April 8th, 2009
Top 5 futuristic music interfaces and instruments
You may recently have heard about the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, or MoPhO, a six person orchestra that uses iPhones to play improvisational pieces and chamber music. The group’s Ocarina app has been downloaded 600,000 times, which means that many people now have a 12,000-year-old clay wind instrument at their fingertips.
The creation and control of music is already democratized through cheap production software. Now, gesture-based computing is opening the door further with a new breed of music applications available on mainstream devices such as the iPhone and Wii.
Still, there are also intriguing music controllers and interfaces on the market that are relatively obscure. I contacted Kurt Biederwolf, who holds the Music Synthesis chair at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, for his take on the state of music technology and key examples.
“So far, traditional MIDI interfaces have been limited to traditional instrument groups: keyboard, percussion, wind, string, etc. But now we’re seeing a crop of really fresh alternatives,” said Biederwolf. “We are seeing the acceptance of a new type of music aesthetic. Artists are approaching sound in a gestural way with an evocative quality.”
In no particular order, here are the coolest instruments, controllers and interfaces that are available on the market:
Designed by staunch environmentalists Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, the simple device has a reconfigurable grid of backlit buttons that can be programmed to trigger a variety of audio and video functions or scripts. It connects to a computer and the interaction between the keys and lights is determined by the application running. The minimal device has no hard-wired functionality, but is rather an open ended performance interface designed for customization. It uses the Open Sound Control protocol.
“All of these devices can use MIDI commands, but there is a newer protocol called Open Sound Control (OSC) which is essentially a high-res version of MIDI that is more flexible and offers no preconceived notion of what it is supposed to be for. It’s for deep shaping of audio rather than just triggering musical notes and basic controller events,” said Biederwolf. (Video)
The Lemur, from Jazzmutant, has a multi-touch-sensitive surface that can track multiple fingers simultaneously. The controller allows for users to design and assemble the interfaces themselves with sets of generic control objects such as faders, switches, and pads. Biederwolf explains: “With the Lemur, you can build your own interface on the touch screen and create anything you might need to interact with software in a performance setting or in compositional work.”
“There’s a bit of emulated physics involved. For example, you can create a ball that will follow the movement of your finger on the screen, and its movement can be set to affect a number of sonic and/or visual parameters. You can even create one for each finger and “throw” them around so that as they move about or bounce off the screen’s boundaries they affect multiple sounds and effects. You even have control over the amount of friction as they travel,” he said. (Video)
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Christopher Jablonski is a freelance technology writer. Previously, he was the manager of marketing editorial at CBS Interactive, delivering client solutions on BNET, ZDNet, and TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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