Playtronica TouchMe as Midi Optical Theremin with ELZ_1 play Prototype
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
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Full Disclosure: Playtronica sent me the TouchMe controller for free so I could demo it on my channel which is why this video is marked as paid promotion. No money changed hands.
So the nice people over at Playtronica sent me a TouchMe usb midi controller to play with. It's designed with touch control in mind, connecting the two pad on the end with your hands or various other things will trigger notes depending on the conductivity, so squeezing the pads with your hands will produce higher and higher notes. It comes with a pair of alligator clips like the ones shown which is perfect, it very much encourages experimentation. It's a usb midi device so anything you do with it will have to be fed through a daw or connected directly to a mobile device. Something has to convert the usb connection into useable midi anyway, it won't work directly with din midi.
Before it even arrived I had an optical theremin in mind to try with it and as luck would have it I found a single remaining photo-resistor in a drawer from the days when I used to build experimental instruments. The range is very high with the lighting I set up so Ideally I would have added a resistor in series to get the resistance up but I wanted to keep things simple for the video, so I'm controlling the range with a simple transpose midi plugin and a note range limiter plugin.
The TouchMe has selectable root notes and scales which are chosen by pressing the small copper pads so I chose a pentatonic scale to make playing easier. More on that here: help.playtroni...
Using the TouchMe like this means you get a quantised output so there's not gliding between notes like on a real theremin or analog optical theremin, but the advantage is things are nicely in tune! The midi notes from that are being fed into a Sonicware 'ELZ_1 play' prototype which I've had in the studio for a while and I've been meaning to demo. More info on that as I get it :)
As well as the midi optical theremin setup there's a hand played bass and pad plus some lofi beats I grabbed from my sample library.
/ chrislodymusic
/ chrislodymusic
chrislody.redb...
/ chrislodymusic
#ChrisLody
Yeah! D-BEAM but actually useful ;)
Love your work, sounds amazing!
I was wondering can ELZ_1 also connect the Playtron board?
Thank you 😁 In the same way as this yes, though I was only able to get it working by plugging the TouchMe into my computer via usb and then running a standard midi cable into the ELZ_1 play. I was hoping to be able to plug it directly into the ELZ_1 play but unfortunately that's not possible as it doesn't have a usb midi host mode
cool
Nicely done. You got one already, cool!
Thank you 😁 Yes, the ELZ_1 is prototype hardware and software though just so I can give feedback on firmware updates etc. I'll demo it properly at some point, just waiting for a couple of things to be added.
Love your channel so much!
I'd like to use my Playtronica with the SQ-1 is it possible in some way?
Thanks a lot
Hmmm I can't think of a way to be honest. The TouchMe send midi over usb only and the SQ-1 sends CV and midi out so there doesn't seem to be a way to use them together
Glad you like the channel btw 😁
ooh when did you get the play
Not long after it was first announced. It's just prototype hardware though, the finished version has only just passed its CE\FCC tests which is a bit behind schedule
@@ChrisLodyMusic thanks, im so tempted, think he still has a few left. any thoughts on the physcal modeling stuff, strings, or are you on a gag order?
@@ryanstevens3822 Well I can't talk about anything that hasn't been announced, but it's looking like a great bit of kit 😁
😂
Fair play, surprisingly entertaining 👌
Interesting! Does the Playtronica connect like any midi setup?
Thank you. Not any midi no, it's usb midi only so anything you do will have to be routed through a daw or straight into a mobile device will work too. I'll update the description with that, forgot to mention it.
Originally I was going to use the original ELZ_1 as it has a usb midi host mode but I couldn't get it to work with the TouchMe. Might be my cables, not sure as I've never tried it before today