Every Music Nerd’s Wet Dream

Okay, not exactly but this is noteworthy. I’m sure everyone is familiar with what “open source” is. Well, to put it in a nutshell, it is the opening up of source code of various applications, allowing for its users to make improvements and changes to their liking. Hence, the old distinction between “inventor” and “customer” is flattened to a large degree. One of the most popular example of the Open Source movement is Mozilla Firefox, but there are many others, including Wikipedia.

The chatter about the Open Source “movement” has simmered down in recent years due to the rise in Web 2.0-talk for many reasons, one of which has to do with the rise in popularity of open source software in lieu of hardware (Again, look at Mozilla’s rise). This makes a lot of sense since hardware on some level has always been open source, if you wanted it to be. What I mean is that anyone can modify and tweak a guitar amp for example by opening it up with your hands and rewiring various things or replacing this or that part. I say this with a smirk on my face since I know that messing with hardware requires a huge degree of specialized knowledge whereas making a change on a Wikipedia entry, for example, is comparatively easier.

The divide that kept the terms “hardware” and “open source” far away from each other as the two halves of Moses’ Red Sea is slowing recuperating with the advent of this baby.

This is the Open Stomp Coyote-1, which is being branded as “the world’s first open-source digital guitar effects processor.” How this works is that the Coyote comes with software that allows for customization of effects and patches as well as an online community which of course promotes the sharing of said effects and patches with other users of the Coyote. Here is what the software, called the Workbench looks like:

Looks pretty promising but I have two potential criticisms (which mind you are completely unwarranted since I’ve yet to get my hands on this thing nor will I ever). The first, which I think is what many companies fall prey to, is that OpenStomp relies too heavily on people purchasing enough of their products to form the database of effects and patches that will be freely shared. In other words, if I’m one of the 10 people that have purchased this thing, half of the entire novelty of this product has been erased. Secondly, it is not really open source hardware in the sense that the basic hardware components cannot be manipulated. Now that may be asking for a lot but to advertise this thing as open-source hardware is a bit misleading. With the advent of MIDI and digital sampling, we’ve had assignable hardware, which allows users of a keyboard sampler, for example, to load whatever sounds they want to various “banks” and play them back by hitting the keys of the keyboard. It is basically the same principle employed by any cheap Casio, which, with a click of a button, changes the sound of the instrument that you are playing, despite the fact that you are playing the same set of physical keys. Quite simply, it is the ability to assign a different effect to the same cause. In my mind, this pedal is just an extension of that logic placed onto an effects pedal context with the added bonus of creating your own presets and storing them onto the pedal (which, although may not be a big deal in terms of media and technology studies, is admittedly a big deal for musicians who play live often). Let’s see if this thing takes off but, for me, what is far more innovative is what musicians like electronic musician Daedelus and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello do, which is literally construct their own hardware.

Daedelus’ renowned “bit box” aka monome. If you don’t know him, check him out. He’s that FIREEEE:

XLR8R TV Episode 71: Daedelus from XLR8RTV on Vimeo.