I went along to Music Hack Scotland on Friday afternoon in between interviewing previous Chancellor of the Exchequer's and the sedate environment of the Edinburgh International Book festival. SummerHall is a brilliant setting and it was good to be back in the building after the List launch party earlier in the month.
My boyfriend, Dougal Perman who set up internet radio station, Radio Magnetic (ahead of the curve in that broadband internet didn't exist, laptops weren't nearly as common or portable as they are now and mobile devices weren't yet internet enabled, wifi wasn't prevalent and well people hadn't got turned on to the idea of streaming music and data online) with his university friend after they graduated from Glasgow, was DJing at the hack throughout the evening along with Cliff Waddell from Glasgow based music blog and label, Phuturelabs so I went along to hang out.
I didn't know quite what to expect from a music hack but had been along to the Culture Hack event in Glasgow earlier in the year. I was impressed with the introductory presentations including FOUND's new music app, a souvenir concept for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. I was also keen to hear Matthew Herbert talk as he's such an interesting character and well the last time I 'saw' him was at the final Kinky Afro night on my 30th bday.
I'd been to a Culture Hack day in Glasgow earlier in the year where I learnt to code some basic javascript. Since the start of the year I've tried a few sessions on CodeAcademy, something I'd like to get into a little more. I really enjoyed the session, demystifying the art of coding and so with it breaking down the barriers between those with technical or predestined ability to develop. I'd have stuck around for the whole weekend had I not misunderstood the attendance policy. I thought that the overnight hack part of the weekend was more or less exclusively for developers. Heading back on Saturday afternoon for the developer session and the show and tell, I soon realised that the Culture Hack session encouraged participation from people who like me are more firmly based in the creative or cultural sector.
The line up was impressive. The SMIA and Jim Wolff, Jann et al had done an excellent job on attracting some superb folk. On returning later that evening when the hack was underway (filming duties took me away for a few hours), masses of delicious, authentic curry was being served up. Three times in a week for me and the Mosque kitchen.
The developing had begun and the tunes spun. I was curious to see if there were any projects I could input or get involved with so decided to find out what everyone was up to. I pretty much introduced myself to almost everyone in the three rooms. There was an interesting mix of concepts being thrashed out and ideas being formulated. I was certainly impressed to see the likes of Last.fm, Shufflr.fm and ThisIsMyJam hard at it. One common theme seemed to be that many people wanted to work with the Echonest api. I was a little surprised to learn about it as it was news to me but it seems to offer some really intelligent development potential.
I had wanted to create something myself. After meeting with Ben Fawkes from SoundCloud when we presented a digital media workshop for Edinburgh Fringe participants earlier in the month. He'd told me about their API where if you've geotagged your soundcloud content you can pull this into a player. After working on Walking Heads and having this content and information I wanted to see how feasible it would be to pull this info together in a mobile format for potential integration into native apps. As my developer skills are somewhat lacking, and my cheek not sufficient to blag or cajole somebody into doing it for me I decided to change tack. I was determined to leave the Music Hack after making something. Inspired by the creations of Lucy Robinson and Taras Young at the Culture Hack I set about to make something. I'd heard about the conductive pens so wanted to do something with them, but not sure what. We left the Music Hack at about 3am, then back to the house for a drink for an hour or so as I was driving. Returning to Summer Hall on Saturday around lunchtime (another amazing spread!), I set about rummaging through the box of hardware in a quest to build some kind of music creation.
I'd found something that looked like a speaker and some other bits and pieces. John was most helpful in directing me toward a project I could start my electronics hack with. Obviously wanting to maintain some music theme, I found a metronome project that looked fairly straightforward. Of course even with Rory's help in sourcing materials the magic box of gear didn't have exactly what was needed. After drawing out the circuit on a piece of squared paper, I took that along with the directions for making the circuit to Radio Shack just along Nicholson Street. Of course they didn't have exactly what was needed but I figured I'd take their advice and buy a couple of their most popular resistors. I really only had rudimentary knowledge. I'd made a buzzer loop with an old wire coat hanger and a big chunky 12V battery when I was a guide in an attempt to extract cash from punters in exchange for challenging to travel from one end to the other without making a circuit and buzzing.
Back on the bike to Summerhall, with only a few hours remaining before the show and tell and I'd not started soldering yet. John very kindly furnished me with copper circuitry that had a sticky back. Stick backed copper tape, neat! Laying out the copper tape, I then stuck it down. Each joint needed soldering. In my maverick, or somewhat lacidasal way, I had to be careful so as not to burn through the paper. There's a few smoulder marks where soldering had to be
Thanks again to John for the use of his soldering iron. I had used one many years ago. Although I've no idea what for!
A mad dash to complete my project left me almost out of time. Unfortunately I wasn't able to give my full attention to the weird and wonderful 3D globe projections that were happening. One final hurdle, on completion and testing of my metronome masterpiece, I'd realised it wasn't working. Thankfully John came to my rescue and was able to test the battery which proved to be emitting 2 of it's potential 9V. Another visit to the newsagent over the round, and the best part of a fiver later, I had a battery. I could hardly contain my excitement when watching the speaker cone rise and fall, dependent on where the adjustor was placed.
Thankfully I'd already entered my project on the wiki so was all up for presenting. I have to say part of my motivation for entering the contest was the opportunity to win a Raspberry Pi. Who knew there were ipad's up for grabs too. I got to present toward the end of the session. It was a little apprehensive. As I'd spoke with almost everyone there the prospect of telling my story was a little less daunting as it seemed like a room full of familiar faces. I presented and seemingly folk seemed to be receptive to my journey that day. Even though you could barely hear the tiny 8Ohms speaker even on the front row, never mind toward the back of the layered lecture hall.
I was delighted too with the response from everyone there. I was also ecstatic when I got the opportunity to buy my own Raspberry Pi from Eben and met his wife who wrote about Music Hack Scotland. Bare Conductive also offered up a set of pens, fortuitously I won a set which was just as well as it'll encourage me to continue my electronic circuitry in a really fun, tactile way.Being a participant, and I do mean participating, creating and presenting my hack, (unimaginatively called the Deer-Nome, Deer from my surname Deery, Nome from Metro-Nome) made for a slightly different experience than mere hack observer. I certainly was left feeling there was a culture of cooperation, and whilst there may have been some gentle competitive spirit, the atmosphere was mostly quite open and encouraging. One thing I'd like to see at future hacks would be some limitations. It'd be interesting to see what folk could do with just the data that's provided. Perhaps even offering up the same data sets and API and limiting them so there's a closer competitive element? Perhaps that's not in the spirit of a hack but something that might produce interesting results.
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