Lava Lamp controls Propellerhead Reason

By Paul Dakeyne

October 26, 2009 | Posted in Feature

As a 60′s child, I’ve always been a fan of Mathmos lava lamps. In fact I have one sat next to my studio monitor offering aesthetically pleasing good karma to oil the wheels of creativity. Imagine my surprise when I saw this video showing one pulsing MIDI control messages to Propellerhead Reason?

This bizarre method of fluidic control (or is that un-control?) brought to mind the weird and wonderful experimental sound creations as highlighted in BBC4′s ‘Krautrock’ documentary recently. Bands such as Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Can and Faust were shown, members of which were still clattering, dragging and abusing various inanimate objects with manic abandon – appearing almost like a ‘Vic ‘n Bob do music creation’ exercise.

So would this method of using transistors to pick up light intensity and movement, translated by a microcontrol motherboard, spewn into a PC running Propellerhead Reason with modular sound generators… erm, ‘work’ for today’s new generation of sound designers? Well, probably.

Although you’d never get an exact repeat performance from the performer, sorry, lava lamp, you’d certainly be able to record the MIDI it generates and do a club remix for the next “Ministry of Sound does ‘r-beefa’ album”.. The impossibilities are endless!

About Paul Dakeyne

Paul Dakeyne has written 592 post in this blog.

Paul Dakeyne is a DJ/Producer who has dedicated the past two decades of his life to dance music production and DJ'ing. For six years, he toured globally for the world famous Ministry of Sound and has played DJ sets for the likes of U2 and for the legendary, Kraftwerk, Although remixing around 250 records in his career, as an artist in his own right, Paul landed one of dance music's seminal crossover moments with his "18 Strings' monster hit by Tinman - scoring a UK top ten in 1994. He also co-wrote and produced the music for BBC's Watchdog and Crimewatch when they were both revamped in 2001 and '06 respectively. His other career highlights have included an A&R stint for Mercury Records, lecturing in 'DJ culture and music technology' and creating mash-up mixes for Radio 1's, Chris Moyles. Paul joined the DV group in 2003 leading to his role as blog and feature author here at the DV Mag.

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Tags: Controller, lavalamp, mathmos, midi, propellerhead, reason

1 Comment

One Response to “Lava Lamp controls Propellerhead Reason”

1. matt says:

   October 29, 2009 at 22:50

   How cool is that?!

     matt

   Reply