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A new instrument found unusual success

theguardian.com

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Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#91

Post by eesmith »

flangola7 wrote: post #89
eesmith wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what a patent is. The purpose (at least for the US) is stated in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: > [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Now quoting from the US Patent and Trademark Office at https://www.uspto.…

Read my comment again, as you obviously did not internalize it the first time.

I have done so, but did not find enlightenment about the true purpose of patents.

Perhaps you did not explain it well enough and can provide more details?

Without it, I see no serious conflict or disagreement between my quick summary and the more complete history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#92

Post by elihu »

yummypaint wrote: post #63
elihu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some reasonable ways to do pressure-sensitive buttons cheaply. I'm also working on an electronic instrument. What I do is glue felt on the back of a sheet of 1/8" birch ply (using liquid hide glue), and then laser cut all my button tops out of that. The buttons are held in place by a laser-cut wooden frame, also 1/8" birch ply but without the felt. I stick packing tape to the back of the frame sticky-side u…

I have used velostat for this purpose with a similar design, but i had too many problems with self-consistency of response across different buttons. There was a fair amount of hysteresis too, i thought too much to be usable as an instrument. I am wondwering if the felt is the secret sauce? I am moving toward 3d printed pivoting keys with an internal mirrored surface that reflects variable amounts of light into a phot…

My impression (I'd have to do more testing to verify this) is that velostat is not very consistent if you use it as a through-mode FSR (electrical contacts on opposite sides of the FSR) but works quite a bit better as a shunt-mode FSR (electrical contacts on the same side of the FSR as "interdigitized fingers").

The spacing of my traces for the interdigitized fingers is about 8 mils, and the traces are about 6 mils wide. I'm using JLCPCB, and they have no problem with that trace width.

I also use an op-amp (TLV274) in voltage-follower mode as a buffer in front of the ADC inputs.

Sensitronics makes a nice simple test board you can use to test various FSR materials with various trace widths: https://www.sensitronics.com/products-xactresponse.php

(Their website doesn't say so, but the board also comes with samples of their FSR material.)

Here's a (somewhat out of date) schematic showing approximately what I'm doing: https://github.com/jimsnow/microtonal-controller/blob/main/d...

(The keybed itself is a separate board that I haven't posted the schematic for yet, but it's mostly just a bunch more shift registers and FSR elements. FSR elements are notated as a squiggly line.)

There's a company called Wooting that makes gaming keyboards with analog key travel sensors. Their current design uses magnets and hall effect sensors, but I believe their earlier versions used LEDs, light sensors, and mirrors, which sounds similar to what you're doing.

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#93

Post by ttctciyf »

The article links to a vulfmon track with audio and a still photo, but the video for same track on the vulf channel proper shows the instrument actually being played[1]. When I saw this a couple of months ago I had a bit of work to convince myself it was a real instrument - Stratton makes it look just too easy!

Coincidentally, I found a 1976 video[2] of David Vorhaus playing his Kaleidophon around the same time which gave me the same skeptical vibe.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ROpRnmmKE

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRNM5n3jjQ

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#94

Post by cush »

cush wrote: post #87
zarzavat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a form of patent trolling. The point of patents is that inventors should be compensated fairly for their inventions. Not that they should be able to prevent the production of those inventions like little dictators - that does not advance society.

Society wouldn’t advance if anyone could copy the work of others either. Gender would swoop in, create these on the cheap and completely ruin the sound that the creator intended.

Fender*

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#96

Post by kian »

jamesash wrote: post #74

A childhood friend of mine invented the Lumitone, a microtonal keyboard with colored backlit hexagonal keys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNIxTiApig About 10 years ago I visited him in his studio where he had all mocked up in paper and cardboard, putting all the pieces together. Fun to see it finally out and in people's hands.

I've been dying to get my hands on one of these :) I think there's a pretty large and unexplored possibility space in using these MPE controllers for controlling things other music, as well...

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#97

Post by Zuider »

unwind wrote: post #78
franky47 wrote: post #65

I remember at NAMM about 10 years ago, the company I worked for made a touchscreen-based mixing console. The CEO insisted to have Stevie Wonder try it. What surprised me is that he (SW) looked impressed doing so, moving virtual faders on a glass screen with no tactile feedback. That was my first realization that music is a business like any other, and getting a famous person doing a PR stunt for your product may be b…

Uh in case someone doesn't know. Stevie Wonder is blind. Having him test a non-tactile instrument is non-obvious at best. Obviously he has a couple of metric tons of experience as a musician so can probably make a potato sound interesting, but still ... odd choice.

Stevie wonder was one of the pioneers of the Fairlight Synthesizer, which was possible for him to use because it used a text interface navigated by arrow keys, rather than a fiddly GUI with unpredictable placement of drop-down menus. Arguably, a touch-screen GUI would have the same predictability (because of consistent placement of active elements) as the Fairlight text screen. In short, rather than being a tasteless joke or a stunt, it was an instrument that he could profitably use, which was demonstrated by the fact that he actually could use it.

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#98

Post by tzs »

Taikonerd wrote: post #79

One cool thing about the harpejji: it's isomorphic. That means that the "shape" of a chord will be the same, everywhere on the playing surface. So, switching from playing in C major to D major just means moving your hands over one string. (Guitar and piano players know that it's more complex than that on their instruments.)

That could be nice when trying to learn western music theory.

A long time ago I asked on a music theory forum (probably on Usenet, but maybe on Reddit) what would be the best instrument to accompany learning music theory on. The answer given was the chromatic button accordion.

The buttons are in regular rows with alternating rows offset so that from any given button (except on the edges) there are 6 neighboring buttons arranged so that they are on the vertices of a hexagon. Moving diagonally through the hexagons moves in consecutive minor 2nds on one diagonal, major 2nds on another diagonal, and minor 3rds on the remaining diagonal.

On the harpejji each note position you'd have 2 directions that give minor 2nds, one that gives major 2nds, and one that gives minor 3rds, so should similar to the chromatic button accordion.

I wonder if in practice the offset rows of the accordion are easier or harder to deal with then the non-offset rows of the harpjji?

Re: A new instrument found unusual success

#100

Post by xyzzy123 »

raincole wrote: post #32

Slightly off topic, but I really want an instrument that works like LinnStrument but with a synth built-in (so you can actually play it without connecting to something else).

You can bolt one in / under / on the side, and map controls for it. The MVP is duct tape but it's possible to get a small synth & battery into the case.

I know it's not quite the same thing as you're asking for, but when you dig into the linnstrument it turns out to be very hackable.

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