Around here, we love the crazy ones who don’t accept what is put in front of them. For them, off the shelf just isn’t enough to satisfy their musical desires. For them, the very idea of pulling apart expensive DJ gear isn’t an issue — in fact it’s a challenge they relish to make something much more befitting of their vision. And that’s exactly what Genesis Alejandro did with his FonoFaders prototype.
A few official words about FonoFaders:
Turntable Instrument Prototype Preview on YouTube
San Francisco, California, March, 5th 2015 – A video preview has been posted on YouTube today of the of the prototype of the PhonoFaders. Designed to showcase the idea how DJ tools like the turntable and mixer can be constructed to be used as a musical instrument, the video shows the instrument being played as piano, guitar, bass, strings, drums and scratching sounds.
The inventor, Genesis Alejandro, says “This is a the first step and proof of concept of my idea how the turntable and other DJ tools can be used as an instrument. There is definitely more to come.”
The FonoFaders prototype features multiple faders with a slide and another fader to control the pitch of the sounds.
Genesis is currently considering doing a kickstarter in the near future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5feWPhOYCi8&feature=youtu.be
For more information please visit the FonoFaders Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/fonofaders
FonoFaders — what’s going on here?
Looking at the constituent parts we can see eight faders arranged in an octave, a fretless fader style chassis housing the faders and a Vestax turntable playing Serato vinyl. As to exactly what’s happening… I gave it my best guess this morning before writing to Genesis. And while I wasn’t too far away, we (that’s Genesis and myself) thought it would be fun to see how close you can get before posting the full explanation.
As ever, I’ll keep an eye on the comments and if you can’t get close, or indeed almost nail it, I’ll post the explanation I have in my inbox. For now, speculate away to see if you can work it out.
UPDATE — an explanation from Genesis
I think I teased you for long enough. Here’s the response I got back explaining the concept a little more.
Thanks for watching. You are partially correct. The Serato vinyl is kind of the red herring. The faders are really acting as faders. My initial idea had to do with having a multi-needle turntable with each sound controlled by a fader. I tried making one myself but it proved too expensive and required more skills than I am capable of. So I figured out the next best thing, the Serato S4. Basically, the signal that comes out of the record is split into 4 channels. So when you are controlling the record you controlling all 4 decks. In Serato, each deck is assigned with a track with notes of a particular sound. Each track has two different sounds or notes. One on the left and one on the right. That is how I am able to get 8 different samples working with each fader.
The samples I used are of instrument sounds and are playing through Serato. Some are looped. So in the video there is no use of triggers or hot cues although in the future I plan to show them in use to further the functionality of the instrument. The slider is configured to MIDI to control the speed of the turntable platter to which in turn changes the pitch or note of the sound being played.
A small footnote to this — Genesis has since got it working with Traktor too. Looks like this project is progressing nicely.
Moving the whole rig up and down changes the note range/sample bank and the faders seem to restart the sample/note each time through midi..
I have some ideas similar in my “todo list” (scratch isn’t my priority at this moment…)
I’m not really sure about what’s going on but it seems:
Left: faderboard midi triggering samples (almost in the drum part) with scratch control.
Down: rail guided pitch control.
Right: more pitch control (or separated tone control)
It will be useful do this with a pitchshifter pedal instead midi cv. It could be compatible with any sound source…
Wow! I really like the idea of a spring loaded fader that keeps you in the “off” position. I could see that on a controller with “monitor” buttons to assign a track to that fader.
Looks like it is sample triggers alright, turntable pitch doesn’t seem to be affected. Not sure how this works in Serato with multiple sample scratching.
sexy.
My guess is the spring loaded faders trigger cue points and also open the cross fader
The vertical rail changes pitch of the vestax 3000 just like the original fretless fader
The ninth fader is a regular crossfader only
Seems a bit like the vestax deal that, Shingo2 I wanna say, made years ago. I forget what its called. Only this has spring loaded faders.
http://www.djworx.com/skratchworx/reviews/faderboard.php
I said in my comment “faderboard” ;)
Faderboard works quite nicely in combo with my controller one . Wonder if anyone else has tried this setup ? Had them both for years just discovered the two work together well as of late . Nice work on these projects people !!!!
The thing John Beez did well was his demo was so polished (cause dude is a beast on the cut) that he made the fretless fader look even better.
One thing this has going for it is the ability to play chords. On the other hand, all those faders. How would you crab? Seems like you’d be hitting faders all over the place.
The thing John Beez did well was his demo was so polished (cause dude is a beast on the cut) that he made the fretless fader look even better.
One thing this has going for it is the ability to play chords. On the other hand, all those faders. How would you crab? Seems like you’d be hitting faders all over the place.
I’m going to make a fret-less fader mixer for my PDX 3000
I,m going to use a Akai AMX with a livid interment brain jr and a open-lab OP1 midi interface
My mixer will be serato Dvs ready with a inno-fader
It will have 2 joysticks for EFX control and 10 FSR pads for cue points
And by using the OP1 as the midi brain for the hole project ‘I can have a I-pad dock ,so when slide the inno-fader up and down your music notes ,you will be able to see what note your playing on the iPad or use the iPad as a midi sequencer
and 2 CV and GATE input and output …..use old synth with the vestax TT
Thank you Genesis Alejandro and djworx the pic is very helpful for my project
Like how your using a midi touch fader for your note…I was going to use standard 100 mm fader …but by the look of it I don’t need to……thank you again
It seems to me like this whole thing is connected to something other than Serato (a DAW) and the faders either send MIDI signals to vary the pitch of a long, looped sample with some sort of clever mapping, or there are simply 8 tracks being played simultaneously that are controlled by timecode at the same time (this definitely happens when he is scratching with different samples and playing drums).
My bet would be Ableton with one of available timecode control plugins with a number of tracks controlled by the plugin at the same time and faders mapped to simply open separate channels.
I personally have a modded mixer with a midi-note fader brand fretless fader, and I can tell you that when you see john beez or DJ Brace using it, that they are making it look way easier than it is. I have been cutting for over a decade, but when i use my fretless, i feel liike its my first day, every time. it is very hard to do things that sound like scratching , while pitch bending, and most of the things i do that sound musical , just sound like a 3 year old on a synth. something like this fonofader, while innovative, is going to be almost impossible to sound musical, even with the most talented artists….