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}
}