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What do you guys think of this MIDI interface?


bodimix
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oops... I was so excited I didn't bother to search first... sorry.

So cool tho... but doesnt look like it's portable...

Although, a small, palm sized, battery operated LED projector was just released... it can throw a 40" image from a little more than a foot away...

I wonder that if you coupled it with a little camera, and tracked movements in MAX/MSP sometihng similar couldent be

Also with mini-ITX becoming so cheap (the fanless 800mhz CPU+MOBO is now under $100)  I've been thinking about  creating a dedicated, CPU controlled, all purpose MIDI interface.

In theroy, you could put together a tiny system thats battery powered, running linux off a CF, sending MIDI data over 802.11x for under $200 (w/out the LCD of course). But how cool would it be to just have this unit sense the location and color of objects (via a tiny camera in the unit), then anything could control the output... laser pointers, led keychains, little color blocks, drawing/painting,  motion, etc...

If only they made a version of MAX/MSP for Linux. I suppose anything that was created would then have to be done by scratch...

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oops... I was so excited I didn't bother to search first... sorry.

hey, no problem.  i wasn't trying to be snide there, just answering your post in a way...figured you'd find it interesting.

Although, a small, palm sized, battery operated LED projector was just released... it can throw a 40" image from a little more than a foot away...

man, that thing sounds amazing!  how much does it cost?  i want one....

Wow cool, got a link to that projector?!

yes, link please!

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Yeh I don't know, I saw this thing a while back but it just didn't impress me much to be honest... You'd have to spend so much time coding for the GUI.... It looks really good in those demos and all, but if they wanted to do a different set it would take more coding than it's worth in my opinion... and heck, if I wanted to reach out and grab something and slide it around on a flat surface... I'd use a mouse :)

I think that sometimes people let their nerdiness get in the way of the point of all this, which is to make music... I think?

Just my opinion, but I understand others will feel differently!

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well stryd_one, i think u missed the point.

i dont think those guys are realy "musicians", as i understand they are r more of a programmers !

the whole idea behind it is - INNOVATION !!

this is how progress is made, come up with some crazy idea and develop it !

see for example - the MOOG !

as i see it we are now in a process of just starting to understand the capabilities hidden in the technology as we know it today,

we are now starting to undersatnd that the only limitation is our mind.

in the near future we will NOT need any slider/knobs/buttons !

we will be "presseing" and "moving" your hands in the air to activate commands. we will look like doing Tai-Chi ;D

(there was a movie with kiano rives that i dont remember the name of, he play a cop addicted to drugs that is being send to the future to prevent crimes... any way - at the begining of this movies u see kiano in a control room - much like what i m talking about)

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I know that movie, My g/f says it's Johnny Mnemonic :) I always loved that scene :) It looks super cool!! By the way, this is already possible using existing VR gear :)

Oh, I understand the idea of being innovative, I just don't think this is.... I mean, a standard windows install, with multiple mice, and a projector, could have the same kind of effect.

Have you seen my sequencer project elsewhere on the board? Have you ever seen a sequencer that is built for realtime performance which allows for standard composition, algorithmic composition, polyrhythms and polymeters, programmable interaction betwen musical elements, remote control, non-linear (loop based) or linear (track based) song design or both combined, non-standard note length (for eg 11th notes) and partial or entire tempo multiplication/division including prime division and multiplication, blah, blah, blah... It includes many features not seen elsewhere, and certainly never all of these features in one machine (correct me if I'm wrong please, I want one!). But none of the ideas are new, so I wouldn't call it innovative... Maybe the combination of those ideas is an "innovation", but if you ask me it's a natural progression, not innovation.

And ah, Bob Moog, all respect due, was far from the first person to think of a different way to make things make sounds. Ever since people decided to strap skins over hollow logs rather than bang sticks and/or bones together, or to use metallurgy to create wind instruments with movable keys, or to use magnetic coils to detect the movement of metal guitar strings, or use electronic componentry to manipulate and amplify electric signals, people have been using the tools at their disposal to make noise. Look at the didgeridoo. Just 200 years ago it was never seen or heard. But it's been around for over 30000 years.

It's cool, but...yeh...

I guess this gets into a whole different kettle of fish... If you take this theory to the extreme, then in fact nothing really completely differs from anything else at all, seeing as it all comes from a big bang or whatever, if you take it back far enough. It's all really a natural progression. The way I feel is that humans tend to think that what they are and what they do is really special, and I think it's a matter of the human ego getting in the way of the facts: Who they are and what they do is just that - Who they are and what they do. Do crows who learn to crack open nutshells with stones dropped from a height run around going "damn I'm good"? of course not! Do monkeys that put a twig in an antsnest to get food beat their chests and claim greatness?

Of course, as with all things, we tend to draw a line somewhere, and that's subjective. It may be because we are taught from age nil to differ between one thing and another, rather than to see the similarities between them. The physical realm is an analog system where absolutely nothing is identical, and even this fact means that everything is also the same - it's different to everything else. Once again, the result of the human ego.

Just read my post from earlier this evening talking about DJ Sasha's lack of talent. Of course, that's a comparison between him and another hypothetical muso, and perhaps that my ego becoming involved in that manner, was the reason that after I clicked "Post", I sat and stared at the post for several minutes wondering if I really felt that what I was doing was morally right. In retrospect, I still can't help but feel that there are more talented DJ's out there, and I guess that if I completely lived my philosophy, I would realise that no DJ is really doing anything completely new, and so one DJ is the same as another. But of course nothing is entirely the same or entirely different, and everything will always change, so to draw a line like you and I have done is most probably foolish.

In the end, it comes down to individual opinion. You think it's innovation, I dont. But we're both making a call on something that's really silly, because it's not tangible, it only exists in our own head.

I don't really know where I stand on this kind of thing. But do I need to? Perhaps this is just another example of natural progression.

Now we need to go to alt.philosophy or something heheheh  ;D

Sorry for going OT... or was it OT?  ;D

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The idea something for showoff, not for functionality. Not something for composing work. Your improvisation will lose wings with that.

About tracking motions coming from a camera, this is not a very good idea, camera resolutions that one could afford are far-far too low to have any descent control over anything, an alternative would be infrared tracking that is not too expensive, principally you can buy a headtracker or P5 glove and take it to parts and adjust it to your needs.

As I see, most of the input controllers available today are crap, as they operate in very limited time-space dimentions. That goes for speed calculated touch sensitivity, piezo solutions that you must hit with a stick and hit them strong, even most expensive hand percussion controllers are relatively dissapointing.

I've been looking for best input controller for about 10 years now and closest match to human hands are in my opinion, zendrum, kat percussion controllers and some custom Force Sensitive Resistor based keyboards that I've tried. Combining these with breath control you could have nearly satisfiying results in terms of sensitivity.

I see it as a challenge of evolution, human hands and voice have bit more history than input controllers available today, but the speed progress and directions where things are going, are promising.

My thumbs go up on this one because it makes people think about controlling forces to express them in different ways than they are used to and experiment with them.

If I could make the difference in my youth, I'd study a bit more math and physics and smoke a bit less weed so I would be smart enough to today to build an input controller that would be a table covered with touch pads for location, under these force sensitive resistors. Additonal controls would come from infrared head tracker and breath control. Some P5 gloves broken to pieces and made to track other motions would be also useful.

It sounds like something for virtual reality, but hey, define music.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 years later...

i need a circuit diagram 4 this

oh come on, please stop asking for circuit diagrams in every thread ;) Regarding Midibox stuff, please read the ucapps.de website and the Wiki before asking for diagrams again. Regarding this actual "Audiopad" thing, please read the website http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/ that was already linked in the first post. If there's more questions about it, why don't you ask the guy who built the thing? Nobody on this forum is in any way related to this project so it makes no sense to ask here.

S

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