DROIDS is out

Today DROIDS is out, forty-one years after the SoundDroid was first shown in Los Angeles.

This blog is where it started. Between 2008 and 2011 I published here the conversations that became the core of the book: with Michael Rubin, Andy Moorer, Tom Holman, Richard Beggs and Gary Rydstrom. Reading them again this year, I found that many of the people who built the machine were still there, and willing to write their own chapters.

The book is free to download here: unidentifiedsoundobject.com/droids

Matteo Milani

DROIDS: the SoundDroid book, out on 31 October

This blog has been quiet for a long time, and it seems right to wake it up with this news. Some of you may remember the interviews about the Lucasfilm SoundDroid that appeared here. That small project has grown into a book.

DROIDS: How a Team at Lucasfilm Invented the Digital Audio Workstation tells how a small team at Lucasfilm built the Audio Signal Processor (ASP) and the SoundDroid between 1980 and 1986. Only one SoundDroid was ever built and it was never sold, yet its ideas (sound as an editable waveform on screen, non-destructive editing on disk, a signal processor you could reprogram) arrived years before the tools we now take for granted.

The book lets the people who were there speak first: conversations with James A. Moorer, Tomlinson Holman and M.H. Rubin; a foreword by Gary Rydstrom; first-person accounts written for this edition by John Snell, Curtis Abbott, Bernard Mont-Reynaud, Marie-Dominique Baudot, Jeffrey Borish and John Strawn; and an epilogue by Carla Scaletti.

DROIDS will be released on Saturday 31 October 2026, the 41st anniversary of the SoundDroid's presentation at the SMPTE conference in Los Angeles. It is free, as PDF and ePub, under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It will be available on the book’s official page: unidentifiedsoundobject.com/droids.

My thanks go to everyone who shared their memories, documents and corrections over these years. This book exists because of them.

Matteo Milani

"Back and Forth", a new Scratch and Turntable Sound Effects Kit

Back and Forth was born of an idea with my pal Lorenzo di Tria (aka Dj Mate), thinking on how to build an intuitive and great sounding music tool for contemporary producers and sound designers.

Based on Lorenzo’s experience on the art of turntablism, this library is now an easy way to add real scratch and turntable performances to your musical and audiovisual projects, and finally make them sounds better then ever before.

Back and Forth differs from any other scratch library on the galaxy for its 400 samples recorded entirely in the studio only with real vinyls, plus a unique Ableton Live Instrument (.amxd): the Scratch Machine. It’s a magical sample-based scratch improvisator that combines many different scratch combos with criteria. With the ability to choose six different classic samples (THA, FRESH, TWAI, AYE, YE, YO), the Scratch Machine adds a timeless and authentic turntablist to any type of production, from the most old school Breakbeat, to the freshest Trap Vibe.
But wait, there’s more: THE QnA LOOPER – VOL.1 is included in the package and it’s free! It’s a new way of thinking the scratch looper. Now you can easily improve your dj skills using just this Max/MSP standalone application (for Mac and PC) and practice on 18 different beats with an automated scratch engine! With 900 sample-based answers, the QnA Looper makes easier and smarter your training sessions.

 

Use coupon code "bf2020" to get 25% off on all our libraries until November 30th [Find out more]