Music

Workshop on the T-Stick @CIRMMT

The T-Stick DMI

Composer/instrumentalist D. Andrew Stewart performing the soprano T-Stick.

On Saturday November 16, 2019, CIRMMT hosted a workshop on the T-Stick digital musical instrument. The workshop included presentations by myself, composer D. Andrew Stewart (the other originator of the T-Stick), Eduardo Meneses, Takuto Fukuda, Mathias Bredholt, and Mathias Kirkegaard. Presentations covered the history, design, and development of the instrument; mapping and performance practice; and current advances including embedding libmapper and algorithms for high-level gestural descriptors in the instrument firmware and the addition of programmable force-feedback hardware to the physical structure of the DMI.

The workshop also served to launch the 2019 T-Stick Creation Project, a new  program supporting composition for the T-Stick which will culminate in a concert performance in February 2020.

This workshop explores the development of compositional and performance practices for the T-Sticks—a family of gestural musical controllers designed to sense performer interactions such as touching, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing, and shaking. Joseph Malloch—the T-Stick designer (Dalhousie University)—and D. Andrew Stewart—composer/T-Stick instrumentalist (University of Lethbridge)—will discuss the instrument design and compositional possibilities for the T-Sticks, followed by a hands-on workshop for the practical use of the T-Stick, including how to set up, perform and notate. Finally, the workshop will include a report on the CIRMMT Student Award project, Between design, composition, and performance: expanding and embedding a high-level gesture vocabulary for the T-Stick, by Eduardo Meneses and Takuto Fukuda.

Digital Orchestra Toolbox featured on Cycling74.com

Content You Need: Digital Orchestra Toolboxdot_icon

We tend to focus a lot on new Max objects in the Package Manager, but with Max there are many ways to solve problems without compiling externals. This Package Manager release brings a collection of highly practical Max abstractions from McGill University’s IDMIL, designed with music and digital orchestra projects in mind. Looking at this package, all of the well-organized abstractions are clearly the result of real-world patching that we can all learn a few tricks from.

The Digital Orchestra Toolbox is now available in the Max Package Manager

The Routledge Companion to Embodied Music Interaction

embodied_music_interaction The Routledge Companion to Embodied Music Interaction captures a new paradigm in the study of music interaction, as a wave of recent research focuses on the role of the human body in musical experiences. This volume brings together a broad collection of work that explores all aspects of this new approach to understanding how we interact with music, addressing the issues that have roused the curiosities of scientists for ages: to understand the complex and multi-faceted way in which music manifests itself not just as sound but also as a variety of cultural styles, not just as experience but also as awareness of that experience.
With contributions from an interdisciplinary and international array of scholars, including both empirical and theoretical perspectives, the Companion explores an equally impressive array of topics, including:

  • Dynamical music interaction theories and concepts
  • Expressive gestural interaction
  • Social music interaction
  • Sociological and anthropological approaches
  • Empowering health and well-being
  • Modeling music interaction
  • Music-based interaction technologies and applications

This book is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand human interaction with music from an embodied perspective.

Along with many other interesting chapters, the volume includes a contribution I co-wrote with Marcelo Wanderley titled Embodied Cognition and Digital Musical Instruments: Design and Performance.

3DMIN Symposium

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Last week I was back in Berlin for an exhibition, concert and international symposium on Design, Development, and Dissemination of New Musical Instruments (3DMIN). The symposium was titled “Musical Instruments in the 21st Century — Identities, Configurations, Practices” and included a range of interesting speakers from the 3DMIN project itself and invitees like myself. The other speakers included: