Live Performance Instrument for Alvin
	Composer Alvin Curran has been performing live with electronic instruments for decades. One of his performance setups was a piece of software written with Max/MSP that did some simple filtering and looping on input signal. He approached me with the hopes of acquiring an instrument that was more versatile, efficient, capable of a wider range of processing, and able to store presets. Together we conjured a system that performs a variety of digital signal processing, such as phase vocoding, harmonizing, looping, granular manupulation, comb filters, delays, filtering, reverb and a panning system. These processing modules were ordered the way he wanted them, and connected in a way to avoid unneccessary CPU usage. Alvin had also developed sophisticated sampler instruments that he was playing with AKAI samplers. I brought his whole AKAI world into the Max/MSP application that I designed for him, thereby reducing his setup to a single Apple Powerbook and a MIDI Keyboard.
	This screen shot shows the main control interface for Alvin's new instrument. The Input signal (from his software sampler instruments, or microphones) flows from top to bottom, going through each processing module (colored boxes). Individual wetness measures for each module allow him to find interesting mixes of processing; modules with no wetness are turned off to avoid additional CPU usage.
				I also designed specialized graphical interfaces for each of the processing modules to display their current state, to allow easy interaction using the mouse and keyboard and to let Alvin store presets.
Alvin performed with this instrument throughout the summer of 2002 while on tour in Europe. He continues to use it today and has expressed interest in further developing the instrument in the future.