the sHowl speaker-controller project
'Practicing' and/or tweaking an interactive controller
I have been continually drawn as a
player and researcher to a rather
odd hybrid digital-electro-acoustic instrument that brings together a
synthesis instrument, an electric guitar, and a hand-held speaker used
to feedback the guitar signal as well as control the parameters of an
engaging digital synthesis instrument.
Patching a small, hand-held
speaker out of the headphone jack of a
guitar effects processor produces feedback in the electric guitar
signal when the speaker is brought near the instrument’s pick-ups. The
mellifluous range of squeals generated by this technique earned it the
name “Howl” guitar.
The sHowl (sensor-Howl) turns this
hand-held speaker into a
controller with a range of gestures remarkably suited to express the
odd beauties of the blotar—a digital synthesis instrument based on
similarities between the physical modeling of flute and electric guitar
timbres.
When the digital synthesis
instrument is combined with the “howl”
electro-acoustic effect, an expressive dialog ensues between various
forms of digital and electro-acoustic feedback.
Re-coupling: the uBlotar synthesis instrument and the
sHowl-speaker-feedback controller
A paper
that I wrote with Dan Trueman and Perry Cook 1) describes
design and aesthetic motivations for the sHowl; 2) compares aspects of
the structure and control parameters of the blotar with an improved
version of the digital instrument called the uBlotar; 3) surveys the
timbre space of the uBlotar; and, 4) describes a process for mapping
the control parameters of the uBlotar to the sHowl (comparing these
mappings with earlier ones of sHowl to blotar) with the aim of
demonstrating the increased timbre space and interface possibilities of
the enhanced digital instrument. In addition, this paper addresses some
general compositional/theoretical issues of concern when mapping hybrid
synthesis instruments to gestural controllers.
