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The current trend in instrument design involves shrinking physical dimensions to create smaller ‘desktop’ instruments. However, research on large interfaces, exemplified by Chaos Bells, a large digital musical instrument, explores the impact of size on music performance, providing insights into stakeholder influences on design culture and suggesting benefits for designers of instruments of all sizes.
This article explores the impact of instrument size on music performance, drawing on the Entanglement Theories of Human-Computer Interaction. By acknowledging music as a product of interconnected systems involving humans, objects, and sociocultural elements, the research suggests that designing large instruments can inspire innovative designs across all sizes. Rather than providing specific guidelines for large Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs), the focus is on highlighting entanglements within music-making processes, emphasizing the potential benefits of investigating under-explored niche musical practices for broader instrument design.
The design of acoustic instruments is inherently linked to size based on physics, with large instruments like organ and contrabass flute having dimensions determined by sound chambers or string lengths. In contrast, Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) can be designed independent of size for their sonic output. A current trend in commercial DMI design involves scaling down instruments into smaller ‘desktop’ versions, featuring keyboard keys, touch pads, and sliders. This trend extends to the academic instrument design counter-culture, particularly in the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) community, favoring designs with ‘fluid full-bodied interaction.’ While there is a growing interest in designing large DMIs among independent artists, trends reveal a gap in exploring gesturally performed large DMIs, with few examples of expressive control through instrumental interaction.
Chaos Bells is a 2 × 2 m instrument with 20 gesturally performed pendulums designed for both artistic and analytical purposes. The unique sound design allows for bell sounds that can range from droning to chaotic. Striking the pendulums or instrument frame produces short or cacophonous tones, while tilting a pendulum creates a sustained tone. The sound is generated by embedded accelerometers and a modified Karplus-Strong synthesis algorithm. The tilt angle of the pendulum influences the feedback coefficient, altering the drone decay and timbre, with extreme tilting leading to chaotic and distorted sounds. Chaos Bells, tuned to a C sharp melodic minor scale, offers a wide range of timbres influenced by strike force and performance tool used.
Instrument designers and researchers acknowledge the potential for deeper insights into instruments by combining lab-based findings with interactions in music communities (Harrison 2020; Martelloni, McPherson, and Barthet 2021). Following research studies in London, the first author toured the UK, performing electro-pop tracks from her solo album and gaining additional insights from live performances with Chaos Bells. While not part of the research, touring with Chaos Bells highlighted practical considerations unique to touring artists, distinct from non-touring producers and installation artists.
Odd Lust, an electronic two-piece, incorporated Chaos Bells into live performances, revealing the impact of instrument size on audience perception. Increasing Chaos Bells’ volume aimed to emphasize its live contribution. The touring experience identified implications related to fatigue, transport costs, storage, logistics, and breakages specific to large Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs).
Touring with Chaos Bells proved physically demanding and more expensive, requiring larger transport means. Despite higher costs, promoters often failed to recognize the added value, making it financially unsustainable for the first author. Negotiating load-in times and venue setups became challenging, impacting the artist’s enjoyment and perceived value.
International touring with Chaos Bells incurred additional expenses, reducing the possibility of profitable tours. Unexpected logistical challenges, like shortened load-in times and damaged equipment, further complicated the touring experience. The aesthetic similarity of Chaos Bells to playground equipment contributed to children mishandling it during an event.
Storing Chaos Bells at Queen Mary University in London limited its use, occupying studio space meant for music production. The account of touring with Chaos Bells highlighted tensions with industry stakeholders, such as promoters and venue staff, regarding fair payment and time allowances. Despite the unique musical contributions of large instruments, these challenges discourage the first author from pursuing future tours with such instruments, revealing potential cultural biases favoring desktop instruments over larger ones in the music industry.
After completing the Chaos Bells studies, the need for a smaller desktop version arose. The first author reconfigured the materials to create a compact Chaos Bells Desktop measuring 1 × 1 × 0.5 m. This cuboid design, occupying half the desk space of the original, maintains design aspects of the larger version. Despite its desktop size, Chaos Bells Desktop retains the selective pendulum performance aspect seen in the large version, with pendulums placed on all four sides. Constructed with smaller PVC pipes, it incorporates the ‘micro-scale within the macro-scale’ concept, allowing subtle gestures to influence significant changes in sound output. The sound design also exhibits timbral variation across registers in both lower and higher tones.
The Chaos Bells Desktop interface design features 20 silver pendulums manipulated with mallets or hand movements, diverging from the industry trend of fingertip-controlled black box desktop instruments. The controlled tilting of the pendulums allows for unique gestural interactions, enabling micro-gestural exploration of sound design. The desktop version retains the original instrument’s sound design and the use of pendulums as a tonal control interface, resulting in drones with tones ranging from clear and stable to broadband noise. The design, originally intended for larger performances, explores musical entanglement by considering instrument size as a factor in an entangled musical system. Designing at a large scale before pragmatically reducing the size yields a more unique instrument, demonstrating a different aesthetic space compared to designing small instruments from the outset. While performing with large instruments may be impractical for many artists, the approach of building a smaller instrument based on a larger one can lead to novel designs and benefit instrument designers of all sizes. The author, after four years of designing large instruments, emphasizes the distinct thinking required for large instruments, which offer different sonic and performative features. This approach has changed the author’s perspective on music performance and composition, highlighting the drawbacks of homogenization in using the same tools and advocating for diversity in musical interfaces to avoid marginalizing non-conventional artistic practices.
The future of large instrument design holds numerous unexplored aspects. The second Chaos Bells study delves into the responsibility of instrument designers towards performers’ bodies and how performers perceive themselves. Future research in large instrument design could extend into Accessible Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) design, incorporating collaborative efforts with disabled musicians. Lab-based Chaos Bells studies highlighted the role of instrument size in music performance, but economic factors make it unlikely for commercial instrument design companies to embrace large DMIs. Live performances outside the lab expanded our understanding of Chaos Bells’ impact on live music and revealed how venue staff and promoters may contribute to the industry’s preference for desktop instruments. Designing a desktop version of Chaos Bells showcased the value of starting with large instruments, leading to a unique design without commercial instrument tropes. The research influenced the first author to shift focus from commercially available instruments to exploring those not offered by the industry, including large instruments. Despite missed opportunities in the commercial industry’s small instrument focus, the researchers advocate for embracing large DMIs in both performance and design practices.
Source:
Lia Mice & Andrew P. McPherson (2023) Chaos Bells: Instrument Size and Entangled Music Performance, Contemporary Music Review, 42:3, 363-375, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2023.2277556