A force-sensitive surface for intimate control

2017

The musical possibilities of force sensors on touchscreen devices are explored, using Apple’s 3D Touch. Three functions are selected to be controlled by force: (a) excitation, (b) modification (aftertouch), and (c) mode change. Excitation starts a note, modification alters a playing note, and mode change controls binary on/off sound parameters. Four instruments are designed using different combinations of force-sound mapping strategies. ForceKlick is a single button instrument that plays consecutive notes within one touch by altering touch force, by detecting force down-peaks. The iPhone 6s/7 Ocarina features force-sensitive fingerholes that heightens octaves upon high force. Force Trombone continuously controls gain by force. Force Synth is a trigger pad array featuring all functions in one button: start note by touch, control vibrato with force, and toggle octaves upon abrupt burst of force. A simple user test suggests that adding force features to well-known instruments are more ...

This paper presents alternative ways to develop efficient force and position ("touch") sensors for new musical interfaces. We have studied three basic types of conductive materials-complex, composite, and porous-and evaluated the possibilities of using each to develop inexpensive and reliable touch sensors. We have built several sensor prototypes with varying electrical characteristics, shapes and sizes, and have evaluated them in terms of their response to applied forces and positions. Our goal is to provide digital musical instrument designers with straightfoward means to circumvent the limited offering of commercial sensors, which are restricted to a few technologies with predefined electrical characteristics, shapes and sizes.

Advances in Sensors …, 2011

Flexible sensors can find many useful applications detecting vibrations, contacts and impacts, air and liquid flows, pressures and compressions, displacements and motions. So they are utilized in the fields of robotic, medical, fitness, assistive technology, gaming, etc. But we want here point out the adoption of such sensors for realizing a data glove, capable to associate a sound to each single movement of every joints of the fingers of a human hand. In addiction force sensing resistors, applied to each fingertips, measure of the pressure applied on a surface when the hands mimic the gestures of a pianist.

2012

Tangible tabletop musical interfaces allowing for a collaborative real-time interaction in live music performances are one of the promising fields in NIMEs. At present, this kind of interfaces present at least some of the following characteristics that limit their musical use: latency in the interaction, and partial or complete lack of responsiveness to gestures such as tapping, scrubbing or pressing force. Our current research is exploring ways of improving the quality of interaction with this kind of interfaces, and in particular with the tangible tabletop instrument Reactable . In this paper we present a system based on a circular array of mechanically intercoupled force sensing resistors used to obtain a low-latency, affordable, and easily embeddable hardware system able to detect surface impacts and pressures on the tabletop perimeter. We also consider the option of completing this detected gestural information with the sound information coming from a contact microphone attache...

Springer Series on Touch and Haptic Systems, 2018

This chapter introduces to the concept of musical haptics, its scope, aims, challenges, as well as its relevance and impact for general haptics and humancomputer interaction. A brief summary of subsequent chapters is given. 1.1 Scope and Goals Musical haptics is an emerging interdisciplinary field investigating touch and proprioception in music scenarios from the perspectives of haptic engineering, humancomputer interaction (HCI), applied psychology, musical acoustics, aesthetics, and music performance. The goals of musical haptics research may be summarized as: (i) to understand the role of haptic interaction in music experience and instrumental performance, and (ii) to create new musical devices yielding meaningful haptic feedback. 1.2 Haptic Cues in Music Practice and Fruition Whenever an acoustic or electroacoustic musical instrument produces sound, that comes from its vibrating components (e.g., the reed and air column in a clarinet, or the strings and soundboard of a piano). While performing on such instruments, the haptic channel is involved in a complex action-perception loop: The player physically interacts with the instrument, on the one hand, to generate sound by injecting energy in

We present a textile pressure sensor matrix, designed to be used as a musical multi-touch input device. An evaluation of our design demonstrated that the sensors pressure response profile fits a logarithmic curve (R² = 0.98). The input delay of the sensor is 2.1ms. The average absolute error in one direction of the sensor was measured to be less than 10% of one of the matrix's strips (M = 1.8mm, SD = 1.37mm). We intend this technology to be easy to use and implement by experts and novices alike: We ensure the ease of use by providing a host application that tracks touch points and passes these on as OSC or MIDI messages. We make our design easy to implement by providing open source software and hardware and by choosing evaluation methods that use accessible tools, making quantitative comparisons between different branches of the design easy. We chose to work with textile to take advantage of its tactile properties and its malleability of form and to pay tribute to textile's rich cultural heritage.

Physical modeling allows realistic guitar synthesis incorporating many expressive dimensions commonly employed by guitarists, including pluck strength and location, plectrum type, hand damping and string bending. Often, when a physical model is used in performance, most control dimensions go unused when the interface fails to provide a way to intuitively control them. Techniques as foundational as strumming lack a natural analog on the MIDI keyboard, and few digital controllers provide the independent control of pitch, volume and timbre that even novice guitarists achieve. This paper presents a hybrid interface based on a touch-sensing keyboard which gives detailed expressive control over a physically-modeled guitar. Most dimensions of guitar technique are controllable polyphonically, some of them continuously within each note. Mappings are evaluated in a user study of keyboardists and guitarists, and the results demonstrate its playability by performers of both instruments. c 2012 Christian Heinrichs et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Computer Music Journal, 2014

This article presents alternative ways to produce efficient custom force or pressure sensors using cellulose paper filled with carbon-black pigments. We have produced several prototypes of force sensors to observe and compare their response with applied forces with those of commercial sensors, as well as those of other conductive materials. Advantages of custom sensors are presented through the description of various examples of music controllers using several kinds of paper touch sensors with a large variety of size and shape. Our goal is to provide digital musical instrument designers with new strategies to circumvent the limited offering of commercial sensors, and to propose ways to exploit these concepts through a dedicated Web site.

Proceedings of the …, 2011

The design space of fabric multitouch surface interaction is explored with emphasis on novel materials and construction techniques aimed towards reliable, repairable pressure sensing surfaces for musical applications.

2012

Abstract This paper describes the implementation of a haptic system for simulating the force-feedback of a centuries-old musical instrument, the carillon. A carillonneur's performance depends on a developing familiarity with force-feedback associated with a particular instrument. Force-feedback may vary not only across the range of the instrument but from one instrument to another. However, carillonneurs have restricted access to their instrument for rehearsal, unlike musicians who specialise in other instruments.