Blog

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Joytoggle Iteration..yaaaay!

now that the system is functional to a reasonably high degree, i can start tweaking the design a bit to make it more ergonomic and invisible. by invisible, i mean to make it prosthetic in nature; reducing the amount of unneccessary motion it thakes to do routine things so that the experience is that of simply thinking of something musical and hearing it come out of the sound system in the most efficient manner possible.

to this end, i have spent most of the last two weeks iterating a new joytoggle system. the joytoggles are the 4 position joysticks on each hand unit. they are not real joysticks in that they only register the direction they re pushed. think of them as 4 push buttons controlled with one control. there is one on top and one on the bottom of each unit. the top ones are modified by the index finger and the bottoms ones by the thumbs.

their reason for even existing, is very serendipitous. on my previous instrument, the wx5 midi wind controller, there are two keys at the top of the instrument that can either be used for playing notes, like all of the other keys, or can be assigned to send control messages. for most of the time that i played the wx5, those keys went unused but when i needed an easy way to control the record/overdub of a software looper, i decided to dedicate that key to that function. when i created the first beatjazz controller, my first thought was to improve this functionality but either it was already perfect or i was just accustomed to this placement so i recreated this key using a 4 position joystick, making use of only one of the positions. eventually, i realized that i could replace the many buttons and switches i had envisioned for the system, with these simple joytoggles, so i used them for the thumbs as well with the left hand being for octaves and the right hand for looper functions and pre/post fx. at that point i had 3 of them installed; one for each thumb and the original looper control one for the left index finger. at this point my obsession with symmetry made me add on last on for the right index finger that had no functions envisioned for it at the time, but it balanced the design.

this worked for a while but over time i noticed that the placement was slowing me down. although the main function was instantiated by a simple nudge from the side of my index finger, other functions required me to lift my finger to instantiate. when playing lines of improvisation, this breaks up the line unneccessarily. as well, the forward direction on both bottom joytoggles no longer function because of the angle and force that my toggle-r puts on the shaft of the joytoggle, and the thumb is unneccessarily uncomfortable over time as the thumb must stretch to reach it. I decided that now, before my jazz fest debut next week, to solve these issues.

the two primary design tasks were to integrate the top joytoggle into a position under the first "key" and to reposition the thumb joytogglesto am more comfortable position and make them adjustable. it took a number of tries to find the right way to interact with the newly positioned joytoggle, with the first idea being an elaborate through hole cage, but through the many iteration i settled on simply pushing the joystick up through the keypad where the shaft extends up high enough for a dual function keypad toggle-r, to push it in the required directions with minimal effort.

the next thing was the place the bottom joytoggle shaft where it would fit directly into the joint of where the thumb bends. i have found that this is the most comfortable placement for this control. i also pushed it up, closer to the index finger and back, toward the hand. the two controls together feel like you are making the letter "C" with your two fingers and is now very comfortable.

i will make the higher resolution versions today for inclusion in the primary controller, for performance testing. (these will go out on the controllers that are yet to ship.)
while these print, i will be working on the holy grail of the whole project. the one aspect whose design has illuded me from the beginning; lip pitch control. a wind instrument without pitch control, especially lip based pitch control, is incomplete. it is the signature of wind instruments. i have sorely missed lip based pitch control since shifting my efforts to this system.

 the problem has been spit.  this is a really old design, before I had a 3d printer. i found that the same FSR's that i use as keys, make great, sensitve lip pitch controllers, but my designs always leak spit onto them, instantly rendering them useless.  so i put it on the backburner.  now that i have 3d printing to create designs which can place the fsr in a purpose made, spit-resistant cavity, i now, desperately, want to reintegrate lip pressure into this system.  i will report more on this once i have iterated a few designs but so far, the design is wildly different than a woodwind mouthpiece, owing to the headsets permanently stationary mouthpiece position.  more later.

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May Update 2012

Ola! Happy May! Hope you are all doing well. I wanted to go ahead and hammer out this update so I can keep everyone up on what is going on in the world of beatjazz.

I had to take a bit of a break recently, from the crazy pace of the last year, so I took (I think) my first ever non-music related holiday. I went to Spain to visit a wonderful friend of mine and was shown a whole other side of that country. From roman architecture to crossing waterfalls barefoot, it was a much needed respite from staring at this computer screen day and night. But, I am still me, after all, so of course I used the occasion to investigate the travel ability of dis-assembling and reassembling my reprap. I broke it down to about 5 main pieces and it was fairly easy to reassemble and get to work with. While there, I printed parts for the next controllers to be sent to patient contributors, namely, one made of glowing plastic!

Funnily enough, I will be creating 2 of the glowing versions and I will be taking an assembled version of it, as well as an assembled robot silver version with me to Romania this weekend to perform and present a talk on beatjazz, 3d printing and wearable technologies at ELECTRO ARTS FESTIVAL: CLUJOTRONIC. It will actually be in what is known to be Transylvania and will be presented over 2 days. I think a glowing, gestural, wireless, 3d printed, digital musical interface will leave an impression

Before then, I will be camped out at my new "Afrofuturistik Labs" studio at Tacheles Kunsthaus, redesigning the thumb control module on the hand units. I have now played the new system long enough to be not completely happy with how the controls are realized. the joystick module (everything is modular for this exact reason) will be much smoother, more ergonomic and more robust with the new design while also making it more playable for others (I have long, double jointed thumbs)

also, being that my studio is an "open" studio, i.e. open to the public for much of the day, iterating the new synthesis system is progressing at a much nicer clip, save for the gawking when people come in and see me, in full cyborg regalia, programming synth sounds while my reprap prints parts for other controllers. All in all, it’s much better than sitting at home doing the same thing in solitude for weeks at a time.

The designs of the perks for the campaign are progressing as well. I know that it is taking quite some time to sort them out, but it takes as long as it takes. I refuse to send anything out to those supporters that isn’t the dopest thing I can create for them. Like the controllers; had I shipped those out last summer, my sole contributor would not have gotten this iteration which is heads and shoulders above last year’s cardboard prototype. For those that have a perk coming I say this; bear with me. You will be receiving dopeness in the mail as soon as it is proper.

My hope now is to get the new beatjazz suite software ready for the Elbjazz fest (Hamburg) and the Lost Lectures (London) at the end of this month. Currently it is slow going but it is now functional enough to do little performances for Tacheles visitors. The key, I found, was to design the parameter layout FIRST, then attach the parameters to a stable interface. This assures that I can go back later and update individual modules easily. Right now, figuring out where in this 32 node grid, to assign what parameters so there is a control vector that won’t confuse me, is the where my interest lies, but it works and everything else now is a much less crucial technicality.

I will hit you up with photos of the new hand unit revisions as soon as they are done. Take care!

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Beatjazz system software playability

the system software is finally at a stage where it can make, record, loop and manipulate musical sound. this is now the beginning of the next phase. the phase of programming->performance based iteration rather than the all programming/all day/night stage it has been in since October. 

I learned that the synthesis was not the hard part. generating sound with pure data is pretty easy. open an [osc~] object and patch it to a [dac~] (sound output object) and viola! you have sound. no, I discovered that the real headache comes from designing the interface to the synth. going into this project i designed the first of the gestural synths from the perspective of designing the synth first then somehow rigging it with gestures. this quickly became obviously tedious. there was no standard way of interacting with the sounds, which meant that each synth/interface combo would be completely different which would sweep the learning curve towards exponential as more and more synths were added.

in late february i went back to the drawing board and decided to design the gestural interface first, then the looper, THEN the synths. the logic being that the sound generation mechanisms will be more easily controllable from a standardized interface. so i created a gesture grid system. the gesture grid is made up of 32 nodes (16 for each hand, accessed by a 2-bit finger sequence) which direct the x and y position of the accelerometer, to various parameters. all of this is within a mode where the entire interface is dedicated to parameter modification. each element has its own gesture grid including each drum sound.

the next stage, which is now so much a part of beatjazz as to be inseperable as a concept, is the looping. within the context of beatjazz, looping, or "recursive improvisation" (recursion) allows for the construction of arrangements from a architectural point of view. the artist plays and when something they play seems to be relevant within the piece, it can be buffered and looped, allowing for more sonic elements to be placed around or on top of this element.

the previous looper, did this with one column of loops. layered one on top of the other. this was a wonderfully challenging because one had to create an arrangemnt consisting of many loops of the same length yet still give the impression of momentum by deconstructing and reconstructing this simple structure, continuously. the drawbacks (which can be strengths depending on how they are approached) are that

all elements are combined into one patchwork of looping layers

to deconstruct the first layer played, one must delete all layers "on top" of that layer first.

this was the main drawback actually because one had to be very careful with what was going to be looped first because that element would be present throughout the entire sonic trajectory. the benefit of this is that it provided an anchor and the interaction with that anchor sound be the main sonic idea of the piece. 

with the new looping/buffering system, each element has its own, synchronized, "buffer"; 8 in total. this buffer is basically one loop layer that can be added to over and over again, faded out over time, muted or rerecorded, independently of the other buffers. now, for instance, the drum buffer can be muted and/or rerecorded, irregardless of the order it was recorded. 
at the beginning of a sonic trajectory, the loop length toggle is switched then the next loop recorded will determine the base tempo for all buffers. its constructed in such a way that it will be easy to do tempo based edits later and is very stable and glitch free, surprisingly.

so now that this actually works ( and quite well), I have begun creating synths of varying types. i have determined that because of the breath based nature of the system, i can focus more on timbre and harmonic quality than "instrument type", ie, a sound of can be played staccato for percussive sounds and more legato for pads, but still be the same sound. the things that determine elemental character now, are how the parameters interact. 

the visualization will be the only thing that most people will ever see of the beatjazz system, including many that will play the system. it will enable complete interface-only interaction with the system. right now, it is very simplistic, consisting of a gesture grid visualization, parameter text readout and loop/buffer nodes at the bottom. its job is to convey all parameters in realtime, mostly for the pilots benefit, but knowing what is doing what, especially in electronic music, is something that i have found to be appreciated by many that come to performances.

for some, the desire to build this system entirely within pure data (extended) is counter productive. some saying that there are other languages that are better at many aspects of what pd does. but pd and its graphical flow chart-esque programming idea, has been a profound and enlightening experience for me. to have hardware integration, graphics and raw dsp-level sound creation all together in one package that also happens to be open source and free is just too good. it is also my belief that relating mathematical principles to sound generation could revolutionize interest in mathematics. i, personally, have now started studying trig and physics to allow me to create ever more relevant sonic structures.

hopefully today, i will have a set of elements that are not embarrasing.  this will entail creating various synthesis types (from tutorials in the amazing book, "Designing Sound" by Andy Farnell), assigning them to elements and determining the proper control vectors for each parameter assignment.  then very basic element, pre and post fx.  once it has a bit more capability, it will replace the "old" system.  to tell the truth, this transition has already happened.  i played the new system for over an hour last night and it was much fun, even with only 3 super basic sound sources, so i may have already made the switch and dont know it yet, but before i feel comfortable with it psychologically, it needs the above mentioned addtions.

i felt that it was neccessary to report on this stage of the developement because now, everything speeds up immensely.  exacerbated by now having an open studio to work out of. 

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April early spring 2012 Beatjazz Update

I'm baaacck! Sorry for the dearth of posts but I needed to zone out on some specific stuff and my mind couldn’t split itself to doing more than that for a while. But I do have a whole boatload of updates for you!

First, the 3rd contributor beatjazz controller has shipped now! Yaaay! I gave all the cats that got one, the option of what color plastic they wanted me to print it in. Phillip asked for black. And black it is! The funny thing is that you never know how any of these will look, until you actually put it on and I must admit, the black looks awesome. Very aggressive. As if built for battle! It was like watching my (hypothetical) child going off to college when I mailed it. But I am sure it will be happy in its new home.

I'm, not too worried about whether I will see it again because I have set up a social network that will become the repository for all future beatjazz communication and iteration. www.beatjazznetwork.ning.com it is still very much under construction but I am very excited that there are at least 2 members of the community now besides myself. #babysteps

I finally have my personal system up to its full previous functionality, by which I mean, THE VOCODER IS BACK! Yaaaay!! This is a big deal for me because the vocoder is the glue of my sound. Any sound I don’t have a synth for, I can usually make with my mouth and the vocoder. The biggest issue was creating a custom housing and mounting for the belt pack I own. As I have mentioned before, I hate beltpacks, so I designed a housing that places the transmitter just behind my head (ass seen in the video). In keeping with the design concept of the rest of the system, the battery is mounted underneath and the battery contacts are 3mm bolts. The 3d printed casing is very cool and of minimal weight. The microphone is positioned just below the mouthpiece so I only have to start singing directly into the mouthpiece now! Consolidation is our friend. 

This is easily the most instant system I have ever played now. Everything is exactly where it should be. And voice is a crucial aspect of the beatjazz system suite software (i.e., all pure-data/non-vst plugin based system) as it will modulate a great many aspects of the all sound in the system. Some subtle and some very overt. This will take a lot of trial and error to get right which makes it fortuitous that I now have my own (first) studio to work out of now, at Tacheles Kunsthaus! 

The reasons for this are many. First, I still need to work ALOT, but sitting in my flat is no longer an option as I can no longer work in the pure solitude that was so useful in the primordial stages of this project. Second, I hope that maybe I can better contribute to helping Tacheles remain open. It is very important for this place to not fall victim to over-gentrification because once the art goes, the city spirit is not far behind, as is evidenced by the transformation of other cities I have witnessed. And 3rd, its HUGE and I can make as much noise as I want, as well as have a place now to do shows and workshops. It’s simply amazing. I will try to have an open house sometime in the next month, AFTER; I have the system software a bit more along.

Aaahhh, the system software. Who knew DSP was going to take a little time to wrap ones head around?! The synths I have now are still very primitive. The buffer system (looper) now works, although sans volume control or a stop button, but it does work, so it is now a matter of just iterating a little every day and then doing a short performance from my studio to test what I build each day. The progress of this aspect should pick up sharply in the coming days and weeks.

So that’s everything.  I will be posting my research into gestural synthesis conceptualization on the beatjazz network so please check it out.  It should prove to be interesting. Qapla' (Klingon for "goodbye-success")

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Get your ass to Tacheles this coming moring to save it from the banks! It’s going down!

yes.  i know it sounds like the storyline from electric boogaloo II (and yes i am that old), but the story is the same; the big bad bank want to destroy a community in the name of profit.  the difference is that electric boogaloo was a movie and Tacheles is a real, living monument filled with artists from around the world.

when i first arrive in Berlin, It was very hard for me to find non-buskin on the street places to play, but tacheles either invited me to play theri events or gave me full access to the many parts of the "house" when ever i wanted.  last year when the prototype had finally reached a playable level, the first place i thought about to go and test it was tacheles.  to me this place is almost sacred ground.

The history, as it has been told to me, was that after the wall came down the building was slated to be torn down but for a group of artists that occupied the building and demonstrated that they would turn it into an art house.  since then it has become world famous and continues to be a place where art lives and breaths.

  keeping tacheles alive means that a precedent gets set that you cant just kill off art in the name of profit. if you are here, like me, as a creative immigrant, trust me when i say that this affects you whether you think so or not. most of my moves in life have been just about the point that this transition happens in the cities i have lived in but this time, i dont want to move.  i like it here alot.  Berlin is home now and i want my home to be and remain a place where art can flourish.

if you actually care and live in berlin, come down this morning at 4am.  no, it wont be cutesy.  i will be playing but it will be more angry than groovy: pure sonic warfare. so dont come to be cute. come to support art in the city that we call home now.  come show some solidarity or else when all of the coolness that made you live here gets bulldozed, dont say shit, because you didnt do anything to help.

Below is the email from Tacheles going out right now:

 

SENDING ALARMS - TACHELES IS SCHEDULED TO BE FENCED IN TOMORROW
The policed confirmed that the some action from the lawyers / securities is planed for tomorrow morning.
Now, the moment has arrived: WE HAVE TO KEEP THE ARTHOUSE ALIVE AND SAVE IT!
WE ALL MEET AT 4am TO HAVE AN OCCUPY BREAKFAST. PLEASE COME AND INFORM ALL YOUR FRIENDS. THIS IS AN HISTORICAL MOMENT.
It would be great if you could bring cameras and internet sticks to make a direct coverage on internet.
Please, help that many people are with us tomorrow morning. We don't know the exact time the fencing would start, but it could be already at 5am.
TOGETHER WE STAND
BEST WISHES YOUR TACHELES
http://kritikdesign.blogspot.com/2012/03/alarm-alarm-tacheles-wird-mittwoch-samt.html

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Gizmag have just done a really nice writeup about the system

 

http://www.gizmag.com/beatjazz-hands-gestural-digital-musical-interface/21744/ 

This is one of my favorite sites on the web so to be there is a big honor for me.  enjoy.

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A tale of two mistresses

I am used to this phase now.

This transitional phase from one all-encompassing aspect of the project to another. I try to do 2 things at once. In this case software design and hardware design, but, try as I might, one will usually take precedence. back in January, I knew that learning enough CAD to design the hardware in 3d was going to take most of my waking life, but using project management principles I realized that if you spend more of your daily time on one thing, you can make more progress with that one thing, allowing you to move on to something else fairly quickly. 6 weeks of 18 hour days gave me a controller I am very proud of (for the time being. I have already made a number of design iterations in the last few days).

Now as I open up the room in my head that stored the gestural synthesis research and patches, it is as if I am reading someone else’s notes. 2 full notebooks full of notes, each page tweaking something from a previous page, annotated with barely legible scribbles. It feels as if all of that fervor has seeped out of my ears and rolled under the bed somewhere.

Couple that with a severe case of cabin fever, exacerbated by the presence of a gorgeous hot red 3d printed seductress who calls me to be with her constantly. It’s not enough that the controller itself feels great and looks the business, but since she arrived, she has had a profound effect of my current NI Kore 2/Komplete audio 6(audio interface) based sound set. My latency (the amount of time between the time I play a note and it comes out of the sounds system) is currently 32samples!! Without going into a lot of highly technical explanations this basically means that when I play fast passages, they are now, for lack of a better term, perfect; attacks fall right where they are supposed to and not a few milliseconds later. Drums are especially tight now. This is NEW. Most of my anxiety in the past has been with trying to play in a manner that distracted from my ongoing battle with latency. Solved. Thus, I just want to get out and play, play, play!!

But before I pack of the gear and become kokopelli, I must put the programming hat back on for a few more weeks. playing the Kore soundset is much fun, especially because I am used to it and have been playing with it for a couple of years now, but the beatjazz system is the real intended nervous system of this controller. An integrated system encompassing many forms of sound creation and manipulation, all interacted with through gestures and motion that will be freely downloadable, shareable, and modifiable by me and/or anyone else. This is the future of the beatjazz system. To not simply be a controller/synth metaphor, but an integrated sound prosthesis. Fortunately for my sanity, part of the iterative process for this will include going out to test it on people.

This is a sharp move away from hermit vibe that has cultivated so much progress in the last year (thankfully); Sitting in my blissfully quiet flat, listening to Coltrane, babbling to myself and creating. But, 3 things converge to make this unfeasible going forward. 1. The pre-mentioned cabin fever, 2. The need to test the system on a crowd and 3. Income. Busking will solve all three. I can test new sound constructs, before unleashing them on audiences at festivals, shows and conferences, be a bit more social and supplement my income in a manner that I feel doesn’t distract from the trajectory of this project.

It would be win, win and win, but now I must satisfy two mistresses within this context; that of wanting to play something that sounds good in the here and now and something that will sound good in the (hopefully) near future. The mistresses are Kore and the new, untested, beatjazz system (alpha1).

Kore sounds so good now, I just want to play it for hours, even at home but the PD based system has to be iterated daily to have anywhere near the progress I had on the hardware front recently. Both want and need a lot of attention.

My recent solution has been to reintegrate Cockos Reaper back into my system. This is a fantastic multitrack digital audio workstation with one major feature that I find indispensable; a driver called Rearoute ASIO. This allows any ASIO capable audio applications audio to be routed directly into reaper and out to any other application, with almost no latency. I first discovered Reaper a few years ago when I first wanted to play softsynths live during my DJ sets. So I used it to allow Traktor and fl studio to be used simultaneously and used it all the way up until my previous laptop died.

At first it didn’t want to work with the version of pd-extended (0.42.5) I have been using so I upgraded to the latest beta build(0.43.1) and so far, all is cool except that pd-extended lowest latency is 64 samples. Although this is still far faster than what I am used to and only an increase of .7ms, I did take note, and I do believe that once the system is all Pd based, this will be negligible. Kore worked right away.

Currently, the performance system is based on 8 sound element channels, elements being a grouping of related sound types (i.e. bass, leads, pads, etc.) I have two empty ones. What I envision as the way forward that will allow me to keep iterating the beatjazz system while being able to get out and play in public is to route Pd synth audio into reaper where it will be routed to one of the two empty channels in Kore, playable like any other sounds in the system. Once one of those Pd synths is good enough, it will replace a Kore synth element. Eventually each of the synths in the Kore system will be replaced by Pd based synths, still running thru Kore and reaper with those being the last items to be removed. I feel that this will allow the system to evolve organically.

This should keep both mistresses happy while allowing me to not need to sit in this flat for another 3 months of 18 hour days as it should be easy to go busk somewhere and, when necessary, stop and tweak the code when and where needed. Let me know if anyone is interested in a four-square/Facebook location update when I do my busking crawls. Its most definitely time to interface with people again so holla at me.

Also this Saturday, I am going to play for the record release of a great berlin-based duo, Tanga Elecktra. If you are in Berlin, you owe it to yourself to come to this show at Franz. These guys are the real deal. I have seen them a number of times before and played a few shows with them and that are smoking! Trust me on this. If you don’t, don’t say I didn’t tell you they were about to blow up. Holla...

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We don’t need no water, let the m%(&f§)/”a burn!!!-Introducing the “firestarter” 3D-Printed digital musical interface (beatjazz controller)

Ooooh ho ho ho....yes!!! fi-yah, baby!!! Fi-yah!!! I wanted to post about this a few days ago but I wanted to have proper pictures and video to go with it! This is the full MkI beatjazz controller....in red! This has permanently replaced the beloved cardboard prototype that worked so well for so long. I needed a change of pace on the color front so I decided to encourage my other personality to reassert itself this year, by providing a visual cue. Fire red! It’s so gorgeous!! I was really happy that that I was able to get a full beatjazz system out of one spool of 1.75mm PLA plastic filament (100meters). This was also from faberdashery and seems to be very flexible (i.e. not brittle).

In the video, I had literally just gotten the system to work. I had mostly assembled the system by Monday evening but I, in my great wisdom, decided that it would be great to use hot glue to cover all of the open wiring in various places. I discovered that this particular brand of hot glue conducts electricity (for future reference I should use silicon). I burned up two arduinos and a couple of radios as well. By Tuesday morning (the day of the show in the video) it was very apparent that this wasn’t going to work so I just said "screw it" and built new sensor boards. It wasn’t hard, just lots of small tedious steps. But by 8pm I was getting proper data from the system so I packed it up and finished configuring it in the dressing room. I really didn’t know if it was going to work or not for the show, but the new hand units are very much a "musical prosthesis" now and felt very comfortable and intimate.

Over the weekend, the first controller contributor from the 1st crowdfunding campaign, winter 2011, came to berlin to finally receive his perk. I was still working on it when he got here. Needless to say, he was quite happy with how it turned out. I had the headset from the "firestarter" system (yes, that is what I call it) so we basically spent a couple of hours playing around like kids in transformer costumes.

I decided to go ahead and give him the working one because (a) I had already started on building the red one that would be mine (b) he has been so patient and supportive for waaaaaay longer than I thought it would take to complete his perk, and (c) he has had 3-4 versions of the software already and thus has a decent idea of how it works. That said, I didn’t realize how complex the system would be for others. I forget that I have played this system ALOT. I was overwhelmed with the list of little weird shit I needed to explain like when holding two joystick positions on the same hand, the last one latches until you click it again. And many more little things. I will use the next couple of weeks to make the software easy enough to use, out of the box, with simple instructions. I am very interested in an interactive tutorial built in PD-which I have begun-but I will hold off on that until the gestural synthesis system works (very soon).

There are a few design aspects that I am most proud of with this MkI design. The adjustable mouthpiece is EXACTLY how I imagined it. It sits in a perfect position for playing and besides the ear-hang thingies making me look like I have pixie ears, the whole contraptions so flexible and very comfortable. I put padding on top of the FSR's to spread out the finger presses across their surfaces and it gives the "keys" much more feedback. Much like drumpad pads. I feel that this new feel deserves a "tabla mode" just for playing percussive hits.

The lights illuminate the interior of the controller in a nice unexpected manner. It very much looks like a circuit, itself, when the lights catch its angles. I will definitely play with various lighting configs once the campaign has been wrapped up.

I can begin to be, like, slightly more normal again now. 18 hour days will shrink to 12 hour days until the software is functional...ok, that’s a lie. I will probably still do 18 hour days because that’s just my pace, but I can diversify my activities beyond simply learning cad and printing parts. Gestural synthesis is the main focus now. As well as printing perks for the other campaign contributors. I have been working on some very interesting 3d printed perks that are going to blow their minds and I can’t wait to wrap up this phase of the project so I can show them all how much I appreciate them for supporting my project. Without them, things would be very different.

from Monday I will begin a new series of posts based on the my analysis of electronic music sounds and how I will create their "spirit" within the gestural synthesis system so if you don’t like tech talk mixed with hippie talk, you won’t like them....otherwise, I will see the rest of you at the rabbit hole on Monday. l8r!

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How the Borg play funk

the beatjazz system continues to iterate itself to life. these are the hand units for the system. as with the headset, they continue to iterate themselves into more refined states, owing to having a means of easily creating updated parts. I had planned to have an associated video with this post but i decided to wait until after the weekend when the very first controller contributor comes to berlin to take reciept of his controller. i figure that will be a much better video than me sitting in front of my webcam.

the reason for the differences in color between the two units in the pictures is (a) i ran out of black PLA filament (biodegradeable plastic derived from plants-Polylactic acid) and the silver one is for the contributor, while the black/silver one is for frankensteining various parts.   i ordered the silver PLA from a filament supplier in the UK called Faberdashery. one word; GORGEOUS! on the spool it was already beautiful but once i started extruding it into parts i was in shock at how gorgeous it is. they really know what they are doing. very high quality with little flecks of reflection and it extrudes very smoothly and evenly without breaking off as was the case with some other PLA i have used in the short time i have been printing with this material.

I have had a chance to play with them over the last few days. the action is very much solid and sure. i have not added padding for the keys and may keep it that way. it very much feels like a musical prosthesis now. the palm bracing system i designed seems to work well but i wont really know until i have sweated with it in a club. in comparison with the cardboard prototypes, this feels more like it is part of my hand and there is more of a feeling of confidence that i can do more expressive gestures as if feels more robust and is about 30% smaller, though slightly heavier.

the old design served it purpose though, as many of the immediate design cues were gleaned directly from the prototype, namely the fsr positioning and susequent "rim" around each key to funnel the fingwer into its proper place, the joystick angles and the palm bracing mechanism.  also, the lights now not only provide indication of the element color, but illuminate the exposed internal circuitry.  i had created a version that was enclosed (which is where 50% of the black PLA ended up) and it looked like some sort of black gourd.  it did not look nearly as cool as i thought it was going to, so i regrouped and went back to my exposed circuit design, and i am over the moon with how it came out. 

last week i looked at how i wired the internals of the prototype and i realized that it was wildly inefficient.  i was able to compress all of the circuitry onto a small prototyping board that attaches directly to the arduino fio that acts as the sensor interface. 
i find that it tells its own story not least of which it say "i am a functional interface" which will go some way towards convincing people that it is not some sort of trick to convince them that the person playing it is just dancing with lights on their hands.

one by one, i will be getting these controllers out to their contributors in the coming weeks with the first being this weekend.  with him here at my flat (workshop?!) I will be able to refine certain aspects that i designed to be multi-size and see if they translate.  should be a lot of fun any way it goes.
back on monday with video. l8r.

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3d printed beatjazz headset: Pre-alpha build update

For future reference, whenever I am not posting or updating my status, I am working. There is so much going on during these hack sessions that to update on each step would be too much. The side benefit is that I so want to update you on the progress of things that it helps me to maintain focus so I can drop something dope on you when I do post.

The last two weeks (month?!) have been much more balanced than the previous 6 months. There’s been a bit of social life, played a show in Switzerland and one in Dresden at Groovestation. Really nice gig! People were well up for a party and the vibe was really good. I was very happy that it seems to be a trend that my system (now with quad core laptop and new pressure sensors in the mouthpiece) works flawlessly now. I didn’t even know what "flawless" felt like before these changes to the system. Now, the effortlessness is starting to assert itself and I hope that my new software designs reinforce this aspect more predictably.

After the Dresden gig, it was straight back and straight into learning CAD (computer aided design) and sound design exercises. Having finally achieved a stable print with the reprap, I wanted to forge ahead with designing the new controller as well as various other 3d printed beatjazz system crowdfunding campaign perks. Adding these printed perks to the campaign was done intentionally to force myself to have to jump into CAD and make something viable with it in the short term. I was very fortunate to have friend show and allow me to use the CAD software he uses for his work, called Solidworks (My product trial copy is on the way...yaaaay!!!). ah-may-zing! You can design a whole car in this joint! It is completely parametric so I can make sure that everything is exactly the size I need it to be. It has been a bit of a stretch to go to his flat to refine the parts I create in freecad, but it is worth it for the extra detail I am able to impart.

So now, it has been a week that I have been printing parts and even though it’s not completed, I wanted to show you what I have been working on. This is the basic design of the headset. The premise is that it should be adjustable for any size adult head so I have left a lot of spacing between components, owing to the enormity of my own noggin. The design hinges at the jaw and the mouthpiece base rest on the chin. I will be starting on the design of the mouthpiece today (I ran out of the white plastic filament that came with the reprap and will continue once the black and "robot silver" filament arrive). The rear-of-head brace will also adjust for various head sizes. The "plumbing"-for the pressure tube and wiring-will be internal in this first design (subject to change)

The iterative aspects of CAD and 3d printing are incredible. The ability to add in exact dimensions and channels for electronics, and air tubing allow for a design that is much more compact, durable, light and comfortable than was previously possible. As well, the design can be change so easily and cheaply, I could design a beatjazz controller for very specific purposes (music therapy, burning man, busking, acrobatics, etc.) and never worry about being too protective of being harsh with it because another one is simply a matter of printing replacement parts.

Interestingly, the design of one part, rewrites the design of each subsequent part. The current look of the headset stems from the chunky design of the jaw hinge, which vectored away from the "scaffolding" design concept of the parts before it. (and this is the first week of doing any of this type of design!  imagine a year from now.) Once I can hold it in my hand, the next step seems to create itself. For me this is perfect. I am much better with physical objects than with their onscreen representations.

Also, the reprap itself has been leeching into the design. The reprap's ingenious common components/custom assembly design has been a big inspiration. As with the reprap, I hope to make 70% of the non-electronics components of this system, printable and downloadable with the software (and linked to the reprap open source wiki to encourage the building of one’s own 3d printer as well). Its intersection of screws and bolts mated to self-printed parts is a design concept that I can see making waves in the next few coming years and beyond.

The plastic itself, PLA-Polylactic acid- is plant, rather than petroleum based. It is strong, non-toxic and can biodegrade in a landfill, although it won’t biodegrade in regular use. This really suits me as a means of expressing myself in a manner that won’t make a bad situation (pollution) worse.

Next will be the hand units. This will be pretty easy because once I design one hand, the CAD software will let me mirror it and print out a version for the opposite hand. From that point, it is all about getting them to the contributors so they can have as much fun as me!

So wanted to update you on the progress of the system. There is still loads of work to be done, but things are progressing nicely. Gotta get back to work. Holla...