The KeyWI: An Expressive and Accessible Electronic Wind Instrument

Matthew Caren, Romain Michon, and Matthew Wright

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

This paper presents the KeyWI, an electronic wind instrument design based on the melodica that both improves upon limitations in current systems and is general and powerful enough to support a variety of applications. Four opportunities for growth are identified in current electronic wind instrument systems, which then are used as focuses in the development and evaluation of the instrument. The instrument features a breath pressure sensor with a large dynamic range, a keyboard that allows for polyphonic pitch selection, and a completely integrated construction. Sound synthesis is performed with Faust code compiled to the Bela Mini, which offers low-latency audio and a simple yet powerful development workflow. In order to be as accessible and versatile as possible, the hardware and software is entirely open-source, and fabrication requires only common maker tools.

Citation:

Matthew Caren, Romain Michon, and Matthew Wright. 2020. The KeyWI: An Expressive and Accessible Electronic Wind Instrument. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4813218

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{NIME20_118,
 abstract = {This paper presents the KeyWI, an electronic wind instrument design based on the melodica that both improves upon limitations in current systems and is general and powerful enough to support a variety of applications. Four opportunities for growth are identified in current electronic wind instrument systems, which then are used as focuses in the development and evaluation of the instrument. The instrument features a breath pressure sensor with a large dynamic range, a keyboard that allows for polyphonic pitch selection, and a completely integrated construction. Sound synthesis is performed with Faust code compiled to the Bela Mini, which offers low-latency audio and a simple yet powerful development workflow. In order to be as accessible and versatile as possible, the hardware and software is entirely open-source, and fabrication requires only common maker tools.},
 address = {Birmingham, UK},
 author = {Caren, Matthew and Michon, Romain and Wright, Matthew},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.4813218},
 editor = {Romain Michon and Franziska Schroeder},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {July},
 pages = {605--608},
 publisher = {Birmingham City University},
 title = {The KeyWI: An Expressive and Accessible Electronic Wind Instrument},
 url = {https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2020/nime2020_paper118.pdf},
 year = {2020}
}