GETTING STARTED WITH DON BUCHLA'S LIGHTNING II

I. Don Buchla

* West Coast inventor of electro acoustic musical instruments
* Buchla and Associates

II. Brief description of Lightning II

* a MIDI controller that senses spatial movement of hand-held wands and transforms this data into MIDI signals by sensing the horizontal and vertical position of each hand and uses those positions to compute velocity, acceleration, and analysis of gesture

III. How it works

A. Parts of the Buchla Lightning II (s/w versions 51106, 60112, and 70000 series)
1. Wands
* a Right and Left
* on/off buttons and variable range
* emmission of infrared beams

2. Head
* positioning of head
* photo-detection and response to movement
3. Receiver - the user interface for Patch editing

B. Spatial Detection through patches - Patches are the means by which musical meaning is attached to gestures

Patches establish relationships between gesture and response

1. gesture
a. zone - area in space on x/y axis where a
stimulus is valid
b. stimulus
i. strike (up, right, down, left)
ii. strikes in either direction
iii. entry or departure from a zone

2. response - consists of an object type
NT - note
Con - Controller

IV. Getting Started

A. Quick Start but not very flexible - Audio outs to mixing board and start swinging away after turning the unit on
* use presets (numbered 61 and up), use empty preset for creating new patch
* < > is cursor control
* ^ and reverse ^ is data increment/decrement
* press ENTER to go into subdirectory, press ESCAPE to navigate to parent directory

B. MIDI
Getting a note (from 51106/60112 manual)

1. Turn on Lightning II if not on already, and find an empty preset, make sure MAX/MSP patch or DP is open and in foreground
2. For navigating the pages, see "Quick Start" above
3. position cursor in field labeled "Patches" and press "Enter", the Patch Edit display will appear
4. position cursor to "Edit" and change to "New" if not done so already
5. position cursor to "Zn" (Zone) and elect the space for your stimulus (just pick one and mess around with it)
6. position cursor to "St" (Stimulus) and elect how you will strike or enter/leave a zone
7. position cursor to "Nt" (Note data field) and elect a MIDI note value (ranges from 0 to 127, suggested : 60 middle C)