design-an-instrument contest!

My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)
and the winner gets it built by the Digitopia team (as an
open source project). See details here:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/03/25/tell-us-your-musical-technological-dreams-get-a-chance-to-see-them-realized/

Designs will be scored on "innovation, originality, feasibility
and inclusive potential". Microtonality sounds like a shoe-in!
C'mon folks, this is your chance. Submission deadline is
this Saturday!

-Carl

Since you're one of the resident MMM regular mapping gurus, do you have any
ideas?

-Mike

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...g> wrote:

>
>
> My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
> is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
> instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)
> and the winner gets it built by the Digitopia team (as an
> open source project). See details here:
>
>
> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/03/25/tell-us-your-musical-technological-dreams-get-a-chance-to-see-them-realized/
>
> Designs will be scored on "innovation, originality, feasibility
> and inclusive potential". Microtonality sounds like a shoe-in!
> C'mon folks, this is your chance. Submission deadline is
> this Saturday!
>
> -Carl
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 05:00 PM 3/25/2010, you wrote:
>Since you're one of the resident MMM regular mapping gurus, do you have any
>ideas?
>
>-Mike

Yeah, a generalized keyboard. Since several are already available,
and they are very hard/expensive to make, it's probably a no-go.

The other big one is a score editor, but that's also hard and I don't
even know exactly what I want yet.

I'll try to 'think small' about this tonight... now, time for family
stuff...

-Carl

I'm glad there is lots of time!!

It sounds like a great contest - maybe next year?

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

>
>
> My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
> is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
> instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)
> and the winner gets it built by the Digitopia team (as an
> open source project). See details here:
>
>
> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/03/25/tell-us-your-musical-technological-dreams-get-a-chance-to-see-them-realized/
>
> Designs will be scored on "innovation, originality, feasibility
> and inclusive potential". Microtonality sounds like a shoe-in!
> C'mon folks, this is your chance. Submission deadline is
> this Saturday!
>
> -Carl
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

LOL yeah, time is tight.

Some kind of adjustable tuning guitar would be pretty cool as well.
Something in which the guitar itself is fretless, but there's some kind of
"autotune" module built in that quantizes the notes to the appropriate
tuning. Perhaps with a bit of magic there could be illuminated frets as
well, although I dunno how feasible that is.

-Mike

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>wrote:

> I'm glad there is lots of time!!
>
> It sounds like a great contest - maybe next year?
>
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
> > is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
> > instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)
> > and the winner gets it built by the Digitopia team (as an
> > open source project). See details here:
> >
> >
> >
> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/03/25/tell-us-your-musical-technological-dreams-get-a-chance-to-see-them-realized/
> >
> > Designs will be scored on "innovation, originality, feasibility
> > and inclusive potential". Microtonality sounds like a shoe-in!
> > C'mon folks, this is your chance. Submission deadline is
> > this Saturday!
> >
> > -Carl
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Generalized keyboard would be ideal. I don't know enough about how they work
or I'd submit a design myself.

-Mike

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

>
>
> At 05:00 PM 3/25/2010, you wrote:
> >Since you're one of the resident MMM regular mapping gurus, do you have
> any
> >ideas?
> >
> >-Mike
>
> Yeah, a generalized keyboard. Since several are already available,
> and they are very hard/expensive to make, it's probably a no-go.
>
> The other big one is a score editor, but that's also hard and I don't
> even know exactly what I want yet.
>
> I'll try to 'think small' about this tonight... now, time for family
> stuff...
>
> -Carl
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 05:13 PM 3/25/2010, you wrote:
>I'm glad there is lots of time!!

:)

But seriously, would you really use that time? All that's
needed is a paragraph or two, and a sketch or two.

-Carl

>"My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)"

Here's an "easy" monophonic instrument design that can perhaps be made polyphonic with some tweaks.
An instrument that's simply software to interpret accelerometer data. This can be implemented on an
I-Phone, Wii, or any other controller containing an accelerometer.

This is how it works: you move the device up or down to control the pitch and software immediately translates the pitch to the nearest scale, thus allowing near infinite pitch selection. Hitting a button on the controller activates the note, letting go releases it.
Vibrato is as simple as twisting the control sideways and holding down a button makes an exact portamento (without locking to the nearest note) all with one hand.
Adding tremolo is as simple as turning sideways while playing.
That gives most forms of controller expression using only one hand.

Now for chords (the advanced part that requires a custom accelerometer controller). If we can custom design the controller we can make several buttons allowing the controller to act like a standard keyboard and play chords according to which button is pressed starting at the root tone indicated by the controller/accelerometer position. If the chord played does not fit the scale the software will lock the chord to the nearest chord. If a blue button on top of the controller is pressed the nearest JI chord will be played and settings on the controller will allow selection of the highest "limit" of chord allowed on a small LCD screen. In some cases the chord will be stretched out a bit to meet the low-limit criteria and non exactly match the scale...thus allowing the instruments player to "interpolate" between a strict scale and adapttive JI.

Hopefully that will meet the standards for a high flexibility instrument.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Mike,

Here is your chance to get the microtonal re-ntuning pedal!

Wrap it with an instrument and there you go!

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>
>
> >"My old colleague Peter Kirn, in collaboration with Digitopia,
> is running a contest where you submit a design for your dream
> instrument (most likely digital, could be a controller or software)"
>
> Here's an "easy" monophonic instrument design that can perhaps be made
> polyphonic with some tweaks.
> An instrument that's simply software to interpret accelerometer data. This
> can be implemented on an
> I-Phone, Wii, or any other controller containing an accelerometer.
>
> This is how it works: you move the device up or down to control the pitch
> and software immediately translates the pitch to the nearest scale, thus
> allowing near infinite pitch selection. Hitting a button on the controller
> activates the note, letting go releases it.
> Vibrato is as simple as twisting the control sideways and holding down a
> button makes an exact portamento (without locking to the nearest note) all
> with one hand.
> Adding tremolo is as simple as turning sideways while playing.
> That gives most forms of controller expression using only one hand.
>
> Now for chords (the advanced part that requires a custom accelerometer
> controller). If we can custom design the controller we can make several
> buttons allowing the controller to act like a standard keyboard and play
> chords according to which button is pressed starting at the root tone
> indicated by the controller/accelerometer position. If the chord played does
> not fit the scale the software will lock the chord to the nearest chord. If
> a blue button on top of the controller is pressed the nearest JI chord will
> be played and settings on the controller will allow selection of the highest
> "limit" of chord allowed on a small LCD screen. In some cases the chord will
> be stretched out a bit to meet the low-limit criteria and non exactly match
> the scale...thus allowing the instruments player to "interpolate" between a
> strict scale and adapttive JI.
>
> Hopefully that will meet the standards for a high flexibility instrument.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Michael wrote:

>Hopefully that will meet the standards for a high flexibility instrument.
>

Just so there's no confusion, you have to submit to them directly,
not to this list (or me).

-Carl

Actually, great idea about integrating the "re-tuning pedal" into the controller idea Chris...

If possible, the software/"driver" for the controller will include a mode that takes audio input from a tiny microphone or audio input jack on the controller (which can be from ANY type of external instrument) and
A) Loads it into a phase vocoder for sFFT analysis(same kind of way Sethares does spectral alignment)
B) Finds all the peaks that are not masked by other peaks and takes the highest of those as the root tones (IE ones 1.3+ times or so higher than all the rest).
C) Compares the peaks in B to a list of all possible overtones of the root notes and re-aligns the peaks in B to match them
D) Plays back the peaks in B (both root tones and overtones), which are re-tuned to fit the tuning.

This wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to implement programatically (kind of works along the lines of auto-tone, only poly-phonically instead of monophonically), but it would have the desired effect. The only side issue is portamentos would be impossible...then again you could have an option to use the controller (and not the recorded instrument) to do portamentos. ;-)

Carl>"Just so there's no confusion, you have to submit to them directly,
not to this list (or me)."

Ok my bad...where's the direct e-mail or other "place?" where they need to be sent?

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]