Towards an Interface for Music Mixing based on Smart Tangibles and Multitouch

Steven Gelineck, Dan Overholt, Morten Büchert, and Jesper Andersen

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

• Year: 2013
• Location: Daejeon, Republic of Korea
• Pages: 180–185
• Keywords: music mixing, tangibles, smart objects, multi-touch, control surface, graspables, physical-digital interface, tangible user interface, wireless sensing, sketching in hardware
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1178532 (Link to paper)
• PDF link

Abstract:

This paper presents the continuous work towards the development of an interface for music mixing targeted towards expert sound technicians and producers. The mixing interface uses a stage metaphor mapping scheme where audio channels arerepresented as digital widgets on a 2D surface. These can be controlled bymulti touch or by smart tangibles, which are tangible blocks with embedded sensors. The smart tangibles developed for this interface are able to sense howthey are grasped by the user. The paper presents the design of the mixing interface including the smart tangible as well as a preliminary user study involving a hands-on focus group session where 5 different control technologiesare contrasted and discussed. Preliminary findings suggest that smart tangibles were preferred, but that an optimal interface would include a combination of touch, smart tangibles and an extra function control tangible for extending the functionality of the smart tangibles. Finally, the interface should incorporate both an edit and mix mode---the latter displaying very limited visual feedback in order to force users to focus their attention to listening instead of the interface.

Citation:

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Gelineck2013,
 abstract = {This paper presents the continuous work towards the development of an interface for music mixing targeted towards expert sound technicians and producers. The mixing interface uses a stage metaphor mapping scheme where audio channels arerepresented as digital widgets on a 2D surface. These can be controlled bymulti touch or by smart tangibles, which are tangible blocks with embedded sensors. The smart tangibles developed for this interface are able to sense howthey are grasped by the user. The paper presents the design of the mixing interface including the smart tangible as well as a preliminary user study involving a hands-on focus group session where 5 different control technologiesare contrasted and discussed. Preliminary findings suggest that smart tangibles were preferred, but that an optimal interface would include a combination of touch, smart tangibles and an extra function control tangible for extending the functionality of the smart tangibles. Finally, the interface should incorporate both an edit and mix mode---the latter displaying very limited visual feedback in order to force users to focus their attention to listening instead of the interface.},
 address = {Daejeon, Republic of Korea},
 author = {Steven Gelineck and Dan Overholt and Morten B{\''u}chert and Jesper Andersen},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1178532},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {music mixing, tangibles, smart objects, multi-touch, control surface, graspables, physical-digital interface, tangible user interface, wireless sensing, sketching in hardware},
 month = {May},
 pages = {180--185},
 publisher = {Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST},
 title = {Towards an Interface for Music Mixing based on Smart Tangibles and Multitouch},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2013/nime2013_206.pdf},
 year = {2013}
}