Open Sound Control is a protocol for communication between computers, synthesizers and other multimedia devices. Based on Ross Bencina’s oscpack implementation I’m making iPhone OSC controllers. Using the controller from the iPhone allows the electronics music performer to get up from behind the laptop and interact with his audience. Using this controller, you can control audio software such as Ableton Live, Reaktor, Plogue Bidule, Traktor, Max/MSP/Jitter, Pure Data, OSCulator and many, many more.

pOSCa is the first released on the iTunes AppStore, sporting a nice dial, up/down and left/right buttons and ten programmable buttons. Programming the buttons is easy: just select a button and set a value with the dial, then you can set another button to another value. When you hit the first button again, the dial will spin in place and give the desired value. This allows for easy pre-programming up to the performance and quick interactivity

OSCar is an array of buttons that light up and fade out in the speed you prefer. You can use as many fingers as you like, and you can even have the option of keeping them alive by holding the finger down and gently moving it around, if you choose so from the settings

In order to have no surprises in concert, the settings are kept in the iPhone/iPod’s Settings area. Just select pOSCa there and you can set to what IP and port the UDP OSC data should be sent. You can also set a name for the device so that you can have multiple devices controlling the same synth without causing confusion. Also you can set default min and max values. These are by default set to max and min for MIDI as many of the synth come from a MIDI heritage, but they can be set to anything you want

For a demo OSC application to test with to ensure that you have set pOSCa and/or OSCar correct up, you can download OSC-Client.zip, a small demo-app made for this purpose