Life is one big road with lots of signs
So when you riding thru the ruts
Don't complicate your mind.
Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy.
Don't bury your thoughts.
Put your vision to reality, Yeah!
- BOB MARLEY -from the song "Wake Up and Live"
Topic:
NEW MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Re-inventing the tools to create expressive sounds
Around 10 years ago, the innovative musician Yo-Yo Ma performed and recorded Bartok's Viola Concerto on an alto violin, part of a violin octet constructed by
Carleen Maley Hutchins. The work of Carleen Hutchins and her
associates, had accomplished a "rediscovery" of the violin octet, a development that deserves more attention than this brief description. Dr. Hutchins, acoustician, writer, editor, teacher of the building of string instruments, facilitator of others' work, permanent secretary of the Catgut Acoustical Society, and amateur string player, would have considered herself an unlikely candidate to play any of these roles, but many of the talents that she has brought to them were developed during her childhood and young adulthood when she worked with the Girl Scouts of America and as a teacher of science and wood-working in New York City private schools.
Music -- often thought of as a universal language -- is based on the desire for musical expression. As an application of human toolmaking, the making of instruments has evolved constantly over the last centuries, as inventors and musicians sought to apply new concepts and ideas into improving musical instruments or creating previously unheard of sounds by using new methods to generate or control the expression of music. In the most recent developments of modern instrument design, the interaction end of instrument design could be thought of as an exercise in the field of ergonomics. Now that previous types of instruments have become electronic, and finally digital, their fundamental purpose is becoming absorbed into the types of tools that we think of as general purpose computers. Indeed, the research going on in musical instruments human interface design is now being merged with human-computer interface concepts. On the cutting edge of this merger, are the interfaces that have been developed for virtuoso performers, (those who have become adept with the process of manipulating subtle nuances of sound with specific disciplines of hand, sound generation techniques and pitch control). Increasingly, the power of the computer can be used to exploit basic gestures that can be mapped and utilized to generate complex sounds. However, it is also possible to use these same technologies and methods to allow even non-musicians to conduct, initiate, and to a certain degree control a dense musical stream. Because the high-level skills will still push the envelope of control over music expression, the application of non-intrusive, high-precision sensing will allow greater levels of performance through the use of demanding real-time user interfaces. However, techniques involving pattern recognition, algorithmic composition and artificial intelligence will allow greater interaction with music performance than ever before from every level of interest...including those who are too young to have the discipline or those who must get beyond the challenges of physical or perceptive limitations.
