A friend is having a birthday party in a couple days, and asked if I could play some tunes. I had a few options.

1. just use itunes. [boring, no crossfader! no mixing!]
2. learn how to use Traktor. [way more than i need]
3. pack up turntables and mixer etc. [heavy, probably will get damaged]
4. make a DJ patch that works with my block controller. YEAH!

This is a simple 2 deck DJ device, no preview channel.
I do all my track organizing in iTunes, because it’s great for that, then right click and export the playlist as xml. This patch reads in the XML playlist, turns that into a coll that links to a cell block for viewing. (You’ll need to change the path that the umenu links to to load the XML lists.) No, there is no drag/drop of files or really much concession to using the mouse. The block is where it’s at, man! All audio is handled ungloriously by jit.qt.movie. You could add soc/spigot~ if you want headphone previews on a 4 channel-capable soundcard.
It’s not the cleanest patch – I did this thing in about a day. Look for a cleaner version in the coming months, including standalone versions for those non-maxers out there.
I use the 2 left faders on the block to scroll (coarse/fine) through the file display. The far left 8 vertical buttons on the block load a clip from the cellblock into the left deck, similarly for the right deck and far right 8 vertical btns.

Top left knob (#1) is crossfader.
Top right knob (#8) is master volume.
Knob 6 and 7 are l/r scrub.

The function buttons are:
PlayL PlayR
StopL StopR
[blank] [blank]
Shift

The Shift button is a momentary that turns the sliders into volumes for each deck.

Download it here: http://lividserver.com/dl/block/simpleDJ.zip

The xml parsing was assisted by a nice patch from the dot collection (digital orchestra toolbox – http://www.idmil.org)

Simple, unattractive max patch!

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Livid Union user Faisal Anwar is concocting a multimedia mix on which I recently gave a small assist.  As part of Toronto’s 175th anniversary, he has a project called 360extended that invites people to geo-locate their stories of their city. This web-based project will then be part of an installation for the anniversary party on March 6th at Nathan Phillip’s Square, where he mixes these stories with video of the city and realtime stories delivered in an intriguing way.
He emailed me wondering if he could mix web-based flash content with video in Union. Well, in theory, yes, but in this case, no – his particular example wasn’t working, and even had it shown an image, it still would not have been satisfactory. What was so intriguing about this flash movie was that is generated from SMS messages sent during the performance.
This was too good of an idea to let cave to technical reasons. I coded up a Max/MSP Jitter patch to parse the xml file where the SMS messages are compiled, post the most recent 20 or so messages, and animate and mix them with existing video content in Union. Take a look.
Of course, you can have a much better look as he projects ACTUAL text messages on a building during Toronto’s blowout, so if you are near the city, pay a visit to experience a nice piece of temporal civic art.
Oh, and he’s looking to expand this to your city – so keep an eye out for it so you can tell your story.

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