Sometimes playing a guitar with a plectrum isn't enough. Jimi Hendrix used his teeth. Creative musicians are always seeking ways to make novel sounds with existing instruments, as are digital instrument creators like Andrew McPherson, of the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London.
"I call my little laboratory the augmented instruments laboratory," says Andrew. "It's about creating new musical instruments that extend the expressive possibilities of traditional instruments."
Take, for example, the piano. "There are lots of things you can do with a piano, but one of the things you can't do is continuously shape a note after you've played it," says Andrew. "You press a key, the hammer hits the string, and that's it." As a viola player, Andrew was used to altering notes by bending the pitch or playing vibrato, for example.
Magnetise the ivories
To achieve the same effect on a piano, Andrew attached electromagnets to the strings – one for each of the 88 keys. When an electric current passes through the magnets, the strings vibrate without being struck by the traditional hammer mechanism. A pianist can control the current by varying pressure on the keys, which is measured by a sensor. Press harder and you get a brighter sound, softer and you produce warm-sounding notes. And by holding down one note and gradually pressing the key next to it, a pianist can bend a note up or down.
"It's an extra layer of performance techniques, which are compatible with playing a piano in the way that people always have," Andrew says.
Andrew's piano has been readily adopted by musicians. To date, around 15 pieces of music have been written for the instrument, by a dozen composers. London-based band These New Puritans used an adapted grand piano on their latest album, Field of Reeds. Andrew went to a studio in north London to set it up with magnets for the recording.
His path to instrument development began with an undergraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I started out as an electrical engineering major, but found I was playing in the orchestra a lot, and taking composition classes, which I loved," he says. "I realised I should be doing both of these things."
Musical stickers
After double majoring in electrical engineering and music, Andrew did a master's in electrical engineering at MIT's Media Lab, which specialises in blending art and science in innovative ways.
He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, before merging his passions for music and engineering with a postdoc at the Music Entertainment Technology lab at Drexel University in Pennsylvania.
While there, Andrew worked on a simplified version of the magnetic resonator piano. The result was TouchKeys – a series of sensors that can be applied, like stickers, to a keyboard. He ran an online fundraising campaign to support the creation and musicians around the world gave it a warm response. "I aimed to raise £30,000 and I ended up with around £46,000," he says.
Andrew sent TouchKeys to 60 musicians in 20 countries in January. One has already uploaded a video to YouTube of himself using the invention. In it, he plays a keyboard, faithfully recreating a solo originally performed on a guitar – vibrato and all.
Unexpected technique
Andrew is also working on even simpler designs. He wants to encourage musicians to get more creative with the way they play.
"For as long as people have been making instruments, performers have been doing unusual and unexpected things with them," Andrew says. "Jazz saxophone technique, for example, involves playing the saxophone in ways that it was not designed to be played, with squawks, bends and scoops."
Andrew believes the more basic an instrument is, the greater the incentive for a musician to get creative. To put his theory to the test, Andrew and his colleague Victor Zappi have developed a box-shaped instrument that produces only one note.
The note can be manipulated via a pressure sensor, which is connected to a simple computer. Its software can transform the sensor data into audio, amplify it and send it to a speaker.
"We gave these boxes to 10 musicians, and observed the diversity of techniques that emerged," Andrew says. "It really was startling – everyone did something different." Percussionist Enrico Bertelli hums into the box, and even licks the sensor (see video, above). "To have a very limited set of possibilities can inspire you to come up with creative solutions for how you're going to use them," Andrew says.
Make your own instrument
You don't necessarily need a degree in engineering and music to get stuck in to building digital instruments. "We're in an era now where electronics and software programming are so accessible," says Andrew. "I've seen great instruments created by people who are primarily musicians and others created by people who are primarily engineers. It really can work either way."
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