CsMultitouch - A Toolkit for the Creation of Custom Multitouch User Interfaces for Csound

This is a demonstration of the software i wrote for my MSc In Music Technology at DKIT under the supervision of Rory Walsh. The software is used to create custom multitouch user interfaces for controlling Csound Instruments. It allows users to define gui elements, such as sliders and buttons, in their csound file. The .csd file is parsed by CsMultitouch to retrieve this information. Said information is then used to create the multitouch interface using the PyMT framework.

The available gui elements are: Horizontal sliders, Vertical Sliders, Push Buttons, Toggle Buttons, X-Y Pads, VU Meters, and Text Labels,

I would like to thank Rory Walsh for all of his help, everyone at www.nuigroup.com, and all of the people on the PyMT IRC channel, without your help this project would not have been possible.

The video shows my DIY multitouch screen running CsMultitouch. The user interface which was created by CsMultitouch shows two samplers and a crossfader between them. Each sampler can record a four second sample, once the sample is recorded it begins looping. The user can then manipulate the audio: each sampler has controls for changing the pitch/speed, volume, frequency freeze and amplitude freeze. each sampler also has a VU meter.

The idea behind this demonstration was to show how a combination of CsMultitouch and a Multitouch display could add a new dimension to live Electroacoustic Music performances

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Multitouch
• User
• Interfaces
• Csound
• pymt
• python
• gui
• CsMultitouch
• Toolkit
• for
• the
• Creation
• of
• Custom

[moleculeColony]

Anyway, I really think multitouch is THE future for interfacing hands/fingers and computers (especially for music), it has so many advantages over regular keyboards and anything else, there can be no other way than that this is THE thing.

It would be great if there were a regular opcode for multitouch input in the Csound program, or if your piece of work would be easily accessible from the main Csound page. Hope to find it somewhere one day and be able to try it.

[GrmcomMultitouch]

I agree about multitouch being the future, if you have time to develop your own hardware i highly reccomend it, its alot easier than you might imagine! If your interested you should check out the Nuigroup website.

Thanks for your interest in the project i will let you know when CsMultitouch is up for download.

[moleculeColony]

Weird that this is just 4 days old. And I haven't been aware before that multitouch is available to mainstream consumers already. Check out the Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch, for example. (Not a screen, but a graphics pen/touchpad.)

Only, what I don't like here, is the square interface. Sliders, sliders, horizontal and vertical, a few buttons, everything square. What I would visualize is something free, where you could dance with your fingers, abstract-painting-like, much more intuitive.

[GrmcomMultitouch]

In regards to multitouch being available to mainstream: This is a touch screen that i built myself, using information forun on the nuigroup website.

I agree about the interface, hopefully future versions of CsMultitouch will incorporate more of the freedom that makes multitouch so exciting. Look up "subcycle labs" for an interesting example of multitouch interaction

[GrmcomMultitouch]

The sliders/buttons etc are from the python multitouch framewoork pyMT. I dont really know anything about Haskell, what are its strong points? You should look into python, its so easy to learn and getting it working with csound couldnt be easier

[moleculeColony]

I thought you were using FLTK sliders and buttons, and Python only for controlling them?

If not, then surely better, for FLTK is very very slow sometimes, and also shows weird behavior in a couple of circumstances, and isn't at all that flexible as you would like it. (Which was the main reason I was looking for another language to complement Csound, and for some crazy reason I ended up with Haskell, which has an awful potential, but also needs quite some time to learn it.)

[moleculeColony]

Sounds exciting, I haven't envisioned that possibility so far, but it also seems that there are 22'' multitouch screens for only $ 300 on the market already, so I don't know how much sense it makes building one yourself. (Except for the excitement of the process.)

The cheapest solution is of course the touchpad (like the Bamboo Touch for $ 75). You can print the layout and put it on the pad, and it will sense your fingers through the paper, so you could use the screen for some visualizations.

[GrmcomMultitouch]

I am pretty inexperienced with the FLTK interface, but what you are doing here sounds interesting.

[moleculeColony]

I've been doing some funny things with the limited FLTK interface on Csound, like putting 150 sliders on the screen side by side, each 4 pixels wide (like that you only see the sliding part), and moving them with FLxyin. (You also need some spreadsheet program, and gedit to replace \n, or you'll get crazy with the typing.)

But still too limited, in the moment I'm learning Haskell to be able to design the fancy interface I need (probably Python would have been enough, man, but oh well...)