On Sunday 11 October 2009 13:36:55 Carlos
Sanchiavedraz wrote:
Hi dear folks.
I would like to do some kind of a survey to know about configs, setups,
controllers, etc that you have come to over the years and based on your
own experience. (Well, I already know some of yours for your mails on
the list)
It's usual to see piano keyboards and controller boards, i.e. Behringer
BCF/BCR2000 or FCB1010.
But more than this kind of consumer products, which I know many of them,
I'm rather interested in something like (inexpensive and) strange MIDI
controllers, pedal boards, Arduinos, DIY HW... that allow controlling
and have interaction with applications, whether it's Ardour, Rosegarden,
Freewheeling, Sooperlooper, Pd, Supercolider, Mixxx ...
Why this? I've been willing for a long time now to buy an audio
interface with MIDI and maybe some controller, but at the moment I'm
still stuck with just my keyboard and mouse; it's ok with DAWs but an
inconvenient when using live loopers (most of all when playing guitar,
and without a MIDI interface).
Check out
http://www.sensorwiki.org
it has a good list of interfaces and sensors to use for them,
and a link to a taxonomy of digital instruments (by far incomplete, but
still).
Also
http://www.nime.org may point you to some of the stuff that's out
there.
I had a thought re keyboards (particularly the keys themselves). Why
can't the surface of a key be a touchpad-like surface sensitive to
pressure and even movement? So, for example, you could play a violin
note, hold it, and use finger pressure and movement on the key surface
itself to do vibrato the way a violinist would? That would go a long
ways toward bringing human expressiveness back into playing the sounds
of such expressive instruments as strings and woodwinds.