Elektruck Posted April 12, 2011 Report Share Posted April 12, 2011 Hey, Last week I finished my midibox cabinet and it works and looks great! First a little introduction. Me and a friend have a little non-profit company called Elektruck. We transformed an old citybus into a mobile digital music workspace and we drive to school's to do music workshops with the kids. (see www.elektruck.nl, it's in dutch) About two years ago we won a big 'cultural community' price and a few days later we got a big secondhand truck from the government for free! The plan with the second truck is to transform it into an experimental play/soundgarden for kids. So in the first truck we got 10 little PC based studio's with Ableton Live and the second truck we want 'interactive music installations'. After breaking our heads over what kind of conceptual interactive installations we wanted I decided just to start experimenting with the UcApps stuff with my midibox cabinet as a first result. In dutch it's called 'klankkast' witch means resonator box. What is it? It's just a drawing cabinet with different sounds in each drawer. By turning the knob on front you select a different sound set. If you open a drawer the sound comes out, by pulling multiple drawers you can mix the sounds. On top sits a Paia theremax witch sends out CV's according to the reach of the antenea. Those CV's go straight into the core and let you play with Ableton's grain-delay(pitch)and an other delay. It's the most simple setup with only one core, (for 8 analoge inputs) and a dinx2 for the select knob, that's all! In the big truck we would like to build a huge cabinet with 64 drawers so the kids can go wild! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flemming Posted April 12, 2011 Report Share Posted April 12, 2011 Congratulations on making my own crappy Ikea furniture look even more boring :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elektruck Posted April 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2011 Thanx, and that reminds my to post it on the Ikea hackers sites; http://www.ikeahack.org/ and; http://www.ikeahackers.net Cheers, Roel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
technobreath Posted April 12, 2011 Report Share Posted April 12, 2011 Though the sound style wasn't my taste, this I must say was a pretty nice piece of work. Very cool, and I'm sure the kids dig it!! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elektruck Posted April 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2011 Though the sound style wasn't my taste, this I must say was a pretty nice piece of work. Very cool, and I'm sure the kids dig it!! :D Thanx, and about the sound style; you can put different sounds in the drawers of coarse, I used just different styles of MP3's with some samples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuartm Posted April 13, 2011 Report Share Posted April 13, 2011 That "Moppe" rocks ! Great idea and well done ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hawkeye Posted April 13, 2011 Report Share Posted April 13, 2011 great stuff ;-) i really enjoyed the video! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted April 14, 2011 Report Share Posted April 14, 2011 This is really great! Can you explain what senses how far you pulled the drawer out? Is it a mechanical mechanism that moves a pot? Or is it optical? Also, a suggestion: if you are trying to teach children, "more" drawers is probably not better. There's a lot going on with the drawers you have. You even might consider simpler musical phrases in each drawer, so that the kids can better focus on creating a groove. Adding more drawers will probably bring a lot more chaos. Kids, being impatient by nature, will want to open every drawer. By limiting their options a bit, they might be more inclined to find a good combination instead of being gratified by a bunch of new sounds in new drawers. To put it another way: most youngsters I know would want to pull out every drawer, but if they are limited to just a few drawers, maybe they will stop being amused by sounds sooner and instead focus on blending them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elektruck Posted April 14, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2011 This is really great! Can you explain what senses how far you pulled the drawer out? Is it a mechanical mechanism that moves a pot? Or is it optical? Thanks. The technique used is really simple. I just used 8 faders and the drawers are attached to the mechanical wipers of the faders. See the attachements. This is also how I got the idea, I was playing with the faders and I thought they looked like furniture sliders. And drawers are for storing stuff, so 1+1=3. Sometimes simplicity is the best. The antenna just interrupt slider 7 and 8. The switch is an eight turn switch, witch selects just 8 different 'note on' events, to select different scenes in ableton. Also, a suggestion: if you are trying to teach children, "more" drawers is probably not better. There's a lot going on with the drawers you have. You even might consider simpler musical phrases in each drawer, so that the kids can better focus on creating a groove. Adding more drawers will probably bring a lot more chaos. Kids, being impatient by nature, will want to open every drawer. By limiting their options a bit, they might be more inclined to find a good combination instead of being gratified by a bunch of new sounds in new drawers. To put it another way: most youngsters I know would want to pull out every drawer, but if they are limited to just a few drawers, maybe they will stop being amused by sounds sooner and instead focus on blending them. Yeah, I think you're wright. But in my imagination I see this old big cracky magical drawers cabinet. I would really like to build that. Also funny to play a sort of sound memory with the really young kids. 'In witch drawer is the other cow?' But I agree that there's already a lot going on right now, mainly because of the MP3's. And the 'less is more' idea will surely be better with the impatient kids, thanks for your suggestion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elektruck Posted April 14, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2011 That "Moppe" rocks ! Great idea and well done ! Moppe rocks indeed, but they don't sell them anymore at IKEA nor something similar. And I just got the idea to build more of these to hire them to schools or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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