BeatBearing project weds ball bearings, elegance to make jams
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 16th 2008 2:47AM
posted Jan 16th 2008 2:47AM
[Via Technabob]
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Huh. Um...Potentially interesting with more flexibility, but now, not very at all. For one, it takes WAY too long to set up a simple house beat. How are you going to mix up live sequencing?
I thought the idea of a MIDI device controlled by ball bearings would be awesome, until I saw that it's not using the...ballness of the bearings at all. Those things can be rolled, can't they? Yep. Rolled, bounced, spun, they can be rolled down sloped canals. If, say, each contact that they go into can be thought of as a plane with two axes, each axis controlling a different MIDI parameter, now it could get interesting. Have a tray like that, with a ball bearing in each one, and you can just roll them around in their spaces to control pitch, EQ, envelopes...any two elements at a time. But this offers no functionality that, say, FL or any software sequencer can't do much more easily.
Think of the ball bearings as relative to those antique ball mice, except you can control up to five mice with each finger!
That's awesome!
I was actually quite disappointed with this, and prefer the Tenori-On by far.
I can see this will be on shelf
on ToyRus very soon.
(and got off shelf because of safety hazard very soon)
Wait... the device clearly has no wires or light emitting device. So its clearly sitting on a screen, and is he just running it though a sequence?
Smoke and Mirrors me thinks. (hope i'm wrong)
Good call. I checked out the pdf from the website, and it's clearly sitting on a screen. I assume it's a touch-screen, though. I don't think the demo has canned audio.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/5939/beatbearingjl6.jpg
More cowbell!
I WANT I WANT I WANT! ok DIY'ers. How can I make one of these?
This is like the embedded music creator on most SE phones. Its fun for about 5 minutes then you never touch it again because its so limited.
I also hate the word myriad, used correctly or incorrectly. It never flows in a sentence all that well, especially when people use it in the wrong way.
My God That Is Sweet!
would be much more cool if the "cowbell" (top row) actually sounded like a cowbell and not some fischer price toy...
Philistine ! The sound set is from the classic Roland 808 drum machine
watch @ 49-51, why does it miss the hit on the top right of the sequence? Maybe some tomfoolery?
If you take a look at it, the light under the ball goes out for a second. Like it was making a bad connection or something. Take a look, it goes out then comes back.
Wait, what's so great about the Tenori-On? Monome seriously beat them to the punch.
Isn't there a tablet pc touchscreen "virtual" version of this I've seen before? It's easier to use cause it let's you drag different types of balls for various effects/pitch changes.
Agreed - use the word correctly or not at all :)
we just spent hundreds of years evolving away from this sort of thing. whats next actual instruments ?
jesus, you felt strongly enough about this to post your comment here AND on the youtube video page. exactly what chapter in evolution did humans use ball bearings to create synthesized beats?
Check out Fruity Loops. Software application that does the same thing as this but you can really break it down and change tempo as well as time signatures. It even looks the same as this except it's on a computer monitor rather than in front of you.