The purpose of the HapticSynth project is to design and implement an interactive musical environment for improvisation, composition, and performance. This environment will utilize haptics, or sense of touch, to create an intuitive interface for generating interesting musical sounds. An essential component of this project is designing a user interface intuitive enough to be understood by a novice user and nuanced enough to be played skillfully.
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HapticSynth consists of a force-feedback device, a MIDI keyboard, a workstation, and a pair of speakers. The force-feedback arm is capable of both receiving input from and rendering force against the user, creating a controllable virtual space for the user to work within. The user plays the keyboard with one hand, generating note events, and plays the feedback arm with the other, affecting the sound quality of these note events in various ways. The resultant sound is then used to control the haptic feedback the arm exerts against the user. In order to make the open control framework provided by HapticSynth into a useful instrument, the various control parameters must be chosen carefully. The attributes of HapticSynth's sound can be controlled arbitrarily by the controls. That is, aural elements such as pitch, volume, timbre, or effects (echo, delay, phasing, etc) can be controlled by control elements such as the keyboard's note information, the position of the keyboard's wheels (pitch bend, modulation), haptic arm position, or haptic arm velocity. Additionally, the resulting sound feeds back into the haptic arm to control the virtual haptic space. The nature of this feedback must be carefully chosen to reenforce certain musical behaviors and make playing HapticSynth feel satisfying. A large portion of HapticSynth's development involves finding a control mapping or several sets of mappings which satisfy the above requirements and is conduce to good music-making. |
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