The Nashesizer v1
The Nashesizer v1 is an accessible music controller developed for and with sound artist and digital storyteller Gemma Nash. It was realised over ~4 weeks as part of Drake Music’s DMLab Challenge North West, May 2017 by a team including Gemma, Mike Cook, Craig Howlett and myself with support from James Medd, then Technical Manager at Barclays Salford Eagle Lab.
Development was informed and guided by Gemma and her experience of commercial music making hardware and software – “For a while I had been frustrated by the digital audio workstations I had been using due to their inaccessibility. I have cerebral palsy and this means fiddly mouse movements, swipes, taps and other common gestural control actions can be a barrier for me.”
The emerging design of the device responded in several ways:
- we veered from the usual design axiom which tries to integrate as many knobs, sliders, buttons and other physical inputs as possible in favour of a minimal, streamlined approach – a single large knob, motorised slider and arcade joystick that were multifunctional;
- we took a modular approach – each of the modules was a self-contained unit with its own internal logic (driven by a Arduino Nano) that communicated with the device’s main controller (a Teensy 3.6) via I2C. This meant we could easily adjust the layout of the modules and potentially add additional ones in the future;
- we added RGB LEDs to each module to provide visual feedback on their current setting as well as a 3.5cm square OLED display to preview the current state of the device overall;
- and the joystick was used in a specific (and we think innovative) way – allowing Gemma to ‘navigate’ her way around the various tracks (left and right) and channel controls – volume, pan and FX sends (up and down) – with far less requirement to access Ableton Live’s dense interface via her trackball.
Not everything we tried worked as well we hoped: the rotary encoder, despite being far larger than those usually found on commercial devices as well as being fitted with a custom-designed and 3D-printed ‘ergonomic’ knob, was still difficult for Gemma to use. We subsequently realised that it was actually the thumb/index finger ‘twisting’ action required to control a knob that Gemma finds difficult – and its larger size and custom design didn’t actually help.
Gemma has a post about the project – including Drake Music’s video of the challenge – on her website. The team also maintained a Tumblog documenting the project (and the subsequent development of a v2 iteration) starting off with the initial challenge proposal.
A demo video of an early iteration of The Nashizer v1 in action embedded below.
