Note Pad from Charlie North on Vimeo.

This charming music video from Charlie North imagines creating your own simple music controllers with a piece of paper and a marker. (There’s some similarity to M-Audio pieces there, too.) Of course, that raises another question: could this actually be done?

Computer vision isn’t quite intelligent enough to work out automatically what’s going on here, but it seems to me that you could get a little closer. Another alternative would be using conductive ink or graphite to make the drawing itself a sensor. I’m going to leave you to puzzle out the rest.

It’s technically still a holiday weekend here in the U.S. of A., so I’m going to keep with the whimsical inspiration for the rest of the day.

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I love this video and it's concept! To me it's plain and simply "making beats". And that's what I do in my spare time. I haven't seen more videos of this kind. Has anyone else? If so, let me know. Thanks!!

keyboard controller looks funny - wrong keys and weird ADSR knobs )

Oops! Chinese will not like this idea..^_^

Paper models only use for dead man...

Ah, Randy mentioned it first -- yes this is totally doable with laser light plane techniques!

And you don't critique songs made with paper and ink midi controllers, you grade them.

In red ink - XX? xX ? A- "Excellent Job, but next time please record on an 8.5 / 11 double spaced rig."

@db3ll

you´re welcome. I´ve been a Tori fan myself since Earthquakes.

I am kind of hooked with the fader-thingy -

really!

I love such stuff.

:)

@dyscode

Yes, and I've shamelessly ripped it off in my music one way or another "all these years". Glad someone noticed, though.

Also, you can make a paper thin fader in much the same way, but it requires a magnet. Cut a slot in a piece of paper, color around the slot with conductive ink (I use the "trace repair" pens sold at electronics supply places... it has a very fine tip), and glue some SVHS tape (resistive side up) under it. Put a thin piece of metal beneath the SHVS tape & use a magnet to conduct between the SVHS tape & the conductive ink. The magnet will stay in position due to the metal (I use package banding) under it, and aside from the magnet, it is roughly the thickness of a couple sheets of paper.

@db3ll

btw. that´s a phrase from Tori Amos' "Silent all these years".

now back to the regular programm... :D

IT WORKS FOR REAL!!!!

check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnjb0xuuGQ

I wet my pants watching!!

even more reading the comments.

this is an interesting topic!

In a pad controller I'm making using a HUGE Staples calculator, I'm using strips of aluminium foil separated by a sheet of paper with holes at each button as switches merely a milimeter thick, and these are quite responsive.

Like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H93kDWI9n08

Conductive ink is what I used, painted on as traces on the non-printed side of the paper.

Check out Kellum and Crevoisier's 2008 paper Transforming Ordinary Surfaces into Multi-touch

Controllers. More at future-instruments.net.

Trackbacks

  1. [...] Imagine drawing an interface on paper, then being able to use it as a musical interface. Or, heck, don’t imagine it – do it. Unfortunately, the kinds of intelligence necessary to make the music video in yesterday’s post just aren’t practical yet. (That is, you could draw a picture of a keyboard, and even use the picture as a music controller, but while you or I could recognize a keyboard from a drum pad and know that line is a fader, a computer would need some sort of advance structure for any recognition to work.) But you can do some really clever things, as folks have shared in comments. [...]