Touching Your Music: "

There is a lot of interesting work right now in the way of music interface design — with focus on creating ways for multiple people to collaborate in mixing and composing music in real time. Read on for a few of my favorite ideas, with more accompanying video and images. There are also links to many more designs I won’t elaborate on here, but have been thoroughly covered elsewhere.

Loopqoob

The brain-child of Murat N. Konar, this is a system of sensor-equpped cubes that manipulate a computer program generating music. Different aspects of the music are triggered based on the orientation of each cube. Cubes can be stacked and manipulated together to initiate broad changes in the composition.

VIDEOS
LINK [website]

TENORI-ON

Mentioned previously on CN, this device consists of a 16x16 matrix of touch sensitive LED lights, that trigger either a looped or single note depending on how they are pressed. The device has LEDs on both sides, so the performer and the audience can both see the design of the music being played. Designed by Toshio Iwai and Yamaha, this will be commercially available soon. No video is yet available that I can find, but the website has a lot of pictures, and the background music gives you an idea of what it can sound like.

LINK [website & music]
LINK [images and more info] (via we make money not art)

JazzMutant Lemur

Lemur is an extremely configurable, multi-finger-sensitive touch screen interface for controlling and creating music. A number of different UI elements are available with a variety of behaviors to create your own custom controller. The videos and company website offer more insight into the workings of this device, as it must definitely be seen to be understood.

VIDEO [Real Video]
VIDEO [Quicktime] (via iua.upf.es)
LINK [website]

Audiopad

In many ways, the best has been saved for last. Created by James Patten and Ben Recht (aka localfields), I came across this a year or so ago, and it still strikes me every time I watch the videos. Using a projector that is mounted, facing down, above a surface with motion-tracked translucent markers, it allows for incredibly smooth and dynamic manipulation of a collection of loops. Beats and tunes can be triggered, filtered, sped up or down, and faded in or out, all in real time, with the ability to to handle multiple musicians.

VIDEO [performance and explanation]
VIDEO [live performance]
LINK [website]
LINK [Wired News article]

Etc.

Many more such devices exist — some similar to those previous mentioned, and others leaning more towards sound generation than the creation and manipulation of listenable music. Here are a couple lists others have compiled (you’ll notice a lot of overlap between the two, but they each offer some things the other doesn’t):

LINK/VIDEOS (via Martin Kaltenbrunner, creater of reacTABLE*)
LINK (via Sonicforms)

Conferences

If you want to experience any of this yourself, the following annual conferences and conventions will definitely be of interest:

LINK [NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression)]
LINK [Cybersonica Festival (’International Festival of Music & Sound’)]
LINK [SIGGRAPH, specifically the Emerging Technologies exhibit]

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(Via Centripetal Notion.)