Bridging the Gap Between Art and Science EducationThrough Teaching Electronic Musical Instrument Design

Paul D. Lehrman, M.A. Todd M. RyanDepartment of Music, Tufts University 69 Conwell Avenue, #3

48 Professors Row Somerville, MA 02144Medford, MA 02155 +1 617 784 5342

+1 781 393 4888 todd.ryan@tufts.edupaul.lehrman@tufts.edu

ABSTRACTElectronic Musical Instrument Design is an excellent vehiclefor bringing students from multiple disciplines together towork on projects, and help bridge the perennial gap betweenthe arts and the sciences. This paper describes how at TuftsUniversity, a school with no music technology program,students from the engineering (electrical, mechanical, andcomputer), music, performing arts, and visual arts areas usetheir complementary skills, and teach each other, to developnew devices and systems for music performance and control.

KeywordsScience education, music education, engineering, electronicmusic, gesture controllers, MIDI.

1. INTRODUCTIONTufts University is not a place one might expect to find acourse in Electronic Musical Instrument Design (EMID). Themusic program at Tufts is very tradition-oriented, emphasizingtheory, musicology, composition, and ethnomusicology, withno program in music technology and no electronic musicstudio per se. The electrical and computer engineeringprogram emphasizes high-level design and development andhas no specific courses in audio electronics or recordingengineering.

However, there has been in recent years a strong push from theadministration to develop programs that are multidisciplinaryin nature, bridging the gap between C.P. Snow's "TwoCultures," the arts and the sciences.1 Because it draws from somany disciplines simultaneously, EMID has generated quite alot of interest.

The student population at Tufts is extremely diverse,intelligent, and talented, and also, as befits a campus close to alarge culturally-oriented city such as Boston, very aware ofcurrent trends in popular culture. Besides traditionalperformance ensembles, many students are active inextracurricular musical groups and music production projectsthat use electronic instruments and performance systems, withsurprisingly sophisticated results. So the raw materials for thiskind of course are definitely there.

2. HISTORY OF THE EMID COURSEThe idea for the course emerged from two othermultidisciplinary programs at Tufts.

2.1 Musical Instrument EngineeringThe Musical Instrument Engineering (MIE) program, whichoffers both a minor and a concentration, began in 1994 as a"half-course" in the Mechanical Engineering department forfirst-year students called "Design and Performance of MusicalInstruments.”2 It was "intended to pique the interest ofstudents in engineering by teaching them principles ofengineering using musical instruments as the educationalmedium."3 It soon caught the attention of Steinway MusicalInstruments, the parent company of Steinway & Sons Pianosand Selmer Musical Instruments, who formed an alliance withthe university to work on a variety of research projects for thetwo companies. Out of that alliance, and with the participationof the Electrical Engineering (now Electrical and ComputerEngineering) and Music departments, the MIE program wasdeveloped. The first students in the program were enrolled in1999.

Today the MIE program encompasses courses in:

• Musical Instrument Design and Manufacture• Dynamics and Vibrations• Fluid Mechanics• Physics of Music and Color• Music Composition• Acoustics• Materials Science• Finite Element Analysis• Technical Writing• as well as individual research projects and seminars

The certificate program is open only to MechanicalEngineering majors, but the minor program is open to anystudent with a good mathematics background and an interestin the field.

2.2 Multimedia ArtsThe second multidisciplinary program is the minor inMultimedia Arts (MMA), which is administered by theprogram in Communications and Media Studies. The MMAprogram, which prepares students for research and careers in allaspects and combinations of media, draws from the Music,Drama, Dance, Fine Arts, Studio Art, and Electrical andComputer Engineering departments. Among the facilities thatthis program created was the first computer-based laboratoryon campus for music composition and digital audio editing.

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Present author Lehrman was asked to join the faculty at Tuftsin 1999 to teach courses in these subjects and to act assupervisor for the lab, which is also used for courses in digitalphotography and web design.

2.3 Electronic Musical Instrument DesignThe EMID course was proposed in 2000, and was first offeredin Fall 2001, when it had an enrollment of seven. It was nextoffered in Spring 2004, with an enrollment of 10, and is beinggiven in the current semester (Spring 2005) with an enrollmentof 11. The students have come from many disciplines,including mechanical engineering, electrical and computerengineering, computer science, chemical engineering, music,sociology, mathematics, economics, entrepeneurial studies,and the School of the (Boston) Museum of Fine Arts, withwhom Tufts has a cross-registration arrangement.

The course is listed by both the Music and EngineeringScience departments. Financial support comes primarily fromthe Mechanical Engineering and Music departments, withtechnical support from the Mechanical Engineering andElectrical and Computer Engineering departments.

3. CURRICULUMThe curriculum covers seven general areas. While this list ismore or less in chronological sequence, many of the topicsoverlap.

• Broad analysis of what constitutes "music:" elements ofmelody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, dynamics, orchestration.

• Gesture controllers: analyzing the types of physicalgestures that are used to control musical parameters inexisting instruments, followed by creativeconceptualization of other ways in which physical gesturescould be used to control musical parameters.

• Study of existing commercial and prototype electronicmusical instruments and performance systems, includinglive demonstrations by their inventors and/or expertperformers. The companies and institutions representedhave included Buchla Associates, Alternate Mode Inc., SonicImplants Inc., Yamaha, Immersion Music Inc., RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, Northeastern University, and the MITMedia Lab.

• Finding and working with a wide variety of sensors formeasuring force, acceleration, distance, pressure, position,and other factors, and designing circuits for obtainingmeaningful data from them.

• Study of MIDI and how it is used to control performanceparameters.

• Study of IRCAM/Cycling '74's MAX and how it is used toprocess MIDI data.

• Study of Propellerheads' Reason, particularly the NN19sampler and SubTractor "analog" synthesis modules, andhow they are manipulated by MIDI commands.

4. EQUIPMENTTufts has dedicated a laboratory space approximately 10' x 20'.In the lab are two complete development systems built aroundMacintosh "Sawtooth" G4s with 1 GB of memory in each,running Reason and MAX under OS X 10.3.

Two MIDI keyboards are provided, each of which has a largenumber of configurable controllers: an M-Audio Oxygen8 andan Edirol PCR-30. These are used to help program Reason

sounds and to act as a source of consistent and reliable data fortesting Max patches.

Originally M-Audio USB Audio Quattro interfaces providedboth audio output and MIDI input, but they proved sounreliable that it was decided to go back to the Macintoshes'own audio outputs, which are fed through Edirol MA-10powered speaker systems. Given the small space of the lab,these are more than adequate, and for public presentations alarger system is brought. in. MIDI input is handled by Mark ofthe Unicorn FastLane USB interfaces.

An I-Cube sensor/MIDI converter system was used in the firstsemester the course was taught, but it was problematic in anumber of ways, primarily in the consistency of the data andthe cost of expansion. It was replaced in the second year bytwo each of the Pocket Electronic and CTM 64 circuit boardsfrom Doepfer Musikelektronik GmbH, of Graefelfing, Germany.These boards were custom-mounted (see Figure 1) on twoLexan bases by our Electrical Engineering staff, so that eachsystem can read 64 discrete switch closures and 16potentiometers or DC circuits, and translate them into MIDInote and controller commands, respectively. They haveproven to be very reliable.

Figure 1. The custom-mounted Doepfer modules

5. STUDENT ASSIGNMENTS5.1 ReadingsRequired readings include several chapters from Towards achoice of gestural constraints for instrumental performers,edited by Axel G.E. Mulder (IRCAM); MIDI For TheProfessional, by present author Lehrman and Tim Tully(Music Sales); Users' Guide to Propellerhead Reason, byDebbie Poyser and Derek Johnson (Muska & Lipman), andselected articles from Electronic Musician, Keyboard,Computer Music Journal, and IEEE Spectrum magazines.Students are also given several written assignments and amidterm exam which are primarily intellectual exercisesdesigned to stimulate their thinking about the relationshipbetween physical gestures and the production and control ofmusical sound.

5.2 Design and constructionThere are three construction assignments during the semester.The first assignment is to build a simple one-parameter MIDIcontroller, the second is to build a multi-parameter controllerand connect it to Reason through MAX, and the third, which isconsidered the term project, is to build a complex performancesystem and learn to play it.

6. CREATING WORKING GROUPSPerhaps the most important contribution to the success of thecourse has been in its creation of working groups comprised of

students with complementary skills. In each group there was atleast one student with at least one of these qualifications:

• musical literacy and performance experience• familiarity with MIDI and Reason• ability to assemble simple electronic circuits• woodworking and/or metalworking skills• sufficient computer programming experience to be able to

master MAX quicklyFortunately, most students had two or more of thesequalifications, since considering the small size of the class, itwould have been difficult to constitute more than one grouphad it been otherwise!

For example, among the students in 2004 were the followingindividuals:

• a computer science major who had the previous semesterstarted working on an independent project to design agranular synthesizer using Max/MSP

• a student from the Museum school who was also an activeDJ

• a chemical engineering student who was a fine guitaristand woodworker

• an electrical engineering major who not only lovedbreadboarding but was an accomplished pianist andcomposer

• an art history major who was a talented bass player, recordproducer, and sound designer

• a music and entrepeneurship major who had taughthimself Reason

• a mechanical engineering major who was an excellentcarpenter

• and an ethnomusicology graduate student with a degreein recording engineering

The students were divided into four groups for their firstassignment, and when the assignment was completed, theywere asked them to evaluate themselves and their teammates,and indicate whether they would like to continue with thesame team. The response was almost unanimous that theywould, and so the teams were kept intact for their finalprojects.

7. SPRING 2004 STUDENT PROJECTS 4

7.1 Sequence-oriented projectsTwo of the groups' final projects took advantage of Reason'sbuilt-in sequencer, and used their controllers to manipulatesequencer tracks in real-time, rather than generate individualmusical events.

7.1.1 The CarstrumentThis team built a mock-up of an automobile steering columnwith directional and windshield-wiper levers attached totoggle switches, a steering wheel (which they obtained from aplastic child's car that had been left in someone's rubbish)attached to a rotary potentiometer, a slide potentiometer with ashift-lever-style handle, and two foot pedals containingsprings pushing down on pressure sensors.

The position of the toggle switches determined which ofseveral procesing or timbral parameters would be controlledby the steering wheel. The slide potentiometer turned on andoff individual sequencer tracks. The foot pedal controlleddelay feedback.

7.1.2 Edward SensorhandsThis team used two garden gloves, equipping one with a force-sensing resistor on each finger tip and the palm, and the otherwith a flex sensor on each finger (see Figure 2). The flexsensors were mapped to Controller commands and the FSRs tonotes. In Max, the incoming notes toggled mute switches(touch on/touch off) for each of the sequencer tracks. The FSRin the palm was interpreted as a MIDI Start command, whichreset the sequencer. The incoming controllers were mapped tovarious timbral parameters in the Reason modules.

Figure 2. "Edward Sensorhands"

The students had also hoped to influence tempo and more-complex timbral changes using distance and tilt sensors, butwere unable to get them to work reliably.

7.2 The Digital Washboard performance instrumentThis two-person team (which included present author Ryan)bought an old-fashioned washboard made by the ColumbusWashboard Company, who claim to be the last manufactuer ofsuch items in the United States, at a local hardware store. Theyran a strip of duct tape along each of the 18 ridges on one face,and then attached conductive copper tape to the duct tape,anchoring each piece of copper tape with a screw, andsoldering a lead to each screw.

Each lead was attached to a different terminal on the CTMmodule, so that completing a circuit through the tape wouldgenerate a different note. To complete the circuit, thimbleswere glued to the five fingers of a cloth glove, and wired to the+5VDC output of the CTM module (see Figure 3).

In Max the students created 12 matrices which mappedincoming MIDI notes to degrees of different scales andarpeggio patterns. On the top of the washboard they mounted12 momentary-contact buttons, which were connected to thePocket Electronic module (see Figure 4). In Reason, thestudents created 12 different patches, each with its own MIDIchannel, using the SubTractor and Maelstrom pseudo-granular synthesis modules.

Pushing any of the buttons sent a Controller command whichselected one of the note-mapping matrices in Max and alsochanged the MIDI channel of subsequent notes. A slidepotentiometer on the board was also wired to the PocketElectronic module and served as a transposer with a range ofone octave: the Controller value it generated was divided by10, and the result was added to the MIDI note numbers beinggenerated. A second slide potentiometer was mapped to MIDIController 72, which is used by most of Reason's modules tocontrol amplitude envelope release time, on the ucrrentlyactive channel. Two more buttons were used to momentarilyadd or subtract 1 to the note numbers, to enable playing non-scale tones.

The students were able to play a reasonable version of HerbieHancock's Rockit on the device. In effect, they created astringless, highly-flexible digital autoharp—which, in-terestingly enough, was an instrument that neither of them wasfamiliar with.

Figure 3. The Digital Washboard and glove

Figure 4. Detail from the Digital Washboard

7.3 The Virtual LungaThis project was different from the others in that the studentswere not constructing an electronic performance instrument:they were essentially de-constructing, using similartechnology, a traditional instrument.

The project was undertaken at the request of Dr. David Locke,professor of ethnomusicology at Tufts, whose specialty is thedrumming of West Africa. During the semester Prof. Locke washosting Dolsi-naa Abubakari Lunna, one of the most renownedmaster drummers of the Dagbon region of Ghana, who was inresidence at Tufts. Dolsi-naa's instrument is the talking drum,or Lunga, which is played by hitting one of the drum's twoheads with a crooked stick with one hand, and changing thetension on the head by pulling on a set of cords connectingthe heads, using the wrist, forearm, and elbow of the other arm.

Prof. Locke has recorded and studied the musical language ofthe Dagomba drummers extensively, and asked for the class'shelp in creating a database of musical gestures employed byDolsi-naa. Dolsi-naa contributed one of his drums, which hemakes by hand., to the project.

The students analyzed Dolsi-naa's playing and determined thatthe musical events could be distilled down to four parameters:

• how hard the stick hits the head

• where on the head the stick makes contact

• the angle of the stick when it hits the head

• the tension on the cords

They then placed two force-sensing resistors on the face andside of the stick head, three piezo-electric pressure sensorsunderneath the head, and a short-range distance sensor on oneof the cords (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. The Lunga with distance (L) and force sensors (R)

The plan was to record Dolsi-naa using audio and video, at thesame time feeding the data from the sensors into the PocketElectronic, where they would be translated to MIDI controllercommands and recorded in parallel with the audio, using Markof the Unicorn's Digital Performer. The second phase of theproject would be to extract samples of individual events fromthe recording and use them to create a sampled instrument thatwould respond to the recorded MIDI data in such a way as tore-create the original performance.

Due to restrictions on Dolsi-Naa's time and difficulties inobtaining some of the necessary parts, the students were notable to complete the first phase of the project before the end ofthe semester. But they laid some fine groundwork, and it is oneof the goals of the class in the current semester, when Dolsi-Naa is again visiting Tufts, to make much more progress.

8. CONCLUSIONSThe Electronic Musical Instrument Design course at TuftsUniversity has hardly broken new ground in the field ofinterface design, but the authors feel we have sparked theimagination of a group of students and inspired them to thinkin new ways about combining art and technology. The coursewas unanimously praised by the students and several of themreported on their formal evaluations that it was one of the bestcourses they had taken at Tufts. The musicians were gratefulfor the new perspectives on music and musical tools that theywere exposed to, and the engineers were happy that they haddone so much hands-on engineering, and learned so muchabout music. As a vehicle for bringing together students fromvery different disciplines, teaching them and watching themteach each other, while having fun in the process, we havefound the course to be eminently successful.

9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of ChrisRogers, Jesse "Chip" Jones IV, Warren Gagosian, GeorgePreble, the staff of Cycling '74 Inc., David Locke, RobertoAimi, James Caccese, Todd Nocera, John McDonald, AnilSaigal, Janet Schmalfeldt, Mohammed Nurul Afsar, KarenPanetta, Howard Wolfe, Alva Couch, Tod Machover, and MarkGoldstein.

10. REFERENCES[1] Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, UK, 1964.[2] Jones, J., Lehrman, P., and Rogers, C. "Using Musical

Instruments as an Engineering Educational Medium."Proceedings, IEEE Frontiers In Education, IEEE,2002http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/fie2002/papers/1605.pdf

[3] all student reports available at "Music 53/ES 95me:Electronic Musical Instrument Design,"http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/emid