Proceedings ICMC|SMC|2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece Touchpoint: Dynamically Re-Routable Effects Processing as a Multi-Touch Tablet Instrument Nicholas K. Suda Owen S. Vallis, Ph.D California Institute of the Arts California Institute of the Arts 24700 McBean Pkwy. 24700 McBean Pkwy. Valencia, California 91355 Valencia, California 91355 United States United States
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Touchpoint is a multi-touch tablet instrument which pre- sents the chaining-together of non-linear effects processors as its core music synthesis technique. In doing so, it uti- lizes the on-the-fly re-combination of effects processors as the central mechanic of performance. Effects Processing as Synthesis is justified by the fact that that the order in which non-linear systems are arranged re- sults in a diverse range of different output signals. Be- cause the Effects Processor Instrument is a collection of software, the signal processing ecosystem is virtual. This means that processors can be re-defined, re-configured, cre- Figure 1. The sprawl of peripherals used to control IDM ated, and destroyed instantaneously, as a “note-level” mu- artist Tim Exile’s live performance. sical decision within a performance. The software of Touchpoint consists of three compo- nents. The signal processing component, which is address- In time stretching, pitch correcting, sample replacing, no- ed via Open Sound Control (OSC), runs in Reaktor Core. ise reducing, sound file convolving, and transient flagging The touchscreen component runs in the iOS version of Le- their recordings, studio engineers of every style are reg- mur, and the networking component uses ChucK.