Participants: Joseph Malloch, D. Andrew Stewart, Marcelo M. Wanderley
Time period: 2005–present
The T-Sticks are a family of gestural musical controllers. The first prototype (a tenor) was completed in 2006, a second (alto) T-Stick was completed in early 2007. The hardware is presently in its third revision and approximately twenty more T-Sticks have been built, including several prototypes integrating haptic feedback and additional sensing modalities.
The T-Stick grew out of a collaborative project undertaken by Joseph Malloch and composer D. Andrew Stewart, partially funded by a CIRMMT student award, and also out of collaboration with performers as part of the McGill Digital Orchestra project. The T-Stick has been performed and demonstrated many times internationally, including appearances in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, and the USA.
The T-Stick can sense where and how much of it is touched, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing, and shaking. The output of the sensors is sent over USB to Max/MSP software, which processes the data and maps it to sound synthesis parameters.
The T-Stick is intended to be an “expert” musical interface: engaging to new users, allowing virtuosic playing, and “worth practicing” in that practice time results in increased skill.
Media:
Related Pages:
Related Publications:
Joseph Malloch. “A Framework and Tools for Mapping of Digital Musical Instruments”. Ph.D. thesis, Music Technology, McGill University, Montréal, 2013.
D. Andrew Stewart and Joseph Malloch. “Everybody to the power of one, for soprano T-Stick”. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA 2010). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 3093–3096, 2010.
D. Andrew Stewart. “Catching Air and the Superman” D.Mus. Thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2010.
Xenia Pestova, Erika Donald, Heather Hindman, Joseph Malloch, Mark T. Marshall, Fernando Rocha, Stechen Sinclair, D. Andrew Stewart, Marcelo M. Wanderley, and Sean Ferguson. “The CIRMMT/McGill Digital Orchestra Project”. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC09), pp. 295–298, Montreal, Qc., Canada, 2009.
Joseph Malloch and Marcelo M. Wanderley. “The T-Stick: From Musical Interface to Musical Instrument.” In Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME07), New York City, USA, pp. 66–69, 2007.
Joseph Malloch. “A Consort of Gestural Musical Controllers: Design, Construction, and Performance”, M.A. thesis, McGill University, 2007.
Unpublished Reports:
Joseph Malloch and D. Andrew Stewart. Project report and renewal application, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), 2006.
Joseph Malloch and D. Andrew Stewart. “Project Proposal: Creation of a New Digital Instrument”, Joint Interdisciplinary Research Project Proposal, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), 2005.
Partial list of Public Appearances:
| Date | Type | Event | Location |
| 2006/04 | concert | seminar concert | Montreal, Canada |
| 2006/11 | recital | Fernando Rocha DMus lecture recital | Montreal, Canada |
| 2007/06 | presentation | New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference | New York, USA |
| 2007/09 | demonstrations | Wired Nextfest | Low Angeles, USA |
| 2008/02 | demonstrations | Innovaction | Udine, Italy |
| 2008/03 | concert | MusiMars Festival | Montreal, Canada |
| 2008/04 | concert | Music+Technology Incubator | Montreal, Canada |
| 2008/07 | concert, workshop | Sound Symposium | St. John’s, Canada |
| 2008/09 | concert | Le Vivier relaunch | Montreal, Canada |
| 2008/10 | concerts | Duo pour un violoncelle et un danseur | Montreal, Canada |
| 2009/02 | competition | Guthman competition | Atlanta, USA |
| 2009/07 | workshop | SMC Summer School, used T-Stick to control robotic Gamelan | Porto, Portugal |
| 2009/08 | concert | International Computer Music Conference | Montreal, Canada |
| 2009/10 | workshop | Society for Music Theory, workshop on listening through time | Montreal, Canada |
| 2009/12 | concert | live@CIRMMT | Montreal, Canada |
| 2010/04 | concert | ACM CHI Conference | Atlanta, USA |
| 2010/04 | concert | Viagem, 5 T-Sticks played by blind performers | Porto, Portugal |
| 2010/07 | workshops | launch of 2010 T-Stick Composition Workshops | Montreal, Canada |
| 2010/08 | talk, performance | Expansive Spirits, Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium | Toronto, Canada |
| 2010/12 | talk | Electronic Music Foundation | New York, USA |
| 2011/02 | concert | Ghost in the Machine Conference | Montreal, Canada |
| 2011/03 | concert | Concerto for T-Stick and two laptop orchestras, Concordia Laptop Orchestra and Cybernetic Orchestra | Montreal, Canada |
| 2011/04 | concert | Open Ears Festival | Kitchener, Canada |
| 2011/05 | concert | Issue Project Room | New York, USA |
| 2011/05 | concert | New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| 2011/06 | concerts | Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais | Belo Horizonte, Brazil |
| 2011/06 | concert | Sforzando Late Night Concert, Electroacoustic Music Studies Network | New York, USA |
| 2011/11 | concert | Sea of Sound Festival | Edmonton, Canada |
| 2012/03 | concert | Experimental Music from Brazil and Beyond | Lethbridge, Canada |
| 2012/06 | concert | Concierto, Andrew Stewart y Ensemble 3 | Mexico |
| 2012/09 | concert | Moving Sound, Electroacoustic works by D. Andrew Stewart and Rolf Boon | Lethbridge, Canada |
| 2012/11 | concert | 24 Frames, Improvisation with Tim Brady | Lethbridge, Canada |
| 2013/03 | concert | From Up There and Down, New Works Calgary | Calgary, Canada |
| 2013/05 | concert | New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference | Daejeon, South Korea |
| 2013/09 | concert | Percussive Arts Society International Convention | Indianapolis, USA |
Joseph Malloch 