Kevin Schlei

I’m nearing the release of the multipoint synth I’ve been working on, but in the meantime here is some useful code for GUI controlled arrays in Pd. I call these ‘tap-array’ objects, since they were originally designed for a tap delay system I’ve been developing. There are also table read and write objects to go along with them that mimic those built into Pd: [tapwrite], [tapread], [taposc4~].

The idea is that table control can be incorporated into patches in a more expressive way – that array data can be musically manipulated in real time.

Download (Pd – 6 files, .zip)

Files and installation instructions included.

A while ago a piece of mine, Fractal Constructions No. 1, was featured on a compilation CD of new works commemorating the 100th anniversary of Ives’ The Unanswered Question.  The CD is called ‘Questions’ and was released a few months ago.  There is a ton of great music on this CD – work by Yehuda Yannay, David and James Bohn, Jerod Sommerfeldt, and more.  You can check it out at the Bohn media store and listen to some excerpts of my piece here as well.

CD cover:

I’ve finished two demos of a multitouch instrument I’ve been programming. You can see the videos on Vimeo:

The synth uses the Macbook Pro trackpad, but it can accept any multitouch interface that adheres to the TUIO specification. I programmed the instrument to react to the relationships between the points, instead of simply mapping the multiple points’ coordinates directly to synthesizer parameters. This adds a level of interpretation to the raw multi-point stream, but the result is a much more dynamic instrument. MDrumSynth, for example, allows you to ‘mute’ the trackpad like a drumhead by holding down multiple fingers before tapping. I mapped that parameter to the long decay sound you can hear in the video.

I’m still very much in the development stages. There is a lot of polishing to do before I look into distributing the programs.