University project

Hey

I am currently studying at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. For a 4th year project I am investagating into alternate methods of control with a digital instrument. By alternate I mean not a MIDI keyboard or a drum pad.

My idea is to create a 3D box that can be interacted with via a touch screen so the user can play sounds and effect audio (more details can be posted if necessary).

To do this I was wanting to use the derivative software, Ableton live 8 and a touch screen.

Through anyones experience with derivative here is this project possible using derivative software?

Regards

B :smiley:

Yes, TouchDesigner would be ideal for such a project. A box can be setup to send unique MIDI signals out from Touch when you interact with it in different ways, these can control parts of the LIVE interface. To communicate the other way, you can send detailed OSC messages from Ableton to TouchDesigner through Ableton’s MAX4Live plugin. TouchDesigner FTE is free to use for educational purposes and includes all the features necessary for such a project.

Hey Ben

Thanks for your help, I am really happy that this is possible. I will keep updates of my progress on the forum.

Regards
Doug

Hi Ben
I recently had a meeting with my lecturer about the project I am undertaking using Derivative, Ableton and touch screen technology. He was excited with my proposal and felt that the project is so unique that if done correctly he would put it forward to be published through the Audio Engineering society. As you can imagine this is now a very exciting prospect as I believe the creative possibilities of Derivative, Ableton and touch screen technology are endless.
Unfortunately I am still at a very basic stage of using derivative and as any project I only have a certain amount of time (4 weeks). My project plan is as follows:

  1. 3D cube where each side has a set of controls for audio and visual manipulation.
  2. Side 1: Much like Ableton will work of scenes triggering samples panning etc
  3. Side 2: The visual that syncs with the audio playback
  4. Side 3: The effects such as reverb, flanger etc again triggered in Ableton each effect used can be layered in a tab section so multiple effects can be used
  5. Side 4: Volume control, Panning etc
  6. Side 5: X, Y for controlling effects parameters
  7. Side 6: Logo: “The audio cube”

The aim of my project is to investigate alternated methods of control, This design will be tested thoroughly with a minimum of 15 testers and then an analysis will be taken and the remainder of the report completed.
My main question is how do I go about starting this project and how feasible is it given the time scale?
I would be more than happy to credit Derivative in my report as I feel it is the future of Audio and visual design and hopefully this will give some coverage of how versatile Derivative software can be when working with audio.
Thank you for your time

Kind regards

Doug Shearer

Have a look in the pallette browser to begin with. Here are premade components that you can drag into your scene, you can dive inside (i) and see how they’re put together and cutomise them to your hearts content. There are sliders, buttons and knobs that you can drag and drop into any component.
You’ll need to look at how to control textures (TOPS) and surfaces (SOPS) using channel data (CHOPS), and how to pull channel data from surface parameters. Take a look (in the browser pallette) at synths > polkadots: inside polkadots > polkadots1 you can see the chops sending data to the 3d geometry (shown by the dotted lines). Right click on null2, open the chop exporter and you can see how the connections are made between the CHOPs and the SOP parameters.

I’ve not tried to do it myself but this could be a useful component to take a look at when figuring out how to interact with the geometry via the mouse (touch screen).
[url]gi_va grid - Shared .tox Components - TouchDesigner forum

There’s loads of useful info in the wiki and the forums, and a few more components you can examine in the shared tox topic. Check out this vid for commication via OSC
[url]http://vimeo.com/groups/insidetouchdesigner/videos/8225369[/url]
Best,
Tom

you should also check out Audiocubes [url]http://www.percussa.com/[/url]