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by Margaret Milne
“A lot of people have the misconception
that you can be either an artist or a scientist, but not both,”
says Dr. Andy Schloss. “That’s just not true.”
Schloss should know. The School of Music professor
and his long-time collaborator, Dr. Peter Driessen of the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have recently received a
landmark grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council
of Canada and the Canadian Council for the Arts to investigate the
fusion of art and science. Using the science of gesture recognition
and the art of sound mapping, they are out to explore the future
of musical instruments.
 At
the heart of the project is the radio drum. Created at Bell Labs
in the 1980s, the instrument consists of two conventional-looking
drumsticks and a flat foam-covered pad. When connected to a computer,
moving the sticks above the pad generates sound.
“The radio drum is like a three-dimensional
computer mouse,” explains Driessen. “It senses position
in space.” This is done through small radio transmitters embedded
in the drumsticks. The pad is equipped with four antennae, one in
each corner, to receive the signals coming from the sticks. “The
antennae compare the strength of the signals to determine the position
of the sticks,” says Driessen. “We translate the motion
of the performer to electrical signals.”
Those electrical signals are then mapped to sounds
by a computer. Exactly what sounds depends on the details of how
Schloss and Driessen have programmed the instrument.
Schloss has had great success with the radio drum,
performing across Europe and North America since 1988. Now the pair
want to improve things. “We want to make the radio drum more
sensitive,” says Driessen. “There needs to be enough
of a challenge that you can become a virtuoso.”
When an instrument is too simple, Driessen explains,
there’s no room for an artist’s musicianship to shine.
That’s why there’s no such thing as a kazoo virtuoso.
In this work, Schloss and Driessen are exploring
the deeper question of what makes a musical instrument musical.
“In acoustic instruments, gesture and sound generation are
linked,” Schloss explains. “The power of using computers
is that anything can happen from any gesture. But this is also the
problem,” he adds, “that anything can happen from any
gesture!”
In addition to making the radio drum more sensitive,
they plan on aligning its sounds more closely to those of traditional
acoustic instruments. That connection to traditional instruments
is important to Schloss and Driessen’s work. “My reference
is always real acoustic instruments,” says Schloss. “These
are the best instruments. I have no interest in making cheap imitations
of acoustic instruments; they are my inspiration when forging new
musical territory.”
In the end, any instrument—acoustic, electric,
or something in between—is meant to be performed. “The
Internet may kill the record companies,” says Schloss. “It
may get to the point where you can’t sell recordings. But
you can always sell performances.” Schloss and Driessen are
committed to creating music and instruments that can be performed
and enjoyed. “We’re trying to maintain music,”
says Schloss. “We’re trying to keep it alive.”
The gesture recognition technology used
in the radio drum has many applications beyond the field of music.
For example, Driessen and Schloss are working with UVic psychologist
Dr. Janet Bavelas, who, in her research on verbal and nonverbal
communication, studies the gestures people make while talking. By
using gesture recognition techniques like those in the radio drum,
they can measure gestures with great precision as they are being
made.
They are also starting a project with
Queen Alexandra Hospital for Children to work with patients who
have a very hard time knowing where their bodies are in space (called
proprioception). For example, if they hold their arms out, they
can’t tell if their hands are at the same height. Lack of
normal proprioception can lead to joint problems, falls, and problems
related to abnormal posture. Schloss and Driessen plan to set the
drum to play different pitches for different heights of the sticks
and ask the patients to raise the sticks. When the sounds from both
sticks match, the patients will know they’ve moved their arms
to the same height. They hope that this audio feedback will help
the patients train themselves to have a better sense of their body
position.
 Margaret
Milne wrote this as a participant in the SPARK program (Students
Promoting Awareness of Research Knowledge), funded by UVic and the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
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