Designing the haptic turntable for musical control

In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of D'Groove, an intelligent Disc Jockey (DJ) system that features the use of haptic force feedback to expand the expressive abilities of the traditional DJ setup. We begin by describing the tasks of a DJ and defining some of the challenges associated with the traditional DJ process. We then introduce our new system, discussing how it alleviates these problems and at the same time introduces new performance possibilities. This is followed by a detailed description of some of the haptics-design-related problems that we solved in the course of building the system, including a method for accurately calculating low velocities. We conclude with a discussion of the role of haptics within the DJ domain.