Thomas Leisner

About Beauty and Bright Ideas

Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

October 12th, 2017 by Thomas Leisner

1. Unpluggedival 2017

For the first time I am organizing a festival instead of playing with my band at that festival. Together with my good friend Andreas Gerts who is already experienced in organizing events we invented the 1. Unpluggedival 2017 at our neighbourhood in Berlin. 

Andreas and I had already worked together at the Florakiezfest, where he was the main organizer and I was the responsible technician at the big stage of the festival. Since then we had the idea of organizing our own festival for music only. The result of it is this indoor festival, spread over ten locations and featuring nearly 40 acts on two evenings: October 20. and 21., 2017.

Unpluggedival

Look at the festival’s own website for details. By the way that website was realized by myself, as well as me developing of the festival’s logo. The idea for the logo came from Matthias Lopp of Graphscape, who also made the print design in correspondence to the website’s design. 

December 24th, 2013 by Thomas Leisner

Das Lied der Krähe

Already ten years ago my brother Markus finished a book that has been available only electronically since. It now has come to a real life as a printed book, and you can get the printed as well as the electronic version right here.

“Das Lied der Krähe” (Song of the Crow) is a book about the great questions of life presented as a dialogue between a young woman and an old man. Markus had finished it in 2003 as a hand writing which I then typed and designed. Since then it was available in electronic form, but has been forgotten about, and I only found it when recently I cleared my computer’s hard drives.

As it would be a pity to really forget about that work, and as the development of printing technology made printing a book affordable, I decided to make it available as a printed book on my website now, ten years after it’s first release. If you want to buy it please use the form below to get in touch with with me. It’s 15 Euros plus 2 Euros for shipping. It has 280 pages and a soft cover as pictured above.

If you want to get an impression before buying you can download the complete electronic book here.

Download Download “Das Lied der Krähe”.

 

November 29th, 2013 by Thomas Leisner

Lydia und Claudia

I just finished the production of a CD for folk-singers “Lydia und Claudia”. It’s their first album and it’s got a rough and fresh attitude to it, which I like very much.

November 4th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

TouchOSC Oxygen 8 Emulation

The attached file is for TouchOSC, the touchscreen control surface app for your mobile device. It emulates the functionality of the famous “Oxygen 8” keyboard when used together with Ableton Live.

The Oxygen 8 is a small Midi controller keyboard with a keyrange of two octaves and eight rotary knobs for controlling parameters in your audio software. It became popular as one of the first compact mobile studio solutions when everybody started to produce music on the go with a laptop. As one of the first devices of it’s kind, it offered power supply through the computer’s USB port.

This simple emulation has the Oxygen’s eight knobs. This fact in itself isn’t very impressive, but if you use it with Ableton Live and in Preferences/Midi you select “Oxygen 8” as a control unit, these eight knobs will be automatically mapped to the “Best Of Parameters” set of parameters predefined by Ableton for every device. So without any manual mapping you will have access to the most important functions of this software.

As a bonus the TouchOSC system is not only smaller and more light-weight than the original keyboard, but it has TouchOSC’s relative mode enabled, which means that you won’t have any parameter jumps when switching between devices and touching the knobs. And if you are missing the keys: Well, you may of course add them into some other tabs in the layout. Simply refer to my version of the “Keys” standard layout and copy and paste it to the Oxygen 8 layout.

Download Download TouchOSC Oxygen 8 for iPod

 

 

October 3rd, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

TouchOSC Design Mod

TouchOSC comes with a selection of useful controller layouts to choose from. They are pre-installed and can be used immediately. After modding the two big controllers for Ableton Live and Apple Logic, I also changed the colours for the various other basic controller layouts.

In case you’re wondering what TouchOSC might be, have a look at my introduction to TouchOSC. In case you already own TouchOSC you may simply download the attached collection of layouts I have modified, open the included files one by one in your TouchOSC Editor application and upload them to your device from there in order to use them.

The “Beatmachine” layout.

 The “Keys” layout. I have added some octaves.

 The “Mix 2” layout.

 The “Mix 16” layout.

 The “Simple” layout.

Download Download Neutrum Design TouchOSC Mod for iPod

These colours are just my personal preferences, but in case you like them too, here they are. I only have the iPod versions here, as I only have an iPod. Please leave a comment in case you are interested in the iPad versions, they are easily and quickly done.

 

August 22nd, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Strange Fluid Hybrid Kit

With my band Strange Fluid I play a hybrid drumkit for more than ten years now, as the mixture of electronic and acoustic sounds belongs to the concept of this band. The symmetry of this drumkit is based on my personal preferences.

The perfect symmetry of this setup means there is no preference of right or left. It allows me to play everything with my right or left hand or foot at any time. It helps me to get equal performance on both sides which always was my first goal in drumming. It also was part of the concept for Strange Fluid from the beginning, as it helps to play unusual combinations that occur when using electronic equipment.

The electronic part on this latest update of the drumkit for our 2012 concerts is not quite obvious to see on these pictures. Of course the self-built pads on the outsides allow for playing samples. But the most interesting part is hidden in the acoustic instruments, the sound of which is beeing picked up by microphones and can be used as is.

Using my self built Quadra Pad switch in the top middle of the set, I can now add up to two layers of samples onto the acoustic sound and spice up the whole thing by using time-based and colour-based effects, usually delay and distortion. The Quadra Pad controls the software on my laptop and indicates by red lights if a layer of effect is currently active.

 

August 19th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Skully

 

July 12th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

LogicTouch Design Mod

TouchOSC comes with two grown-up controller layouts, one for Ableton Live and the other for Apple Logic. These control surfaces interact with the application via MIDI remote scripts which allow for bidirectional communication and automapping of parameters to controller elements. The one for Logic is an officially supported control surface for Apple Logic and is called LogicTouch.

LogicTouch offers extensive control over many parameters of your Logic project, including functions for transport, automation, channel strip parameters, channel equalizer and effect parameters. The iPad version even allows for control over software instruments parameters on a separate page and for controlling sets of eight channels at once.

Given these facts it’s no surprise that it’s big fun and a great help to work with LogicTouch, and just as my Neutrum Design Mod for Logic makes Apple Logic look more elegant and clean, this Neutrum Design Mod for LogicTouch makes LogicTouch look like it was made for it.

The Neutrum Design Mod for Logic and how it relates to the modified design of LogicTouch.

Creating this design modification was relatively easy – and just so is installing it – because TouchOSC comes with an excellent editor for creating your personal controller layouts on your computer. TouchOSC Editor allows for changing the colours of interface elements and also for uploading your creations to your mobile device.

This means that after downloading Neutrum Design Mod for LogicTouch to your computer, you simply need to open the layout for your device in TouchOSC Editor and send it to your device in order to use it. You may overwrite the existing files and in case you want to return to the original layout you may get it back from the same place where you got TouchOSC Editor.

Download Download Neutrum Design LogicTouch Mod

July 2nd, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

LiveControl Design Mod

LiveControl is a MIDI Remote script that allows you to control Ableton Live directly from your iPad or iPod using TouchOSC. It supports full automapping of parameters and bidirectional communication between Live and your touch device.

LiveControl is a sophisticated little piece of software, it’s fantastic and big fun to use. Best of all it’s free, and the wonderful TouchOSC is incredibly cheap. So if you use Ableton Live and have a touchscreen device, using TouchOSC together with LiveControl gives you a powerful wireless remote controller system for nearly nothing!

As you may know if you have heard about my Neutrum Design series of design modifications, I am a bit sensitive about colours. This is why I changed some colours in the layout of LiveControl to fit my preferred colour scheme for Ableton Live, a skin called “Klinikal Ninja”.

I found this skin on the web, and unfortunately I can’t give credit to the one who made it, because I could not find any link. But as this skin was free to download I guess he or she will be all right with sharing it. Look at the picture gallery below to get an idea of it. It’s great especially in dark rooms, such as a club or concert stage.

For LiveControl I changed some colours to make it fit the black and red colour scheme of the Klinikal Ninja skin. Also the clip launcher section was a little too nervous for my taste, so I stopped the “stop” buttons from blinking whenever a clip in this track is playing. I also made it possible to show grey clips, which is very important for Neutrum Design.

Above: The pages of the LiveControl Design Mod for iPod

Above: The pages of the LiveControl Design Mod for iPad

To install this design modification you need to upload the modified LiveControl layout to your device and to replace some script files inside the Ableton Live application folder with the modified ones provided by the download below. A readme file will give you all the information you need. If you also want to use the Klinikal Ninja skin, the installing instructions will show you the way to the skins folder, too.

Download Download Neutrum Design LiveControl Mod

The download contains all the files you need for the design modification on iPad or iPod, as well as detailed instructions on how to install them on Mac or PC. However I could only try and test it on a Mac with my iPod. I hope it will serve you on PC and iPad as well.

 

June 8th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Thinking Beauty

 

April 18th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Gem

 

April 7th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Lickin Beauty

 

March 10th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Some Sweets

Well, I haven’t had the time to post for a while, because I was so busy working on the new website for my band Strange Fluid.

In the mean time, I’d like to give you some sweets to make you enjoy your time! Take care of your teeth, too much sweets isn’t good for your health.

 

January 14th, 2012 by Thomas Leisner

Strange Fluid Making Of

We produced a “Making Of”-Video of our new album’s first song “No Pope”, which shows a little of our studio work at Lauter Leben, where we retreated for a week to get the recordings done.

November 25th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

My Tiddly Wiki

I was curious about what a „Wiki“ might be, and I was surprised to learn and find much more than I had expected. Say hello to TiddlyWiki, your free personal advanced notepad!

A Wiki in general is a system to store and retrieve information, especially when working together in groups. Therefore Wikis are web based and they do not only show their contents but also allow you to edit them. If you think about Wikipedia for a moment, the special thing about it is the fact that you may not only read an article, but also may write one yourself, which makes this collection of information so big and still growing.

Tiddly Wiki is a small Wiki designed for personal use. It runs in your browser and stores information in one single file on your computer. Now the cool thing about Wikis is that they store information in a non-linear way, Which means that you don‘t have one page after another, but you write an entry and may hide it and forget about, but can easily retrieve it by searching for keywords or tags you have given it or looking in a timeline, where every entry is stored in chronological order.

There are many ways to customise Tiddly Wiki, as it is developed by a large community adding content and plugins to expand it‘s functionality. Just as a Wiki‘s content may be read and edited by everyone, the Wiki itself may be used and extended by everyone. This is perfect for me! As you might have noticed I like to edit the software I use to fit my personal expectations and needs, so of course I made some little tweaks, and of course I offer my personal edition for you to download.

So here we go, just download „My Tiddly Wiki“ and try it! A short introduction to basic functions is included. It‘s more or less original version of Tiddly Wiki with just a few tweaks in colour and one plugin which shows your entries in tabs (which is what I was looking for since a friend asked me for just that functionality which he missed in any other software he knew). If you want to learn more about Tiddly Wiki you might also want to look at Wikipedia or visit the original Tiddly Wiki Website.

November 19th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

Blobs

 

November 6th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

Burgers

 

October 14th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

Mainstage Design Mod

This design modification gives Mainstage the same „desaturated“ look that comes with the Logic design mod. Buttons, icons, meters and much more have been reworked to get to a neutral appearance of the whole interface, so you can concentrate on the colours you‘re actually working on in your layout.

Mainstage is the live performance application that comes with Apple‘s Logic Studio software bundle. It allows you to use all the powerful software instruments and effects you have within Logic live on stage or in a studio or rehearsal situation, providing an interface that is optimised for exactly that purpose.

Download Download Neutrum Design Mainstage Mod

The innovative concept of recreating your hardware midi setup as an individually designable graphical representation on screen before adding your sounds to those elements gives you extreme flexibility in creating exactly the interface you need for your performance. The other great innovation is that you can have all the songs for a performance in one big „concert“ file, allowing you to switch between songs on the fly.

As with Logic the general design as well as the concept is great, but some individual parts and components drop out of that overall scheme and have a disturbing influence, at least in my humble opinion. I reworked those elements, as far as that was possible by the applications design concept, using some tricks, so to my eyes they now integrate well into the whole interface design and give it that „Neutrum Design“ look, providing optical understatement and clarity and focusing on what‘s important.

 

September 29th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

Teddy

One of the rare original drawings on paper glued to a wall. There were more awesome drawings in big sizes showing incredible detail and incredible artistic talent. But with the houses getting refurbished one by one they are mostly gone.

I especially like the lighting of those pictures. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, and the sun standing low. Soft shadows of some trees in the street create nice contrasts between random parts of the picture. Adding some strange perspective is something I like very much too, and this is easily achieved taking photos with a mobile camera. Having excellent lighting like in this case gives you quality pictures even with a poor camera like that of my old mobile phone. I was quite surprised to see what this camera can do with good lighting.

September 29th, 2011 by Thomas Leisner

iPhoto Design Mod

In Apple’s photo software iPhoto it‘s impossible to hide neither the sidebar to the left nor the toolbar at the bottom of the window. The new neutral icons help focusing on the colours in your pictures, without getting irritated by the design of the software itself.

Download and try this design mod if you like the screenshots in the web gallery. A detailed explanation on how to install the mod is included with each download.

I should mention that I have made this one, as well as the mod for iWeb in my previous post, for the versions of these applications that I use. These are not the very latest updates, I use iWeb 2 and iPhoto 7, but I am quite shure you may use the mods on earlier or later versions just as well. As always, don’t forget to make a saftety copy of your application before installing the mod, and you can simply try it.

Download Download Neutrum Design iPhoto Mod

In some cases folder names in the install path may have changed with an update of the software (like with the Logic Design Mod, where I provided separate downloads for Logic 8 and 9), but normally file names for the pictures stay the same. So if you can‘t find the right folder immediately, just do a search for some file names.