Ah, i realise now this shouldnt be here because its not really a technical issue. But i will add some at the bottom.

My new plans are unveiled!

As if this picture wasn't explanitory enough, I will further use words.
Firstly, this all requires me buying an arduino board, because thats the way i see it working right now.

Essentially i saw that1guy last night, after a good 3 years of missing his shows.
And it helped me put together an idea in my head while i was waiting.
I've wanted to use a ribbon control for a while, but needed arduino, and it was the actual placing of it on an object which confused me.

This is his "magic pipe" which is a bunch of pipes, covered in piezo triggers and 2 strings which he plays using upright bass techniques.
Search youtube for some live videos too, its quite amazing what he does.

Surprisingly, he doesn't use any computers for his work,(i was talking to him about this after the show, preaching the gospel of PD), he infact uses just effects pedals on the strings, and an old sp808 which all his triggers plug into.

So I plan on taking this to a new level with the help of PD.
The ribbon control will control pitch, increasing the same rate as it would on a guitar.(so each octave is half as long as the previous) While the "rubberyfoam piezo pad" will be struck with a drum stick to trigger velocity of the note.

This will run into whatever synths i have running in pd (i need to work on my synth building)
There will also be some buttons and switches on the end of the broom, for triggering loops and samples, effects, that sort of deal.
And down at the broomier end, some more for swapping instruments, and maybe a few knobs for "filter sweeps"

Now we move onto the bass kick pedal there, i was thinking 2 of them, one for the bass and one for the snare, using two at once seemed like a complicated thing up until i saw that1guy's mastery.
I will probably be adapting a similar system as his here, with a cowbell with a piezodisk attatched, which has its velocity send into pd to trigger a kick or whatever else.

The buttons on the broomotron will probably run through keyboard guts, and therefore through usb.
While everything else that requires a cc or velocity (which in this case still counts as a cc) will be run through an arduino.

Any questions? Suggestions? Offers of free drinks when i get this show on the road?

Issues.
Synthesis: Because im still running a version of pd on this computer where the help files won't load, ill need some help getting some nice wompy basses.

Using the keyboard aswell: Is it worth it? or will the arduino have enough inputs? (im not sure how many i will want, so lets just say a lot.)

ha ha. that1guy is great, i saw him at the woodford folk festival last year and really enjoyed his show. i was also thinking when i saw him...geez, i wonder if he's using max or pd or something for this?? he played in the blues tent, so there was a really cool mix of hippies and old fogies and stuff getting into his tunes.

when you get into the synthesis action a bit more, put your patches up here, and i can definitely help you to get those basses whomping. things you can do to get good bass action are:

* run the cutoff for a vcf~ through an envelope. this really shapes your sound and makes it nice and 'bulbous'.

* use lfo's on some of your synth parameters.

* normal phasors and square waves don't really make such good sounds. set up a bunch of tables with handdrawn wave shapes, (length = power of 2 + 3 extra samples) and use tabosc4~

not too sure about the whole arduino thing, but as long as you solder well, it shouldn't be too tricky.

oh, and of course, i'll offer you a free drink if i meet you somewhere. where are you again? bris? melbourne? broken hill?

He always seems to be put in odd settings, he comes out here regularly for the blues fest, and last night was actually a hip hop show.

So far my synthesis is just basic stuff with [osc~]'s modulating each other in a combination of FM and ring modulation. Nothing particularly brilliant sounding or bassy even.

I could even run it through an external synth program i have here, but that might be a bit cpu intensive.
Or output it to an external synth.

When you say "power of 2 + 3 samples" by power of 2 you mean binary type right? 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 deal?(i assume they will be bigger)

I have relatively decent soldering skills. So rigging up all the switching and triggers should be no problem.

It's Sydney actually.

Tip: you might as well use arduino for the switches AND sensors.

Get the bluetooth version of Arduino and stand 10 feet away from your computer, or walk around the stage. Exciting Stuff.

Unfortunately my laptop doesn't have bluetooth, so looks like its wired for me, but i can always get usb extension cables.

@godinpants said:

Unfortunately my laptop doesn't have bluetooth, so looks like its wired for me, but i can always get usb extension cables.

There's always a usb-bluetooth adapter as well.

Does it do filter sweeps? (/crash)

After thinking that joke myself, i did actually try thing of a way to make that work.

One way i considered actually was a potentiometer with a spring attatched to the end.
The spring is weighted, so when you swing it, the weight and the the spring rock back and forward, changing the value on the potentiometer, but thats not really the type of thing i would want for a filter sweep though.

an accelerometer perhaps?

Maybe there's some untapped potential in the bristles, if you put a strain guage or piezo mic in amongst them maybe you could get noisy data when they move - could be okay for jazz dum style things.