[Dixielandjazz] Where is the music going?

[Steve barbone]

Oh my, what's next?

Shawn Greenlee has already played a tenori-on, at a club in Providence, R.I.
The instrument(?) plays both light and sound. It enables those who are not
musicians to play music.

Hmmmm. Don't we get enough of that already? From legions of washboard
players? Just kidding guys, but then, you would be naturals for the
tenori-on. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve (Nerds Rule) Barbone

Weird Noises That Blossom Into Symphonies (OR JAZZ? - my note)

NY TIMES - By TIM GNATEK - January 25, 2006

AN instrument being developed by Yamaha looks entirely different from the
keyboards, saxophones, guitars and other devices produced by the world's
largest musical manufacturer. In fact, it looks more like a board game than
something that makes songs.

Shawn Greenlee with his musical tablet at a club in Providence, R.I.

The tenori-on, a prototype from Yamaha's product design laboratory, produces
computer music through a grid of 256 illuminating buttons on a
brushed-aluminum tablet. By pressing buttons along rows and columns, users
can program melodies like plotting notes on a scale. When the tunes are
looped and layered, the machine creates a symphony of synthesis, musical
blips and bleeps matched with light patterns that bounce and ripple across
the device. 

"It's a digital instrument in a new form," said Toshio Iwai, a 43-year-old
interactive artist and University of Tokyo professor who created the device.
"It plays light as well as sound."

But will it play with traditionalists, who resist newfangled ways of playing
music?

Efforts like Mr. Iwai's try to bring the future to the present, but
purveyors of futuristic instruments know that acceptance by traditionalists
is always far from certain. The tenori-on is a case in point. Yamaha
officials do not know when they will release it, nor are they quick to guess
its reception. "It isn't easy to promote new ways of playing instruments to
the general public," said Misao Tanaka, a Yamaha spokesman.

Mr. Tanaka speaks from experience; Yamaha's last experiment in radical
interface design, the miburi, never gained wide appeal. Introduced in the
mid-1990's, the miburi, a wearable synthesizer consisting of hand grips and
a sensor-laden suit, activated sounds when pressed, waved or stomped,
turning performances into a sonic dance. It never left the Japanese market.

The tenori-on may appeal to a wider audience because it is portable and
tailored to those without musical training.

"The aim of this project is to create a musical instrument for
nonmusicians," Mr. Iwai said. "I'm not a musician, but I had a dream to play
an instrument on the stage."

Another instrument from Mr. Iwai comes disguised as a video game.
Electroplankton, a Nintendo DS title released this month, lets users make
atmospheric music and images in 10 interactive environments that can be
controlled with touch and voice commands.

"I hope tenori-on and Electroplankton will show the futuristic relationship
of people and music," Mr. Iwai said. "They give people who just listen to
music and never played musical instruments a chance to know creating music
is a lot of fun."

His two creations are part of a tradition in designing radical interfaces
for electronic instruments that began in earnest with the theremin in 1919.
Leon Theremin's device, which creates a violinlike sound when players place
their hands between two radio antennas, attained a popularity culminating in
a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1930. Though less popular today, the warbling
sound is heard in the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations."

"The theremin kicked off a history of interactive alternatives to
traditional music interfaces," said Perry R. Cook, a professor of computer
science and music at Princeton University. "Wave your hands in the air and
control the sound - our legacy is to try to be as magical as that."

In his own practice, Professor Cook both modifies traditional instruments,
like a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) trumpet controller for
Wynton Marsalis, and creates new ones, like putting together a computer
orchestra made from students' home-brewed controllers, built with
pressure-sensitive floor tiles and air-bag sensors. "Half of the work I do
is extending a virtuoso performer's ability; the other half is making wacky
new things no one has thought of before," he said.

Experiments with musical devices are popular exercises for academia, and a
community of innovators shares research at laboratories like the Steim
Center in Amsterdam and at the annual New Interfaces for Musical Expression
conference. But the devices rarely become successful.

Don Buchla, a father figure in the electronic music community, has marketed
several such devices. His first was a synthesizer built in 1963, the 100
series Modular Electronic Music System, which players operated by twisting
dials and plugging wires into what looked like a phone switchboard.

In 1990, Mr. Buchla produced the Thunder, a hexagon-shaped controller with
buttons splayed in rows like a typewriter, comfortable for the hands but
requiring a new technique. He followed that in 1991 with the Lightning, two
batons that play music when waved in front of an infrared controller.

Lightning II, the updated version, is so easy to learn that Ted Bunch, a
music therapist at the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment in
Philadelphia, chose it as a tool for psychiatric care. "It's a way that
everyone can get to playing a beautiful instrument without training, and has
led to increased concentration and decreased symptoms in my patients," Mr.
Bunch said. "It can elevate someone's mood and get them in touch with their
feelings." 

Electronic devices are also built for performance and are enjoying a
developing interest in the underground music scene.

Shawn Greenlee performs electronic music on an improvised controller under
the name Pleasurehorse at clubs in Providence, R.I., New York and Boston.
Mr. Greenlee uses a modified graphics tablet and pen to twist sound files
into railing screams of electronic noise. "I wanted to develop a solo
practice, and at the gut level convey a lot of energy just with
electronics," he said.

His interface, which draws from his background as a visual artist, allows up
to 10 degrees of audio control. "I can use two pens at the same time and
track their position and tilt like a turntable," he said. "It creates
gestures that are understandable to the audience - moving a pen on a pad is
readable, even if it's unexpected."

Mr. Greenlee is also a doctoral student at the Multimedia and Electronic
Music Experiments program at Brown University. His program director, Todd
Winkler, is encouraged by his student's device and how it fulfills a musical
vision. He distinguishes that kind of personalization from consumer products
like the tenori-on.

"The potential in such an interactive system is finite," Dr. Winkler said of
the tenori-on. "It's a cool thing for kids to play with, but I don't know
any musician who would want to be stuck with this guy's music."

Nor does Dr. Winkler think that such instruments will soon replace
traditional acoustic instruments. "I don't think you can ever replace a
flute or cello," he said. "Sometimes, people believe their weird instrument
is going to be the one people are going to play. But they're usually wrong."