The WaveSaw : A Flexible Instrument for Direct Timbral Manipulation

Luke Dahl, Nathan Whetsell, and John Van Stoecker

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a musical controller – the WaveSaw – for directly manipulating a wavetable. The WaveSaw consists of a long, flexible metal strip with handles on either end, somewhat analogous to a saw. The user plays the WaveSaw by holding the handles and bending the metal strip. We use sensors to measure the strip’s curvature and reconstruct its shape as a wavetable stored in a computer. This provides a direct gestural mapping from the shape of the WaveSaw to the timbral characteristics of the computer-generated sound. Additional sensors provide control of pitch, amplitude, and other musical parameters.

Citation

Luke Dahl, Nathan Whetsell, and John Van Stoecker. 2007. The WaveSaw : A Flexible Instrument for Direct Timbral Manipulation. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1177079

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{Dahl2007,
 abstract = {In this paper, we describe a musical controller – the WaveSaw – for directly manipulating a wavetable. The WaveSaw consists of a long, flexible metal strip with handles on either end, somewhat analogous to a saw. The user plays the WaveSaw by holding the handles and bending the metal strip. We use sensors to measure the strip’s curvature and reconstruct its shape as a wavetable stored in a computer. This provides a direct gestural mapping from the shape of the WaveSaw to the timbral characteristics of the computer-generated sound. Additional sensors provide control of pitch, amplitude, and other musical parameters.},
 address = {New York City, NY, United States},
 author = {Dahl, Luke and Whetsell, Nathan and Van Stoecker, John},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1177079},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {Musical controller, Puredata, scanned synthesis, flex sensors. },
 pages = {270--272},
 title = {The WaveSaw : A Flexible Instrument for Direct Timbral Manipulation},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2007/nime2007_270.pdf},
 year = {2007}
}