Playing by Feel: Incorporating Haptic Feedback into Computer-Based musical Instruments
Maura Sile O'Modhrain
Ph.D. Dissertation
Stanford University, November 2000
Abstract
When musicians play instruments, they perform certain actions with the
expectation of achieving a
certain result - a musical performance. As they play, they monitor the
behavior of their instrument and, if the sound is not quite what they
expect, they will adjust their actions to change it. In other words, they
have effectively become part of a control loop, constantly monitoring the
output from their instrument and subtly adjusting bow pressure, breath
pressure, or whatever control
parameter is appropriate.
Sophisticated sound synthesis techniques such as ``Physical Modeling'' provide
composers and performers with the opportunity to change any aspect of
their instrument, often in real time. Potentially, a player can alter the
size, shape and even the material composition of an instrument
as they play. The challenge presented by such flexibility is how to
provide the performer with
access to appropriate control parameters. The solution proposed in this
work is to leverage
off the musician's existing sensitivity to the relationship between an
instrument's ``feel'' and its sound.
This dissertation presents the results of a series of experiments in which
experienced musicians played virtual musical instruments with both haptic
and auditory feedback. My objective was to discover whether adding haptic
feedback to these instruments would improve their playability. The
results of these studies indicate that the presence of haptic feedback can
improve a player's ability to learn the behavior of a virtual musical
instrument. If haptic feedback is designed to simulate the ``feel'' of
a real instrument, then the simulation must be of high quality if it is to
promote transfer of skill from the real to the virtual domain.