Ruin & Wesen
Welcome to Ruin & Wesen! We are a small but growing company creating digital and analog musical instruments. We build high-quality handmade MIDI controllers, sequencers, analog and digital synthesizers, drum machines and custom creations. We believe that creativity is best served by mixing the analog and the digital worlds. Analog for its humanity, its vivid sonic richness, its hands-on approach. Digital for the ease of use, the reproducibility, its beautiful algorithmic depth and its ease of programming. For us, customization and flexibility is key. This is why our products are DIY compatible, and come with extensible source code, software, schematics and documentation. Because it is YOUR instrument and YOUR music.
Latest Blog Articles:
Ruin Wesen 2010 Goals02.02.2010 23:58:01
The last post gave some insights about the story of Ruin & Wesen, while this post will explain what we think are our core values, and what our concrete goals for 2010 are. We were building electronic devices for our own use, and wanted to sell them to a bigger number of people in order to make a living doing what we love. We think that is really the core value we have, building electronic music instruments from musicians for musicians. We spend a lot of time doing music, building tools that allow us to be creative, making them better, more interesting and more flexible. That is also the biggest commitment we can make about the care we put into our products: using them ourselves, we are as much interested in improvements and fixes as our customers. That’s also why we care a lot about the sound, interface and overall design, because we know how important these aspects are when you are creating music.
Having learnt a lot from the community, we also want to give our knowledge, insights and ideas back, which is the second big core value of Ruin & Wesen. We want not only to share our technical designs (opensourcing our hardware designs and all the software we write), but also to share the thinking and mindset that went into creating them. We try to document our experiments and knowledge by writing technical blog posts on our blog, recording tutorial videos and screencasts (ranging from techno playing to pcb layouting to software programming) and giving workshops at tinker gatherings and schools. We received a lot of very positive feedback for doing this, which we are very thankful for and shows us that we are taking the right direction. We are also very interested in feedback and ideas from our users, and are very thankful for all the nice words, links and ideas we already received.
This blog post will now describe what our primary goals in 2010 are going to be:
- polishing the Minicommand firmwares
- creating a community around Mididuino
- releasing our first analogue synthesizers
Minicommand batch ready22.01.2010 14:06:58
It's been a really long time, but we finally received the missing encoders (had to switch distributors due to the crisis). This means that we have about 90 Minicommands ready to go (actually, we have about 20 wooden boxes left, the new boxes should be arriving in 2 weeks).
My plan is to do grouped shippings to the US, Canada and to Australia/NZ to save on the horrendous shipping charges if I send them individually. Shipping to Europe is handled on an individual basis. For other countries, I'm afraid I'll have to charge the UPS shipping costs which are usually around 100 EUR (!), or maybe handle things out individually if you have better suggestions.
The price of the Minicommands stays at 220 EUR without VAT, that's 260 EUR incl VAT in the EU + shipping (roundup price of 15 EUR except for exceptions), and 240 EUR for the US as I'm covering customs and VAT on shipping, which comprises:
- Minicommand + 1 GB SD-Card
- new printed and illustrated manual
- wooden box + felt bag
- power adapter (US, UK, AU or EU adapter)
Customs and VAT will apply depending on your country.
If you want to be part of this batch, contact me per email or fill out the preorder form, and I'll send you an invoice. Payment can be done through bank transfer and paypal. If you are in the EU, I can send out the Minicommand immediately, if you are in the US or Australia, I will wait 3 weeks until the 12. of February to gather and group orders, and then do a batch shipping. I'll send out a reminder email along the way :)
If you are in the EU and want a Minicommand immediately, without the new manual (which will be available as PDF of course), say so in the email.
Thank you all very much for your patience, and kind regards, :)
2010 musings: a brief history of RW19.01.2010 10:13:34
This is the first post in a collection of three, reflecting on the last two years and the story behind Ruin & Wesen (from Wesen's perspective), identifying the goals and thinking behind the company, and working out a plan for 2010. The last two years have been very intense years, and these posts are a reflection about what has happened, how it happened, and why it happened. They are both very personal, and on another hand very public, because it touches on issues that I think a lot of creative people out there can relate to. They also try to explain why Ruin & Wesen has been mostly "Wesen" until now, as the company was created to produce and ship the MiniCommand and Monojoystick, and how we are planning to change that in 2010.
First Minicommand prototype
Synth DIY: Synthesis with logic concepts18.01.2010 11:35:11
Greetings; your lord Ruin here. There has been a lot of ideas being stewed around here at Ruin & Wesen. Some of these ideas come from the act of using digital logic as a sort of analog synth, patching between modules to create flexible signal flow. A lot of these modules have coalesced into what I've called the 'Cashbox', read more about it later. Technically it's not an analog synth but the way you work with it is sort of, well, analogous to... analog. This synth was inspired by what is known as a Lunetta synthesizer. What I've found with the Lunetta style of synth, where I feel my usage strays from is that the Lunettas seem to be made to be played by themselves, without human interaction; as well 'pure' Lunettas are to use nothing but CMOS logic. I've found that interfacing this to an analog synth is a great thing. They are great for sequencing and processing. When you consider that there are essentially what are octave dividers on a chip, with very little external components, or trigger sequencers (shift registers), you see where all this stuff opens up. Of course, these concepts aren't really new. These modules have been used in analog synths for decades; but when you make each block patchable thats where things get interesting. You can design a sequencer however you want. For DIY synth nerds it brings in a new wave of thinking about things, all signal flow and switching essentially, opposed to waveforms and filtering. Sounds generated by these circuits are quite brash, ballsy and gritty. If you've played around with 555's or some really crusty square waves you know the sound. Don't expect nice from these. Expect your ears to hurt.
Advanced Microcontroller Programming08.01.2010 09:02:07
Following up on last year's "algorithmic music in a box", here is the video of wesen's 2009 talk at the CCC congress: "advanced microcontroller programming". A big shoutout to the video crew that managed to put all the videos online in a matter of days (wow!). This talk is not about music or MIDI at all (although the subject is used as an example), but about the development "discoveries" that were made during this intense year of programming. Put your geek hat on, download the slides and notes and enjoy some nerdy programming fun!.
