Beatjazz - Open Source: Onyx Ashanti /Electronic Jazz Artist at TEDxLuanda 2013
ONYX ASHANTI
Online Video
Jazz music community with review and forums
"Beatjazz"
Beatjazz is what you get when you cross a sci-fi obsessed electronic jazz artist with a futurologist instrument inventor. The result of 20 years of conceptualization that has taken Onyx Ashanti on a conceptual journey from Mississippi to California to London to NYC and finally to Berlin, where he now resides.
Beatjazz is a completely live, improvised form of electronic music with no boundaries. Onyx creates all aspects of his self-created style, live, from scratch...nothing pre-recorded or pre-concieved. He plays each part, one part at a time and builds one-of-a-kind sonic-architecture. So, to aid in this concept, he has made use of cutting edge 3D printing technology (the open source Reprap) to create a one-of-a-kind musical instrument to play it with. he calls it a beatjazz control interface, with which every motion and every breath is creating sound which he transforms into space-age funky grooves.
Onyx sounds like the offspring of Roger Troutman, Timbaland, and John Coltrane. having cut his teeth playing the southern California rave scene in the late 90's, he spent the first half of the the 2k's playing and recording with the likes of Soul II Soul, Basement Jaxx and Marshall Jefferson. The last 3 years has seen him take on the challenge of creating a new form of music for a new age. A form un-encumbered by genre. Armed with a new type of sound design concept of his own creation-Gestural synthesis- Onyx can construct any style of music imaginable and quite a few that aren't.
The beatjazz control interface is a three-way wireless sensor network that converts his finger, hand, and breath movements, into musical control data, which allows him to play synthesizers with dance-like movements and saxophone-like fingerings. In addition, Onyx created a light based "element narration" subsystem combined with a large screen projection that relates sound types and gestural data to colors and visual imagery so the audience knows which part of the arrangement that Onyx is playing at any given time. The system was designed specifically for Beatjazz and the combination of the two together create a never before realized marriage of sound, light and motion.
The Beatjazz system is one of the first 3d printed digital media performance interfaces in existence which is also fully open source. Once the system suite software is functional, it, along with the 3d CAD files for interface, will be made freely available and be part of the growing beatjazz network of artists looking to combine and expand the limitations of what sound art and motion can be.
---
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)