The Drancel: a 3D-accelerometer sound and light "atom" for the Drancing system

The Drancel accelerometer "light atom" principle can be applied to any light source or video generator; here PureData/GEM computer visuals are used to create Drancel accelerometer monitors, based almost exactly on the Java visuals from previous versions of DranceWare.

The corresponding (very pragmatically developed) prototype PureData/GEM patches look a bit rough, however the resulting monitor lights are beautiful when projected behind a performer, and they provide excellent visual feedback to accompany the audio synthesis.

A DranceMan composed of 5 Drancel units worn on the hands, feet, and waist. This multiplexing (combined with master-slaving) could be repeated to include many DranceMan systems for many "Drancer" performers controlled by DranceWare over a large arena. That's Drancing !

A Drancel is the virtual synthesis 3D "atom" of the Drancing accelerometer music system (where "music" means here both real-time sound and light synthesis).

A Drancel is designed to work with ANY triaxial accelerometer (of which the WiiTM Remote is a convenient example, thanks to its leverage of BluetoothTM wireless technology).

It is the calibrated, conditioned, "homed", virtual Drancel that is considered to synthesise, not the triaxial accelerometer, which is merely a source of (X,Y,Z) acceleration signals that are mapped to synthesis channel triads and (R,G,B) (or other) light components.

A DrancelRGB (drancing light element) is to Drancing synthesis what a "pixel" (picture element) is to a picture.

Imagine hundreds of "Drancers" (Drancing performers), each with 5 DrancelRGB units, each synthesising sound and light, and you get the picture ! Can you hear it ? Can you see it ? That's the Drancing vision !

Drancels can act as independent synthesis units or they can be combined (multiplexed) to create arbitrarily complex syntheses. In this PureData prototype there are, however, only 2 Drancels, for 2 hand-held $Wiimotes$ as wireless accelerometer sources. (The original Drancing accelerometer suit (since 1997) had 5 triaxial accelerometers in a "body star" pattern.)

Currently the PureData synthesis prototype offers the following elementary synthesis units:

• AM: modulation of the amplitudes of a triad of "fixed-frequency" oscillators,
  which frequencies can be set by the user using the sliders.
• VFO: variable frequency oscillators: the user can set the scale of frequency driving, a frequency offset, the overall gain of the oscillations, and whether or not the frequencies are discretised to lock-on to MIDI note frequencies (as opposed to arbitrarily fine continjous frequency variation).
• Drums: simple sample drums (I currently use the free AudioPervert CR-78 drum samples) which will probably be replaced soon with completely synthetic PureData drums.