Imaginary Marching Band Paper 2

The Imaginary Marching Band: An Experiment in Invisible Musical Interfaces Scott Peterman Parsons, The New School for Design 389 6th Avenue #3 New York, NY 10014 USA +1 917 952 2360 [email protected] www.imaginarymarchingband.com ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION The Imaginary Marching Band is a series of open- The Imaginary Marching Band is not just an source wearable instruments that allow the wearer to experiment in interaction design or music generation. create real music simply by pantomiming playing an This is a project geared towards a larger goal: the instrument. liberation of spontaneous creativity from the theater, Keywords studio, and writing desk and to embed it into our daily lives. MIDI Interface, Wearable Computer, Fashionable Technology, Digital Music, Invisible It is also a performance piece, an actual band who will Instruments be performing at a variety of festivals and institutions around the world this summer and fall. This project is open-source, both as software and as hardware. The hope is to encourage others to experiment within this area of design: the creation of invisible interfaces that mimic real world actions, and in so doing inspire a sense of play and enhance - rather than diminish - the creative experience. INSPIRATION But almost none of these instruments have brought the The twentieth century saw frequent bursts of Dionysian joy of actually creating music to a wider innovation in the manufacture and design of musical audience, nor the act of performance out into the “real” instruments. From early novelties by Russolo and world; if anything, these inventions appeal exclusively Theramin to mid-century instrument modification by to the most experimental of musical spaces. And none John Cage and Ivor Darreg; from Laurie Anderson’s of these instruments ever caught on in the mainstream tape-bow violin and Michel Waisvisz’ electric in any meaningful way. Kraakdoos, to the hyper-speed advances of the 1980s Recently, entertainment technologies, in particular in MIDI controller design (see Bill Aitken’s SythAxe gaming systems such as Harmonix Rockband, the and Starr Labs’ Ztar) and functional deconstruction Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft’s Kinect, have begun to (Robert Grawi’s Gravikord and Alan Gittler’s guitars); re-envision how music is created and enjoyed. Apple’s and finally, to turn-of-the-century labors of love, such most recent iOS runs Garageband, a downloadable as Yuichi Onoue’s Kaisatsuko or the bizarre music app that utilizes clever virtual instruments Moodswinger Yuri Landman built for the band Liars in including tappable drum pads and pluckable guitar 2006 - advances in music composition and mainstream strings. music technology have been accompanied by flurries of invention at the technical fringes of the art. Fig. 1 - Laurie Anderson Fig. 3 Harmonix Rockband Drums Elegant and playful though these innovations are, they still limit the performer to the realm of “interacting” with a traditional screen, and thus they do not liberate the act of performance into the “real world” in any significant way. A broader fact remains: beyond these few recent innovations and bizarre historical experiments, the vast majority of instruments have been always digitized in a completely artificial way. Trumpets, tubas, basses, harps, cellos, violas, flutes, and nearly every other instrument are more often than not “played” using a keyboard. Yamaha has offered a few lines of products in this realm, including trumpets and clarinets, but they remain as expensive and bulky as the instruments they mimic and are still of fringe appeal. Fig. 2 - Gravichord All instruments to date have been built using the Arduino platform, with prototyping occurring on a variety of different boards (Duelimanov, Uno, Mini, Seeduino film). The current instruments run off the extremely common Arduino Uno in order to make them as accessible as possible for DIY home construction. MPX4115A Pressure Sensor (Freescale Conductors) Trumpet, Tuba, and Trombone Mouthpieces Fig. 4 Yamaha EX-TP MIDI trumpet The lack of wide development in this area, paired with the rich and interesting historical precedents in outsider and experimental music and the recent innovations in commercial product design, point towards the possibility for interesting work. The Imaginary Marching Band attempts to create a playful, creative product and performance that simultaneously excites people about the possibilities of music and asks broader questions about the nature of interface and how we can have more meaningful and exciting interactions with the digital world. INSTRUMENTS Fig. 6 Pressure Sensor As this work ranges over broad conceptual ground, I The Trumpet, Trombone and Tuba are realized using was initially unsure exactly what instruments I Freescale Conductors MPX4115A pressure sensor with intended to create. I knew I wanted to tackle the a small piece of plastic tubing attached. Blowing into Trumpet, as that had been the initial genesis of the the tubing causes the instrument to play. The idea, and Trombone, as it shares a great deal of embouchure of the mouth on the tube determines what functionality with the Trumpet and is the purest partial is played, ranging over three octaves and five demonstration of the concept. I had initially planned to separate starting notes, as it is on the real world do these two and then move on to more traditional instrument. instruments like the keyboard and the guitar. The selection of this sensor was the result of a long Once I had a working prototype of the Trumpet, the experimental process. Initial explorations involved direction was clear: nearly every single person I exposed piezo elements and electret microphones, with showed the glove to suggested doing a Marching Band, a brief detour into small fans. These options proved essentially adding a Tuba (electronically a replica of insufficiently sensitive, and they did not meet with the Trumpet but constructed differently) and then approval from consulted musicians: they were insistent creating a Bass Drum, Snare Drum, and Cymbals. I that pitch control was less about the strength of breath immediately responded to this idea, as it perfectly and more about the shape of the mouth. encapsulated the sense of play I was hoping to achieve This led to the exploration of pressure sensors, with the project. including TDH30 industrial pressure transducers used Arduino Uno in weather balloons (consumed too much power and Micocontroller required custom hardware tuning to ramp back from their default 3-10,000 psi) and the DesignFlex PSF102 pressure switch, made for sip/puff wheelchair devices (incredibly accurate but too big for a wearable). Freescale Conductors’ MPX4115 series provided the best blend of default range (2.2 to 16.7 psi), size (about the diameter of a US quarter) and power. The initial sensor was a flat model, sitting directly on the user’s hand at the joint of their thumb and index finger. Fig. 5 Arduino Uno motion in order to truly perform – as opposed to pressing any sort of button or piece of fabric in the palm of the hand. So a return to a flex based method of sensing seemed called for. I was recently introduced to Matt Johnson and his Bare Conductive non-toxic conductive ink, and he and his team had promising results after painting the ink onto stiff paper and then pressing or bending it to return force and flex data. The promise this technology holds is significant, but it remains months from market at a minimum. In the meantime, I began to explore a very old solution (used as early as the 1920s for Arcade games and car Fig . 7 Initial Prototype alarms): the rolling-ball tilt sensor. The musicians requested adjustments to the exact I bought a range of these simple, cost-effective sensors placement of the sensor but did not seem bothered by from Mountain Sensors (through Mouser), and found blowing directly into their skin. But critics from the the 107-2005 model, the middle size with the leads design realm complained that the placement blocked attached, to be the most responsive and easiest to work the face, and that the prototype in general robbed the with. This allowed for the responsiveness needed by experience of the grand gesture that was possible when the musicians while simultaneously forcing the simply pantomiming a trumpet and blowing into your trumpeter to fully pantomime playing. thumb. This led to the selection of a different form Ping Ultrasonic Rangefinder (Parallax) factors for the pressure sensor, that allowed for the attachment of a 1/4” plastic tube that I then ran up the Trombone Slide thumb to a mouthpiece. 107-2005 Rolling Ball Tilt Switch (Mountain Sensor) Trumpet and Tuba Fingering Fig. 8 Ping Rangefinder The Trombone uses the same pressure sensor mechanism to determine partials as the one used in the Trumpet and Tuba. The slide that determines the notes between partials is created using a Ping Ultrasonic range finder. I knew from the get-go that we would be Fig . 7 Rolling Ball Sensor using a range finder for this particular instrument I performed a broad survey of available technology in (though I did briefly experiment with a hand-made an attempt to best imitate the finger motions used to velostat flex sensor placed on the player’s elbow. Again, close a trumpet’s valves. Flex sensors proved too this cheap and innovative solution simply proved too unreliable and prone to breakage, and velostat inaccurate). conductive shielding stretched along the finger We tested a range of sensors, including the MaxSonar- returned too inconsistent a value. EZ1 and the ubiquitous Sharp rangefinder, but the Ping For the initial working prototype, simple buttons sensor was the only cost-effective solution that worked. sufficed, though attempts were also made to use the The reason for this is that it is the only sensor I found finger to complete a circuit both across a single piece that performs adequately at very low-distances (sub 1- of conductive ribbon and through the finger using the foot, a crucial range for the trombone).

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