Amidst the general-purpose computing platforms (laptop, iPad), and latest iterations of the conventional synthesizer (keyboard, knobs), the quest to build something genuinely specific, self-contained, and unique drives on. These creations are strange breeds, evolutionary singularities that aim to embody something the more generic instruments of our age lack: personality and soul. They’re the kind of object you might want to practice for years, to treat in their digital, “post-mechanical” form the way you would a violin or piano. They have a feel, more than the smooth surface of a trackpad or plane of multitouch glass, something that pushes back when you push it.

And while many such creations have shown up in proof-of-concept demos and academic conferences, the Eigenharp is an instrument a small but growing community of players are embracing in the long haul.

Musician and Eigen advocate Geert Bevin is back with the latest round of updates as those players hone their chops and try to really master their Eigen playing. And if you want to get involved yourself, there’s even a regular, Web-based clubhouse, thanks to Google’s fledgling “Hangout” technology on Google+. Geert tells us:

Independently from Eigenlabs, Eigenharp players are now organizing a clubhouse, twice a week, on opposite times to allow everyone to join at one point or another. This happens on Monday at 4PM CEST (Europe) and Wednesday 4PM CDT (US), using Google+ Hangouts. I’m hosting the European one and it’s streamed and recorded on Livestream
People that interested in the Eigenharp are invited to join one of the hangouts and circle me or Larry Heilman on Google+ to get access.

Now, some of the artists videos, in a wide survey Geert has put together that spans genres.

António Machado (Portugal) used his Eigenharp Alpha during the INCastelo open-air show with dancers in a medieval castle.

Here is what António has to say about this performance: “I compose music and take care of sound design for most of the dance shows from DançArte and we were in the two final shows of the cycle ‘In/Out’ focusing on local architecture and their surroundings. The ‘In’ part in August, outdoors and the ‘Out’ part inside a traditional theatre. Planning ten months ahead, August 2011 would bring us to Palmela´s medieval Castle built in the year 1150, to get inspired by and ultimately create “In Castelo”. Again the choice of performing with the Alpha suited me perfectly. It is visually stunning, so I was able to connect with the audience through the lights, using the “Arranger” and was free to interact with the surroundings, the dancers and their choreography. I have a very high degree of control over each sound/sample/AU or iVST and effects used, right from the instrument, so I don’t need to look at the computer screen while performing”

http://www.youtube.com/user/palaires

BangStrokeBlow (UK) live with an original instrumental:

BangStrokeBlow is a London-based duo of Eigenharpists; they make infectious, dance floor-oriented, experimental music. They retain many of the sensibilities of modern electronica but through the Eigenharp, have developed a much more expressive and human way of performing this music live. Expect anything from Hip Hop to Breakbeat to Trance; every single note will eat away at your internal organs, in a fuzzy, buzzy, rapturous way.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BangStrokeBlow
http://www.myspace.com/bangstrokeblow
https://www.facebook.com/bangstrokeblow
http://soundcloud.com/bangstrokeblow

Dino Soldo (UK) has used the Eigenharp for the 2010 world tour of Leonard Cohen:

Here’s what he had to say during an interview: “I can be onstage just with this, the computer on the side and my horns. That’s my fantasy. The visual is everything… Being on stage is a fantasy and this contributes to that fantasy. I wanna get rid of my keyboards. I wanna have a whole side of my stage disappear. Make the stage a little cleaner. There’s enough buttons for me to get everything I wanna have happen, happen. Really all you have to do is get your brain situated around the Eigenharp, then the Eigenharp is ready to go… The possibilities are truly endless. It really allows me to do things that I wouldn’t normally do with a solo instrument.”

http://www.dinosoldo.com
http://twitter.com/dinosoldo
http://www.myspace.com/dinosoldo
http://www.facebook.com/DinoSoldo

Flytecase (Belgium) live with an original song, “Same Place Again”:

Flytecase is a Belgian alternative pop-rock band, they used the Eigenharp Alpha for most synth arrangements on their debut album ‘Speaker Mind’ and are now preparing a new live show that uses the Eigenharp on stage. This is one of the finished songs, written on the Eigenharp and performed live in Charleroi, Belgium during the Fêtes de Wallonie Festival.

http://www.flytecase.be
http://www.facebook.com/flytecase
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B56CEC9C692B36B2
http://twitter.com/flytecase

Ian and Paul Harriman (UK) using AudioCubes and Eigenharp at Electro-Music 2011 festival:

Ian and Paul Harriman using AudioCubes and Eigenharp at Electro-Music 2011 festival [Percussa (AudioCubes) blog]

Paul Harriman has played the Eigenharp Alpha for two years in a row at the Electro-Music festival and performed a piece together with his son on Audiocubes this year. As well as playing leads and pads live on the Alpha, all the backing tracks are also triggered and controlled by the Eigenharp.

http://www.harriman4.com

Kayla Kavanagh (UK) live with an original song, “Take me home”:

Kayla is a Yorkshire-based singer-songwriter who plays nine instruments. She started a year and a half ago with the Eigenharp Pico and has since then moved on to the Eigenharp Alpha. Her last album is one of the world’s first to feature the Eigenharp. Kayla played at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival with her first original song on the Eigenharp Alpha.

http://www.kaylakavanagh.com
http://www.youtube.com/kaylakavanagh
http://twitter.com/KaylaKavanagh
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kayla-Kavanagh/22032129016

Thanks for this, Geert! This covers quite a range; it seems that you’re bound to find something that sparks interest. If others would like to do a similar round-up for an alternative instrument/controller, I’m all ears.

Moving beyond touching a screen as two-dimensional plane, Roger Linn’s concept music controller, the Linnstrument, adds tactile response and expression. Roger calls it “3D Note Expression,” but in lay terms, it means pushing harder on the controller makes it respond differently, as you’d expect from a physical instrument.

Roger this week posts an update on how his development is going and what he imagines – good timing, as this week we also saw another design on the same lines, the Soundplane. The sensing methods are different, enough so that I can easily see room for both, but the upshot is the same. Randy Jones in that story also reflects that, once these things are invented, what will really be essential is musicians to play the things and develop lots of interesting software that can use the controllers. See, previously:

A Glimpse of the Soundplane Controller, Innovative Tactile Multi-Touch, in the Lab; Call to Action

The major change in Roger’s latest update, apart from adjusting the form factor to something longer and more spacious, is the addition of different overlays, including traditional keyboard “manuals,” fret-style grids, and honeycomb-patterns hexagonal grids like the one at top.

It isn’t just a blank slate any more – certainly not in Roger’s mind, at least. Linn, a guitarist by training, has an extensive schema worked out for a grid that would function like the frets on a guitar neck. Movements in any direction can make an adjustment, impacting timbre (perpendicular to the front edge), pitch bends (parallel to that edge), and loudness (pressure).

It’s still all concept, with one working prototype; Roger’s professed style is to work in big-picture concepts. But I’d love to see some of these ideas reach fruition.

I’m still hopeful that a simple, inexpensive, open source option could evolve from this landscape. I hope for that not necessarily even because of a philosophical belief in open source so much as the sense that such an open field could lend itself to experimentation by, say, the people who read this site, not only in creating software but building the instruments. In the case of Roger’s design, unlike the more novel approach used by Randy, patent questions are less of an issue. And a community of people experimenting in such a way could simultaneously yield software that could be compatible with the proprietary and commercial projects.

Lots more ideas and reflections – including detailed notions of how you’d play this thing – on Roger’s site:
Preview: LinnStrument – A New Musical Instrument with 3D Note Expression

And here’s a new video, entitled, cheerily, “Gloomy Sunday” (the music of Rezső Seress):

For review, Roger’s original demo video:

On tablets, on displays, multi-touch control these days is calibrated largely as a software interface – more Starship Enterprise panel than violin. As such, it works well for production tools and exploring compositional ideas. But it falls far short of being an instrument: even on the much-hyped iPad, touch timing and sensitivity is too imprecise, and the absence of tactile feedback and real, kinetic resistance makes you feel like an operator rather than a musician.

Several projects in experimental instrument research seek to change that. But of all of them, the one that has generated the most enthusiasm is Randy Jones’ Soundplane, co-developed with hardware designer Brian Willoughby. CDM shares a conversation today with Randy about his brilliant Aalto synth, and I’m working on a review soon. But wonderful as Aalto is, many of us are still eager to hear more of the Soundplane controller. I chose to wax poetic and optimistic back in December of 2008:
Intimate Control: Multi-Touch, New Models, and What 2009 is Really About

I shouldn’t have put a year on my predictions, though – good things take time. (If I could clearly recall what happened in 2009, maybe my general prediction was correct. The past tends to blur together for me into a continuum in the manner of the modern technologist, a vague assemblage of stuff that happened in the 60s with things that are actually still in the future.)

The good news: Randy continues working on the Soundplane, and Aalto will help.

Continuing our interview, here are the thoughts most relevant to Soundplane — and a glimpse of what it’s looking like as he works on it in the lab.

First, Randy explains his ideas about running a small business, continuing what he had to say in our Aalto story. The basic idea: Aalto’s software will bootstrap Soundplane’s hardware.

I think the whole idea of venture capital is sort of a poisonous one. It’s a little like bands wanting to get signed right away. The first thing you want to focus on is giving up your autonomy, really?

Instead, why not scrape together whatever you can from friends or family and just make something that you can sell right away, however small. I didn’t have enough saved to finish the Soundplane project so halfway through I switched to putting out Aalto as a plan B for paying the rent. Now it’s out and it’s a product I’m proud of that I think reflects where we’re coming from, and it’s going to fund Soundplane development, and it’s letting tons of people know we exist. Just get a foot in the door, do something useful.

He also shares his feelings about patents:

Some people won’t like to hear this, but I applied for a patent on the sensor used in the Soundplane. I know, the patent system is totally broken, and often, if not usually, used in stupid ways. But if there’s one thing I think it is actually good for, it’s to protect small companies like ours that innovate against a bigger entity simply stealing their R&D. This is why it was designed, right? I don’t know if our patent will save the day if such a thing ever happens, but if it does I’d much rather have one than not. It’s a pain to write one but it’s not impossible, you just need a lot of patience. “Patent it Yourself“, Nolo Press, is a good reference.

The patent question raises some additional questions for me – in fact, I’d love to see open source hardware that’s also backed by patent protection, in the same way that the GPL license is made tenable largely through the existence of traditional copyright laws.

But I do tend to agree that in the case of a truly novel technology, which this is, patent protection may be necessary. The question for projects like this will be whether to operate as a conventional, patent-protected design, or whether some sort of open source model with a patent covenant and a copyleft license like GPL will make sense — both preventing exploitation and allowing free experimentation. If there are any IP lawyers lurking around out there, let us know (I have some contacts, too); and definitely let us know if that’s a conversation you’d like us to continue.

In the meantime, the important thing is that Soundplane lives, and using Aalto could help it come to fruition. We’ll absolutely keep you posted.

As proof, though, more shots from the lab:

Also, must-read article from shortly after Jones’ NIME presentation:
Why Soundplane?

The whole article is worth reading, but Jones argues that not only is it likely many people will try to do tactile multi-touch, but it may be necessary. For those of you not all that good at hardware design, you could be just as essential as well to there being any future for these curiosities. The designers need other designers. The hardware needs software creators – lots of them. The software creators need to try lots of ideas. And everybody needs players, composers … users.

It’s all-too-tempting to sit back on the Web and marvel at what everyone else is doing, to take their genius and novelty as an engraved invitation to give up on your own work. “It’s been done before.” “Someone else is already doing this.” It’s probably a topic for a dedicated article, but it’s simply the wrong reaction. “It’s been done before — maybe it’s worth doing. Or doing again. Or doing better. Or doing over and over again.” “Other people are doing this — that means I have someone else to do it with.”

Historically, revolutions aren’t solo pieces. They’re ensembles.

Updated: speaking of work being ensembles, while Randy’s name is most associated with the Soundplane project, credit is due to hardware designer Brian Willoughby, who did the hardware design for the instrument. As he wrote in comments on CDM in 2010, when we covered Roger Linn’s Linnstrument: “For my part, I’ve been deep into the process of designing the analog circuits, DSP hardware and firmware necessary for the product, so it’s nice to poke my head up for a moment and see interest on this site, as well as to hear about other engineers trying new things and inspiring ideas.”

A new tool could be for the expressive, not just the lazy. That’s the read of Auto-Tune for guitar, and it makes me excited to see what people will do with it. It could be the advent of the true digital guitar.

Antares teased their efforts to bring Auto-Tune technology to guitars earlier this month, having gotten as far as working proof-of concept. (See Harmony Central’s exclusive video above, and Axetopia, Synthtopia.) I hadn’t worked out anything intelligent to say about it, perhaps because I was cowering in a corner in fear.

As a technologist, I have great respect for what Antares does, and their portfolio goes far beyond just the flagship vocal pitch correction. But suffice to say, Auto-Tune has been used in recording in some pretty unpleasant ways – the fault of the user, not the software, I’d argue. It’s regularly applied in order to suck the life out of great, perfectly-tuned singers, as well as to cover for people who can’t really sing, to the point that producers seem to not understand what the sound of a human voice is in all its complexity. (Case in point: Glee. The talented cast sounds incredible live and onstage, and like they have android stand-ins when they’re on the show. In fact, if you disagree with those uses, please – go use some of Antares’ terrific software for good, not evil, and I’ll write about it.)

Auto-Tune as a name, then, has come to symbolize a revolution, an extraordinary blockbuster of software – and the butt of a joke. So, it’s hard not to see a product called “Auto-Tune for Guitar” and carry some of that bias. Sometimes, as writers we actually need our readers to add some perspective.

Auto-Tune for Guitars could likewise be misused to smooth out some of the guitar’s natural intonation subtleties, though I think the danger is far less so than it is with the voice. But it’s more than that.

Reader Jesse Engel reflects on what it could mean. He notes that the significant advance is building the intelligence into the guitar, not just the computer, and that applications could be varied:

Don’t know if you saw this, but Antares has taken a fresh swipe at HEX guitar, putting a processor in the guitar and using it to do some more modern (Auto-Tune, emulation, etc.) processing. [Ed.: Hex refers to the practice of adding individual pick-ups to each of six strings. -PK]

The hex has been around for a while, but it’s a big deal to use it in this way for guitarists since you don’t need to try to do any polyphonic pitch recognition. Literally direct note access. Also, signals add nonlinearly, so effecting each string individually has a different sound than doing emulation on the mix.

The tech looks like it will help a lot of people fake being better than they are (especially bending to the right note), at the expense of the beautiful imperfections of great playing, but the potential of using hex pickups in these new ways is fun to think about.

The digital guitar has been a vision for a long time, from working out MIDI output to multichannel output. Gibson has been the name behind many of those efforts. Back in January 2004, Wired ran a glowing portrait of Gibson’s efforts in print:

The 100-Megabit Guitar: Gibson’s maverick CEO wants to shove Ethernet up your ax and rock the music world. [Wired 12.1]

It’s worth reading the whole article; the technical limitations of the Gibson system immediately come to light. Suffice to say, that vision never quite came to fruition; Wired even this year claimed that the project had been killed – at least at Gibson. None other than Adrian Freed, OpenSoundControl and alternative instrument design guru at the University of California Berkeley’s CNMAT research center, led the group – he, his colleagues, and his many students go right on innovating with or without Gibson. Updated: I’m not able to find the reference for that story, which I read in print. See comments for commentary by Adrian Freed, who sees otherwise.

At the time, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, oddly speaking in the third person, pronounced, “Progress will happen. If Henry Juszkiewicz didn’t build a digital guitar, I can assure you the digital guitar would still happen.” That prediction may prove prescient.

The 2007 video below shows the debut of Gibson’s HD.6x-Pro Digital Les Paul – working with individual strings. I also saw a demo with Gibson, Intel, and Cakewalk that used each string in a surround speaker diffusion. It was a psychedelic effect, if not necessarily the most practical demo, but proof that a technology like this could have many uses.

For their part, here’s how Antares describes their technology. Notice that they aren’t only talking intonation, but other applications, as well.

Incorporating our world-renowned Auto-Tune pitch detection and manipulation along with our proprietary modeling technologies, ATG-6 is an entirely DSP-based suite of functions that offer everything you’ve always wanted from a guitar, along with capabilities you never imagined possible. From flawless intonation to astonishing tonal flexibility to alternate tunings that open up entirely new areas of inspiration and creativity, ATG-6 technology seriously expands the flexibility and range of the electric guitar while letting you continue to play your own way.

… Using our new Solid-Tune™ Intonation system, an ATG-6 equipped guitar constantly monitors the precise pitch of each individual string and makes any corrections necessary to ensure that every note of every chord and riff is always in tune, regardless of variables like finger position or pressure or physical limitations of the instrument. As a result, listening to a guitar with Solid-Tune is a revelation, offering a purity of intonation that has simply never before been possible.

Of course, Solid-Tune is smart enough to know when you want to manipulate pitch, so you can play bends and vibrato exactly as you always do. In fact, Solid-Tune Intonation makes it even easier to bend to the right pitch every time.

Antares ATG-6

Updated: Chris Randall chides me on Twitter (and I agree) for not mentioning Roland, specifically — that’s the reference above in Jesse’s from-the-hips comments to “hex” guitar. Roland has built a whole business around products that track notes played on a guitar, adding polyphonic pitch shifters, open tunings, note-by-note replacement, MIDI output, and even DSP effects processing. The difference in the Roland offering is that Roland has done all this work in a separate processing box you connect to their pick-up; Antares appears to be promising something that’s all-in-one in the guitar. And the analysis Antares is doing may well prove more sophisticated than what we’ve seen in the past in terms of distinguishing, say, a bend from different notes. That could open up additional and radically-new expressive possibilities, even if the underlying fundamental concept is more or less the same.

On the other hand, the other difference with the Roland offering relative to both Gibson’s past attempts and Antares’ upcoming ones: Roland successfully shipped and sold theirs. Until Antares does the same, advantage: Roland. We’ll be watching.

Is there anything genuinely new in digital instruments? Isn’t it just a load of repeated novelty, without the ability to actually make useful musical noises? Hasn’t the technology just gotten in the way of the music? Isn’t … (sigh) .. all you see … all you get … (repeat ad infinitum)

Even among technologist futurists, skepticism about the iterative process of new digital design runs rampant. But if you yearn for a bit more optimism, here are four strong counter-examples, projects that, building upon previous research, begin to reach a level of maturity and expressivity that could inspire. They’re inventions that you might want to pick up and spend time learning, play into late evenings for the joy of the challenge of them, creations with which you’d build a relationship. They’re not alone, but you can catch all four in the Bay Area starting today through this weekend, and I hope that they help kick-start a new conversation about what instruments can be. In place of the novelty of new invention, they might just start to raise questions about what could really last.

None other than our friend Roger Linn, creator of the LinnDrum, MPC, and new designs, is hosting the event. Geert Bevin of Eigenlabs fills CDM in on the details, and has some reflections on what’s special about these four examples:

One thing that makes these instruments so uniquely expressive is their ability to sense the precise movements of each finger in 3-dimensional space (for example, pressure for note expression, left/right for pitch, and forward/backward for timbre), and to do that for all fingers simultaneously. But each instrument also presents many other innovative ideas and improvements over the limitations of traditional mechanical-age instruments.

The instruments:

The Eigenharp, demonstrated by Geert Bevin, Senior Software Developer from UK-based Eigenlabs.
http://www.eigenlabs.com

The Continuum from Haken Audio, demonstrated by Bay Area pianist Ed Goldfarb.
http://www.hakenaudio.com

SLABS, a new instrument designed by David Wessel, director of Cal Berkeley’s CNMAT computer music department.

SLABS: Arrays of Pressure Sensitive Touch Pads

The LinnStrument prototype by Roger Linn.

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/products/linnstrument

If You’re Going to (Be Near) San Francisco…

Live event details, from Geert – if you make it and can help document for CDM, we’d be hugely grateful (hello from, for the moment, Montreal)

Here are the events:

Thursday, May 5 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Audio (CCRMA)
660 Lomita Dr. Stanford, CA 94305
Directions: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/about/directions
At this event, the Eigenharp, Continuum and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Friday, May 6 from 7 to 9 p.m.
University of California Berkeley’s Center For New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)
1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA 94709

http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/

At this event, the Eigenharp. SLABS and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Saturday, May 7 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Guitar Center San Francisco, Pro Audio Department
1645 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109
At this event, the Eigenharp and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Monday, May 9 from 4:45 to 5:45 p.m.
SF Music Tech Conference
Hotel Kabuki, 1625 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
At this event, the Eigenharp, Continuum and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.
Note: Conference entry fee is required–see www.sfmusictech.com

Please join us to see, learn about ~ and even try out for yourself ~ these radical new instruments that are changing the way music is made.

Please note that these instruments are not otherwise available in the bay area to see or try out.

Additional events might still be added, keep an eye on http://eigenzone.org/events

Enjoy if you make it. Aside from these four, what new instruments would make your short list?

Nearly as long as we’ve had electronics, musical inventors have tried to imagine new electronic instruments. In the crowded world of new instrument design, the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition has emerged as a key prize for the best work, with creations battling fiercely for attention.

But in the oddball world of sound and music, how do you judge a winner? As a starting point, organizers this year asked the judges what they personally found important. With an expert panel including synth pioneer Tom Oberheim and reacTable creator Sergi Jorda, those answers are themselves revealing.

As for the competitors themselves, even with eclectic entrants, one theme stands out. Human gesture and performance presence is a strong dimension of the winners. And in perhaps the most promising first-prize winner yet, research begins to crack the code of how to make real gestural analysis work, even allowing everyday objects to become musical instruments.

To help us learn more, Competition founder and Georgia Tech Music Technology director Gil Weinberg grants CDM a window into the philosophy of some of these leading technologists, and introduces us to this year’s winners.

The Winners

First Prize: MO, Interlude Consortium. Everyday objects become novel gestural interfaces.

From the project site:

The MO tangible interfaces are a series modules to capture various gestures, from motion to touch. The central module MO contains motion sensors (3D accelerometers and 3axis gyroscopes) and transmits the data wirelessly. Moreover, two accesorries, i.e. other sensors can be added to both side of MO.

Second Prize: MindBox Media Slot Machine, Humatic Berlin. A vintage slot machine is transformed into a compositional interface.

Personnel:

Christian Graupner , Humatic
….media artist, director, composer

Roberto Zappalà
… performer, choreographer

Norbert Schnell, IRCAM — Centre Pompidou
… interactive music & sound design

Nils Peters, Humatic
…system developer and software artist.

Third Prize: Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee, Leon Gruenbaum. It began as an ergonomic computer keyboard, but years of layered work on relative pitch makes it an instrument – a bit like a macro keyboard for composition.

Honorable Mention: Hexenkessel, Jacob Sello. A conventional acoustic timpani is both projection surface and multi-touch input.

From the creator’s description on the video:

The Hexenkessel is a modded 22″ timpani using LLP multitouch technology for control of live-electronics & dmx-light. the realisation of the instrument involves a modified led-projector, webcam and IR-Lasers. the programming is done entirely using max/MSP/Jitter + CCV. The instrument-hack is non-destructive and costs less than 300$.The instrument is intended for the use in multimedial stage performances and innovative concepts of new music.

Pioneering Judges Offer Their Philosophies

A musical instrument design may seem like subjectivity atop more subjectivity, a meeting of the aesthetic of the object with personal musical expression. Judges were asked, therefore, to describe the philosophy they brought to the contest. The reason, explains organizer Weinberg: “To steer it away from general statements – this is the better instrument than this – to make it more personal, about the judge’s opinion and artistic manifesto and instrumental manifesto.”

Tom Oberheim, the man who created the first polyphonic synth product, responded:

The first thing that I look for in a new musical instrument is its musicality. This means where appropriate: does is sound good, is it playable, does it add to the music making language. Then I consider if the device has some sort of universality; in other words, can it be used by a variety of musicians from different backgrounds. Finally, I consider the ease with which the device can be learned.

Sergi Jorda, creator of the reacTable tangible interface:

The ultimate goal for any new instrument could arguably be the potential to create a new kind of music. In that sense, baroque music cannot be imagined without the advances of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century luthiers, rock could not exist without the electric guitar, and jazz or hip-hop, without the redefinitions of the saxophone and the turntable. Yet, this extremely ambitious objective is often beyond the reach of its creator (eighty years separate Adolphe Sax from Coleman Hawkins, and no less than thirty go by between Les Paul and Jimi Hendrix). Being a bit more pragmatic, as a performer, my goal when constructing the instruments I will play is clear. I need instruments that are enjoyable to play and that mutually enhance the experience when playing with other musicians. Thereby allowing me to create or co-create music that will surprise me as much as possible, that will keep revealing little hidden secrets at every new performance. Music not necessarily better, nor worse, than a piece that I could compose in a studio, but music, in essence, that could not have been created in any other possible way. As a ‘professional’ luthier, I need to take some additional considerations into account, but the overall goals do not change: my aim is to create instruments which people can enjoy playing; instruments that will be able to enrich and mature the performers’ experiences in any imaginable way; instruments that allow scope for the performer (particularly in the case of a non-expert user) to be proud of the music created. In order to survive in the extremely demanding instrumental ecosystem, any new instrument should clearly excel in something. It should either be able to do one thing that no other instrument could or, at least it should do it better (whatever this can be and whatever “better” may mean). My last advice would be that when envisaging new instruments one should not only concentrate on the instruments’ sonic capabilities, on their algorithmic power or on the amount of sensors used. One should also be especially careful about the instruments’ conceptual capabilities, and consider how new instruments impose or suggest new ways of thinking to the player, as well as new ways of establishing relationships, new ways of interacting, new ways of organizing time and textures; new ways of playing, in short.

Jason Freeman, a composer, technologist, and Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech:

For me, new musical instruments are significant for their potential to transform our experiences with music. They may enable us to create new acoustic or electronic sounds not previously possible. They may encourage us to think about musical content, structure, and hierarchy in unusual ways. They may suggest new methods of musical collaboration, performance, or education. And they may make musical creativity more accessible to everyone. I am interested in instrument makers who have thought deeply about their work from technical, musical, and design perspectives to create musical instruments that transcend novelty to suggest new paradigms for musical creativity.

A Chat with the Organizer

Now in its third year, the Guthman competition has become a coveted award. As a result, says organizer Weinberg, who is director of the hosting Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, quality and quantity were up in entrants. And, he says, he feels that entrants have transcended some of the typical designs in the field.

“New interfaces for many [means], let’s think about an object that we didn’t use before, and some kind of gesture, stick on some sensors, make some music … But I think the winners of our competition were outside of this realm, really innovative, completely new approaches for playing music,” he says.

On the prize-winning MO tangible interface:

In a section of the performance, they took a ball – a soccer ball – and did some [musical] gestures with it, threw it … moved it … on the hands, on the floor. Each one of these gestures was recorded with the gesture recognition. And then they actually threw the ball to the audience. The audience members started to throw the ball back and forth. If you threw it in a particular way, it made a particular sound — and everything’s wireless, completely — if you threw it back and forth in a different way, it made a different sound. It was really fun; people threw the ball at each other, threw the ball back at the stage. And all made music that was pretty cool to listen to.

Basically, the instrument becomes an intelligent entity. It can sense similar but different gestures and create something smart and relevant musically.

On the slot machine:

The gesture is mostly visual — the intelligence here is of the human performer. He makes his own gestures, accompanied by sounds. And it allows you to manipulate and change [the sound] — and get some surprises, because it is a slot machine, after all.

You can play, explore it. He was able to very expressively pet and touch and click and manipulate the slot machine to create some very nice — not only musical outcomes, but visual outcomes. In some cases, this guy is lying in the sea and making gestures in the sea. Sometimes he’s hanging stuff on the walls, and making sounds with his mouth. Sometimes it’s basic stuff that you can manipulate in real time, with a pretty unique interface — it’s not a monome, it’s a slot machine. It surprises you.

On the Samchillian:

Some instruments – controllers – have this short or sometimes long learning curve, but once you get to a certain point, you know it, and that’s what it can do. And you cannot get better at it. I think the Samchillian is really an instrument with a learning curve that’s very long, and just like other acoustic instruments, violin, piano, there’s a wide range of [technique]. And this guy was really a virtuoso with this instrument. He was able to play chords, all kinds of arpeggiators.

What I liked about it is it’s an instrument more than a controller. There’s always more to learn about how to become better with it. And I think that’s valuable.

Notably, Weinberg has no illusions about the challenge of making new instruments. It’s no accident that the winners were typically the result of years of development and evolution. “I don’t think any of the great instruments were invented in months,” says Weinberg. “It’s a lot of iteration, a lot of building… only a few are good enough to stick.”

And perhaps the great electronic instrument, while getting nearer, hasn’t yet been created. Weinberg says one example of a new instrument design that doesn’t work particularly well is the legendary Theremin – it’s beautiful in the hands of only a couple of artists, but generally a design that stumps musicians and is hard to play.

Looking at the winners this year, though, there are ideas on which new work can be built, not just impressive one-off instruments but real research into handling pitch and gesture. That, at least, should present a bright future. But with the competition heating up, aspiring engineers may want to get started on those designs now.

Thoughts? Questions about the work? Let us know.

More on the MO tangible interfaces from the IRCAM-based Interlude:
MO Interfaces

That work isn’t yet available for download, but an “augmented score viewer” is.

I don’t know if it’s “the most revolutionary new musical instrument of the last 60 years,” but let’s be clear on one thing: the Eigenharp Alpha is utterly, beautifully insane. It combines breath and finger input in a bassoon form factor, but with quite a lot more physical control, a computer connection, and no internal sound source of its own. The breath input comes from a crooked tube as on a bassoon, with finger input in a touch strip, a fretted, light-up keyboard, and keys that have their own various forms of expression. Launched yesterday in London, the Eingenharp is getting a lot of attention. (And yes, some of you spotted signs of its launch all the way back in June, to which I say – I’m sorry I’m so late to the party.)

From BBC: Do you drum it, strum it or stroke it?

I hope to speak to the creators soon. Already, I see some indications that there are equal parts genius and madness here. The controller itself, even in the bizarre bassoon form factor, has an extraordinary amount of control, with high-resolution keys, percussion keys, elaborate control arrangements that can adjust tone or record samples, and extremely precise breath and touch. At £3,950, many computer musicians accused of “knob twiddling” by the creators probably won’t be able to afford the top-of-the-line model, but I do believe an instrument like this can easily, fairly cost this much, it’s a cost reasonable for musical instruments – and there is a £349 “Pico” edition for mortals.

There’s some madness, too, however. For the “instrument of the future,” the creators appear to have chosen MIDI, via USB, in place of a modern control protocol. Then, they plug the instrument into proprietary Mac software. (A Windows version is expected early next year.) There are software models of a Cello, a Clarinet, and a Synth, but there are also gigs of samples oddly loaded into SoundFont format. Given the futuristic ambitions and the sky-high price, closed software and antiquated I/O seem puzzling to me. I’m also skeptical of the approach here of piling on as many controllers as possible.

CORRECTION – CORRECTION! Yes, indeed – proprietary software and the limitations of MIDI wouldn’t make any sense – and apparently the creators agree. So the software will be open sourced, as will their custom-designed protocol. I’ve got all the details – required reading for anyone working on expressive instruments.

But don’t get me wrong. I think this fascinatingly bizarre instrument is worth exploring. The hardware design looks exceptionally luxurious, and there is some genuine design innovation in the controller the likes of which we’ve never seen in an instrument beyond a prototype or two.

Oh, and yes, I already want the Pico – and I think the Pico’s fewer controls may actually make more sense.

Basic specs:

Video of the key action, among others collected on YouTube:

The “Alpha,” the flagship:

• 120 keys, plus 12 percussion keys. (Wait — 120? Yes, you read that right.)
• Two strip controllers, one on each side.
• Breath pipe and mouthpiece.
• 11-bit resolution (2048 values) in the keys and strip controllers, 12-bit resolution (4098 values) for breath.
• Internal audio interface with mic pre, converters, and headphone out – so you need to carry this and a computer, but not this, a computer, and an audio interface.
• A “Base Station” with inputs for expression pedals and foot switches, which also contains the USB connection. This connects to a floor spike on which the instrument rests.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/alpha/

The Pico:

• 22 keys (18 for playing, four mode switches).
• Keys work via direct pressure and lateral pressure in both directions, as on the Alpha.
• Breath pipe.
• Strip controller.
• Same resolution: 11-bit keys, 12-bit breath.
• £349.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/pico/

To be honest, I’m quite a lot more interested in the Pico, not because I think cheaper is better, but because I’m curious whether you can’t be just as expressive with the more limited set of controls as with the kitchen sink approach of its big brother. After all, 22 keys is roughly the number you’d find on most reed instruments, including the Bassoon. True, the piano has 88 keys, but it also doesn’t really have anything else – and it’s able to have so many because of its form factor.

In fact, I’m sorry, but I love the Pico. It looks friendly, it looks portable, it isn’t terrifying-looking like the Alpha, and it seems it’d be more at home in a variety of musical venues than the Alpha. Sometimes less is more. Let’s see if I prove to be correct.

The software, though I hope you could also customize your own software rig using the MIDI input:

• Modular, allowing the routing of control inputs, sound sources and samples, loopers, and synthesis and effects.
• SoundFont oscillator.
• Physical models of the clarinet, cello.
• AU host for adding your own plug-ins. (And yes, this is where I think you’ll have the most fun.
• A system for triggering events, takes, key, and mapping scale.
• An interactive arrangement system for step sequencing.
• Oddly, an extensive Steinway D multi-sample. On the other hand, for years we’ve all have been playing bassoon and other reed samples on the keyboard, and in organ form for centuries, so now the reed instrument gets its revenge.

Source: Eigenlabs software specs.

The instrument’s creator, John Lambert, repeats the maxim heard at new instrument design conferences: “We’ve got pretty fed up with watching people twiddle knobs on stage.” Naturally, that means… turning to the Bassoonist, that sex icon of the orchestra? I’ll run with it.

One other tidbit from that article:

He says there is one high-profile musician who is about to take delivery of an Eigenharp, but won’t give any names.

Yeah, Herbie Hancock, we know it’s you. (Okay, they are an English company, so maybe it’s an English celeb, but really the question is whether Herbie is who they mean, or whether he’s filling out the pre-order as we speak. He’s like what we would all be like if we had a budget.)

Anyway, consider this a first look. I hope to get closer to the actual instrument soon.

Barry Threw demos the K-Bow at Maker Faire from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

Yann Seznec aka The Amazing Rolo brings CDM his coverage of
music tech at the Maker Faire in three episodes today.

As long as there have been computers, violinists have looked for ways of extending the nuances of their physical performance into the digital realm. (Us keyboardists have it easy – we’re used to pressing an array of levers, and a lot of the gestures we make are, arguably, superfluous.) Many of these concepts return to the idea of the bow.

The K-Bow by Keith McMillen Instruments is a Bluetooth-enabled bow with sensors that read bow angle, length, acceleration, grip pressure, and even hair tension. It’s accompanied by software developed in Max/MSP. The bow itself is one of those “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it situations,” at US$4000-5000 retail, though they claim the bow itself – specially-designed kevlar and carbon graphite, anyone? – can compete with more expensive bows even before you add in the sensors.

http://www.keithmcmillen.com/kbow/index.html

In the video at top, developer Barry Threw of Keith McMillen Instruments demonstrates the K-Bow.

Here’s what you get out of the software screen:

Barry has also written up a visit to the STEIM research center and work with sensor bow pioneer Jon Rose.

Jon Rose with the K-Bow

And yes, you can rock out hard with this thing:

I know what you’re thinking – you could also just hook your violin into a pickup and some distortion pedals. I think it’s really the experience of playing it that changes, though I’m just guessing, since I’m not a string player.

Previous research projects:

Jon Rose’s own Hyperstring project (warning: loud hyperviolin audio auto-plays, and I don’t see any mute button!)

The Augmented Violin project at IRCAM: see Emmanuel Flety’s development blog, IRCAM project page and references

And that’s by no means a complete list, of course.

The New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2007 Conference, held at NYU’s campus, was an exciting and stimulating convergence of ideas and technology in the world of digital music. The conference’s umbrella “Interfaces for Musical Expression” brings together creatives from all over the artistic and engineering world: from music runtime software (MaxMSP, PureData, ChucK to), designers for alternate controller hardware (M-Audio, Making Things, i-cubeX, Photon Wind Research), and educators for music and electronic arts (Columbia Computer Music Center, Harvestworks, NYU’s TischITP) and art galleries/shops (LEMURplex, Eyebeam), just to name a few.

Held in Manhattan, and hosted as a part of the larger New York Electronic Arts Festival, the event moved at full-tilt New York Speed. The days were jam-packed. Paper presentations starting at 9am, break for live technology demos at 1 (and a chance to sneak away for lunch), a keynote presentation and more papers at 2 until 6, when the evening’s concerts and performances begin, where many people’s programs and hardware were showcased in a artistic context.

These concerts included a multimedia theater concert, held right across the street on NYU campus. On Friday and Saturday were late-night club-shows held at Brooklyn’s Southpaw venue and the Galapagos space. These jams went until well after midnight.

The keynote speakers joked that this dense conference schedule made NIME an “athletic event,” which is not so far from the truth. We arrived Thursday morning. I was unable to attend every event, but I did see the majority of the paper presentations, live demos, and keynotes. I caught one of two club shows, and saw the last of three theater concerts. The whole week was a lot to take in, and it’s only fair if I try to sum up my experience of this special conference by describing the things I remember best. So, among each of the categories of the presenters, products, and performances which I managed to catch, I’ll share some words and images.

Presenters

Percussion instruments using realtime convolution: Physical controllers
Roberto Aimi
Again, I’ll admit my bias toward high-tech drum sounds. Roberto used vibration sensors (piezos) to send signals to excitable drum sounds. However, he’s turned the conventions of e-drums on its ear. Rather than turning vibration peaks into midi notes to trigger sounds, the piezo is treated as a continuous signal, used to excite convolution models of drum sounds. In short, this means getting natural brush excitation and cymbal wash that is simply impossible with midi sound triggering.

I was too busy being mouth-agape to get any images of his work. However, Roberto has lots of demo vids on his own website. Also, this work is right on track Adam Tindales’ “hybrid percussion,” of which I managed to get a video. (See Adam’s work in Presenters.)

The T-Stick: from Musical Interface to Musical Instrument
Joseph Malloch, Marcelo Wanderley
In the world of digital sound control, the connection between physical controller and the sound algorithms it controls can be somewhat arbitrary. Perry Cook expounded on this in his keynote address, saying that one shouldn’t imitate existing instruments, because “the best violin controller is already a violin.”

Joseph Malloch’s T-stick, also called the Tiger stick because of its many bands of pressure sensors, stood out from a lot of the other hands-on devices that one plugs into their computer. This was a padded stick with sensors for vibration, movement, even positional pressure and twisting. Its most important asset was its ability to respond to positional damping. This meant it could be played like a fret-able string and a damp-able chime, and some things in-between. As a tactile and vibrational sensor, the utter simplicity (and cost-effectiveness) of its design was quite impressive.

T-Stick in action:

Trimpin: 2nd Keynote Presenter
The German-born, Seattle-based sculptor and musical installation artist was at NIME to provide the conference keynote on musical sculpture and mechanical instrumentation. The themes of the morning session revolved around the philosophical, historical, and pedagogical issues surrounding new musical interfaces. Trimpin was alive and creating instrument-art well before the age of digital. His body of work often reflects many unorthodox adaptations of many of the foundations of “digital music” which many of us take for granted. For example, when he needed a sculpture-based random number generator for a musical device, he constructed an array of bobbing-birds to generate random streams of data.

Trimpin keynote, pt. I:

Trimpin keynote, pt. II [description from YouTube]:

he’s describing a sound/art installation he did. In it, an array of bobbing chickens created a random-number generator that would randomly select which of many records got played.

A man of great insight and humor, Trimpin’s art and ideas are a valuable link to the era of pre-digital machine-music.

Products and Demos

Multi-form Wind Instrument Controller
Photon Wind Resarch, Ltd.
Conference partner Photon Wind Research was showing off a really slick hardware controller package for wind, brass, and harmonica players. With its multiple embouchure-sensing mouthpiece, its array of pressure and distance sensors, and valve attachments, this unit seems to digitally interface just about anything you blow into. In the (hopefully) laptop-based near future of digital players, this unit could give MIDI saxes a run for their money. The hardware is small, looks tough, and has modular snap-in sensor modules (for sax or woodwind keys) and processor components (for wireless and other communication processing.)

Hybrid Method For Extended Percussive Effects
Adam R. Tindale
As a drummer, I have an admitted bias toward high-tech drum widgets. Adam’s table, with a piezo drum-trigger plugged into his laptop, immediately caught my eye. He explained to me that, rather than turning a trigger signal into discrete events, it could be harnessed as an expressive signal itself. As we talked, he told me to check out Roberto Aimi’s presentation later that day.

While Roberto’s work generates percussive sounds from convolving drum samples, Adam generated drum tones from resonance modeling: more “drum-synthesis” than sampling.

The hybrid digital drum in action:

Mobile Clavier: A New Music Keyboard for Flexible Key Transposition
Yoshinari Takegawa, Tsutomu Terada, Masahiko Tsukamoto
These gentlemen had given a paper presentation on their modified midi-keyboard on the first day of paper presentations. However, it wasn’t until they had their keyboard out for demo on Day 2 that I really understood how it worked. In a nutshell, the keyboard has extra black keys, and the orientation of the key scale can be reconfigured to fit the score as you play. So instead of having to lift your hands for chord changes, the keys transpose under your hands.

How does it work? They added extra black keys (in between E and F and B and C), and made these black keys light up according to the transposition, where some are “black keys” and some are “blank keys.” You use a foot-pedal to step through the transpositions, which are programmed as part of the score. You can use the 25-key controller to cover a significantly wider range of keys while barely moving your hands around.

Here’s a video demo:

Performances

It just isn’t “Musical Expression” without the performance aspect. I only caught a few of the concerts, and I enjoyed all. Among them:

Radio Wonderland
Joshua Fried, Friday Evening, club-concert at Southpaw
Friday Night, Southpaw bar and venue. This is the performance that many people were talking about. Josh literally kicked out improvised jams with computer, radio, steering wheel, and shoes. More specifically, he samples snippets of speech, melody or beats right off the radio from a boombox, loops them on the computer, using a MIDI-fied steering wheel for loop-editing, filter-sweeps, pitch-warping effects, and jams along by beating upon drum-trigger dress shoes. I hope some short videos help paint a better picture.

Radio Wonderland @ NIME, pt. I:

Pt. II:

Pt. III:

Pt. IV:

Desconcierto pt. 2
Gregory Kowalski, Andrea Pensado. Saturday Evening, theatre event
Compared to the some of the other multi-media performances of that and other nights, this performance was simple. Greg faced the main projection screen, wielding a flashlight at a camera, which fed data to Andrea, who processed the camera and her voice, back into mangled sounds and explosively colorful visuals. This provided an evocative and dynamic performance of painting with motion, and seeing and hearing the results. Between the grinding sounds and the explosive color animation, it was quite a violent, vandalistic piece.

A few seconds, as a sample:

I managed to capture only a few seconds on video. I had the delight of grabbing lunch with Greg and Andrea Sunday morning, on the way to LEMURplex, and I was surprised that the makers of such violent multi-media would have such a subdued sense of humor (…or perhaps, like me, they were just exhausted). I look forward to seeing more of them.

The LEMURbots
Built, showcased, and activated by Eric Singer at LEMURplex art space, Brooklyn
While not technically (human) presenter sin their own right, Eric Singer’s Leauge of Electronic Musical Urban Robots sure put on a show. It seems that all his robots are fed MIDI info from Max/MSP.

My favorite of Eric’s League is the Slime-a-tron. Here I am playing the slime, and getting Eric to divulge his secret formula. Ed.: We saw the Slime-a-tron at the CDM/Make night at Etsy Labs — see previous video and photos/report, especially if you like this sort of thing. -PK

And the GuitarBot. 4 guitar strings with computer-driven tangents. This contraption makes for some rather frantic glissando strumming.

Of course, Eric’s gallery ceiling was littered with the percussbots. Here they are, jamming out, along with his Xylobot:

See MVI 1987, 1988, 1991

Thanks, Patrick! We’re still welcoming other entries from the NIME conference — the thing was so huge that even this extensive report can’t begin to cover it — so if you’d like to share your own project, or one you saw, please do write us. -PK

If you’re traveling to town to attend NIME, to present at NIME, or if you happen to already be here in New York and are going to the NIME events or the concurrent New York Electronic Arts Festival (which seems itself to be perhaps a new creation in itself), let us know what you’re doing. Got a paper? Send us a link and some quick notes on what it’s about. Got a piece premiering? Tell us why it’s cool and link us to whatever documentation you’ve got. Taking photos? Send them to us via Flickr. Attending an event? Write up something, and we’ll run it. It’s one of those few times where I’m happy to post anything you send, provided you write a bit about it — so you’ve got instant publicity for yourself, in the process.

Too often, these huge conferences happen and only the people in attendance can keep up with what’s going on … and sometimes not even they can. I do appreciate your help, and will do my best to keep up here on CDM.

You can get in touch right here:

NIME/NYEAF Story Submission