This project is an ongoing one examining the suitability of sensors for specific tasks in digital musical instruments. It has involved a survey of sensor use in digital musical instruments along with a series of experiments to examine the suitability of particular sensors in specific tasks.

The first step involved a literature review of papers presented at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conferences from 2000 to 2004. The results of this showed that certain sensors are used more often than others in digital musical instruments. The following table shows the results.

For more detailed information see the specific project page for the survey.

The next stage of this research involved some experiments to evaluate the use of some of the more popular sensors for control of specific tasks.

The sensors used were as follows:

Participants were asked to rate the ease of use of each sensor in tasks involving playing simple melodies and adding vibrato to automatically played melodies.

Initial results are promising. User's have shown a strong consistancy in the preference ratings which they attach to the sensors. This would seem to indicate that a mapping does exist from sensor types to task types. In the note-selection task all users showed a preference for a position sensor. Of these, 83% showed a first preference for a linear position sensor and second preferemce for a rotary position sensor. The remaining participants showed an inverse of this preference. For the note modulation task all of the users indicated a first preference for a force sensor.

For more information, see the evaluation of sensors page.

Further experiments examining learning times for the tasks are in progress and results will be available here once completed.