THE RULERS
Project Description
The Rulers is a self-contained musical performance system called a digital musical instrument [1]. It includes a software component to produce music and a physical interface to manipulate it. Originally designed in 2004 as part of CCRMA's Summer music technology seminar, it is currently undergoing an overhaul so that it is suitable to be played in McGill's Digital Orchestra.
The instrument was designed to evoke the gesture of plucking or striking a ruler that is fixed at one end. Because the seven aluminum “tines” are of various lengths, each tine oscillates for a different amount of time when plucked. This provides an element of visual and passive haptic feedback to the player. The design minimizes the acoustic component of the oscillations and vibrations of the tines. While they oscillate silently, their motion is sensed by infrared reflect sensors to control a computer-based synthesizer. Output amplitude is determined by the amplitude of the tine’s oscillation, allowing control over the amplitude of initial excitation and damping — characteristics that classify it as an instrument that outputs musical events with a non-excited middle [2].
Check back soon for an updated project description as the instrument approaches completion.
References
1. M. M. Wanderley and P. Depalle, “Gestural control of sound synthesis,” Proc. IEEE, Spec. Issue on Eng. and Music – Supervisory Control and Auditory Communication, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 632–644, 2004.
2. D. Levitin, S. McAdams, and R. Adams, “Control parameters for musical instruments: A foundation for new mappings of gesture to sound,” Organized Sound, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 171-189, 2002.
More Information
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