I actually had the opportunity to play with one of these two weeks ago in the Emerging Technologies portion of the SIGGRAPH convention here in Los Angeles. The designer (Toshio Iwai) had four of what I'd call a "late prototype". From the controller perspective it was a really fun little 4 track step sequencer with both typical and unusual modes. I don't know if the little grills actually were intended to contain speakers or not as all the units had headphones.
The buttons on the frame are for:
(1) top = reset/clear the current track
(4) right = track selection
(2) bottom = volume
(4) left = pattern mode for the current track
The dial controlled the timbre used for the currently selected track. I'm trying to remember all the details about the different pattern modes.... If memory serves
Mode 1: typical 16 step pattern sequencer, horizontal is time, vertical is pitch
Mode 2: like mode 1 but in addition it did what they were calling "real time recording", instead of requiring you to press an hold a button momentarily in order to get a note to repeat all you had to do was trip the switch. By dragging your finger across the grid you could layer "waves" of notes on top of each other (the original timing was maintained).
Mode 3: ??
Mode 4: best described as ping-pong. Press a button to get note repeating, then press another. The time between notes is based on the distance between each point. Press more buttons to add additional notes to the sequence, when it got to the last note it repeated.
The sound was basic but varied enough that the device was fun to play with. No MIDI on the prototypes as far as I could tell... it also wasn't clear if it would become an actual product some time in the future.
-greg
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Greg Wuller greg@...
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