Can't Touch This...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison
Continuing my exploration of making a touchscreen-based recording/performing environment (that isn’t on a fucking Twitter Machine… errr… I mean iPad) I decided to try a different tack this time. Since Brian Crabtree has already done a lot of the hard work on this front, I thought I’d bust out a touchscreen monome emulator, just to see how that might work.
As it happens, not so much.
While the monome is a comparatively simple device (the only things that make it special, as such, are the facts that the LEDs are decoupled from the buttons, and the extremely high construction quality and craftsmanship; otherwise, it’s just a box full of buttons), as it turns out, and I think the above video proves, actually having the buttons under your fingers is somewhat important.
It was a pretty easy thing to code, just being a grid of lights, and some simple OSC messages. Rather than go through the trouble of faking the operation of the driver software, in the interests of quickly having a working prototype, I just altered mlr slightly so it could talk directly to my Cinder app and not look for a monome. I made a grid of 16 x 16 buttons (ignore the column on the left of larger buttons; those are scene triggers for Maschine, which I didn’t use in the video) and it’s off to the races.
While the functionality is, in and of itself, flawless, I think that the combination of mlr (and other patchers I tried) and the monome hardware is what makes the instrument. The more sensitive nature of the touchscreen sort of precludes laying in to it, and not being able to feel the buttons makes any sort of virtuosity difficult.
That said, it was a fun idea that, I think, merited exploration. But for this sort of thing, the money is better spent on a real monome, in my opinion.
Back to the drawing board.
26 comments
I like this track actually. I really feel frustrated with touch screen interfaces, I think you have to grow up with them for them to feel natural. Give me a Maschine, give me an MPC60, give me an APC40... just ordered a QuNeo so I'm going to be in candy colored button heaven... or hell... tomorrow.
(the internet made me do it)
"i think Tesla said that but Edison got credit for it" ZING!
well executed. my first thought was for the fingers not having actual buttons. it's one of the things i like about using renoise now and then. all those key commands for everything.
all that real estate on that screen has me laughing when thinking about an iPad. there is just so much more room for stuff and all kinds of feedback for the user. you've already come up with some interesting takes on it and you've only just gotten into. i imagine there is an "ah ha" moment somewhere down the line that will be gratifying. though the journey is plenty of food for thought.
Yeah. This app, in my internal numbering scheme, is R4. R3 showed some promise; I put up a couple screenshots on Twitter or something; the problem was that there were crackles somewhere in the looping engine, and the code kind of got away from me.
(While I love inventing things in my head, I don't love making them in real life, usually.)
So I may go back to R3 after this, which was a purer take on the idea. I will say this much: R5 will have its own audio; I'm tired of having to flip back and forth between Max and Visual Studio. I'm also thinking about manning up and getting a proper multi-touch monitor. This two-touch shit is for the birds.
-CR
You know, I don't think touchscreens are ever going to move into the same place as any other serious musical instrument. They seem to be all the rage right now. But the fact that you need to be looking at it to get a bearing of what you want to is going to be a process that stands in between getting to know the instrument and playing it well.
Also the fact that their aren't any universal designs that seem to make sense for it - at least ones that aren't harder to use replications of what is already offered on regular computer screens. The main issue here is subtle but important. On a computer screen with a mouse, you can see every value of what you are interacting with. With a touch screen, your hand blocks about 1/3 of the interface while you are using it. Its fine if you are just interacting with the occasional web form or using a virtual keyboard to fire off an email. But when the slider or knob value that you are trying to change is being covered, you can't actually tell what you set it to until you remove your hand from the screen.
The which is the point of the exercise. Trying to figure out a way around all that, because nobody else is.
-CR
i've seen several interfaces with "exploding knobs" so that when something is touched it enlarges or the part your finger touches expands out from the knob and you get a number or dot or something that is a reference.
clever people will find solutions and options and eventually they will all be available for people who want to use touch screens and each user will be able to taylor the interfaces to these things to whatever works for him/her/robot/terminator etc.
but they won't find those solutions by not trying to find them.
i'm just going to leave this here...
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/
That article is all well and good, and in general I agree with him still, although perhaps less so than I did last year when it came out.
The chief problem is that he argues there are two aspects to usability: usefulness and comfort. There are, in fact, three: he _totally_ ignores convenience. I'd love to carry a mouse and a keyboard around to control my iPhone. Oh, wait. No, I wouldn't.
Is a touchscreen monitor the best window in to a computer's abilities? Don't know, but I doubt it. Is it the most convenient? In certain contexts, yes. I'm not concerned in the slightest with the best way to find a Starbucks near you or access boarding passes or do 3D modeling. There is really no possible way I could give less of a shit about that sort of thing. I'm concerned with the best way for a performance to not be this:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/files/2007/05/quantazelle-live_at_sonotheque.JPG
Over. And over. And over. And over again. And again. And again.
And while Mr. Victor knows a lot about boarding passes and finding Starbucks, he doesn't know shit about music.
-CR
@chris, that's my friend Liz at work in that picture. And I've seen her play, and enjoyed it, despite the lack of grand performance.
I just played a show with Moldover, who has found a way to PERFORM perform with his laptop, and it's pretty fun to watch, and he has some good songs. But to a large extent it is a matter of hitting a button to advance scenes in Live, and then tweak stuff with a MIDI controller.
The best purely electronic performance I've seen was visually static, which was Keith Fullerton Whitman live patching an analog modular. Which I was able to record:
http://cornwarning.com/xfer/2010-08-23-KeithFullertonWhitman.mp3
And the most dramatic 'show' I went to this year was Tim Hecker, who performed in near total darkness, hunched over his laptop and the organ manuals.
So yeah I like it that you're trying something new. As Joe Biden would say "God bless ya." But a performance is as valid as the music produced and how the audience feels during, and I'm impressed when someone just stands there and stares at their computer and still pulls it off.
I'm not. At all. I've done it many times, and seen it hundreds. It fucking sucks.
(As usual, add "in my opinion" to any subjective statement.) Apologies to Quantazelle, but her pic from CDM is the first image that came up for the Google image search "electronic music performance." Which should tell everyone here something.
Also, Moldover is not what we're talking about. He does perform. He has an instrument that he's built himself, which he plays with virtuosity. (For various values of "himself" and "virtuosity.") I'm speaking _specifically_ to the "checking my email" crowd.
-CR
This is very cool.
I use monome and arc, but have zero programming skills or proclivity and rely exclusively on the monome community's open source utilities. Even THEN I barely know what I'm doing!
Your tech prowess is impressive to me, Chris. It must feel pretty powerful to be able to have a raw concept AND be able to pursue the execution.
- c
My favorite part of Moldover's rig is that there's a big aluminum rotary switch at the top left, and he switches between songs with it. There's something kind of clunky and endearing about it. It should make a loud 'thunk' noise when he switches it.
I saw the first video when you posted it, but I figured it was the preview of a brand new version of audio-video de-syncing software: Jive 9.
any chance you might commandeer some hardware to replace the touchscreen?
like a novation launchpad (not built like a monome, but not a total POS either) or an AXIS ( http://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=prod_axis-64 ) or even a disused midi keyboard, used solely for the purposes of midi triggering?
dont know. just a thought.
The two big issues for performance seem to be, can you look at (and hopefully engage) the audience while you play it, and can the audience watch you manipulate the thing your playing? Both are an obvious problem with laptop performances, but the first is probably the real killer.
Most ipad apps suffer from the same problem, you have to look at them to use them and all the action is happening really small on the performers side of the screen.
Things like the Tenori-on and this monstrosity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvPYsDCkDw&feature=fvwrel (warning: possibly the most annoying youtube video ever) try to address the second problem by displaying the screen on both sides, but it seems like it would still be hard to engage the audience with either. I bet if you built a touchscreen instrument that a blind guy (or gal) could use, you'd have it licked.
I saw that hot mess at NAMM this year (the DJ thing.) I hadn't yet had my Touchscreen Epiphany, so I just looked at it like it was, a hot mess.
But as you say, a blind guy. That's my chief problem with my monome emulator (and everything I've done to this point, really): you need to direct your visual attention to what's on the screen. And why a real monome works: you can actually feel the buttons, and thus virtuosity is possible, like with any other instrument. (It isn't any more complicated, intrinsically, than a guitar, and in fact far less so in some respects.)
The iPad is just douche-tastic on stage. There's no arguing that. For music in general the environment is terrible. And I say this as an iOS audio developer.
My thinking, right now, is that if the screen is of a certain size (22.4 to 24, so you can easily cover it without too big an arm movement) and the controls are simple and full-surface, and the UI is designed so that you can, in general, use your peripheral vision, then I think we're on to something. Otherwise, the screen itself needs ridges or something, which kind of defeats the purpose. (However, not impossible at all. Could easily make ridges with a clear epoxy.) So, some more thought needs to be applied to the process. In general, you're correct, though, IMO.
-CR
What kind of watch are you wearing?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HDMTSG/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=analogindustr-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B000HDMTSG&adid=19ZG70MPXFZHMKYTHK43&;
-CR
Tangentially related:
In my last post on this subject, I complained at length about the monitor I bought, and several options were batted around. It appears that Dell just announced (inexplicably, during Apple's press conference on new iShit) a 10-touch capacitive screen 24" monitor.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=0&c=us&cs=19&l=en&sku=320-9517&~ck=baynoteSearch#reviews
I'll wait for some reviews before jumping on it, but this is, best I'm aware, the first large capacitive screen that doesn't cost multiple thousands of dollars. May change things a bit.
-CR
re the ridges of clear epoxy..
How about selling software and matching silicon grids to hang on/stick to the screen?
I'll leave it to you to sort out the minor details...
Wow. That raven looks like it would be unbelievably frustrating to use. Trying to do any kind of multitracking or sound editing on an ipad is what killed touchscreens for me in the first place.
The Raven is a textbook example of something that is immediately, obviously not cool.
Sorry to bring that topic back up.
- c
No, you're absolutely correct. When I saw the press blurb, I was like "ooooh, and we were just talking about this." Then I watched the video, and I was all "boy, howdy, did they miss the mark on this."
-CR
Well, for starters, Slate's videos are just plain hilarious. Credibility of a drummer, unintentional comedy from the point zero onwards. If Raven's not going to bunk, I don't know what will.
I instantly knew: here's something that's probably really expensive that I don't want or need. There's plenty of stuff I can't afford that I do want and need.
Slate is a trip, though. I do wish his partner, Old Fabrice Le MacDonald, would update his eieiosis plug-ins, or at least aireq native, which is the only one I have.
Okay, here's the "does anybody remember" part. It's an alternative controller related query: Jimmy Hotz and Hotz Box/Translator.
He and I worked out of the same studio, before he headed west to become whatever it is he became. He's actually very talented and I learned a lot from him.
Have you seen this? Not sure if this is vaporware or real:
http://www.tactustechnology.com/index.html
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