Music jamming as a participatory design method. A case study with disabled musicians

We propose a method that uses music jamming as a tool for the design of musical instruments. Both designers and musicians collaborate in the music making process for the subsequent development of individual “music performer’s profiles” which account for four dimensions: (i) movements and embodiment, (ii) musical preferences, (iii) difficulties, and (iv) capabilities. These profiles converge into proposed prototypes that transform into final designs after experts and performers' examination and feedback. We ground this method in the context of physically disabled musicians, and we show that the method provides a decolonial view to disability, as its purpose moves from the classical view of technology as an aid for allowing disabled communities to access well-established instruments, towards a new paradigm where technologies are used for the augmentation of expressive capabilities, the strengthening of social engagement, and the empowerment of music makers

Mirroring the past, from typewriting to interactive art: an approach to the re-design of a vintage technology

Obsolete and old technologies are often used in interactive art and music performance. DIY practices such as hardware hacking and circuit bending provide e ective methods to the integration of old machines into new artistic inventions. This paper presents the Cembalo Scrivano .1, an interactive audio-visual installation based on an augmented typewriter. Borrowing concepts from media archaeology studies, tangi- ble interaction design and digital lutherie, we discuss how investigations into the historical and cultural evolution of a technology can suggest directions for the regeneration of obsolete objects. The design approach outlined focuses on the remediation of an old device and aims to evoke cultural and physical properties associated to the source object

Fictional Instruments, Real Values: Discovering Musical Backgrounds with Non-Functional Prototypes

The emergence of a new technology can be considered as the result of social, cultural and technical process. Instrument designs are particularly in uenced by cultural and aesthetic values linked to the speci c contexts and communities that produced them. In previous work, we ran a design ction workshop in which musicians created non-functional instrument mockups. In the current paper, we report on an online survey in which music technologists were asked to speculate on the background of the musicians who designed particular instruments. Our results showed several cues for the interpretation of the artefacts' origins, including physical features, body-instrument interactions, use of language and references to established music practices and tools. Tacit musical and cultural values were also identi- ed based on intuitive and holistic judgments. Our discussion highlights the importance of cultural awareness and context-dependent values on the design and use of interactive musical systems

Beholden to Our Tools: Negotiating with Technology while Sketching Digital Instruments

Digital musical instrument design is often presented as an open-ended creative process in which technology is adopted and adapted to serve the musical will of the designer. The real-time music programming languages powering many new instruments often provide access to audio manipulation at a low level, theoretically allowing the creation of any sonic structure from primitive operations. As a result, designers may assume that these seemingly omnipotent tools are pliable vehicles for the expression of musical ideas. We present the outcomes of a compositional game in which sound designers were invited to create simple instruments using common sensors and the Pure Data programming language. We report on the patterns and structures that often emerged during the exercise, arguing that designers respond strongly to suggestions o ered by the tools they use. We discuss the idea that current music programming languages may be as culturally loaded as the communities of practice that produce and use them. Instrument making is then best viewed as a protracted negotiation between designer and tools

The Sabotaging Piano: key-to-pitch remapping as a source of new techniques in piano improvisation

In this paper we present the Sabotaging Piano, a prepared electronic piano that alters key-to-pitch correspondence by reassigning adjacent pitches (i.e. one semi-tone higher or lower) to each key. Performers can control how many keys to remap through an expression pedal. If the pedal is not pressed the Sabotaging Piano works as a normal piano. When fully pressed, each key is remapped one semi-tone up or down with equal probability. Each new performance (i.e. when the piano is turned on) triggers a new and unknown remapping pattern, but the specific pattern remains fixed throughout the whole performance. This aims to provide a balance of uncertain but still explorable and learnable behaviour. We invited three professional piano improvisers to rehearse with our piano in order to prepare a final improvisation concert. We aimed to explore how much can be rehearsed or prepared with a piano that will behave somewhat differently for each new performance. We asked pianists to document their rehearsal processes to witness the appearing of strategies or techniques with the Sabotaging Piano. Through analysis of the rehearsals reports and the MIDI data collected in the final concert, here we show that the three pianists not only developed different techniques with the Sabotaging Piano, but they also leveraged the particularities of it to use them as creative resources

Skip the Pre-Concert Demo: How Technical Familiarity and Musical Style Affect Audience Response

This paper explores the roles of technical and musical familiarity in shaping audience response to digital musical instrument (DMI) performances. In an audience study conducted during an evening concert, we examined two primary questions: first, whether a deeper understanding of how a DMI works increases an audience’s enjoyment and interest in the performance; and second, given the same DMI and same performer, whether playing in a conventional (vernacular) versus an experimental musical style affects an audience’s response. We held a concert in which two DMI creator-performers each played two pieces in differing styles. Before the concert, each half the 64-person audience was given a technical explanation of one of the instruments. Results showed that receiving an explanation increased the reported understanding of that instrument, but had no effect on either the reported level of interest or enjoyment. On the other hand, performances in experimental versus conventional style on the same instrument received widely divergent audience responses. We discuss implications of these findings for DMI design

From miming to NIMEing: the development of idiomatic gestural language on large scale DMIs

hen performing with new instruments, musicians often develop new performative gestures and playing techniques.Music performance studies on new instruments often con-sider interfaces that feature a spectrum of gestures similar to already existing sound production techniques. This paper considers the choices performers make when creating an idiomatic gestural language for an entirely unfamiliar instrument. We designed a musical interface with a unique large-scale layout to encourage new performers to create fully original instrument-body interactions. We conducted a study where trained musicians were invited to perform one of two versions of the same instrument, each physically identical but with a different tone mapping. The study results reveal insights into how musicians develop novel performance gestures when encountering a new instrument characterised by an unfamiliar shape and size. Our discussion highlights the impact of an instrument’s scale and layout on the emergence of new gestural vocabularies and on the qualities of the music performed

A platform for low-latency continuous keyboard sensing and sound generation

On several acoustic and electromechanical keyboard instruments, the produced sound is not always strictly dependent exclusively on a discrete key velocity parameter, and minute gesture details can affect the final sonic result. By contrast, subtle variations in articulation have a relatively limited effect on the sound generation when the keyboard controller uses the MIDI standard, used in the vast majority of digital keyboards. In this paper we present an embedded platform that can generate sound in response to a controller capable of sensing the continuous position of keys on a keyboard. This platform enables the creation of keyboard-based DMIs which allow for a richer set of interaction gestures than would be possible through a MIDI keyboard, which we demonstrate through two example instruments. First, in a Hammond organ emulator, the sensing device allows to recreate the nuances of the interaction with the original instrument in a way a velocity-based MIDI controller could not. Second, a nonlinear waveguide flute synthesizer is shown as an example of the expressive capabilities that a continuous-keyboard controller opens up in the creation of new keyboard-based DMIs