Chapter 9 - Controllers: new creative possibilities in performance

Summary

New performance scenarios

Playing traditional musical instruments presents us with a straightforward model of performance: some effort is invested in plucking, hitting, rubbing or blowing and some sound is produced with more or less control. That is: physical effort causes and affects sound, and so, musical output. Computer music seems to have destroyed this model. Press a button – which takes minimum effort – and you can hear a nuclear explosion, or whale-song, or a landslide or the interior perspective of a 747 airplane! Minimal effort can produce maximal sound, or so it seems. For this reason alone, we can safely say that digital music has brought us unique models of musical performance. In this chapter we discuss the topic of controllers for performing with computer music based instruments.

The appearance of digital musical instruments, like keyboard synthesisers, drum machines, customised electronic instruments or even music performance software (for DJing or manipulating sound files on stage) has required us to develop new skills. And so, in musical performance, we often find ourselves wanting to do one or more of the following:

• Triggering ready-made audio files (samples or loops);

• Creating sounds through synthesis and manipulating them on-the-fly;

• Processing or extending electrically or mechanically produced sound (made by traditional musical instruments, including electric guitars, pianos and basses or anything that produces an interesting sound when beaten, rubbed or blown).

The first two of these options remain quite independent from traditional instrumental playing skills. To perform music with a game controller or trigger samples by hand gestures aimed at a video camera linked to a computer it is not necessary to have any real musical instrument skills, just to be musical. The third option is more dependent on traditional skills, because it may involve having to play an instrument or coaxing sound out of an object with the same kind of playing skills you would use, say, as a percussionist. But then, depending on how involved the processing of sound is, the player may be limited to very simple actions. You can easily (and perhaps often) find yourself in a performance scenario where you are doing all of the above. For this reason alone, musical performance and notions of virtuosity in playing are being redefined. This chapter, then, provides an introduction to new instruments or control devices for music generated or aided by computer music software.