On 18 Jul 2009, at 22:08, Kassen wrote:
That is an interesting use. If one does not have a turntable to scratch, I checked one can use the top of a matte CD or DVD - I only tried without print, and the underside (that carries the data) didn't work. So that might serve as an interface to scratch some audio-file
Yes, it's a very interesting way to create a expressive interface with little cost or fuzz. I've seen videos online of people simply sticking a optical mouse into a pizza box they had cut up. My friend Rob Bothof went a bit further than that; http://forum.itchymuzik.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=53 (some docs and a example video)
I simply hooked that up to LiSa and had it control the .rate() while continuously recording. This simple setup was already a lot of fun, far better than the toy turntable for Playstation that I've been using. The experience is very tactile and intuitive.
He says he has problems with recording constant turn velocity. There is no information about the surface the mouse reads off - if that is uneven, that may cause problems. For recording turns, one should use a Hall sensor, like this one: http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/BEIDuncanElectronics/9360_... This is inexpensive though not USB, but netsearching for words like "USB rotary joystick Hall effect controller" may produce some results.
These are called "extended keyboards", or full size, at least on the Mac side http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard I have an old Mac one, where the function keys are without gaps and no space the other keys. This was very good for the diatonic key map, as it becomes enlarged. But I found it difficult to do ornaments on it: the keys are a bit too chevy. It is A1048 here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#Apple_Keyboard I have for couple of months used the A1242 - it is much better on ornaments, but not as good as a musical instrument. The rather short action takes some time to get used to.
Yes, I see. Personally I don't care that much about ornaments ...
They are important in melodic development to provide character and style.
...but I do care about the tactile feel which is where I feel the Model M really shines. Of course there are also many who detest it for the weight, the noise, the size and the heavy feel.
This is pretty much and individual preference - some like heavy weighted keys, and even think it helps playing faster, others the reverse. All typing keyboards seem to have an unpredictable depressing point which makes them less suitable for music interpretation.
To me these seem like under-appreciated factors. If we are going to use devices like these for music then tactile feel matters for expressiveness and it will pay off to find one that suits our tastes.
There was a adding cards to the computer also on the Mac, but they are mostly gone now, because the CPU/GPU are so powerful, it is not needed.
I meant that some people may want to add exotic devices, like hookups to cash registers or industrial machines or sensor arrays or vending machines or.... It seems to me that some drivers, some of the time, will be unavoidable. Take for instance video editing; that require a rather largge video card with many in and outputs. We can hardly make vendors of such devices wait for a new OS update before shiping a new model. Video cards seem a exception in general, Ati and Nvidea like their strange drivers to access their own features so well they even made Linux ones Aside from that this would give a bit too much power to OS makers for my tastes.
These are the GPUs I mentioned. Mac OS X is developing special language support for these. So the exact driver thing will be transparent. Learning a new way to program fro every device requires too much of an effort. So this is probably the trend for the future.
One reason to avoid custom supplied drivers is that they do low level things that may cause the computer to crash. On Macs, that is called "kernel panic". Basically, it means that the kernel running the processes gets some code that it cannot handle. Often, there is a driver for a piece of hardware involved. The hardware, the OS and the computer, though, are fine.
Yes, I agree. On Windows I already took to ignoring most driver discs and having the more stable default ones sort it out. On Linux the default ones are often all we have and I have to say they work very well. Without aiming to get too political; I don't think the issue is with users installing their own drivers, I feel the issue is with vendors that create buggy ones, often without good reason because the standard ones do the exact same thing. I've seen that many times with joypads and joypad adapters. That need not be a matter of platform, I have little doubt that a exotic device in need of special drivers could bring OSX or Linux to it's knees as well if it had a bad driver.
On the Mac, I noticed that the printer drivers now all seem very small, except for HP, which was huge, like 1 GB. Hans
Hans; He says he has problems with recording constant turn velocity. There is no
information about the surface the mouse reads off - if that is uneven, that may cause problems.
It's quite a odd phenomenon. When we have quickly changing velocity, such as while scratching rapidly back and forth it behaves fine yet when the movement is even (which may still be a high speed movement), such as when giving the platter a firm shove and letting it run out there is considerable jitter. This might be in the uneven surface or it might be some artefact of the method of scanning used by the mouse itself. So far Rob implemented a variable interpolation that depends on the change in movement speed which does seem to work quite well. More research will be needed. We need more research anyway as it's not clear how we'd emulate the equivalent of a slipmat in digital scratching. The weight of the platter in this case seems to imply one might be useful.
For recording turns, one should use a Hall sensor, like this one:
http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/BEIDuncanElectronics/9360_...
This is inexpensive though not USB, but netsearching for words like "USB rotary joystick Hall effect controller" may produce some results.
For my own use I already ordered a HID development board which I plan to use with a optical step-less rotary encoder. I may change my perspective here but right now relative rotation seems more interesting to me than absolute angular position. I could imagine reaching different perspectives on that and going with a Hall one though. Yes, I see. Personally I don't care that much about ornaments ...
They are important in melodic development to provide character and style.
Again we have a small misunderstanding; I thought you meant things like volume control buttons when you said "ornamentation" and didn't realise you were refering to the musical sense of the word. My bad. This is pretty much and individual preference - some like heavy weighted
keys, and even think it helps playing faster, others the reverse. All typing keyboards seem to have an unpredictable depressing point which makes them less suitable for music interpretation.
Well, that is what I meant; typical for the Model M is that it gives both tactile and aural feedback at the exact moment the stroke is registered. This makes it a favourite of some and hated in crowded offices (where the noise may be objectionable). IBM went as far as outfitting some models with a actual speaker to give additional noise at the moment a stroke registers, that is probably taking the idea too far for most (I'm not making this up, I have keyboards with a speaker grill right here though without the speaker, I know it sounds far fetched). These are the GPUs I mentioned. Mac OS X is developing special language
support for these. So the exact driver thing will be transparent. Learning a new way to program fro every device requires too much of an effort. So this is probably the trend for the future.
As a side note; this sounds revolutionary now but the Amiga platform was well known for this. They used a aditional chip for sound as well. Yours, Kas.
On 18 Jul 2009, at 23:47, Kassen wrote:
For recording turns, one should use a Hall sensor, like this one: http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/BEIDuncanElectronics/9360_...
This is inexpensive though not USB, but netsearching for words like "USB rotary joystick Hall effect controller" may produce some results.
For my own use I already ordered a HID development board which I plan to use with a optical step-less rotary encoder. I may change my perspective here but right now relative rotation seems more interesting to me than absolute angular position. I could imagine reaching different perspectives on that and going with a Hall one though.
If 'chuck' does not have routines for computing derivatives and integrals numerically, perhaps it should have. Then it will not make any difference.
This is pretty much and individual preference - some like heavy weighted keys, and even think it helps playing faster, others the reverse. All typing keyboards seem to have an unpredictable depressing point which makes them less suitable for music interpretation.
Well, that is what I meant; typical for the Model M is that it gives both tactile and aural feedback at the exact moment the stroke is registered. This makes it a favourite of some and hated in crowded offices (where the noise may be objectionable).
I had one of those, but turned it back after a couple of minutes of use. But acoustical musical instruments do produce noise, and that is a part of the sound. I think that on the Roland virtual accordions, one can adjust the emulated sound from the keys.
IBM went as far as outfitting some models with a actual speaker to give additional noise at the moment a stroke registers, that is probably taking the idea too far for most (I'm not making this up, I have keyboards with a speaker grill right here though without the speaker, I know it sounds far fetched).
You can implement that with 'chuck' :-). Such things were popular addition with Mac OS X in the 1990s and back, but I have lost track of it.
These are the GPUs I mentioned. Mac OS X is developing special language support for these. So the exact driver thing will be transparent. Learning a new way to program fro every device requires too much of an effort. So this is probably the trend for the future.
As a side note; this sounds revolutionary now but the Amiga platform was well known for this. They used a aditional chip for sound as well.
The new thing is that the GPUs are so powerful, one can run programs in them. In the past, they only could do simple thing like drawing objects, if that. On Mac OS 9, if one wanted a window with a scrollbar, one had to implement a series of function calls tracing the events from the system. So nothing for free, there. Hans
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