beatseqr

beatseqr Kickstarter 2011 preplanning

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Hey so I’ve been working with Kickstarter.com to figure out a project I can do to help fund building more beatseqrs, and I thought since the holidays are mid-way through, I should just wait until after the new year to put it up and get it going. But, I’ve also been thinking that I could put my plan up here ahead of making it go live to gauge interest and make adjustments as necessary.

The short description of kickstarter.com is that someone makes a proposal to do some kind of creative project, and then offers different rewards for different levels of support from the community. The project has a target amount that it needs to raise in pledges from people in the community by a set time frame, or else nobody has to actually give the money they pledged, and everyone walks away. So, it’s an All-Or-Nothing kind of deal. If the project gets enough support to meet the target funding goal, then everyone who participated gets the reward for the level they pledged to. Pretty cool.

If you choose to participate, you’re helping to fund a project that is awesome. As an early adopter, you will get some cool extras to help you feel engaged in the project. I’m looking to raise a minimum of $1500, which would end up being only 5 assembled units. And, if we get over the target amount, I just keep building and building and building until everyone who participated gets what they pledged for.

So, here’s what the plan currently is for my beatseqr-on-kickstarter in descending order of pledge amount and rewards:

$1000 “give one, get one + training for two”:
Two v4 assembled beatseqr + case
one custom limited edition Acrylic/circuit board wall sculpture or custom painting incorporating prints made from parts circuit boards & parts
one chunk of a prototype Casting mold
1 year advertising tile space, significant funder page, or Artist page on beatseqr.com
One s.f. bay area training session in person for two people[restrictions apply: local bay area only, Saturday only, 2 weeks to plan, etc]
Up to two names on a future circuit board
two CDs or digital download releases of tracks made with beatseqr
two Patch, some Stickers

$750
any v4 assembled beatseqr + case
custom limited edition Acrylic/circuit board wall sculpture or custom painting incorporating prints made from parts circuit boards & parts
a chunk of a prototype Casting mold
1 year advertising tile space, significant funder page, or Artist page on beatseqr.com
s.f. bay area training in person [restrictions apply: local bay area only, Saturday only, 2 weeks to plan, etc]
name on a future circuit board
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$500
any assembled v4 beatseqr + case
Custom paintings, prints made from circuit boards
Chunks of a prototype Casting mold
Artist page on beatseqr.com
s.f. bay area training in person [restrictions apply: local bay area only, Saturday only, 2 weeks to plan, etc]
name on a future circuit board
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$450 Beatseqr, assembled, in a Wood case
A chunk of a prototype button Casting mold
Artist page on beatseqr.com
Custom painting or print made from circuit boards, beatseqr parts
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$350 Beatseqr v4, assembled, in a black ABS case
a chunk of a prototype casting mold
Artist page on beatseqr.com
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$300 Beatseqr fully assembled, no case
Artist page on beatseqr.com
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$300 Beatseqr kit, with black abs case + silicone buttons and mounting hardware
Artist page on beatseqr.com
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a Patch, some Stickers

$250
Beatseqr kit, no case, with arduino mega
Artist page on beatseqr.com
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers

$200
beatseqr kit no case, no arduino mega
Artist page on beatseqr.com
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers

$150
limited edition wall sculpture
A coupon for $50 off a future purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers
Publicity on beatseqr.com

$75
Prototype circuit boards, signed
A coupon for $30 off a future purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers
Publicity on beatseqr.com

$60
Silicone button test castings, signed and mounted for wall hanging
A coupon for $30 off a future purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers
Publicity on beatseqr.com

$40
Beatseqr illustration Tshirt
A coupon for $20 off a future purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers
Publicity on beatseqr.com

$20
a coupon in the pledge amount good towards the purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers
Publicity on beatseqr.com

$10
a coupon in the pledge amount good towards the purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
a CD or digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr
a custom embroidered patch from a limited run
Beatseqr logo stickers

$5
Beatseqr logo stickers
a coupon good for the pledge amount good towards the purchase of a beatseqr kit or assembled unit
digital download release of tracks made with beatseqr

$1 donation:
My undying thanks and gratitude for your encouragement.

Your comments are welcome, please chime in!

Jonathan Golub rockin’ a beatseqr v3

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Yeah, check this video out!!

from Jonathan’s youtube description:

This is me playing around with Steve Cooley’s amazing beatseqr hardware controller. I’m running it through a Macbook Pro, with Roxor and Steppa, the open-source software designed specifically for the hardware. The Macbook is sending MIDI out to an Emu ESI-32, and I’m also adding Space Echo, spring reverb and digital delay to individual tracks. I spent about 10 minutes beforehand programming the step sequencer, otherwise everything is live.

SUPER sweet video, dude!!

Some back story … I met Jonathan back in 1997 when he was one of the guys running the legendary and seminal weekly internet radio broadcast show called the Beta Lounge. In fact, the beta lounge continues to broadcast, and they have, gasp!!, every show in their archive?! WHOA, they even have my very first DJ set in front of people, which consisted of me playing one turntable with vinyl, and a laptop running a program my brother wrote for me called “QTTurntable”… in 1997. Think about that. That was some cutting edge stuff for the time! But I’m sure my set sounds awful. I don’t even want to go listen to it, but it’s there. Too embarrassing for me.

Can I use GarageBand with beatseqr?

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YES! GarageBand is controllable from external midi devices like keyboards, so that means that Steppa, the sequencer that runs with Beatseqr, can sequence drums, synths, and DLS sound fonts! It’s pretty cool. GarageBand makes setup pretty simple. Follow these steps:

0. FOLLOW THE ONE TIME, FIRST TIME SETUP INSTRUCTIONS
1. plug in your Beatseqr.
2. launch Steppa, Roxor, and Garageband. The order in which you do this doesn’t seem to matter.
3. Once everything is up and running, turn a knob on beatseqr so that Roxor and Steppa are displaying the same numbers. Go slowly if it doesn’t seem to be working, or try the other knob until it does. When you hit the play/stop button on beatseqr, you should see the chase lights running across the step sequence buttons, and the beat count lights (right above the tempo readout) should be lighting up in steppa.
4. In steppa, change the “Midi out device” drop down list to “from Steppa”.
5. Garageband may actually already be ready to play sound, so hit some of the sequence buttons on beatseqr. If things are working, you’ll probably hear the world’s best piano solo.
6. In garageband, double click on the software instrument track to bring up the controls to change it. Change it from whatever it is (probably a piano) to Drum Kits. Now your piano sounds should be drum sounds. Program in some more steps for the different voices, and you should get a drum sequence up and running pretty quickly.
7. Rock the heck out.

BONUS: Ok, so you want to rock more beats, but you don’t want to rock more bucks. Welp, you have a few options, but I can tell you that you’re entering into some fringe territory. Garageband has an instrument called “DLSMusicDevice”. You can research how to find, download, and extract free soundfont files from around the interwebs, but no guarantee that they’ll work particularly well. What you CAN do, for not tooooo much money is purchase a piece of software called “PolyPhontics GB”. What it does is let you create soundfonts that you *know* will work in garageband. The setup process is a little bit of a time eater, but for the price ($35), it’s actually really great! The catch here is that you’ll need to already have some samples, but those are pretty easy to find out in this great big inter wide world tube web of ours. PolyPhontics GB will even let you try out building ten 8 sample sound font packs for free, which, if you’ve noticed, matches up to Beatseqr’s 8 voice sequencing capability perfectly.

CHECK IT OUT:

Monolithic button array!

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Woohoo! I’ve been working on trying to get this monolithic button array figured out for months, and I finally have it all dialed in.

Smooth-On Dragonskin 30

So this, along with the major progress (as seen below) I’ve been making with the new cases, I’m feeling pretty good about beatseqr version 4!

CNC routing plastic cases

If you’re really interested in how I make my silicone buttons, I wrote an extensive article on my fine art blog about it. Check it out!

Beatseqr on Moving Air, NYC edition

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Derek and I were out in NYC for the first ever World Maker Faire, and on our extra day in the city after the show, Derek put me on with my beatseqr for an improvised unscripted demo… Normally, we play as a group with a couple of beatseqrs going, so it became somewhat obvious to me half-way through that I need to tweak my live solo set up. But it was fun and then Derek of course played an awesome set of techno as per usual.

Catch Moving Air on Common Ground Radio, monday nights 7-9pm PDT http://bit.ly/commongr8

Beatseqr v4.0 cnc routed case

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Here’s the first look at version Beatseqr v4.0 in the new case:

I had to look high and low to find sources for the right size project box. It’s been a big challenge to balance cost, availability, feasibility, and also consider the fabrication work flow when selecting this type of case. I’ll be honest in that I’d prefer to have super nice solid wood, or unibody aluminum cases. That would be friggen’ sweet. But… 1. wood cases are extremely time consuming to build. I *will* offer custom wood cases for an additional fee. And, 2. aluminum is expensive, and my tool set really isn’t appropriate to work with it at this time… so we’ll have to settle for our dreams for now. The case I’ve selected is a good candidate for custom paint jobs, and the way all of the parts mount to it is the easiest we’ve ever had. So this is a pretty good case.

After I located the right cases, I reformatted the circuit to fit onto the appropriate board dimensions for the case. I’m still unable to offer the circuit boards as open source designs at this time, but I’m hoping to loom more into that in the next year or so.

Next, I had to work out a set of CNC gcode to reproducibly route all of the mounting and component holes on the circuit boards.  The complications here were in the increased precision I now get to.. enjoy (?) working with, due to the new cases and strict requirements for mounting holes. Previously, mounting the board to the case involved custom drilling holes into the top panel, towards the very end of the process, and now the entire process has flipped. Now I work from the case on down instead of circuit board on up. It’s something I didn’t really think about until I started seeing all of the repercussions once I had my new boards and was cutting holes in the cases. But it’s pretty good now.

Then finally, I’ve been spending a bunch of time dialing in the CNC gcode for the case, as you can see below:

Here’s the aftermath on the blacktoe after several trial and error runs on layout designs.

Here are a few photos of “close but no cigar” runs. You can see that the early tests had holes in the wrong places.

Check out this video of what the cutting process is like. Sorry for Mr. Shaky Cam. I ordered an iPhone 4 tripod mount, so I’m hoping the quality of my videos is going to improve soon.