Vocal effects unit controlled by Kinect

MickOR

Hey people.
I'm a music technology student and for my final year project I'm building a vocal effects unit in Max MSP thats gesture controlled using an Xbox Kinect camera.
As part of the project I have to do construct a market research survey to determine the viability of the project. Below is a link to the online survey, there's just 10 quick questions and it should only take a couple of minutes to fill in. I'd really appreciate it if some of you kind folk could fill it in as the more feedback I get, the better it'll be.
Thanks a mill.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7L9Z3CY

11811

Appears the Kinect and MAX systems are all the rage. Building a gesture controlled instrument for my own FYP at the moment!

MickOR

Cool, What type of instrument are you building? Are you using the Kinect as well?

studiorat

The survey asks about band singers. Not something that would be particularly suitable for gesture based control IMO. The practicalities of nothing else being in the frame etc. a drummer flailing around in the background etc.

I think the technology has other musical uses outside of pop singers, while not being sole preserve of the electro acoustic artists either.

I like the idea of gesture based mixing, panning, levels, eq etc...

MickOR

@studiorat

It is possible to calibrate the system to only lock onto skelatal data from one user. That way Animals flailing arms in the background shouldn't be a big issue! It should be easy enough to set the frame to focus on the singers position at the mic stand.
I agree that it's probably not something that your average pop singer would make use of but I do see possibilities in the system for more alternative or experimental music. In my own band I use a Boss RE-20 frequently for delay on my vocals. I tweak the delay time and feedback controls a lot to create different textures with long decays but I'm inhibited by the fact that I need to have the pedal close at hand to do this. I was excited at the idea of being able to adjust these parameters by moving my hands without needing to be hunched over the pedal. I suppose thats what inspired me to go down this road with the project.
Anyways cheers for the feedback, any other thoughts welcome!

11811

MickOR wrote: »

Cool, What type of instrument are you building? Are you using the Kinect as well?

Yeah using the Kinect as well, developing it at the moment. But the idea will be a device that will be both synthesis and sample based. Gestures controlling various musical parameters.

I like your idea, but one thing I'd be conscious about is unintentional movement effecting performance. Singer gets excited makes shapes and throws the flanger into over drive for instance. Ways around it im sure, but it would be something that sticks out for me.

MickOR

Yeah I'd thought of that alright so I'm considering using a MIDI foot pedal just to activate and deactivate the effects leaving the gestures purely for parameter changes. Or possibly have some sort of area in the frame that can be used for buttons to turn on and off the effects, maybe with a master bypass as well.

studiorat

I reckon you'd need loads of visual feedback too. Just so you know what the settings are like before you unleash the effect!!!

Just a thought though, I had a play with a Wi-mote recently using it to control panning. Moving the thing caused the sound to pan from speaker to speaker. So although it looked like the sound was panning to the speaker the wi-mote was pointed at, it was actually the movement of the thing that was being read not where it was pointing. Don't know where that would go with a camera, but it might be worth bearing in mind.