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Re: hardware vs software - this time from a blind man's view (was "Re: two little guitar loops")



Hi Mark,
You know, what I would really like is f... three position mechanical switches.
But they won't do it because it's too old-fashioned. And the thing is it would probably be cooler for you sighted folks to because you could be looking at something else or even inside yourselves while playing.
Meanwhile I would be glad to talk to your man.
Cheers,
JPR
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 9:02 PM
Subject: Re: hardware vs software - this time from a blind man's view (was "Re: two little guitar loops")


A response from my friend:

Yes it can be done. I don't know if it's a tri-color LED you speak of
or 3 separate LEDs. Doesn't matter too much really. You would probably
want to pick off the LED outs and buffer them though because an LED
generally draws about 20ma and some motors(to vibrate) will draw more
than that and also you want  to be careful because when the motor
starts up it creates a back voltage as a spike so that has to be
rectified.
The problem is you'd need the device to modify it. There are also a
million ways you could have it do something else besides LEDs.
If he wants a Pro mod,I'd be into it,but if he just wants something
slapped together,I wouldn't do it.
Addendum: oh wait,I looked at the device;that's a shit load of LEDs.
Why not a braille device interfaced? I wonder if those individual
buttons can be found in a midi command hidden somewhere. That would
make it easier.

If you want, I can forward your email to him and if you're up for a
custom job he'd be the man who could make it happen.  He made a mod
for me that used the light from a Repeater's tempo indicator to send
tap information to a Lexicon Vortex.  He's quite handy.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 12:27 AM, William Walker<billwalker@baymoon.com> wrote:
> Rainer wrote:
> "Another controller which comes to mind (even though it looks very Eighties
> cheap SciFi) is the P5 dataglove: You have a total of eleven control
> channels (x/y/z position of your hand, x/y/z axis rotation of your hand,
> bending of each finger). And there's a software that maps this data to MIDI
> messages. Might something like this work for you?"
>
> Wow that actually sounds really cool do you have a link for that Rainer?
> Bill
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rainer Straschill [mailto:moinsound@googlemail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:20 PM
> To: loopers-delight@loopers-delight.com
> Subject: hardware vs software - this time from a blind man's view (was "Re:
> two little guitar loops")
>
> Dear JPR,
>
> yes, I know what you mean by "hardware". Actually, my second point
> (the "computer without hardware") was targeted at that fact that, as
> you continue to point out, the majority of hardware effects (at least
> those most people here are interested in) are in fact embedded
> computer systems, featuring some sort of software inside of it.
>
> Now regarding your quest for an easy-to-use solution:
>
> I will in fact stick a little bit with the computer-based approach,
> simply because it's easier to customize a man machine interface here.
>
> The most important thing for you seems to me (and I'm of course open
> for any corrections to this statement) for you to have a man machine
> interface which doesn't require visual feedback of any sort. This
> means:
> 1. any commands you issue must not be context-sensitive.
> 2. any controllers you use must have good haptic feedback for you to
> identify which controller command you're about to issue.
> 3. any sort of information feedback from the computer (other than
> what you hear in your music) must be haptic.
>
> ad 1:
> This affects both the structure of the software solution and of the
> interface you're using. I'll try to give one example to see if that
> makes sense to you:
> in an earlier implementation of my computer-based looping setup (using
> Mobius), I would select tracks by linking the "previous track" and
> "next track" commands to a footswitch each. When I changed my approach
> insofar as to look at the screen less, this did no longer work:
> earlier, if I wanted to switch to, say, track 1, I had a look at the
> screen, and if track 3 was selected, I would simply press "previous
> track" twice. The changed approach:
> I added a BCR2000 faderbox which has a row of buttons with eight
> buttons. Now I simply hit the leftmost button in that row to go to
> track 1. This is no longer context-sensitive: pressing that button
> will always bring me to track 1.
>
> ad 2:
> this of course kicks out beautiful solutions like the lemur
> jazzmutant, and may also make options like the Akai APC40 with its
> huge number of buttons somewhat cumbersome. Also, foot controllers
> might be a problem (are they?). Now my question: how about something
> with motorized faders? Or something like an Akai MPD24 (4x4 Pad
> matrix, six faders above it, and two rows of four endless rotary knobs
> each beneath it). Would that work for you?
>
> Another controller which comes to mind (even though it looks very
> Eighties cheap SciFi) is the P5 dataglove: You have a total of eleven
> control channels (x/y/z position of your hand, x/y/z axis rotation of
> your hand, bending of each finger). And there's a software that maps
> this data to MIDI messages. Might something like this work for you?
>
> ad 3:
> again: would motorized faders work?
>
> Again, this is just meant as a collection of thoughts tossed out - not
> a solution which works for you.
>
> Best,
>
> Rainer
>
>