The T-Stick

Participants: Joseph Malloch, Marcelo M. Wanderley (supervisor). In collaboration with D. Andrew Stewart (Digital Composition Studio, McGill).

Funding: McGill Digital Orchestra project, CIRMMT student awards (Malloch and Stewart), 2005-2006, 2006-2007.

Project Type: Master's thesis (M.A. in Music Technology)

Period: 2005-2007. Status: ongoing.

The T-Sticks are a family of gestural musical controllers designed and built by Joseph Malloch. The first prototype (a tenor) was completed in 2006, a second (alto) T-Stick was completed in early 2007. The hardware is presently in its third revision and approximately twenty more T-Sticks have been built, including several prototypes integrating haptic feedback and additional sensing modalities.

The T-Stick grew out of a collaborative project undertaken by Joseph Malloch and composition student D. Andrew Stewart, partially funded by a CIRMMT student award, and also out of collaboration with performers as part of the McGill Digital Orchestra project. The T-Stick has been performed and demonstrated many times in Canada, Brazil, Italy, and the USA.

The T-Stick can sense where and how much of it is touched, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing, and shaking. The output of the sensors is sent over USB to Max/MSP software, which processes the data and maps it to sound synthesis parameters.

The T-Stick is intended to be an “expert” musical interface: engaging to new users, allowing virtuosic playing, and “worth practicing” in that practice time results in increased skill.

• Original project proposal
• Project report and renewal application
• Presentation on the T-Stick

• Joseph Malloch and Marcelo M. Wanderley. "The T-Stick: From Musical Interface to Musical Instrument." In Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME07), New York City, USA, pp. 66-69.
• Joseph Malloch. "A Consort of Gestural Musical Controllers: Design, Construction, and Performance", M.A. thesis, McGill University. August 2007.
• D. Andrew Stewart. "Catching Air and the Superman" DMus Thesis, McGill University, January 2010.