MusicTech

Tod Machover’s article Shaping Minds Musically is an interesting read, summarising much of the work on hyperinstruments that have happened at the MIT Media Lab during the last ten years. The main point he is trying to make, is that music should be active rather than passive. This comes from the observation that most people’s involvement with music is from a reception side rather than from production. There is more music than ever in the air, but fewer of us actually play music, sing music, or create our own music....

The Interactive Soundscapes project is about creating soundscapes intuitively. Samples can be loaded, simple effects can be added, and then the sounds can be mixed in the soundfield. Not as advanced as Tapestrea, but it seems to work very elegantly.

Students in musicology, music cognition and technology should consider ISSSM 2007: Following on the success of the first international summer school in systematic musicology (ISSSM 2006), the summer school will be held for the second time at IPEM, the research centre of the Department of Musicology of Ghent University (Belgium). This year courses will focus on current topics in the research field such as embodied music cognition, music information retrieval and music and interactive media....

The AudioPint project at MIT aims at creating a computer based system that is as portable and stable as hardware gear: Consider a system that is small, lightweight, tough, able to be powered up, plugged in, and it used immediately - but with sounds that can be controlled by any computer-compatible input device, opening wide the space of expressive possibilities. Devices supported include midi controllers, joysticks, mice, touchpads, or any other custom controller that can connect to a computer!...

Jon Olav Eikenes has posted information about his diploma project on control of sound spatialisation at the department of interaction design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. As a co-adviser I think it is great to see an interdisciplinary project working so well. I hope we can get more of this type of collaborative projects in the future.

Came across the web site of MIT course MAS.960 Principles of Electronic Music Controllers, which has some interesting references and links tovarious resources on NIME development. It is also worth checking out many of the student projects.