February Update - BUSY!

It’s been a while since I last posted, things have been very busy for me recently. Over the past couple of months I’ve had plenty of work to complete and things going on that have set my blogging back. A few interesting events:

Last month I was part of a site-specific performance entitled ‘Life Behind Glass’ by GlassHouse Theatre Company at Crescent Artspace in Scarborough. The piece comprised dance, music and video exploring the concept of being behind glass, particularly in relation to our daily lives. We gave three performances for both university students and lecturers and while the piece was not as well-received by tutors as our previous piece, ‘Dinner In Three Movements’, all of the performances went down very well, many thanks to anyone who came!

Quite an unclear picture of 'Life Behind Glass'!

 ‘Jag-U-Synth’, my guitar and iPhone controlled virtual synthesiser created using MaxMSP was completed on schedule for my university assignment. The synth is now available to download as a Mac application from the ‘Work’ section of my website (right down at the bottom of the page). If you have an electric guitar, audio interface and iOS device sporting the wonderful ‘TouchOSC’ app, please download the instrument and let me know what you think. I’m hoping to make the video demonstrations submitted as part of this and my previous assignment (included in the downloads) viewable on YouTube in the near future. Video footage was also taken of the ‘Charms Of The Sea’ installation that I recently worked on, I’m hoping this should also be made available soon!

After quite a while in the making, 'Jag-U-Synth' is now available to download on my site!

Guitar Synth Project - Changes

It's been a while since my last post about my guitar synthesiser project 'Strat-O-Synth'. In the past few days I've made some final changes to the project. To start with, it's now called 'Jag-U-Synth'. For quite a while after my early experiments with squeezing in electronics I've been working with having the Arduino controller in an external enclosure to be attached to the back of my Fender Jaguar.

Additionally, Arduino control is something I've scrapped. The controller pictured below is now an image of what might have been, as I have detailed in my accompanying documentation, my own limited electrical skills have meant that throughout this project, durability and quality of my  home electronics have not been up to the standards I might have hoped for. As a result, to make sure I still get the most out of this project that I can, with what I see as a small amount of compromise, I have decided to incorporate iPhone control once again. Whilst keeping the level of tactile expression given by using the guitar, having a controller that offers flexibility, ease of modification, expressive options, stability and reliability in a small lightweight device that has wireless functionality, using a customisable touch screen environment is arguably the more sensible option for a project such as this, at least until more experience in the various custom hardware options can be gained by myself. Had I had a longer time frame in which to work, I would have pursued the Arudino hardware further, it's still something I'll definitely use again in the future.

I'll be posting a video of the synth in operation as soon as possible, as part of the University assignment submission I'll be creating a short video demonstrating how the program works. Stay tuned for more news of my other current projects too, 2011 should be a busy year.


Images:

The hardware in its most complete state. As well as 3 potentiometers, a movable FSR was also part of the project, all with switchable control functionality.

How the original program used to look, tying in with the hardware controller.

The iPhone attached to the Jaguar, positioned for easy changing of parameters when playing.

The updated program GUI, designed to match the style of the TouchOSC controller.