NIME 2018

sonicpair #2 - duo for SDRdrum and MechDrum
by Andy Schloss & Robert Van Rooyen

Max Mathews’ legacy began in the 1950's with the first computer-generated music, continued in the 1970's with the Groove system, followed by the Radio Baton and Radio Drum in the 1980's; this work continued for the rest of his life.     Following that trajectory, we have developed a software-defined-radio version of the Radio Drum that we call the SDRdrum. It uses capacitive sensing (like all previous versions of the Radio Baton and Radio Drum), but the technology is novel and inexpensive. The SDRdrum, which is a 3D gesture-sensor for percussion, is constantly tracking the mallets in space, not just detecting percussive attacks. That allows us to give the robotic percussion "psychic" powers—it knows when it’s about to be struck. This leads to an interesting mirroring between human and machine that we explore as much as possible.     The MechDrum is a new robotic percussion system that uses industrial voice coil actuators, which are fast, powerful, and consistent. We find that it outperforms other solenoid-based instruments we have used. Being able to send continuous position data from the SDRdrum using OSC over Ethernet (as opposed to MIDI) is a major step forward in responsiveness and low latency.     Thus, the robotic player is a mirror of the human performer, as you will see.