Thursday, April 7th | 7pm | 832 Folsom
Free Event | Guest List Below
Join us on April 7th for An Evening with Keith McMillen featuring Thavius Beck (Saul Williams, Nine Inch Nails).
Keith and Thavius will be demonstrating the new K-Mix as well as the K-Board Pro and the Bop Pad.
Sign up below to attend the event.
More Info:
K-Mix is our newest innovation: an unbreakable, 8-in/10-out audio interface and programmable mixer. K-Mix features 2 ultra-accurate, high-efficiency low noise μPre preamps, and a precision opto-tactile control surface that was designed from the ground up for an unprecedented level of control. We’ve made super clean audio more accessible, so you can focus on the music.
K-Mix is a go-anywhere, fully-programmable, audio multi-tool that can meet all your needs as an artist, whether you’re in the studio or on the road. With no moving parts, K-Mix can be transported in a backpack without the fear of snapping off a fader or knob, while still giving you unrivaled audio quality, mixer functionality, and control.
K-Board Pro 4 is a four octave MIDI keyboard controller with true X-Y-Z response per key. This gives you velocity, continuous pressure, and both horizontal and vertical position to provide the highest degree of expression ever offered in a keyboard.
BopPad is an expressive electronic drum pad for drummers, percussionists and producers featuring accurate hit detection and true position sensitivity. Four independently programmable quadrants output notes, velocities, continuous pressure and radial distance. An extremely wide dynamic range and measures strike velocity from the softest hand drumming to the most brutal percussive assault.
Keith McMillen Instruments develops innovative hardware and software technologies that allow musicians to interface with computers in exciting new ways. Based in Berkley, California, KMI’s products provide today’s musician with the tools needed to bring new dimensions of expression and control to their performance.The company collectively believes that when a computer is played as a musical instrument it should feel and respond like one — with all the nuance and sensitivity that makes an instrument musical.
Thavius Beck is an electronic musician, multi-instrumentalist, certified trainer of Ableton Live, and an instructor and course designer at the world renowned DJ and Production school Dubspot.
Keith McMillen has been an innovator in audio and music technology for nearly 30 years. He has been working his entire adult life on one single problem – how to play live interactive music in an ensemble using extended instruments moderated by computer intelligence. This goal has required him to create dozens of new instruments, patented inventions and numerous successful companies in order to advance the technology sufficiently to reach his musical objectives. Keith began his audio career in 1979, when he founded Zeta Music. The company’s revolutionary electronic instrument designs created a new market in the music industry, and the brand Zeta is the “gold standard” for electric and electronic string instruments.
In 1992, as Vice President of Gibson Guitars, he founded and ran G-WIZ (an R&D lab for Gibson); and led the effort to devise ZIPI (a musical instrument control language that avoided many of MIDI’s limitations – ZIPI later evolved into OSC). Keith worked with UC Berkeley’s CNMAT and created a new technology group focusing on audio networking, synthesizers and string instruments. As Director of Engineering at Harman Kardon in 1996, he headed a division dealing with complex audio processing and distributed music networks.
In 1999, Keith founded Octiv, Inc. an Internet audio signal processing company that addressed the problem of inconsistent audio quality across disparate delivery platforms. Octiv produced the best selling “Volume Logic” plug-in for iTunes as well as fundamental advances in teleconferencing. He led the company as both technologist and business guru raising over $20M from VCs such as 3i and Intel Capital. In April of 2005, Keith sold Octiv to Plantronics (NYSE:PLT) and is personally funding the current operations of the BEAM Foundation.
Keith received his BS in Acoustics under James Beauchamp from the University of Illinois where he also trained in classical guitar and studied composition with Herbert Brun, Scott Wyatt and Sal Martirano. Keith has spent 25 years developing MAPPS – an integrated computer composition, notation and performance system.
