Augmenting the experience of playing the piano: controlling audio processing through ancillary gestures

Granieri, Niccolo (2020) Augmenting the experience of playing the piano: controlling audio processing through ancillary gestures. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

Pianists spend many years practicing on their instrument. As a result they develop alongside their pianistic technique a set of gestural nuances that enable them to perform expressively and establish their own acoustic signature on the piano. This mute layer of nuanced gestures is rarely taken into consideration when developing new keyboard-based gestural interfaces. These often usually require new gestural vocabularies to be learned resulting in a disruptive experience for the pianist. The main objective of this research is to investigate how new keyboard-based gestural interfaces can enable musicians to control and transform live piano sound through the gestural nuances embedded in their technique. Specifically, how keyboard interfaces with nuanced gestural control can extend the creative possibilities available to classically trained pianists, thus stimulating new approaches to build intuitive interfaces for musical expression, and new ways of learning and playing digital instruments. Towards this goal, interviews, user tests and case studies were conducted with a range of pianists coming from different musical backgrounds, and Reach, an augmented instrument for live sound modulation controlled by gestural nuances embedded in the pianistic technique was developed.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 21 July 2020 Completed
Uncontrolled Keywords:	NIME, gestural control, augmented keyboard instrument, ancillary gestures, sound modulation, AMI, DMI
Subjects:	CAH10 - engineering and technology > CAH10-03 - materials and technology > CAH10-03-06 - others in technology CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-02 - performing arts > CAH25-02-02 - music
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > Royal Birmingham Conservatoire > Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - Music Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Kip Darling
Date Deposited:	31 Aug 2021 14:56
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2022 16:53
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12131