Audiopad ~ electromagnetic musical magic

July 27, 2003 on 5:17 pm | In Misc | 3 Comments

There are some creations that if properly marketed could change the face of its genre. Those same things could fade into obscurity if not fully developed. Though not yet available, you can see one such musical technology here. The Audiopad is a program written for Linux which is comprised of an enormous selection of audio samples. The music is controlled by electromagnetically tracked objects on a flat surface. These plastic objects have a coil of wire and a capacitor which are tracked by the sensing surface’s antennae matrix. Above this is a projector which shines the computer’s visual interpretations below onto said objects. The data is fed into simple midi interface. Individual artists can add their own tracks. The results are an interactive and easily manipulated board of virtually unlimited musical variance.

The physical objects on the Audiopad table are representative of microphones, audio tracks, and actions. Each audio track on the table has several samples. Selection of each track is done very simply through the placement of a translucent selector which lets you go through an ingenious tree structured menu system. Switching to related tracks, such as verse, chorus, etcetera is made simple and can be done very quickly. Volume control is made ridiculously easy by simply moving the physical objects closer to the “microphone”. The mic is made blue by the projector, and sliding the audio tracks closer increases volume, and moving them farther apart decreases the volume. Adjusting the pitch and frequency of each audio sample is easy as moving a piece of plastic on the table. Tempo is set by tracking the speed at which you revolve the object around the microphone.

Please view the Audiopad’s website here. The videos show off this technology wonderfully, and I insist you watch them. You can see the Audiopad Frequently Asked Questions here.