Andy on the Road

My company Hobnox seeks to be a destination site for the creative community - a place where artists and designers can come online and share their content, while we provide materials on the site to equip these users with the tools to create and a variety of outlets for expression.

Of these tools, the most popular to date certainly has been the Audiotool (although the Livetool is also effing brilliant, and <teaser>will be used in a part of Endless Feature soon</teaser>…). The audiotool is a brainchild of André Michelle, web designer and wunderkind, and as the German office would say. In its early stages BoingBoing ran a piece on the first component of the tool, a flash-based re-imagination of the Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer. Since the the tool has grown considerably, adding in a TR-808, two TB-303s and a variety of effects pedals with EQs, Compression, Delays, Reverb, and Distortion.

Today we are thrilled to have Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired’s Listening Post, my favorite music blog, do a feature on the audiotool.

Van Buskirk:

We’ve seen plenty of sites that let you make or mix music in a rudimentary way, but none that offer the deep feature set of Hobnox AudioTool. This free online electronic music studio lets you compose with two TB-303 Bass Line generators, Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and two banks of effects pedals including three delays, crusher, detune, flanger, reverb, a parametric equalizer and a compressor. By clicking the mouse button, you can drag virtual cables between any output and any input to customize the setup.

Composing music in this way is a bit tedious, because you need to add and shape each note individually. But this is exactly how many electronic musicians work, because it allows so much control over each element of the loops and allows you to create melodies and beats without playing them.

Thanks, Eliot, and if you liked it consider Digging the article.