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MIT Students' Audiopad Mixes Electronic Music

Posted by timothy on from the cool-videos dept.

nicodemus05 writes "Grad students at MIT's Media Lab have come up with an innovative control device called the Audiopad to run their digital music studio. The Audiopad, '...is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.' It's practical, but more importantly it looks really, really cool."

15 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Sure by minghe · · Score: 4, Funny

    But can I play Chopsticks on it?

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  2. How long until... by daveo0331 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone gets sued by the RIAA for arranging the objects in their cube the wrong way?

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    Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
  3. Re:Its practical by tankdilla · · Score: 3, Funny
    needless to say it's very cool, just need to integrate it into a table with the projector pointing up onto say a translucent surface rather than down onto a surface

    Better yet, make it work in a 3d space, where full body motion translates into music. There are a few actions that would translate into some interesting 'music' i'm sure.

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  4. I've seen it live.... by lennart78 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've actually seen this device in action and I was amazed. I think the way it interacts with the user/musician is something a lot of people are looking for. Let's hope some manufacturers of musical devices take note of this project and incorporate some of it's ideas in products that can be made available for a broader range of people.

    1. Re:I've seen it live.... by torpor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I watch out for this stuff all the time.

      It's not always practical to apply this technology to the music-instrument market, though. The economy of the musical instrument market is a pretty tight one, sometimes - licensing things like this for incorporation into a product can make or break a product. I don't think the D-Beam or any of the other Ir-based controllers, for example, resulted in any kind of increased revenues, but they sure did cost a bundle to license.

      As far as integrating alternative-control methods into musical instruments, we're actively engaged in research, within certain constraints.

      There may well be some interesting new synthesizers on the horizon ...

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
    2. Re:I've seen it live.... by lennart78 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Excuse me for being software-minded, but wouldn't it be possible to use some of the control-functions and build a MIDI-controller to use with softsynths, or even modular software such as Reaktor?
      I think it would offer some interesting possibilities.

    3. Re:I've seen it live.... by torpor · · Score: 4, Interesting


      Yes, of course it would be possible, but I don't work for a software synthesizer manufacturer, I work for a hardware synthesizer manufacturer.

      We actually make money (soft synth guys don't, pity for them). This means it is more seductive for someone to require us to license something like this technology.

      We'd rather just come up with it ourselves.

      Either way though, the lesson to be learnt from MIT is that there is a loooot of room for improvement in the control surface side of things.

      (We know that already, though.)

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  5. Sounds great by arvindn · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...but since I can't access the page, I'll just say that if they can make a similar device to convert the death throes of a webserver into digital music, we could have some real fun during slashdottings :)

  6. Done before? by m1kesm1th · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I haven't had time to see the site in action, probably due to the slashdot effect.

    From the description, other than using a tabletop as its active surface, i'm wondering how different it is to Korg's Kaosspad in functionality.

    http://www.korg.com/gear/info.asp?A_PROD_NO=KP2

  7. sigh. by den_erpel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is just another one of those MIT projects that makes it to slashdot. Just as you seem to have chain effect in 'peer review' processes, it's not because it is spectacular that it gets published, but mainly because it is from place X or Y.

    Loads of universities create student projects but they basically give it the attention it deserves: they are student projects; practical definately, revolutionary, not by far. Their main purpose is to give students a direct experience with real life toy projects. Real life, because in those projects, several aspects from real systems are included. Toy because students do not have the time to really do the advanced design and testing a profesional project requires.

    --
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  8. Re:Its practical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Leon Theremin did that back in the 20's. It was called a Terpsitone and worked off of body capacitance.

  9. Theremin by zoeblade · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you want to wave your arms around to make music, you still can't beet a Theremin.

    1. Re:Theremin by CausticPuppy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually, if you want to wave your arms around to make music, you can't beat being the conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

      --
      -CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
  10. nice by tade · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This reminds me of this. It is called Mixed Reality Pong.

    Mixed Reality Pong is a mixed reality version of the classic "Pong" game. The aim of the game is to score goals by hitting a virtual ball over the other end of the game area protected by the opponent player. The game counts the goals the players have scored, and they can agree to play either for a limited amount of time, or until either of them has scored a certain amount of goals.
    The players can play the game with their hands or other real-world objects. The game physics simulate the behaviour of a real ball, except that the virtual ball doesn't slow down at all.

  11. different site with video by Tmurder · · Score: 3, Informative

    As it seems the MIT site is slowly being slashdotted... here is a different site with a demonstration video.