[PD] Re:[OT] How do your performance environments looks like?

[Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu]

On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 15:01, vanDongen-Gilcher wrote:
>
> Why should a computer take less time, especially considering that your 
> designing the instrument and developing the methodology as well.

I'm aware of that. I sometimes just need to compare with other people,
not to decide who is better (which is often not a parameter in art) but
just to be sure I'm not following some false ideal instead of keeping my
head on the real issue. I think it's easy in this field.

> > I'm working on my MetaControl. 
> 
> What are the concepts behind this?

I don't think there is anything exceptionally new in fact.

Primarily I needed to 

1) have a user interface not depending on any specific synth (even if
I'm currently using it with PD)
2) have something stable. PD is great but the UI is not stable, often
crashes (0.36 more than ever) and has unpredictable behaviours.

3) controls and the whole application are (being) developed specifically
to work with a graphic tablet

4) a key point is having visual controls more elaborated than the
standard GUI widgets. I have a reduced set of controls

-a 2d+n surface (similar to [grid] but with pressure, since my graphire
has no tilt), This surface is zoomable, but zoom doesn't work good right
now.
-a hypervectorial surface. Here I want to develop hypervectorial control
technique more in depth. For example I can use layers of hyper-spots and
activate/deactivate them at will but there are a number of other
improvements than can make hvc much more expressive and usable.
-I'm adding a strumming surface ("harp") like cnmat's one should allow
me to play and control groups of events.
-frames with auto-built sliders

I also have a containter which can hold 4 of those controls at once. But
I'm no pushing more in that direction. I prefer to have one of them on
the screen and switch between them with key bindings. Something that
it's hard to do with PD but also very important.

5) I'm using Scheme interpreter and I can bind scripts to key bindings.

6) even if "how it sound" is what matters and I partially play things
like "black boxes", I often like to read the values of the parameters.
So most of the time they are displayed on the screen.

I'm using regex in several places to control things in group and not
have to code lots of UI.

So there are two kind of reasons for developing MetaControl, musical and
technological, and they are often linked together. Part of the thing are
there because I used it while playing in past (for example in PD),
another part because I think they will allow me do play certain things
in a certain way in future.

I attempted to do or did most of these things or things working *almost*
like that in PD before. The problem that almost makes often the
different between usable and unusable. 

Here are some snapshots:

http://space.virgilio.it/maurizio.umberto.puxeddu@virgilio.it/Screenshot-Metacontrol-grid.png

also look at

		Screenshot-Metacontrol-dataset-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-receiver-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-grid-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-scheme-console.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-script-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-hv-layer-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-sliders.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-hv.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-snapshots-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-hv-spot-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-target-config.png
		Screenshot-Metacontrol-keybinding-config.png

I don't know if it's a good thing or a complete waste of time that I
should spend in front of CoolEdit composition a piece. There are a
number of arguments pro and against each aspect of this thing and the
choices I made. I guess that if I manage to make good music with it soon
it's ok, if not it's a waste of time.

Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu.