This is a cool video demo via audiolemon of an interesting DIY touchscreen drum machine project. The audio & video are a little raw, but you can see this project has potential.

Here’s a high level explanation of how this was put together:

If you want to build one yourself you’ll need MAX/MSP. You can download the demo for a month and give it a go. If you’re a student you can get it for $59 for 9 months and the $211 after that. If you are just a working stiff (it’s normally $700) go over to Dance-Tech.net and find out if you can avail of the special offer for artists (same deal as students!!!)

The touchscreen was $65 from http://www.lavatechnology.com. It’s a 5 wire resitive touchscreen overlay. If you buy one from Lava mention this post and I get a free~ish one You can find out a lot about touchscreens if you go to Elotouch. They have a great comparison chart that makes it all pretty easy. 5 wire resitive seemed to suit me the best. It is supposed to be good for a million touchs, works ok in heat and cool (venues) and is pretty cheap.

The last piece was Eric Lyons Potpourri externals for Max/MSP. Although there are some problems for me the simplicity of the sample accurate timing wins out over many other concerns. Download it free from http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~elyon/LyonSoftware/MaxMSP/

The VST effects I use come from Audio Damage. The Reverence and Dubstation are two of my favourite effects. I just find them easy to use and pretty musical. I could have used a reverb external in Max/MSP or built my own feedback delay but I like the Audio Damage stuff so leave well enough alone for now.