Music 250a
Physical Interaction Design for Music
Romain Michon and Mike Mulshine (TA)
Course Website:
Lecture 1
New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Jaron Lanier: "Musical instruments have the best interface"
The hurdy-gurdy: bleeding-edge technology from the renaissance
Inside the hurdy-gurdy...
Soprano Saxophone
Grand Piano
Elliot playing a weird accordion/cello found at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at U. Mich.
The Onde Martenot
With acoustic instruments, form and function are deeply bounded: systems used for sound production limit and influence the interface of the instrument
Tiffany Ng playing the Charles Baird Carillon at U. Mich.
Organs: towards separating the interface from the sound production mechanisms
"From a human computer interaction standpoint, DMIs are instruments that include a separate gestural interface (or gestural controller unit) from a sound generation unit."
(Marc Battier, 1981)
Concept of musical controller
Analog synths and Voltage Control (VC): here Moog System 35
Moog 1130: VC drum
Max Mathews playing his radio-baton in his lab at CCRMA
Yamaha GS1 (1975): First "commercial" digital synth
Yamaha DX7 (1983): First "general public" digital synthesizer
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) -- 1983
Akai's Ewi: Wind instrument controller
Roland MIDI Drumkit
Korg Wavedrum: Combining Acoustical and Digital Elements
Roli Seaboard
Mogees
Academia: New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)
- Infinite number of possibilities (not limited by the market)
- Drawback is that it's VERY easy to miss the point
- Technical complexity doesn't mean quality
- In fact, never forget that it's up to the performer to make an instrument sound good: musical instruments are just a mean, not an end
The radio-baton (or radio-drum)
The "junkyard/recycling" approach (form of "top to bottom" approach)
Ken Butler and his golf club at the
2016 Guthman musical instrument competition
John Granzow's Javalele
Technological, Engineering,
& Research Approach
Davide Wessel and his SLABS
Dan Trueman and his bossa
Charles Nichols' vBow
HyVibe/IRCAM's augmented acoustic guitar
The "BladeAxe"
Rebecca Fiebrink's work around machine learning for musical interfaces
New musical instruments can also be "installations"
Wintergatan's Marble Machine
Koka Nikoladze's Beat Machine
More ambitious project: fire organ
What from here?
- Learn how to synthesize sound on a computer: we'll use the Faust programming language for that.
- Create standalone/embedded sound synthesis and processing systems
- Control sound synthesis in Faust using sensors: learn basic electronics and work with microcontrollers (Teensy in our case)
- Prototype instruments and interfaces
- Learn CAD modeling (OpenSCAD) to prototype more advanced instruments and use digital fabrication to make the "final product"
- Design your own instrument/interface/installation and showcase it!