Related link: http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=Uuo6JoTDkBzpp3yLzpJSxvJrvmUZJ6El&p…
There's been a disconnect for a long long time in the world of computer music-making - the human interface to the box. If you're a keyboard guy, MIDI is okay, but in the end, the kinds of expression you can get are still pretty limited.
Guitarists are used to all kinds of nuances (literally) at their fingertips - bending strings, palm muting, scratching strings, generating harmonics - but most of this is not translatable to the typical computer rig.
And anyway, both of these approaches are fine for entering music in the first place, but what about a human interface for mixing, or applying real-time parameters to a soft-synth, or screwing with EQ?
Typically, you've got a bunch of binary keys, and a not-very precise mouse to work with.
Nintendo has foist upon the world the Dimension videogame controller that works in thin air. Sensors track the motion of the hand-held device and gestures are fed back into the gaming system to control the action.
How long will it be before some enterprising hacker rips this sucker apart and hooks it up to a music machine? Not long, I'm hoping.
It's so much easier to get emotional expression when you play something analog, whether it's a bent guitar string, or a turnable dial, or a drumstick cracking a snare in different intensities. You need to have that connection to your body. Trying to approximate data changes that sketch emotion though a set of numbers, or a graphline on a computer interface is just so much harder, and typically not worth the effort.
How dumb is it to mix surround audio using a series of two dimensional, discrete controls?
I'd rather gently wave my hand, shape the sound, hear instant feedback, experiment - play the sound. Okay equipment hackers, I'm waiting.
What cool computer-music input devices have I missed?
Categories
Audio
Comments (2)
Read More Entries by Eric Bell.
Wind Controllers
Hey Eric. Glad to see you back in the blogging scene.
I was amazed at the expression Matt Traum squeezed out of a simple sawtooth wave with a wind controller. You can hear his performance at the end of Jim Aikin’s article on MIDI controllers, “Look, Ma—Hands!”:
I’d like to see more controllers with force feedback. —David Battino, O’Reilly Digital Audio site editor
The Radio Baton
If you are referring only to midi, there are midi guitars and midi wind controllers that can offer quite a bit of expressive control to a midi performance. On the other hand, a composer can achieve something quite different from computer music applications (like CSound and pd) that can not be created by a human. However, I do agree we are in the infancy of understanding how to capture human expression channel it through a digital audio system and make interesting music.
I'd like to add a note about our forefathers who have experimented and invented controllers specifically for music. There are many, of course, but Max Matthews should be highly recognized for his creation of the Radio Baton years ago. Google for it and more here: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2002-03-13/music.html
And, for those interested in current events on controllers and other nifty music gadgets, see CreateDigitalMusic.com. Specifically: http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=884&Itemid=44
brad