Remutualizing the Musical Instrument - Perry Cook

Remutualizing the Musical Instrument: Co-design of Synthesis Algorithms and Controllers - Perry Cook (third result)

Particularly interesting in this article is a presentation of a brief history of the concept of separating control interface from sound production mechanism (going back to the first organs) along with a proposition of reasons why this has lead to lack of intimacy:


" The major flaw in the controller/synthesizer paradigm is
the loss of intimacy between human player and instrument.
I pose three primary reasons (lacks) for this intimacy loss:
• Lack of haptic feedback from the controller/instrument to
the player. Haptic (combined senses of touch, including
skin vibration and pressure, and the muscle senses of
motion, position, and force) feedback has been increasingly
addressed in musical interface research projects.
Commercially, the most successful haptic systems are electronic
keyboards that copy (passively, through weights and
levers) the feel of piano keys.
• Lack of fidelity in the connections from the controller/
sensor to the generator, primarily delays and distortions
in response to gestures. “Distortion” here refers to any
response that does not meet some usual, learnable, or
repeatable expectation.
• Lack of any sense that sound comes from the instrument
(the controller) itself. More generally, this is a subset of a
larger feeling that no meaningful physics goes on in the
controller. Trends toward larger concert venues, greater
amplification, and larger loudspeakers have consistently
worked to diminish the importance of the actual acoustical
instrument sound. The aesthetic influence of this has
been great, most importantly for the player and composer,
and shows profoundly in the musical results (Trueman,
1999). "

Finally a presentation of some DMIs which have been designed in an attempt to remedy these issues. Notably these instruments have followed a process where the synthesis and controller designs have been created in parallel with each other and have informed each other throughout. Included is the previously seen BoSSA system, some hand percussion physical model controllers and the SqueezeVoxen, a series of accordian-inspired instruments (Bart, Lisa, Maggie and Santa's Little Helper) which seem to have designed as a family, like the T-Sticks.

Of particular interest is the Nukulele and the Nukulele'elua which bear striking resembelence to some of the very first design ideas I had for my DMI.