Overview
This (currently unfinished) user guide walks through many of EXA’s most common features and capabilities.
Basic Controls
EXA’s control system is driven by your VR controllers (Vive or Oculus Touch), which can move around in the 3D virtual environment. Using your controllers, you’ll be able to create sounds, trigger playback events, interact with menu interfaces, teleport about the environment, and more.
In EXA, each VR controller becomes a handle. The image shows the Vive version of the handle. The handle for the Oculus Touch is slightly smaller, with buttons and thumbsticks to match the controller. The handles display various icons and indicators, which glow based on button presses and trigger squeezes.
Each handle has a silver, disc-shaped tool connector at both ends (top and bottom). These connectors behave like magnets, allowing you to quickly snap new tools to the handle.
EXA’s teleportation system allows you to jump around the virtual environment without moving or walking in the real-world. This is especially useful if you’re using a seated or front-facing VR experience. Even in room-scale VR, however, teleporting increases your range and can speed up your workflow.
To begin a teleport, press and hold the teleport button (top of touchpad for Vive, top button for Oculus Touch). An arc extends outward from your handle until it hits a circular target on the floor. When this target is green, it is within the acceptable teleportation boundary. This circular target also has an arrow that indicates which direction you’ll face upon teleporting. Twist the handle to rotate this arrow to your desired direction. Once you’ve aimed and rotated the target, release the teleport button to jump to that new location.
Each of your handles has one “cursor” point, which corresponds with the main/top point of the current tool. These cursor points interact with and control EXA’s various menu interfaces.
You can use a “hover” interaction to select a menu item. Simply move your cursor near to the item for a moment: the item fills with one color as the cursor approaches, and rapidly fills with a second color once the cursor is within the selection range.
For slider-like menu items, this hover selection locks the item to your cursor. Move the slider item to the desired position, then pull your cursor away from the item to complete the interaction.
(The image above displays a “LEARN MORE” arrow — when viewing this image with EXA’s document interface, this arrow points to the document’s “next” button.)
Ringers
Creating sound is the core of EXA’s musical experience, and ringers are the source of that sound. Hit any ringer to start making beautiful music!
Ringers are musical shapes that you can fill with any sound, assign any note, place at any position, and stretch to any size. When you hit a ringer, it glows and vibrates, and resonates with its assigned sound and note combination.
When designing a musical structure, a common approach is to place several similar ringers near to each other. For example, the “curved piano” structure in EXA’s default layout contains several rectangular ringers arranged into an arc, all using a piano sound, with each ringer’s note increasing by one semitone from left to right.
There are four ringer shapes: rectangles, ovals, triangles, and straight lines. You can stretch these shapes into any aspect ratio.
When you first enter EXA, your handles will each have a “play” tool attached to them. You can use this tool — and any tool with a glowing white sphere — to hit the ringers.
You can hit a flat-shaped ringer (rectangles, ovals, and triangles) both from above and from below its flat surface. You can hit a line-shaped ringer from almost any direction.
Ringers are not solid, and of course, won’t physically stop your real-world motion. You can swing your controller completely through a ringer, or recoil your controller as if the ringer were like a solid drum. Upon hitting a ringer, you’ll feel a subtle controller vibration.
EXA’s ringers enable you to perform with a variety of interesting and physically-impossible playing styles, like swooping through the piano keys. In many cases, it becomes easier to play fast or complicated musical patterns when you can hit them from many directions, and move them into whatever positions work best for you.
Tools
You can quickly switch between tools using EXA’s magnetic, snap-on tool system.
There are several types of tools, each with its own purpose. These include “strike”, “mute”, “draw”, and “grab” tools types. The “none” tool type is used for removing other tool types — it does not interact with ringers, but can still interact with menu interfaces.
Each handle has silver, disc-shaped connectors on both ends. You can attach all tool types to either end of a handle, with two exceptions: the “draw” and “grab” tools (due to their special capabilities) will only attach to a handle’s top connector.
Each tool type, at its base, has a sliver, disc-shaped connector that matches the handle connectors. These connectors are magnetic — the tools (while in their container) will move and pivot toward the handle connector as it moves near.
To switch to a new tool, simply move the handle connector near to the tool connector. The magnetic force pulls the two together, until finally, the tool snaps onto the handle. As the handle approaches, the existing tool gets smaller, and disappears completely once the new tool is attached.
After you snap a tool onto the handle, a copy of the same tool will appear in the original container. There are unlimited copies of each tool type.
Strike Tool
Use the “strike” tool to play ringers with a percussive style.
There are three different “strike” tool lengths, short, medium, and long. Each length has a glowing white sphere at the end, representing the mallet/hammer that hits the ringer, and is also the cursor for interacting with the menus.
Much like hitting a drum, pushing a piano key, or strumming a guitar string, the speed of the “strike” tool corresponds to the velocity of the ringer’s note. This always corresponds to the volume of the sound. If the ringer uses a Soundfont with velocity-based audio samples, a change in striking speed can affect the sound’s characteristics.
Try a new playing style by snapping “strike” tools (of any length) to both ends of an EXA handle. With this approach, you can hit multiple ringers at the same time, play faster, play with less physical movement, and so on.
By default, the “strike” tool allows ringers to resound for several seconds (if the sound itself lasts that long), fading out along the way. Squeeze the controller’s main trigger when striking a ringer to produce a shorter sound. When you do this, the ringer begins its Soundfont’s built-in “note release” behavior a moment after the strike occurs (which means that it might fade out over a few seconds, or stop almost immediately).
Mute Tool
Use the “mute” tool to quiet or stop a ringer’s sound.
The “mute” tool’s fuzzy appearance represents the way it can affect ringers at a distance. The closer the tool gets to a ringer, the faster it decreases the ringer’s volume.
You can also hit a ringer with the “mute” tool, using the same motion as the “strike” tool. This causes the ringer’s sound to stop immediately.
You can achieve a staccato sound by holding the “mute” tool near to a ringer before hitting it. Just like the gradual effect described above, the note’s duration depends upon the distance between the “mute” tool and the ringer.
Draw Tool
Create new ringers by drawing simple shapes in the air.
With the “draw” tool attached to your EXA handle, squeeze the controller’s main trigger to begin drawing. Note that a “draw” tool can only be attached to a handle’s top connector, so you cannot have two “draw” tools on the same handle.
While keeping the trigger held, continue drawing to form a rectangle, triangle, ellipse, or straight line. Release the controller’s main trigger to finish your drawing.
Once your drawing is complete, EXA will do its best to create a new ringer that matches the shape, size, and position of your drawing. EXA presets the new ringer with the most recent sound that you’ve selected, defaulting to a piano sound if there are no previous sound selections. Each new ringer is preset with the next sequential note in the C Major scale.
If EXA cannot match your drawing to one of the acceptable shapes, you’ll see your drawing fade away. This can occur with incomplete drawings (like an “L” shape) or when you try to make a ringer in the shape of your name.
Grab Tool
Use the “grab” tool (or the controller grip) to select and/or manipulate items.
To move an item, position the “grab” tool near to the item, and then squeeze the controller’s main trigger. The item will highlight in some way when the “grab” tool is near enough to grab it — a ringer’s border will brighten, a menu’s corners will change color, and so on.
While an item is grabbed, it will follow the motion of the tool. Once you’ve placed the item into the desired position and rotation, release the trigger to end the grab.
Certain items, like ringers and loops, are selectable. Grabbing one of these items causes it to become selected, and it stays selected after the grab is released.
With a “grab” tool attached to both handles, you can grab items with both hands. All items can be moved and rotated with a two-handed grabs. Ringers can also be resized — simply move your grabbed hands apart to stretch the ringer larger, or together to make it smaller.
After grabbing a selectable item, a menu will appear near to that item. This menu will have a variety of options related to the selected item. The menu and the item will be connected by a thin, curved line.
You can also use the controller’s grip button (Vive) or grip trigger (Oculus Touch) to perform a grab action. This grip-based grab can do everything that the “grab” tool can do.
In some cases, like during musical performances, grips can occur accidentally. To avoid this, you can disable the grip-to-grab feature via the in-app Application > Interaction menu.
Multi-Select
You can select many items at once to manipulate them all at the same time.
A multi-select begins by grabbing in the air, away from any item. You can do this with the “grab” tool or using the controller’s grip button/trigger (if the grip-to-grab setting is enabled). You can begin a multi-select session with one handle, or both handles at the same time.
The multi-select session stays active while you hold/maintain that grab. During this session, any item that you touch (with the handle’s tool) will become selected. You can carefully touch each item that you wish to select, or quickly swipe through all the items.
Once all of your desired items are selected, release the grab to end the multi-select session. At this time, one or more menu interfaces will appear (one for each item type), connected to all the items in your latest selection.
If items are contained within a group, you can quickly select all those items using the Groups menu interface. Selecting the group makes its menu appear, and then choose the Groups > Selection > Select all items within group option.
Loops
TODO
TODO
TODO
Sections
TODO
TODO
TODO
Item Menus
TODO
TODO
TODO
Additional Resources
The following resources are useful for learning more about EXA:
- EXA release announcements: These written notes describe new features in detail, and provide a link to the relevant dev update video.
- . These videos show new features in detail for each new release. They’re typically between 4 and 8 minutes long, where the intro and the last minute or so are non-instructional (musical performances).
- : This 10-minute video walks through most of the features described on this page.
- User Guide v1.0.0[medium.com]: A written guide for using the very first version of EXA.