From Controller User to Instrument Designer: Teaching NIME in a Contemporary Music Context

Akito van Troyer

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

As commercial music technology and AI-assisted tools become increasingly accessible, more students enter higher education with substantial experience in digital music making. For NIME educators, this creates a new challenge: teaching physical prototyping to students who are already experienced users of digital music tools. While existing NIME pedagogy research primarily addresses novices, musicians familiar with traditional instruments, or engineering students, targeted approaches for students transitioning from proficiency with commercial tools to custom instrument design remain underexamined. This paper presents an undergraduate course specifically designed for this population, based on a full-cycle approach that integrates research, hardware prototyping, composition, public performance, and academic documentation. Analyzing outcomes from 16 students across 2 semesters, we observe that approximately half continued to iterate after the build phase, highlighting how interconnecting building, composing, and performing may foster thoughtful, extended engagement with instruments. The full-cycle structure was also within reach, with a strong majority of students completing all phases. We document the specific institutional conditions, student prerequisites, and resource dependencies under which this approach operates, thereby supporting educators in applying the proposed model in their own contexts.

Citation

Akito van Troyer. 2026. From Controller User to Instrument Designer: Teaching NIME in a Contemporary Music Context. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784250 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_83,
 abstract = {As commercial music technology and AI-assisted tools become increasingly accessible, more students enter higher education with substantial experience in digital music making. For NIME educators, this creates a new challenge: teaching physical prototyping to students who are already experienced users of digital music tools. While existing NIME pedagogy research primarily addresses novices, musicians familiar with traditional instruments, or engineering students, targeted approaches for students transitioning from proficiency with commercial tools to custom instrument design remain underexamined. This paper presents an undergraduate course specifically designed for this population, based on a full-cycle approach that integrates research, hardware prototyping, composition, public performance, and academic documentation. Analyzing outcomes from 16 students across 2 semesters, we observe that approximately half continued to iterate after the build phase, highlighting how interconnecting building, composing, and performing may foster thoughtful, extended engagement with instruments. The full-cycle structure was also within reach, with a strong majority of students completing all phases. We document the specific institutional conditions, student prerequisites, and resource dependencies under which this approach operates, thereby supporting educators in applying the proposed model in their own contexts.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {83},
 author = {Akito van Troyer},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784250},
 editor = {Benedict Gaster and João Tragtenberg and Anna Xambó and Tom Mitchell},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {10},
 pages = {699--708},
 title = {From Controller User to Instrument Designer: Teaching NIME in a Contemporary Music Context},
 track = {Paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_83.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}