HP DJAMMER
DJ track-mixing and scratching device

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard are developing a DJ track-mixing and scratching device they believe to be as significant to music as was the first electric guitar.

HP’s DJammer is a prototype handheld gadget DJs can use to mimic the sound of scratching vinyl simply by moving the device around. So, if the operator makes a scratching motion in the air, arrays of internal motion sensors translate movement into music, and the DJammer "scratches" the music as though the DJ were manipulating a record.

HP researcher April Slayden didn’t just snag an invite to this year’s MTV Video Music Awards in Miami. She also got asked to the exclusive after-show party, hosted by rap impresario Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, and graced by entertainment insiders such as Paris Hilton, the Olsen twins and Andre 3000 from Outkast.

What could be cooler than that ? Well, how about having your current research project demoed at the party ?

One of two DJs playing the event was highly regarded Los Angeles DJ Gavin O’Connor. In addition to using a traditional turntable to scratch his tracks, O’Connor used a handheld device — the DJammer — invented by Slayden’s HP Labs co-workers Mat Hans and Mark Smith.

“It was amazing, having all these people see something that we’re working on at HP,” says Slayden, who is the DJammer’s software engineer and user interface expert.

The DJammer allows a DJ to digitally interact with a music track to create the distinctive scratching sounds usually made by manually slowing down or speeding up a vinyl disk. What’s more, it’s connected to a turntable via a wireless connection, so the DJ can interact with the music from anywhere in the room.

The DJammer project began life as a way of thinking about the next stage in digital music.

Currently the most popular products in this area are digital audio players, which essentially act as mobile music libraries. But however much they’ve become totems of cool, they could be cooler still. They remain passive devices, for example, not addressing two of the great passions of today : creativity and communication.

HP researcher Mat Hans began thinking about how the digital audio experience could address those passions in the summer of 2002, when he attended a presentation by DJ Gerald “World Wide” Webb at New York University organized by the Scratch DJ Academy.

HP has no current plans to manufacture the current version of the Djammer, but that doesn’t bother the team behind it.

"It’s part of our work to show what’s coming up in five years," says Hans, who leads a new Audio Communication and Entertainment group within HP Labs to further explore the ideas behind the DJammer.

The next immediate challenge for the team is to upgrade the DJammer so users can mix two or more digital tracks together. That’s the other trick DJs like : seamlessly mixing one track into another, even when they are recorded at different tempos.

Hans and Mark Smith have published papers on how they would do this, and also filed a patent application on the DJammer concept.

But as they see it, that’s just the start of what a product like the HP DJammer can offer anyone — young or old — interested in finding new ways to make and share the music they’re creating.

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