This paper presents the development and evaluation of an interface for electronic musical instruments, designed for controlling monophonic synthesizers. The hand-held device allows the pitch selection with one hand, using four valve-like metal mechanics and three octave switches. Note events are triggered with a wooden excitation pad, operated with the second hand. The sensors are equipped with an advanced aftertouch, which enables expressive playing. In a user experiment, the controller is compared to a MIDI keyboard, regarding the reaction time and error rate in simple tasks. Results show no significant difference in the response time but a higher error rate for the novel interface. Outcome of this work is a list of necessary improvements and a plan for further experiments.

Authors: von Coler, Henrik; Treindl, Gabriel; Egermann, Hauke; Weinzierl, Stefan
Affiliations: Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany; University of York, York, UK(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 142 (May 2017) Paper Number: 9792
Publication Date: May 11, 2017 Import into BibTeX
Subject: Miscellaneous 1
Permalink: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18666

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