Musical Vibrotactile Feedback - David M Birnbaum Master Thesis

Musical Vibrotactile Feeback - David M. Birnbaum

David M. Birnbaum's Masters Thesis at McGill University

Especially interesting in this thesis is chapter 2, which presents a very convincing argument as to why tactile interaction and feedback is so important in musical interactions citing many disciplines from philosophy to physiology, as well as chapter 3, which presents a physiological overview of the sense of touch in humans and identifies key aspects of the sense with regards to a DMI. Chapters 4 and 5 present the software and hardware (respectively )implementations of 2 flute-like DMIs (the former being a prototype for the latter) which utilize a fairly sophisticated approach to vibrotactile feedback based on the findings presented in chapter 3.

An interesting point is also made in section 1.4 - Methodology regarding creating DMIs with the intention of playing a more traditional repertoire of music, rather than creating modern experimental sound scape type pieces.

After naming a number of instruments born from technological advancements (acoustic and electronic) which were originally conceived to perform existing roles/functions/pieces in a new way but after some time contributed directly to the innovation of new styles and musical roles Birnbaum suggests that:

"Working within known musical styles may be more likely to generate instruments that invigorate widespread creative movements than design theories that seek to subsume the "expressive" characteristics of acoustic instruments with digital technology. Rather than starting with the goal of creating a new kind of music, new instrument design can reasonably be guided by enabling existing music to be played in a new way. Instead of limiting expressive potential, this approach may even enhance it."

It seems to me to be a good suggestion that we use the high expressive potential of existing acoustic instruments as a bench mark for our new DMIs. Not in an attempt to match or better it but simply to serve as a reference by which we could say if our approach to DMI design was producing new instruments which were at least heading in the direction of expressive capability. DMIs are a relatively new concept and it seems logical to start at the beginning and see if we can produce instruments we can judge based on our existing concept of a "good" instrument given existing repertoires and continue from there, rather than starting by reinventing the wheel. (NOTE I'm sure that a similar opinion was expressed in one of these papers I've posted recently. Would be worth looking that up - it was: Problems and prospects for intimate and satisfying sensor-based control of computer sound by Mathew Wright)

Potentially interesting is the related project page at IDMIL (Input Devices and Music Interaction laboratory) .org which presents an over view of the Touchflute and the Breakflute presented in the thesis. See the article - Touch Flute: Exploring roles of vibrotactile feedback in music performance - referenced at the bottom of the page.