Music and Motion

This paper presents a new musical interface design, with which any hard, flat surface can become a musical controller. Furthermore, dynamic graphics are produced simultaneously by the interface to provide the user with a visual representation of the sound. Using an equally spaced grid of piezos to capture a sound source, the difference between the arrivals of the sound to each piezos can be calculated in order to find the location of the sound source. Touching anywhere inside this area generates a sound or \"musical note\" which varies according to both the co-ordinates and the audio features of the gesture. This system allows for complex musical interactions and can be applied as a musical keyboard, synthesizer, sequencer, or a sampler. The user can adjust the software to manipulate the sounds that are created, receive visual feedback from their gestures, and calibrate the system to a surface of any size or material, allowing each surface to be transformed into a creative musical environment. With meaningful correlation and mapping between the music and visualisation, the interface is designed to enrich multimodal experiences and provide increased accessibility.