Project :: Drawchestra

Drawchestra

Sketching is a natural way for one person to convey their thoughts and intentions to another. With the recent rise of tablet-based computing, we believe the use of sketching as a control and interaction paradigm would offer a new and innovative method of music creation.

Drawchestra is an interactive sketch-based music performance system which provides users with a canvas upon which they may create their own instruments by sketching shapes on a touch screen. The system recognises a certain set of shapes which it treats as virtual instruments or effects. Once recognised, these instruments can then be played by the user in real time

As an on going research project and a creativity support tool, Drawchestra is designed to extend novices' capability to make music. Whilst the overall research explores a rational cross-model mapping between sketches and sound attributes. New versions of the application are being developed in order to assess different mapping strategies.

People

Haojing Diao
Nick Bryan-Kinns
Yi-Zhe Song
Christopher Andrew Harte
Yanchao Zhou

Research Areas

HCI
Creativity support
Cross-model mapping

A user interacting with the Drawchestra prototype

Publications:

Diao, H., Zhou, Y., Harte, C., Bryan-Kinns, N. (2014).Sketch-Based Musical Composition and Performance. In Proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2014. London, UK.