Mobile Application to Train Chord-playing on Keyboard Instrument

Music played by a band is mostly annotated in chord charts, unlike complete notations for classical music. Beginner keyboardists playing in a band often struggle to catch up with only chord charts as reference because a single chord can be played in multiple ways on a keyboard instrument. To improve, practice is needed. However, the problems with practice chord-playing are the lack of training material, swayed practice goals as well as the immobility of instrument. Hence, the project has the objectives to: explore the multi-touch capabilities of tablet devices for music training, develop a structured and goal-oriented virtual keyboard mobile application to achieve chord-playing training; conduct a user perception study for the developed application on potential users; and conduct a usability study on the developed application. The application is targeted at beginner keyboardists to improve their existing skills in playing basic chords single-handedly, through a two-octave keyboard interface. The application was successfully developed with 4 prototype iterations. The user perception study showed that beginner keyboardists generally accept using mobile technology to train their chord-playing skills. The usability study showed that the developed application is quite a usable application

An examination of the keyboard technique of Bach, Haydn, Chopin, Scriabin and Prokofiev

Master's Project (M.Mu.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016In this research paper, I will explore the keyboard technique of each composer presented in my recital: J.S. Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, Frederic Chopin, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Prokofiev. I hope to elucidate the physical approach used by each composer, and show in turn how that same approach influenced the music of each composer by analyzing the pieces performed in my recital. To understand the distinct technique of the composers, it is important to know some context. The instrument each composer wrote for necessarily influenced their technique and resulting composition. However, the instrument cannot explain every facet of technique, and it becomes necessary to understand the underlying aesthetics of technique. Moving chronologically from Bach to Prokofiev, a general trend of expansion in the use of the hand and arm will be seen throughout. Keyboards became louder and heavier in touch and the hand faced greater reaches in every generation. The technique of Bach and Haydn was largely focused on compact and relaxed hands with distinct finger movements, while Scriabin and Prokofiev at the other end require sweeping gestures that occupy the entire arm. However, it would be too easy to present this progression as a story that technique is only getting better and better, implying that the older composers were inferior to the later. That is simply false. Instead, extended study of each composer shows that many technical principles are universal. The baroque keyboardists were likely playing with more weight than popularly imagined and one cannot play Scriabin with mittens on the hands

A hybrid keyboard-guitar interface using capacitive touch sensing and physical modeling

This paper was presented at the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark.This paper presents a hybrid interface based on a touch- sensing keyboard which gives detailed expressive control over a physically-modeled guitar. Physical modeling al- lows realistic guitar synthesis incorporating many expres- sive dimensions commonly employed by guitarists, includ- ing pluck strength and location, plectrum type, hand damp- ing and string bending. Often, when a physical model is used in performance, most control dimensions go unused when the interface fails to provide a way to intuitively con- trol them. Techniques as foundational as strumming lack a natural analog on the MIDI keyboard, and few digital controllers provide the independent control of pitch, vol- ume and timbre that even novice guitarists achieve. Our interface combines gestural aspects of keyboard and guitar playing. Most dimensions of guitar technique are control- lable polyphonically, some of them continuously within each note. Mappings are evaluated in a user study of key- boardists and guitarists, and the results demonstrate its playa- bility by performers of both instruments

ArmKeyBoard: a mobile keyboard instrument based on chord-scale system and tonal hierarchy

Session - OS17: Gestures, motion and musicConference Main Theme: Music Technology meets Philosophy: From Digital Echos to Virtual EthosTraditional keyboard instruments, with their sheer size and key anisotropy, although are versatile in musical expression, are difficult to learn and inconvenient to carry around; and its linear layout somewhat rules out the musical possibility of non-linearity. Trying to address this, we design a keyboard with both linear and non-linear layouts based on chord-scale system and tonal hierarchy. Several flipping mechanisms and mapping algorithms are devised to try to equip this small portable keyboard with as much musical expression capability as possible as compared with a traditional keyboard. Evaluation results show that both the musical outcome and user experience of ArmKeyBoard are satisfactory, although people may still prefer a linear keyboard to a non-linear one.published_or_final_versio

ArmKeyBoard: a mobile keyboard instrument based on chord-scale system and tonal hierarchy

Session - OS17: Gestures, motion and musicConference Main Theme: Music Technology meets Philosophy: From Digital Echos to Virtual EthosTraditional keyboard instruments, with their sheer size and key anisotropy, although are versatile in musical expression, are difficult to learn and inconvenient to carry around; and its linear layout somewhat rules out the musical possibility of non-linearity. Trying to address this, we design a keyboard with both linear and non-linear layouts based on chord-scale system and tonal hierarchy. Several flipping mechanisms and mapping algorithms are devised to try to equip this small portable keyboard with as much musical expression capability as possible as compared with a traditional keyboard. Evaluation results show that both the musical outcome and user experience of ArmKeyBoard are satisfactory, although people may still prefer a linear keyboard to a non-linear one.published_or_final_versio

Pickup usability dominates: a brief history of mobile text entry research and adoption

Text entry on mobile devices (e.g. phones and PDAs) has been a research challenge since devices shrank below laptop size: mobile devices are simply too small to have a traditional full-size keyboard. There has been a profusion of research into text entry techniques for smaller keyboards and touch screens: some of which have become mainstream, while others have not lived up to early expectations. As the mobile phone industry moves to mainstream touch screen interaction we will review the range of input techniques for mobiles, together with evaluations that have taken place to assess their validity: from theoretical modelling through to formal usability experiments. We also report initial results on iPhone text entry speed