A general method for the creation of new electronic musical instruments and a new electronic wind instrument
Daniel Taki · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 2020
This thesis investigates a general method for the creation of new electronic musical instruments and uses that method to create a new type of electronic wind instrument. This method involves the enumeration of possible methods of note articulation and pitch control, the implementation of such articulation and pitch control methods with electronic sensors, and ultimately the creation of new electronic musical instruments that have articulation and pitch control methods that may be impractical or impossible to implement in an acoustic instrument. Following this methodology, this thesis implements one such example of a new instrument: an electronic wind instrument whose articulation mechanism is breath control implemented with a pressure sensor, and whose pitch control mechanism is a fretted-style fingerboard implemented with resistive linear position sensors. A musician interacts with this instrument as with any other physical instrument, and it sends Musical Instrument Digital Interface (“MIDI”) data to another device (the “synthesizer”) which interprets the MIDI data and produces the final audio signal.