The Viblotar is a digital musical instrument (DMI) which was created to evaluate a number of hypotheses regarding the design of DMI's. Having performed some experiments to examine the suitability of certain sensors for specific tasks in a digital musical instrument, the Viblotar was created to test the results of these experiments. The Viblotar also provided the opportunity to examine the usefullness of tactile feedback and embedded audio production in a digital musical instrument.

The Viblotar is a monochord-style instrument which is played using two hands. The right hand selects pitches on a linear position sensor, while also controlling the amplitude of the sound based on the force with which the player presses on the linear position sensor. Two small force-sensitive resistors, activated with the left hand, allow for note bending and pitch vibrato.

Vibrotactile feedback in the instrument is accomplished by embedding two small 1W speakers into the front of the Viblotar, powered by a pair of 1W 5V amplifiers. The output from the synthesis system is played through these speakers, causing the body of the instrument to resonate and providing vibrotactile feedback to the performer. The synthesis is performed in Max/MSP using the PeRColate externals. The particular sound used is the blotar, a hybrid flute/electric guitar instrument. This sound coupled with the vibrotactile feedback results in the name of the instrument, the Viblotar for “Vibrating Blotar”. More information on the Viblotar is available in the report below.

• Mark T. Marshall and Marcelo M. Wanderley. Vibrotactile Feedback in Digital Musical Instruments. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME06), Paris, France, pp 226-229, 2006. Download (150K)

• Mark T. Marshall, The Viblotar: a big box that makes noise (and vibrates too!), unpublished technical report, 2005. Download (158K)