Scaled Up^

By Andrew Faraday

A social experiment in collaborative musicianship.

Basically, it is a web interface for multiple people to send control input to the same synthesiser. This is then read back in the order it arrived and played by the synth with an enforced rhythm.

Components

• Web Server - Ruby on Rails webserver which provides a simple interface for users to input notes or samples.
• Player - A Rake task which reads the database of user input, oldest first, and outputs it to the Synthesizer
• Synthesizer - A Pure Data patch which receives UPD messages from the player and produces sound.

Prerequisites

• Ruby 2.1.1 (www.ruby-lang.org)
• RubyGems
• Rails 4.1.0 (gem install rails -v 4.1.0)
• Pure Data (www.puredata.info/downloads)
• MySQL or another database (but not SQLite)

Installation

• git clone https://github.com/AJFaraday/scaled_up.git
• cd scaled_up
• bundle install
• cp config/database.yml.template config/database.yml
• (Modify config/database.yml if required, it's currently for a database with an unprotected root user)
• rake db:setup

Getting Started

(from the root directory of Scaled Up^)

• Open Pure Data and open any file from pd/ beginning with su- and ending with .pd
• rake player:play
• (in a separate shell) rails s
• Open a browser and point it to localhost:3000

Options for PD patches:

• su-diagnostic.pd: This will make no sound, just show incoming signals from the player.
• su-simple.pd: A simple set of sounds, the first attempt at making sounds with pd.

Contributing

If you know any Ruby, CSS, jQuery or Pure Data, you can help. Fork the repo first, make your changes and send a pull request.

Technical details about the app are in the docs/ directory.

I would also like to hear if you've tried Scaled Up^, how you found it, problems you had with it. Get in touch with @MarmiteJunction on Twitter to have a chat.