When is a Guitar not a Guitar? Cultural Form, Input Modality and Expertise

Jacob Harrison, Robert H Jack, Fabio Morreale, and Andrew P. McPherson

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

The design of traditional musical instruments is a process of incremental refinement over many centuries of innovation. Conversely, digital musical instruments (DMIs), being unconstrained by requirements of efficient acoustic sound production and ergonomics, can take on forms which are more abstract in their relation to the mechanism of control and sound production. In this paper we consider the case of designing DMIs for use in existing musical cultures, and pose questions around the social and technical acceptability of certain design choices relating to global physical form and input modality (sensing strategy and the input gestures that it affords). We designed four guitar-derivative DMIs designed to be suitable to perform a strummed harmonic accompaniment to a folk tune. Each instrument possessed varying degrees of `guitar-likeness', based either on the form and aesthetics of the guitar or the specific mode of interaction. We conducted a study where both non-musicians and guitarists played two versions of the instruments and completed musical tasks with each instrument. The results of this study highlight the complex interaction between global form and input modality when designing for existing musical cultures.

Citation:

Jacob Harrison, Robert H Jack, Fabio Morreale, and Andrew P. McPherson. 2018. When is a Guitar not a Guitar? Cultural Form, Input Modality and Expertise. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1302589

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Harrison2018,
 abstract = {The design of traditional musical instruments is a process of incremental refinement over many centuries of innovation. Conversely, digital musical instruments (DMIs), being unconstrained by requirements of efficient acoustic sound production and ergonomics, can take on forms which are more abstract in their relation to the mechanism of control and sound production. In this paper we consider the case of designing DMIs for use in existing musical cultures, and pose questions around the social and technical acceptability of certain design choices relating to global physical form and input modality (sensing strategy and the input gestures that it affords). We designed four guitar-derivative DMIs designed to be suitable to perform a strummed harmonic accompaniment to a folk tune. Each instrument possessed varying degrees of `guitar-likeness', based either on the form and aesthetics of the guitar or the specific mode of interaction. We conducted a study where both non-musicians and guitarists played two versions of the instruments and completed musical tasks with each instrument. The results of this study highlight the complex interaction between global form and input modality when designing for existing musical cultures.},
 address = {Blacksburg, Virginia, USA},
 author = {Jacob Harrison and Robert H Jack and Fabio Morreale and Andrew P. McPherson},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1302589},
 editor = {Luke Dahl, Douglas Bowman, Thomas Martin},
 isbn = {978-1-949373-99-8},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 pages = {299--304},
 publisher = {Virginia Tech},
 title = {When is a Guitar not a Guitar? Cultural Form, Input Modality and Expertise},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2018/nime2018_paper0063.pdf},
 year = {2018}
}