Current Thesis Concept: : Gesture-Synth is an innovative musical instrument / controller that explores the relationship between sound and the physical world. By dipping, swinging, swaying, tilting, and turning the The Gesture-Synth, users will be able to create and manipulate electronic music in new and interesting ways. No longer shackled to a standard keyboard, but free to really perform, the musician is enabled to bring new life and heart to the music. The musician’s interaction with the physical world is an extension and amplification of the audio experience.

Experiment Research Objective: Implementation

Design Questions

Current macro design questions:

• What are the needs of electronic musicians re: gestural or alternative interfaces? What are some interesting alternatives to the way electronic music is currently created?

Experiment #4 specific design questions:

• What should the screen-based interaction look like?
• How complicated should it be?
• Is it neccessary?

Experiment

This experiment examines solutions for the screen interface for the Gesture-Synth.

Current Thesis Concept: : A physical device that influences electronic musical creation and performance.

Experiment Research Objective: Implementation

Design Questions

Current macro design questions:

• What are the needs of electronic musicians re: gestural or alternative interfaces? What are some interesting alternatives to the way electronic music is currently created?

Experiment #2 specific design questions:

• How big should the device be?
• Which shape shape do users prefer?
• Where should the buttons be placed on the device?

Experiment

This experiment focused on the size, shape, and general button-placement for the device. After completing my first experiment, I realized that it was crucial to develop the shape and size of the instrument before moving on to other factors. Only after the physical properties start to take shape can the sonic properties be adequately mapped. In other words, the form begets function. To answer the questions I set up 3 small experiments, each focusing on a specific aspect: size, shape, and button-placement.

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Current Thesis Concept: : A physical device that explores new ways to influence electronic musical creation and performance

Experiment Research Objective: Concept, Implementation

Design Questions

Current macro design questions:

• Is there a relationship between physical space and electronic sound?
• What would this relationship look like?
• How can you effectively map human experience on a physical object?
• What are the needs of electronic musicians re: gestural or alternative interfaces?

Experiment #1 specific design questions:

• Do my preconceived ideas about a musician’s needs match those actual desires?
• Specifically, would users like a functionality that makes leads and/or scales possible?
• How can you make a flexible lead device with limited space?

Experiment

In this experiment, I built a Max/Msp patch that allows the user to play musical leads and/or patterns. The patch uses simple equations to generate every key in standard western notation (A through G, including all of the sharp/flat combos - i.e. A#/Bb) and applies the four most common scales: major, minor, harmonic minor, and blues. In the future, this can be easily augmented with more obscure and interesting scales, but I was more curious to test my assumptions before I continued much further. I was curious if this would be something that the user would find interesting and useful. Would they find the option to easily play melodic patterns a benefit, or would this notion, already so prevalent in existing instruments, seem tired and not useful? To answer these questions, I attached the series of eight note buttons to a block of wood. My users generally found this fun and interesting. Most people asked for access to changing the sound. Some, having seen my earlier prototypes for the gyroscope-influenced synthesizer, tilted the block of wood, hoping to effect the sound. This strengthens the idea to me that this interface is a positive one. As for aesthetics, I used black and red buttons and chose a purely decorative pattern of red, three black, three red, and black. At first I considered alternating black and red, but I didn’t want to make the buttons look too much like a piano keyboard. One tester found the color choices bland so I may experiment with different patterns in the future.

Conclusions

The design questions were answered in this experiment. Users do like the idea of note-based performance, and they find it useful over semi-structured gestural performance. Also, they desire some advanced gesture-based manipulation on top of the structured note-making. This is excellent to know as I continue with my research. With this groundwork I can apply different gestural augmentation that can add to the experience, rather than distract and confuse from the start. The thesis remains the same but with more of a focus on user experience than exploration. While previously I was interested in asking questions about instrument possibilities, I find myself increasingly needing to actually answer these questions. I am interested in building a useful instrument, and it will take many more experiments and tests to accomplish this goal.

Next Steps

For the next phase of the experimentation, I will need to propel myself in to the world of the instrument’s physicality. I have been holding off on this, partly because I know what an important aspect of the project this is and that terrifies me, but partly also because I wanted to have a clear idea of the instrument/controller’s use before exploring the form. I know see that these considerations need to be discovered in tandem. Form leads to use and vice versa. However, having a better idea of the use from this experiment is already causing me to rethinking my form ideas. Over the next three weeks I will explore a few different possibilities of the shape of the object and the placement of the eight note buttons I have already decided to use. Should they be on the bottom, away from the user? Should they be spit in to groups of 4? I like this idea, but it may be confusing to the user. Also, this might not fit every user’s hand shape. Should the device be a sphere, half a sphere, cube, or something else? This next step of explorations will help to narrow down these questions and move the design further.