POLYPHONIC EMBOUCHURE ON AN INTRICATELY EXPRESSIVE MUSICAL KEYBOARD FORMED BY AN ARRAY OF WATER JETS
Steve Mann, Ryan E. Janzen · 2009
Touching, diverting, restricting, or obstructing water jets constitutes a new type of user-interface for immersive multimedia environments such as totally acoustic, totally electronic, or hybrid musical instruments. The result is a richly expressive input device. In the context of a musical instrument, this device is called a hydraulophone. Developments in the rich expressivity of the hydraulophone are presented, as a new type of embouchure control. This paper presents a new concept called “finger-jet embouchure” in which each “key ” (water jet) on the instrument is governed by fluid-dynamics, rather than by solid key motion. The direct coupling between a musician’s finger and physical sound production in the liquid (which can be detected by underwater microphones and fed into a computer, thus creating a hyperacoustic user-interface) leads to highly expressive performance styles. By designing each note to be associated with one water-jet “mouth ” on the instrument, we give the performer an ability to fluidly interleave the dynamics of many notes simultaneously, producing a phenomenon named “polyphonic embouchure”. The result is the ability to perform richly expressive music, whether on an acoustic hydraulophone, or on an enhanced hydraulophone with sound pickups for hyperacoustic computer performances. 1.