Gen II beatjazz controller; clay mockup

this is a clay mock up of the design of the controller that will go out to contributors to the beatjazz system campaign which ends on nov25th. I am only making 25 of these controllers and only for this campaign.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• beatjazz
• arduino
• onyx
• Ashanti
• wind
• controller
• alternative
• afrofuturism

[Megasus007]

So does your mouth do anything? I askl this because I watched TED and really became interested in this. You said their are picks in the thing?

[onyxashanti]

@Megasus007 sorry it took so long to reply. lots going on. there were guitar picks that i had used to make the first version of the mouthpiece but i have created a few variations since then that are much more ergonomic. and yes, i use breath pressure to play the synths like a midi wind controller.

[onyxashanti]

@blumentopf2 (continued) and moving either hand along the x, y or z axis indicated by the visualization. once mastered, one should be able to "transform" from one sound type/texture to another, gesturally. there will be a drum synth, a bass synth, a vocal synth, a synth ammenable to chord stacking and multimodal synth with an interesting array of gesturally influenced oscillators. these will ship with the controller with others to come as i create them.

[onyxashanti]

@blumentopf2 the beatjazz suite software can be thought of as different perspectives on sound expression. there will be vocal manipulation and transformation that will incorporate vocoding and other processes. the sound architecture is gestural, meaning that sounds are designed live in performance by interacting with a accelerometer based parameter latching system, ie, you go into one of the edit modes (instrument, looper, or effects) and modify parameters by holding specific keys (cont...)

[onyxashanti]

@blumentopf2 I am developing the system on a 1.83ghz dual core thinkpad running windows and linux, so it willbe fair to say that it will run on a reasonably recent but not new machine. It will be based on Puredata-extended 0.42.5, which it will ship with on a bootable USB flash drive running linux, although you will be able to use the patches on any machine running PDextended and windows, OSX or linux:

[blumentopf2]

@onyxashanti great. what exactly is possible with the software that comes with 1000$ pledge? is there a vocoder and different synthesizers/drums/instruments­? what are the system requirements to run it all (is another program than pd needed)?

[onyxashanti]

@blumentopf2 as for the hand sizes, the band across the back of the hand, adjusts from the side like a belt and the raised point in the palm area adjusts up and down. that is where the hand locks into the device and provides a massive range of hand size variation. when you put it on, your palm "dimple" will go straght to it, and the back-of-hand band will secure it in place. i have used a bottle cap in this place for months and can attest that is very secure yet comfortable.

[onyxashanti]

@blumentopf2 the jawbone expands sideway at the points in the mockup where you see the cut away bits. and at the point in the middle, where the gold coin is, that is going to be the seperation point from the rest of the unit, which will be behind the head. at this seperation point, the joint will have an adjustable elastic tensioner.this will secure it in place AND make it more comfortable for multiple head sizes. there will have to be a different forward piece for children.

[blumentopf2]

oh wait, just read about the hand straps, and shipping around christmas(?), but the jaw question sort of remains becaus of the blowing component, doesnt it?

[blumentopf2]

I take it this is the pledge for 1000$? couldnt it get complicated with different people having different jaw and hand sizes? how soon after the end of pledges would the controllers be available?