Augmenting Guitars for Performance Preparation

Martinez Avila, Juan Pablo; Hazzard, Adrian; Greenhalgh, Chris; Benford, Steve

Abstract

A substantial number of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) are built upon existing musical instruments by digitally and physi- cally intervening in their design and functionality to augment their sonic and expressive capabilities. These are commonly known as Augmented Musical Instruments (AMIs). In this paper we survey different degress of invasiveness and transformation within aug- mentations made to musical instruments across research and com- mercial settings. We also observe a common design rationale among various AMI projects, where augmentations are intended to support the performer’s interaction and expression with the instrument. Consequently, we put forward a series of minimally-invasive sup- portive Guitar-based AMI designs that emerge from observational studies with a community of practicing musicians preparing to per- form which reveal different types of physical encumbrances that arise from the introduction of additional resources beyond their instrument. We then reflect on such designs and discuss how both academic and commercially-developed DMI technologies may be employed to facilitate the design of supportive AMIs.

Citation

Martinez Avila, J. P., Hazzard, A., Greenhalgh, C., & Benford, S. (2019). Augmenting Guitars for Performance Preparation. In AM'19: Proceedings of the 14th International Audio Mostly Conference: A Journey in Sound. https://doi.org/10.1145/3356590.3356602

• Conference Name: Audio Mostly
• Start Date: Sep 18, 2019
• End Date: Sep 20, 2019
• Acceptance Date: Aug 23, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 21, 2019
• Deposit Date: Aug 26, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 24, 2020
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Book Title: AM'19: Proceedings of the 14th International Audio Mostly Conference: A Journey in Sound
• ISBN: 9781450372978
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3356590.3356602
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2995456
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3356590.3356602