Skiller
For a demonstration of the prototype, please click on the following link: skillerdemo-large.mov (Quicktime movie, 19MB).
I've designed a set of musical gestures that fit the musical and hands-on experience of techno musicians with the elctronic gear they use to make and play electronic music. The result is this prototype of the Skiller.
Techno dance music has a strong repeting character and is build up from a number of 'layers' of loops with a length of 1, 2, 4 or 8 bars. Sound and rhythm variations in these loops contribute to variation in the composition. With the Skiller three layers with the length of 1 bar are used in the composition of a track. These are the bass layer, the percussion / accompaniment layer and the high percussion layer. With four filter types and fading the main volume these layers can be edited separately. One should think of boosting or cutting frequencies with articulating gestures (see figure at the left).
The filter cutoff frequency can be chosen from the main horizontal axis where the slider moves on. These gestures are tracked by sensors in the interface and are send over to a computer over USB and used for controlling the filters on the loops. With the knob panel the musician can select the layer to be edited (and recorded) and has a few kill-switches to mute the layers or play them solo. The computer functions as a sequencer on the gestures, so the musician can play and let the computer repeat his gesture input. This edit can be changed during playback and gets repeated immediately. With the same set of loops one can vary the composition live in infinite ways.
The software used to build the music app is MAX/MSP.
The Skiller is the result of my master project, which I carried out at the Technical University of Delft at the IDStudiolab, a research group of the fac. of Industrial Design.
