Want to reignite interest in DJs who actually use their hands and fingers to slice up and juggle sounds? A cavalcade of “laptopists” is the ticket. Suddenly, at least in some corners, people are again interested in turntablism. It’s nice to see how a controller can integrate digital loop and cue points with a setup that still focuses on scratching. And Stanton’s SCS.3d turns out to be scriptable in the open source DJ software Mixxx. As some live PA musicians revert to a “push play” mentality, DJs can keep it interesting.
Stanton has sent CDM some product shots of the new DaScratch touch controller. What we couldn’t see before is evident here: the fit and finish looks like it has some potential, and most of all, this device is really compact. (Well, that or they just shot it using someone with very large hands.) I look forward to seeing it up close and personal.
I want to hear from you: what do you think is the competition for this device? What are you looking for in terms of expressive controllers — controllers that aren’t just mixer / control surfaces? Mixer-style layouts or simple boxes of encoders/knobs have tended to be the rule. (Coming soon, we’ll have a round-up of controllers on iPod touch and iPhone as well as DS. They’re fun, but none of those give you a whole lot of surface here.)
Stanton has released the details of its new DaScratch touch controller, and I have to admit, it looks pretty terrific. About as far as anyone has gotten with a smart touch controller is an X/Y pad; this controller, by contrast, defines different areas of the touch surface for different functions and provides LED feedback so you can see what you’re doing. “Scratching” alone doesn’t really make sense in the computer world, even with DJ software, so you get lots of different functions for live performance. I think this may be as big a hit with Ableton Live users and laptop musicians as DJs.
Updated: Richard Devine video above now restored.
The specs:
5 touch sliders, 3 of which are switchable via preset
Windows, Mac compatibility (Linux should work, too; it’s class compliant — you just miss out on the included software app)
What can you do with those touch areas? Stanton suggests scratching, scrubbing, navigation, cueing, looping, sampling, pitch shifting, effects, and the like, but of course, you can hook it up to whatever you like, and for our friends building crazy Pd and Reaktor soundmakers, this could be even more fun.
By switching modes, you can shift the kind of gestures you’re using on the center touch area, selecting three vertical faders, or one vertical fader and a circular touch area, or one fader and buttons. That’s in addition to the buttons and fader areas elsewhere. I’m impressed that in a small space, there’s a significant set of controls. If you want more, you can even snap together multiple units.
The clever addition is that, on top of the hardware, you get a software app called DaRouter. Dumb name, but functional stuff: built on Bome’s MIDI Translator, the software makes it easy to swap between presets for Traktor and Serato or select a generic/Ableton preset. You can’t edit the software presets directly, but you can make your own in MIDI Translator. See the DaRouter page for more.
The best part? Our friend Richard Devine demoing the unit in the video at top. I’m sure Richard can do something a lot more out there with this as the controller, though.
Stanton wants this to be part of some giant “system,” by which they mean they want you to buy more things from Stanton. I’ll leave that up for you. On its own, this looks like a potentially wonderful controller; I’m eager to try it and see if the hardware build and touch quality delivers.
The use of a blurred-out model and the name “DaScratch” will surely put to rest any question of the street cred of this device. Okay … maybe not. Just remember, it’s confidential. Only people on the Internet can see it. Shhhhhh!
Stanton is teasing a new DJ controller with touch controls, and particularly a circular scratch/control area, with live LED feedback. This allows “virtual” controllers not only for DJs, but (Stanton hopes) VJs, laptop musicians, and the like. (Stanton says “multimedia artist,” to which we suggest “visualists”.) I especially enjoy the “confidential” site, though I’m not sure marking press release with “do not publish / embargoed” has much more impact given a lot of sites these days.
It’s a little hard to tell, honestly, how this is different from a lot of controllers that use physical controls, thus giving them better tactile feedback. And the Stanton brand earns some skepticism from the discussion on the Ableton forum. But there’s some potential here; launch date is supposed to be September 19 so I’ll update with availability plus other specs then.
In the meantime, DJ/vinyl/DVS site Scratchworx deserves full credit for breaking this story posting the first video; they picked it up from the basement of one of the beta testers. (It looks reasonably cool, though, again, surely any controller could keep you from having to touch the laptop.):
Updated: Retail list is expected to be US$299; see turntable poetry which appears to be the first blog to have carried the story.
The moment I saw the DaScratch (or wait, is that da DaScratch? an DaScratch?) … I thought of the aborted Midiman (now M-Audio) Surface One. Announced in 2001 but apparently scrapped after it was determined to be overly expensive to produce, the Surface One still looks desirable. It combined touch controls with physical encoders, and the faders were arrayed in positions that made sense for, well, human beings with two hands.
Since this week has become Unplanned Unofficial Vinyl Week, I might as well keep going. Vinyl with printed timecode is just one path. Here are two examples (one recent, one upcoming) of products that have found other means of connecting digital sound to the turntable. If a product like Traktor Scratch or Serato Scratch Live represent the maturation of the integrated vinyl + hardware + software solution, these two tools virtualize the turntable experience in other ways. And they demonstrate just how much control technology can change in music, turntable or no.
The Numark X2, above, as pointed out by beatfix in comments, is a hybrid of two approaches. It’s a conventional turntable (meaning you can actually hook it up to an amp and hear something, which isn’t the case with timecode-encoded vinyl). But it also uses the turntable to manipulate an MP3 CD. Now, obviously, Numark has missed the obvious next step: why not transmit control data to a computer instead of a CD? The X2, with a street well below US$1000, isn’t new; it’s been around a couple of years. But I’m still waiting for the concept to be applied to a computer output. (Anyone?)
In the opposite direction, the Stanton Control System, unveiled at NAMM in January and due to ship in June, does away with the turntable. The deck, the SCS.1d, simulates the feel of a turntable with a high-torque motorized platter and even a motorized pitch fader. Personally, I love this — and think it could be a sign of other, non-DJ controllers with tactile feedback. (You heard it here first. Uh … but I do expect that to take a while, as tactile control design is hard.)
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