The Surface Editor is a software tool for creating virtual musical controllers using a multi-touch input device. It was originally conceived to be used with surfaces that are made multi-touch sensitive thanks to our MUTE technology (Multi-Touch Everywhere). However, it can be used in combination with any input device supporting the TUIO protocol. The basic principle for configuring a surface and creating mapping layouts is to draw zones on the surface and assign them musical actions via MIDI and OSC commands. Complex mapping layouts can be determined thanks to the possibility to assign several actions for a zone and also to set rules for the conditional activation of an action or group of actions. For instance, inside the same zone, a certain action can be triggered by a dragging movement, while another one can be triggered if the intensity of a tap is above a certain threshold. Besides the zones, a library of traditional mapping components is available, such as faders, pads, buttons, 2D controllers, and so on.

We have also just released a new plugin for the Surface Editor called LivePad. LivePad is an all-in-one plugin to control and display features of Ableton Live. As a video tells more than a long text, you can check this video and see it in action.
 
The Surface Editor is an open platform based on a plug-in architecture. Users can write new mapping components in Java or using the Processing language. This makes possible to extend the application with new controllers, whose behaviour and functionality can go far beyond the one of traditionnal controllers. The Surface Editor is thus very useful as an experimentation tool to explore new mapping strategies between input gestures on a multitouch surface and musical actions.

The Surface Editor is being realized in the context of the Swiss National Science Foundation project iPercussion. It can be freely downloaded in the Download section.