By now you’ve all probably seen that excellent video of Kid Beyond illustrating his usage of Ableton Live. Pretty cool, right? If one had such a system, you could loop yourself playing guitar, beatboxing, etc., all perfectly in sync with programmed drum/MIDI tracks and other performers.

Here’s how to set up your own system in a similar hands-free operation style, for about US$10, without having to solder anything. It’ll take you about an hour once you gather the parts required, or less. No joke.

You will need:

• A QWERTY keyboard, preferably with a USB connector. Otherwise, you’ll have to buy an adapter to fit your laptop, which costs extra. You can get one for $7.50 at AllElectronics.com, but you can find them even cheaper at your local thrift store’s “technology pile.” I got mine for $2.
• A flathead screwdriver.
• Ableton Live. Ed.: Live is a perfect choice here, but you may find this useful with other music apps, as well — or even in a VJ set. -PK
• A free keyboard-mapping utility called Autohotkey (if you’re running Windows). If you’re running Mac, the program to use is calledIKey.

  That’s it. Here’s how to make it go:

  
  

  Above: Steps 1-2. Simple enough.
  

Cybersonica is underway in London, bringing with it wild, new sound art. Organizer Chris O’Shea puts it this way:

The works selected . . . move beyond the ‘screen, keyboard, mouse scenario’ and respond to physical input, proximity, sound, kinetics, elapsed time and the surrounding environment.

Check out the preview videos, photos, and descriptions at Chris’ site. And if you’re in London, by all means, please go and see this! If you do go, take some notes and photos and send them my way. I know the organizers are hoping for some blog coverage, so let’s not let them down just because I’m across the pond!

As great as the potential of advanced touchscreens may be, for music and other media applications, touchscreens aren’t much fun to touch. Close your eyes and remove visual feedback, and you’re basically running your finger along a piece of plastic. (You’d think we could figure out a way to at least texture it without losing tracking.) Compare that to piano or drums: musical instruments can be played satisfyingly with your eyes closed. Yeah, you can do that to look “deep,” but the point is, you’re relying on tactile, not visual feedback.

Here’s a promising solution: the Hyperfabric project (via the fascinating ramblings at SteamSHIFT). This stuff is strong (it can support body weight), and lets you actually touch, squeeze, grab, and otherwise manipulate a large-scale fabric surface to control computer-generated imagery. It’s certainly workable as a musical instrument, if you want to be able to, in their words, “press your face into the hyperfabric to release fairies.”

I have no idea how this thing works, though I’m guessing some kind of correlation of pressure with video sensing. It’s commercially available, or you can just ponder what giant spiderweb-like surfaces might someday do for music.

There was a time when skeptics thought mice would never catch on. “People will never give up their QWERTY keyboards,” they said. They were half right: now we take both for granted.

Now, more experiments in multi-touch interfaces are appearing by the day. Aside from mysterious Apple patents, we have, via We Make Money Not Art, new research in multi-touch interactions from a team led by Jefferson Han. (Demos pictured.) This isn’t just any touchscreen: not only does it recognize multiple fingers as inputs, but it projects whatever imagery you want in response, enabling new, fluid interfaces, and even responds to force feedback.

Tokyo-based DJ Daito Manabe has devised a unique use for a turntable: he hooked it up to a multiple-PowerBook rig so you can scratch 34 tracks of sound or sit back in a vibrating chaise longue. I asked Daito how this works, and responded in an email that reads a bit like a poetic riddle:

Chair for the silence consists of two elements.
The first one is a chair that can provide 32 vibrations,
the second is music of 34 tracks for touch and hearing.
People can experience this by sitting in the chair and dropping the phonograph needle.

We can recognize pursuing sensual peculiarity, commonality and interaction
between sounds and vibration by this chaise longue.

The vibrations from vibrators are from 5hz to 120hz,
and sounds from headphone are from 5hz to 80hz.

34 tracks (2ch * 14) sound files are controlled by a signal from Ms.Pinky.
It means people can scratch 34 tracks by one record.

More specs and images after the jump, if that still doesn’t make sense . . .

Ars Electronica is one the premiere events of the interactive tech world, and this year was apparently no exception. Good luck deciphering the stream-of-consciousness blog entries on the festival, though; I sure can’t. I’ve tried to pull some of the best references here (via a wiki of weblog action:

Ars Electronica Review [pieceofplastic.com]

Ars Electronica photostream [Flickr]

Tangible interfaces [engadgeted.net], again featuring the ReacTable — see CDM’s musical table roundup

One of the highlights was the Tenori-On, an interactive LED music toy from the creator of Nintendo’s upcoming game ElectroPlankton, as covered here before. But the coolest event sounds like the opening performance “Suspended Engines” (pictured), with video and music live in an engine shop of the Austrian Railway. (Blog details are sketchy, but see Fashionable Technology.) Now, if only they had a train controller for the performance.

Via Pixelsumo comes a fantastic lineup of links to futuristic interfaces for music, etc. If you were impressed by Cycling 74’s new Lemur touchscreen, with the power to let you touch multiple points on a pad simultaneously for controlling music/sound/etc., Jeff Han has built his own. His Frustrated Total Internal Reflection project may sound like some sort of existential experience, but it’s really an optical system for tracking multiple finger touches on a screen. You need a back projector, so it’s not as portable or compact as the Lemur, but watch the video: extremely low latency, extremely high sensitivity. Jeff has other tricks up his sleeve, too: using LEDs for touch control, and volumetric 3D displays using dust, among others. I’m heading to NYU later this week, so I’ll have to see if there’s something in the water. If you’re at Siggraph, go check these out and let us know more!

Régine at WWMNA points to Tremor, a “tactile music sleeve is a piece of clubwear that allows the user to ‘feel’ the music that is being played in the club.” Supposedly helpful to those with hearing difficulties.

Hmm . . . not sure which club you’ve been going to, but one generally finds you can feel the music as vibrations without wearing any additional gear. And if you’re a regular, well, pretty much everyone winds up with hearing difficulties.

There is one novelty: vibrations are split into bass, mid, and treble — I do like that idea. (Oh, and it lights up.) There’s an idea here, but it’s not quite fully formed. So what kind of smart clothing gear would you want? (The good news here is they found ultra-slim rechargeable batteries to charge it, which is usually the smartwear challenge.)

Here’s even more open source code for creating new sound interfaces using free-moving blocks for control. We looked at Sonicforms, which is both intended as a project and a repository for information. Chris’ project uses a projector aimed at a tabletop for additional feedback, and IR lights for sensing. That adds cost to the system and makes it less portable (though it does provide a cooler visual interface.)

The d-touch project, in contrast, uses tags on the blocks that are recognized by a simple webcam (fiducial recognition). Advantage: no projector, no fancy interface, ultra-portable, ultra-cheap. Sure, you lose out on the tricky visuals (and, importantly, visual feedback) — but you get the even more mysterious effect of moving around ordinary blocks with strange hieroglyphics on them.

d-touch features cross-platform C++ code (compiled on Mac OS X, but tested on Linux and Windows, too); the code is open source and regularly updated. Give us a buzz if you do something with it, because I can’t program my way out of a paper ba– uh, tangible interface.

There's been an explosion of so-called "tangible interfaces"
for music: the basic scenario is, there's a table, possibly with
projections, and little blocks or objects or projected thingies you can
play around with and move to produce sound.

(Tangible = something physical you can move or touch, as opposed to an
interface that's intangible, like the filter routing in Apple Logic's Ultrabeat, which was designed by aliens who would rather use mental telepathy for control.)

Lately, there have been nearly weekly introductions of slight
variations on this theme, so many that if you've been reading
interactive tech blog near near future, you can't tell your audiopad from your reacTable from your audiocube from your audiocubes. (Yes, those last two are different.) Even Yamaha and Fisher-Price have gotten in on the action.

Martin Kaltenbrunner has heard your cries of anguish and created a huge list of tangible interfaces / music tables,
complete with links to creators, project sites, and publications.
(Don't tell your thesis advisor, interactive technology MFA candidates
– just say you did this research during hundreds of hours at the
library.) Some links are out of date, but it's still quite useful. (via networked_performance)

Oh yeah, make that tables and one sonic banana
– is Martin hedging his bets in case this ridiculous cube phase comes
to an end and people realize that what they really want to make music
is segments of rubber hose? (Me, I think musical stress balls are the real instrument of the future.)

Still not satisfied? Head to Vancouver for an international conference dedicated to new musical interfaces, take pictures, and let us know what you see!