cheap speaker and line output plug; an LED to show it's on, the possibility of plugging in a power supply which is unusual and will cost as much as this box but it cheaper than batteries in the long run, and a switch to change loops, because contrary to what another reviewer wrote, this does not play random loops, it plays the same nine loops (2 to 42 seconds in length), in the same order and requires you to push a switch to change the loop. A "random play" mode would make this much better, although you can also avoid loops that are the most annoying, although they all are at some point. Again, this does NOT play loops randomly nor change them without your direct interaction.
The biggest disappointment is just how much talk they put into having the Buddha Box/Machine made, and how much trouble it was, etc. etc. The truth is that they're manufactured for cheap in China, and are build like crap. The built-in speaker can't handle the frequencies of their sound loops if you turn it up even more than 25% of full volume, and the line output is even worse - it's extremely noisy, not just hum or hiss but random, annoying noise, if you try to plug it into an amplifier or powered speakers - you need to keep it turned down to about 10% of max. volume to get a signal that's not distorted and full of noise - which in my mind, defeats the entire purpose of having soft, soothing, repetitive sounds.
I guess I had some pretty high expectations of it considering the cost, but really it's just cheap crap that's very hard to get to a reasonable volume out of without distortion and noise. Fortunately, to their credit, they make the loops available in uncompressed format on their Web site, so I'll simply read up or figure out the timing, and make a CD with the sounds that can be played on repeat, at any volume, without the annoyance of noise, hiss, him and distortion. If I had known this ahead of time, I'd just have done that in the first place.
Which does lead to the question of whether or not this is a based on "buddhist principles" - it does make you live in the "hear and now" because I find myself having to get up to change the loop in every 2-5 minutes because they start to become so repetitive they're annoying. The loops are static, and do not change in any way. There's really nothing "organic" about this, it's purely mechanical. If it's meant to create at atmosphere for relaxation or meditation, then it fails, as you cannot really work towards either when you're thinking all the time about changing it, unless, as another reviewer put it so well, "you want to hear the same five second sound 120 times in a ten minute period."
I love the music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Brian Eno and the idea of process music, but their works change over time no matter how repetitive they seem. They're not static, which is all you can get from this box, and that static is more like the so-called "Chinese Water Torture" in the way it doesn't vary in the least amount, which at some point starts to become torturous, not relaxing.
It also gets my goat that in many ways they're promoting this as something new to Western culture, without any recognition to the same exact concepts and execution that is the foundation of Minimalist Composition, in particular the early works of Steve Reich, as well as Glass, Riley and LaMonte Young. Riley, in particular, drew inspiration from this same exact concept, so in my mind, they don't deserve all the "originality" points they seem to be earning.
Granted, I have a personal beef as well - I reissued a CD by a group in Portland called Austere that was released almost 10 years ago that is very similar in concept, although far less static and repetitive and more in the vein of Minimalist composition, and it not only saddens me that they've never gotten any real attention or credit for writing music in this style long before the Buddha Machine but long after it had been abandoned by Reich and the others, in an attempt to keep the flame alight and to carry that torch into the 21st Century. But I guess it all comes down to who you know, and if you can catch a wave of attention and know how to ride it, you can get quite far.
The band is milking it for what it's worth: a limited edition "black" version for 50% higher price (if you want black, it's easy enough to spray paint one.) They also have a brass pin you can wear, and their performances have tons of tapestries with the Machine on them, and the rider for their "live shows", which is basically them setting up a couple of them and letting them play for 35-45 minutes, is worth downloading from their Web site for a laugh. Not quite as ridiculous as the old Van Halen rider expecting a bowl of M&M's (tm) with all the green ones in a separate bowl, but close.
In the end, I guess as I said my expectations were very high, but I know clearly how this could have been correctly - soothing loops that are all longer, with not only some way to set how often they change, randomly or in order, and with a random amount of quiet added between each loop, just to vary it. The potential for something really great was here, but it falls far short of what it could have been. Buy a Steve Reich or Brian Eno CD instead, and put it on a quiet volume on repeat, and you'll be much more likely to find the ways music can help one relax or meditate. Like Public Enemy said, "Don't, don't don't - Don't Believe the Hype!"
Recently, answering a question on the AllExperts.com site about a D.I.Y. MIDI system to control lights with a MIDI device reminded me of one I helped build years ago to trigger samples. Here was the original question:
"What I'm trying to do is take midi information and convert it to light rather than sound. So instead of the midi being assigned to a note "F#" it's assigned to a color "red". I'd need this to be done in a small space powered by a 9v battery. I'm thinking I'll need a microchip and midi program. Any insight would be great. Thanks a lot." — Tom
I ended up responding with a basic outline of the components that Tom would need to put this together, and mentioned that there are commercial products out there that do this sort of thing already, but they're really expensive:
"Sorry to say, but the scope of a cool project like that is well beyond what can be answered here. I will say you can find MIDI (properly all-caps) info and you'll want to learn that, and that there's at least two companies that were already making products similar to what you propose (although I think it would be cool to build myself, I've thought of it as well!) If you do a Web search for "MIDI controllers" and "live performance" you'll likely find at least one of the companies making these kinds of products.Of course, if you want to build your own, you're like me, but I'd still check out the products to get an idea of what's out there. And what the heck, since it sounds like a fun project, I'll try to think it through - you'll need a MIDI interface coming out of a keyboard and/or computer to generate your MIDI data, unless you want to buy a product that translates hand-movements, such as the Korg Kaos controller, to use instead. And a cable to get it to your device. That's all easy.
Your device would require a MIDI input plug, chip and board at least, and you can buy these online if you do a Web search. The hard part would be a microcontroller or DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chip - DSPs are great microprocessors. The translation could be something as easy as just mapping notes to colors, although if you wanted to get trick you could have it do fades, etc. - the speed of which from one color to another I would map to the velocity info in the MIDI stream: slow velocity numbers would fade the colors slowly, and high vel. nos. quickly.
It's really finding a DSP and programming it that would be the hard part. And then figuring out how to send the light data out and what you would generate the light with. My guess is you could get an composite or S-Video microchip that would generate that, and you'd need to build the board to connect the DSP to talk to that chip and generate color.
It's a fun and cool project, but as said, I think there's at least one, if not two products I've already seen that are available. The downside is that despite costing maybe $5 in parts total, they were very expensive - US $100's of dollars. So it's up to you to decide how competent you are with this kind of development - heck, if you can do it, you can probably apply for a patent and start your own product line! As digital video projectors get less expensive, the demand for this sort of thing is just going to go up! Good luck!"
The follow-up from Tom reminded me of a summer when my pal Sean Williams of Process & The Mystery School Ensemble fame, who also runs Artifact Records stayed with me for a couple of weeks and we worked on a project to create a MIDI controller that he could attach to his bass and use to trigger samples on his Mac using eMagic's Logic Audio. Here's what I wrote back to Tom:
"A custom board would be able to do it. There are boards out there with MIDI connections and DSPs - I've helped someone (Sean Williams) from the Mystery School Ensemble build one that didn't control lights but samples instead, but in theory it's all the same. We were able to fit the whole thing in an Altoids tin on the back of his bass, with wires around to 8 buttons near the bridge he could hold down to trigger samples. He bought the board, which had MIDI out/in plugs on them and a DSP, and we just added the switches. You might have to shop around for custom parts like we did, but it works well."
I wish I had a digital camera back then, or if I did, had the insight to take photos, because it was a fun project, and worked out well, and the Altoid tin holding the main MIDI controller was pretty cool glued to the back of his expensive Yamaha electric bass. In the future, any of these projects I take on, I'll be taking photos so I can put together a "step-by-step" demonstration on how it's done.
We're currently rebuilding three Roland RE-201 Space Echo tape echo units (we'll probably gut one for parts for the other two, and then sell or keep the spare parts around.) I'm going to photograph the steps as we work to restore a tape echo to show exactly how involved the whole process is, and why we charge what we charge to do the work.
The upside is that we do work on these particular machines as well or even better than the couple of good audio repair shops in town, and they start at $50 and $65 just to look at the unit, before they start charging parts and labor. We can usually clean up a Roland tape echo for around $40-50 if it doesn't require parts.
But I've gotten off-track and rambling. The main point was that MIDI controllers can be cool to build - it took us only a day once we got all the parts together and I came up with tin to house the electronics, and the two of us had it working by the next day, with eight trigger switches on the front of his bass that he could push and each would start a unique loop in Logic Audio and keep playing it until he let the switch up, and he could change Logic to either then reset and restart the sample at the beginning, or leave it where it stopped to continue again where it left off.
I just really wish I had photos of the project, because it was really fun and cool. If you've read this far, remember to take pictures! You'll never know when you'll want to share it for fun, information, or just to relive a little project that was a blast to do.
Here's another recent question we answered:
"I have been camping/canoeing on The Saco River, ME for 15 years. My group has attempted to perfect the audio entertainment in this time. However, we continue to battle a two powerful variable -- water and time. Our trip is a three day, two night river journey. In the past we have suffered drenching rain, turned-over canoes -- all of which desimate a portable system. We recently tried the work-site radios hoping their durability and large rechargeable batteries would be the answer and it was -- however, when our canoe turned over (only the 2nd time in 15 years)the music was silenced. I was recrntly on a large cabin-cruiser and had an idea. If I had a power source - battery - why not put together a portable system and install it in a heavy duty waterproof case. I think the only components that would need to be exposed to the elements are a couple of weatherproof speakers which I could install flush to the case and seal - the rest i.e. receiver, battery, amplifier (would I need one?), power converter (would I need one?) and wiring could be tucked into foam within the box." — William
Hi William,
Well, you're lucky, because I've done a lot of sound for outdoor parties, events, and camping trips, so I'm got some experience in this area. The two most important things have nothing to do with audio equipment but how it's handled:
Firstly, make sure that the audio setup, all of it, unless the speakers/monitors are designed to be used outdoors, like certain Mackie setups, are covered and kept from being exposed to any rain or sun. Basically, keep everything under a tent or cover.
Secondly, bring some blankets, and try to keep the gear (CD player, etc.) covered as much as possible. This keeps the problem elements: dust, fog, humidity, bugs, etc. from getting in the gear. Just get some cheap wool blankets from your local charity place and they'll work well.
Now, if you're taking gear into a canoe and it's flipping and dumping it in the water - there's really nothing you can do unless you can find fully water-proof audio gear, which I'm not familiar with. I'd suspect you also lost your cell phone if you had it on you, or would have. Basically, electronics in water means they're fried.
Your idea about putting a battery in a case is OK but only if you buy a battery that does not "out gas." Car / motorcycle / boat batteries emit small amounts hydrogen as they operate (its what causes the weird greenish corrosion around the terminals) and why you should never smoke near a battery. So if you put it in a case, and the hydrogen builds up, and there's any flame - you're basically going to blow yourself up. So this probably won't work. If you tried it, you'd need some way for the air to circulate, which would mean it wouldn't be water-tight. And yes, you'd also need a converter, and that might be a problem too - it might get hot in a case, too hot and fry itself, melt, or set the battery off.
I'd shop around for some sort of manufactured water-proof system that's already built for what you're looking to do. I'm all about the Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) approach, but in this case, putting a battery in a waterproof case is very dangerous! So look around for a system - I'm sure a Web search would turn something up. Good luck!