beatseqr

Mute mode and “Ubirox”

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Two updates:

1. Up until now I had been working on an objective-c/cocoa desktop app to handle the serial communication with the Beatseqr hardware. I was doing it to use objective-c and cocoa for a really fun project, and because I wanted to build on the “Rosco” platform that I’d built before Roxor and Beatseqr. For whatever reason, the snow leopard upgrade was not very kind to the serial communications functionality, so I downgraded back to leopard until I could figure out what the problem was or figure out an alternate solution. I don’t believe my preference of operating systems is necessarily *your* preference, so I knew at some point I’d have to tackle creating an app for Windows, at the very least.

So I took the opportunity to solve all of these problems by writing a new app called “Ubirox” (or “ubiquitous roxor”) using the extremely awesome Processing IDE. So now there are Mac, Windows, and Linux versions available. The downside is that the user interface that I’d built to mirror what was going on with the hardware is not present, but the upside is that I have two additional operating system platforms that I can support now.

Roxor will continue to be a downloadable app for the Mac, and will continue to work in conjunction with Steppa to give you a taste of what the Beatseqr hardware is like to use. I made one of my recent tracks released on Dobox Recordings with Roxor and Steppa, and without Beatseqr, so Roxor is still a really fun tool to play with.

2. Mute mode on the voice select buttons is operational! I’m working on a “solo” mode too, so I’ll write up a post with illustrations soon. Ubirox is affected by these developments, so links will go up when they’re all done.

beatseqr version 3 – results of laser cutting the top panel and box

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Success. Definitely good enough for a first attempt… and several lessons learned in the process. I’ll be tightening up the box outlines and trusting the accuracy a little more next time. Everything lined up exactly how it was designed to, to the point of me now realizing that the steps I took to give myself some margin of error were not needed at all. Everything lined up, surprise!

beatseqr version 3 in the laser cut case and top panel

Progress – october 2009

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There’s been a lot of good progress being made, some of which is fundamental to playing and performance, and some of which is tightening up the user experience. Here’s a short list of the new stuff:

* external case designed and prepped for laser cutting:
beatseqr_v3_top_panel_3drender
beatseqr_v3_toppanel_3d_render
ready to go, I’m off to Techshop tonight to try to get these done. Hopefully there will be an update tomorrow on how it went.
* Midi CC slider mode. While not strictly outputting midi cc data directly from roxor, it does spit out OSC data for 8 controls that canbe connected to Osculator today, and steppa soon.
* master tempo set and tempo adjust knob modes. Along with swing, you can now dial in coarse and fine tempo values from right on the hardware.
* tempo and swing controls feedback on the lcd. The knobs behave as the sliders do in regards to maintaining their values until you return the control to the last known position before it will change the value, and using the controls don’t overwhelm the lcd. Two thing you might not notice, but thats what good user experience is all about.

midi note number

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midinotenum

a quick update to let you know that midi note number changes are preliminarily functional from the beatseqr version 3 hardware! Hitting the slider mode select buttons to go from midi “velocity” to “midi note num” will let you explore different notes in your midi instrument… this is great if you’re using an instrument like Ultrabeat in Logic Studio or Logic Express, because this will let you set any of the voices to any of the drum sounds. This should in theory work for any instrument too.. it’s just really cool in ultrabeat to be able to set a pattern up and then use the sliders to change what sounds are being used for each of the pattern voices. Still some rough edges to work out, but this is another huge step in the right direction of letting you spend less time looking at your screen with your hand on a mouse, and more time with your hands on the beat.

Beatseqr v3, stuffed and annotated

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Beatseqr v3, stuffed and annotated

Here’s Beatseqr v3. I did discover some bugs in the circuit board, and I also discovered all kinds of fun new things I didn’t know previously.. I won’t go into details. The end result is that version 3 is alive and well! Roll over the photo above to see the breakdown of how I laid out this version.