Physical Society Colloquium

Designing and Performing with Digital Musical Instruments

Marcelo Wanderley

Schulich School of Music
McGill University

In this talk I will review various designs of novel Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) developed at the Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory (IDMIL), CIRMMT, McGill University. DMIs consist of a hardware interface controlling sound generation algorithms in realtime.

We will focus on the various sensing and actuation techniques used in DMI designs and discuss musical applications of the various prototypes created at the IDMIL, with a special focus on those created for the McGill Digital Orchestra Project, a FQRSC-funded three-year multidisciplinary project involving composers, performers and instrument designers.

A live demonstration will illustrate the musical potential of some of these instruments.