Eduardo Reck Miranda (University of Plymouth) and Marcelo M. Wanderley (McGill University)
This textbook is an attempt at documenting developments related to novel gestural controllers and digital musical instruments with a view to informing researchers and musicians interested in designing new musical interfaces with control and interaction beyond the keyboard paradigm.
Our approach is to provide an overview of various developments on the design of novel gestural controllers, with various references to the literature on the subject. By following this approach, we hope to provide readers with a context to help them understand and compare the advantages and drawbacks of these interfaces, as well as tips to their design.
SensorWiki is a review of the main types of sensing technologies used in musical applications.
The project was started in 2004 by Prof. Marcelo M. Wanderley and several graduate students at the Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory, at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The main students collaborating in this project include: Paul Kosek, Mark Zadel, Elliot Sinyor, David Birnbaum, Joseph Malloch, Mark Marshall, Avrum Hollinger, Stephen Sinclair, Simon de Leon and Alexander Refsum Jensenius.
Since November 2005, this wiki has been available to the community in general.
Garth Paine maintains a blog about new instruments, sensors, electroacoustics and his own projects.
The Synth Zone provides a comprehensive list of MIDI Controllers.
The Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory (IDMIL) deals with projects related to the topic of human-computer interaction, design of musical instruments and interfaces for musical expression, movement data collection and analysis, sensor development, and gestural control.
It is affiliated with the Music Technology Area of the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada and directed by Prof. Marcelo M. Wanderley.
A list of alternative MIDI controllers from Make: a magazine that “celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will”.
A list of alternate MIDI controllers from Deviant Synth.
“Alternate MIDI controllers that are reasonably priced are very difficult to find. The piano-keyboard paradigm has such a death grip on electronic synthesis, it’s embarrassing. This is electronics; the control system is arbitrary and can take any form. But you can’t buy “any form”.
I am always looking for an easier gadget to play riffs on. Having not been tortured with piano lessons in childhood, my preference is for something new.”
Deviant Synth admin.
The entries for the Futuristic Music Design Challenge held in April 2008 are listed at create digital music.
The projects include the Bubblegum Sequencer, The Box custom hardware with colored lights + Reaktor ensemble, the surface-temperature tangible interface table Weather Report, the strange polygonal Kromatron wireless instrumental interface, the Thimbletron gloves-as-samplers with lab coated performers project, the bicycle wheel and analog tape Looping Pedal, the computer-powered musical saw WaveSaw, the 28-string just-intoned microtonal casmolyra, the turntablist custom software ammoBox and the GrooveStep DS pattern maker.
EMI ))) (Experimental Music Instruments) is a group of engineers, composers and sound artist emitting experimental particles through strange artefacts called instruments.
The site also includes a number of copyleft circuits designed by EMI ))).