Distance Sensor instead of Qlink Slider!?!?!

wow.

so i've been thinking a lot lately about mpc modding, what could be better, what could be handier and/or flashier for live performance. also, i am visiting my sister in san francisco and her boyfriend has a roland sp808. not a great machine for sequencing, sampling or really doing anyhting other than some cool effects and tweaking - BUT it does have one particularly awesome feature - the DBeam.

the dbeam lets you control pitch, effects and filter modulation by waving your hand, like a theremin. there are ultraviolet rays which get sent from the so called dbeam and modulated with your hand.

that got me thinking - since the qlinks are simply slide potentiometers, what if i could find an ultraviolet distance sensor that opperates under the same voltage as a qlink does? you could control qlink values (attack, decay, tune, filter, res, start, end, tempo, time shift, swing) WITH YOUR HAND.

who would be interested in that?

Antonym wrote:who would be interested in that?

not me...

I have an MC-909 with dual dBeam and I find it to be too unprecise,
to create predictable or repeatable FX.
As an addition, sticked to the MPC with velcro and a small connector
it would be fun to play with though.
Maybe a more useful idea to "mod" the MPC would be to replace the
original cheeeeaaaap sliders with ALPS faders, to get preciser control
and smoother action.

have a nice weekend!

Nym, u need to take it easy on the glass pipe.

Could be fun though

the dbeam's problem is definitely how inprecise it is, i agree - also because it has 2 parameters which are very close together instead of one. however, while i was manipulating only 1 parameter, i was finding that i could control it quite smoothly. also, if i worked to find something that has a good response and strong precision, we could be in good shape for repeatable effects and such.

PLUS it might be possible to include a switch to direct the voltage from the qlink to distance sensor or back and forth depending on which you want to use - the option would be cool. getting ahead of myself as usual but it's worth considering.

this is mainly for a third control. this way, you could literally position it so that it is triggered by your head - liike you lean in while hitting drums and gradually they get pitched down as you're playing, and then you jump back to set em to normal pitch again - this kind of this is great for live and dramatic performance, which the mpc and most digital intruments lack.

as for replacing the sliders though - HIGHLY possible and a really good idea. slide pots are cheap, and ill look into these -- what, ALPS faders? or at least something renouned to have good response.

exciting possibilities here. also, in replacing the button encoders. i think it might be better to replace them with inastomeric switches rather than the click switches that exist now - they break too soon (2 years is too soon) and i would rather be able to just brush my hand against em rather than jab em with a finger to hit mode, start, stop, etc...

man, this is exciting. before i do any of this though it's all about the pads. but if we understand what kind of stuff we have in the mpc swapping pieces out for better/more wacky hardware is REALLY not that big a deal, and could be highly rewarding to the lifespan of our machines, ie giving them some kind of fountain of use sht

and joey it was in fact a glass pipe and an 808 last night which gave me this idea. so good call...

So is there any midi controllers out there right now that have the d-beam and that you could hook up to the mpc 1k to make it work?

nah not yet. someday there will be a midisense which will allow for the sensor to work. meanwhile i'm looking at a modification in the future, but hopefully lady ada will crank out the next version of midisense here in the future soon.

The dbeam on my fantom sucks

it would make more sense to create a dbeam controller and set it up to control parameters over MIDI, more flexible to since it wouldn't be tied to modding just the 1K......

it certainly would, and that's the main goal
however, if it was built into the mpc to control a qlink, it could then control all ccs via the midi out of the mpc.

pretty cool.
yeah the dbeam isn't that gerat, but there are better sensors out there than the ones they put in that.

Replacing the sliders with some nice faders is a great idea!

[quote="
exciting possibilities here. also, in replacing the button encoders. i think it might be better to replace them with inastomeric switches rather than the click switches that exist now - they break too soon (2 years is too soon) and i would rather be able to just brush my hand against em rather than jab em with a finger to hit mode, start, stop, etc...[/quote]

Ive grown very used to the soft(rubber) transport buttons on my mc-909, wonder if something like that would be possible?