Enough Formaldehyde To Choke A Horse...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
After a disheartening false start, which entailed pretty much starting over from bare metal (protip: might want to have some idea of what you’re gonna code before you start coding) I have my personal R&D project at a state where I can start playing with it. This is part of a larger schema I have, where I’m determined to prove (to myself, mainly) that we, as musicians, can move past our absolutely ludicrous love of “vintage” technology that most of us have never clapped eyeballs on in real life, and start to grab the future by the ears and shake it about a little bit.
So my study of environments that don’t shamelessly ape the traditional recording studio and its inherent limitations has only just begun, and this is very much a work-in-progress that will most likely take years, but the video above is the first footage of some of my ideas in this regard beginning to take shape in usable fashion. The R2 app itself is created in Cinder for portability; currently all the audio stuff is a Max 6 patch, because DSP is most assuredly not my strong suit. I could have conceivably done everything in Pd, then built libPd in to the app, but frankly, I’d rather pull my own fingernails out than deal with that, so here we are.
I think it’s probably pretty obvious what’s going on in the video. I haven’t built the master control section or the FX page yet, but the four loopers are more-or-less in working order. Essentially, they are 1/2/4-measure circular buffers, and you can record a loop and overdub to it at this point, and move the endpoints of the loops arbitrarily. (Although for my own purposes, I’ve quantized the loop points to 16th notes against the master tempo.)
On the lower half of the screen are 5 control nodes; each one controls a different parameter for X and Y so for, e.g., the filter, X is resonance and Y is frequency. I have a more sophisticated schema in mind, but I wanted to try out the playability of this method first. For the drums, I just instanced Maschine in the Max patch. I’ll build a full drum machine that is appropriate to the environment at a later date, but Maschine is working fine for right now.
Anyhow, you get the general idea, I imagine. I have a fairly grand vision for this whole thing, but there’s a lot of exploring to do first. Thoughts? Comments? Criticism?
24 comments
That's a damn cool toy you're building there. I'm guessing that you are two-point limited in hardware though? It looks like you deliberately use just your pointer fingers.
Really interesting... I like the idea of different parameters controllable on the same XY plane. Just intuitively feels a little more like an instrument.
However I'm kinda wondering about your goal in this project. To make a new kinda instrument and "move past..." etc.
It's seems like sitting down to 'write a great pop song'. Sure it's possible, but it often doesn't work that way.
I think that the most modern, forward thinking instruments in electronic music in recent years have been the Monome and Arc. Things that are physically simple and don't engage the visual part of the brain (as much as a screen does) and where the software is the key to interaction.
But this is obviously not a good reason not to try. And it's gonna be super interesting to see what you come up with.
Channelling Keanu Reeves:
"Whoa"
Creating new ways to create music so that others may find it intriguing strikes me as a fine thing indeed. Godspeed.
Cheers,
Alan Tomlinson
@james: Yes, that monitor is only two points. I got hoodwinked when I bought it. And the tracking is terrible. (I left a lot of thoughts in the Amazon review.) Debating whether I should build a big rear projection table with IR tracking.
@atlastop: won't know until I try, right? As Edison said, "I didn't fail 99 times. I learned 99 ways how not to make a lightbulb."
-CR
Yeah but Edison only used analog gear, none of this digital whatchamahasit.
@krylenko yeah... Tungsten bulbs have got that analogue warmth :-)
I actually built a big rear projection table with IR for my master thesis study in multi touch UI. But that was ages ago, so I'm sure whatever I did then is completely outdated.
But I'd stick with capacitive touchscreens. IR with tracking was a pain. Only go with that if you need a screen larger than 40".
I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. An actual vst UI designer, with a ton of experience producing music. This is exciting, but as you say... it's a long haul, that will probably take years.
but Edison's blog was boring... Tesla's was way better and he did it first.
i think what CR is experimenting at here is a healthy thing and i look forward to seeing wherever it goes. i'm sure there will be discoveries along the way that are interesting to us all.
Technically Tesla didn't have to blog, he just beamed his musings directly into people's brains with that big antenna house of his.
i think it shows excellent promise, though the two finger limitation and tracking speed is a bummer. still, you could create custom gestures even with just one finger that could set up controls or transformations like tapping, holding, double tapping, two finger tapping, finger rotation, etc.
in terms of the interface hardware discussion - anyone have any idea how you can get large multitouch capacitive touchscreens at reasonable cost? i agree that IR is a PITA to set up but the tracking is definitely improving and the cost is lower. my issue with it is the space involved, i'd much prefer capacitive multitouch but my research a year ago indicated it wasn't too reasonable cost-wise, especially for 19" and up.
CR - i think an IR frame from Peau Productions might be perhaps your best bet for an improved touch experience. they're inexpensive-ish, thin and offer true multitouch(from 10 up to 42 touches for custom screens). they don't even require a monitor. 24" frames start at about $225:
http://peauproductions.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=424
Yeah, I was looking at the Peau one. I'm seriously entertaining the thought of building a big rear projection one; trying to decide if the sacrifice in portability is made up for in the gain in touch experience and screen size.
I think these 24" 16:9 monitors I'm using are the best compromise, though. If you have to move your hands too far, shit gets tiring fast. Still working it out, though, obviously.
-CR
well you can mount the 24" frame right on your existing monitor and just not deal with its less than stellar touch functionality. it is a bit of bread to purchase though if it's just a stepping stone to bigger/better things.
That UI makes me feel like I'm having an out of body expierence.
http://durftal.com/cms/cylobmusicsystem.html
my friend steve aka Let's Go Outside made a multi touch thing a year or two ago and played live with it for a while. he diy'd the screen i think. i don't know all the details.. that stuff is over my head but he has a blog with lots of info there and videos as well. some of it might be relevant/useful to what's going on here.
lot's of healthy nerding.
http://bantherewind.com/magnetic
http://vimeo.com/10220241
I can imagine there being a huge long term vision of which this demonstrates a small part. But I can also see this as a nearly complete product in its own right, one that I would like to have in my studio.
Either way, you are solving problems that traditional DAWs and samplers don't address very well. Throwing out the old metaphors seems to be paying off.
Just this initial exploration has led me to some new ideas. I've been playing around with the system today and I see where I went wrong, and what I need to do differently to make it more fluid.
However, now that I have the Max patch pretty robust, I'm going to spend some time on visual interest. I want to extend the metaphor of "sculpting" the sound more. I was initially using this as my "inspiration:"
https://vimeo.com/32096487
But I have already diverged significantly from that tack (his system is basically just a sequencer, while mine is mainly a looper) and it's only down from here.
-CR
You had me at "grab the future by the ears and shake it about a little bit" right up until the rhodes wank-fest ;) Otherwise really feelin' it. Nice work.
ps- Hopefully the obligatory winkey faced emoticon is appropriately conveying my irl wink and smile.
I wonder if a Leap ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_d6KuiuteIA ) would help for larger sizes? Lots of potential there.
@meeglosh: I just want to note at this juncture that, of the 36-odd videos I've put on YouTube, there is zero wankery until this one. My aim here was to say "yes, I can wank at a reasonably technical level. I generally choose not to, in deference to good taste."
-CR
The wankery was the highlight of this video for me. Also, the grabbing the future by the ears bit is as inspiring as anything I've seen posted here, which says a lot. Keep it coming.
@boobs said:
"but then again i haven't played live in years and still prefer the days when the DJ was up in a booth somewhere under a little lamp that you sort of would be reminded was there now and then when you glanced up in the corner."
a friend & i had a (sadly) short-lived dj night where we tried to keep the lighting as low as possible most of the time, definitely aiming mostly toward this type of vibe. it's a fucking uphikll struggle these days, and though my friends & i still try, to some extent, it's nearly impossible.
As for the spinning translucent shape eye candy thing, I think it would be cool if that was somehow generated from analysis of the final audio output. That kind of feedback seems like it could add to the vibe the player feels, if not the audience.
Cinder and Max sound like a great combo to prototype this kind of application. Are you using just ctlin and ctlout to interface with Max?
No; I'm doing it all OSC, so UDP-Send and UDP-Receive. I'm using the OSC-Route object (I forget where that comes from; that big Stanford wad, maybe?) for simplicity's sake.
-CR
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