Today I got my boards from Nescivi, these are little development boards that can turn the signal from sensors into a signal send to a computer using the HID standard, they can also do some processing on these signals, control leds/motors and probably more things as well. This needs development in C. I liked writing C in the past because I know nothing about it aside from how it looks like ChucK, so that added excitement. That excitement may or may not scale towards larger projects…. With these I plan to build my own turntable controller and I’d like to track my progress here.
The toy turntables I use now (from the PS1 version of Beatmania) only detect one of three states (standing still, forwards & backwards) and while that can still be loads of fun I think more fun could be had with more nuanced control. I’d also like to add a crossfader; I’m not sure I’m all that I’d like to get closer to literal turntablism I would like to borrow more of the gestural vocabulary. I first got inspired to look in that direction by some talks at the STEIM Jamboree then I joined a forum on “alternative turntablism” that made me believe this is a viable direction for me to take. I think that there is already a big overlap between what I with my live setup and “beat juggling” so why not explore that more? Another big source of inspiration was getting to try out a proper Beatmania arcade machine in Melbourne. This made it clear that a more solid controler feels much better and that lights under buttons do add something; they make me happy like a little boy and if those machines use them to attract players I might steal that idea to create a more attractive performance setup. Commercial turntable controlers have some annoying issues; often they use a custom protocol and when they don’t they tend to have buttons that are too small and too dencely placed for my style of performance. I need something more arcade like, something toy-like in the sense of kids playing but also in the sense of being able to survive a kid of 2 meters.
So; the first part is in. TODO; figure out the SDK, code for the pic, get parts, solder, build, practice. I probably need a new soldering iron as well. This might take a while…
Off to The Villa for a BBQ and night of music organised by friends from Vrijhaven now. Must remember not to get lost/wasted/both as tomorrow #hackpact starts. I’m planning to spend my hour tomorrow exploring the technique of rappidly resetting the ChucK RNG, turning normally noisy sound sources into tonal ones. This leads to a complete inability to also use randomness elsewhere because all ChucK randomness depends on a single RNG so that places higher demands on our ability to write functions that create a varied musical output or bordom will ensue.