Developing a Windows and Macintosh Graphical User Interface for the Mathews Radio-Baton System

The Mathews Radio Baton System is a rugged, portable, and wonderfully responsive 3D hardware controller supported by an ever expanding set of C functions and C++ classes. These continue to facilitate user programmability and customization of the system. In addition, the package also includes Mathews' text-based "expressive" sequencer – The Conductor Program. As it stands, the current Mathews Radio Baton System represents an affordable and powerfully expressive virtual controller. But there has always been a serious missing piece to this text-based system. The lack of an intuitive graphical user interface has turned away many a potential user. This demonstration will showcase two fully working graphical interfaces for The Mathews Radio Baton. The first uses Max/MSP and the MegaMax collection to visually model and literally map all the hardware and software functions of the Radio Baton System on the Macitosh. The second uses the Windows API and Visual Basic to do the same for the Windows PC. Both will be demonstrated running on laptop computers and both controlling realtime software synthesizers – MSP on the Mac and Csound on the PC.