# Instrumental...

- Site: Analog Industries
- Author: Chris Randall
- Date: 2012-09-11
- URL: https://analogindustries.com/2012/09/instrumental/

![Instrumental...](https://analogindustries.com/images/blog/Screen_Shot_2012-09-10_at_4.45.24_PM.png)

I'm currently doing some research and experimentation with a full-sized (22") multi-touch screen; I'll put up more info about that specifically as I learn/create, but in thinking about what I'm doing with that, I keep finding myself pondering the nature of what, exactly, an instrument consists of.

After giving it some thought, I've decided that an instrument, at its base level, needs to allow for three things:

1\. Expression. Any instrument has to be capable of triggering a range of emotions in the listener (since, after all, that is the point of music.)

2\. Virtuosity. In order to be an instrument at all, our instrument needs to have facets that can be mastered, and it has to have a depth of usefulness to warrant that mastery.

3\. Purpose. An instrument is mainly an instrument (that can, occasionally, be something else) and not something else that can also be an instrument.

For instance, take the spoons. I don't think anyone could deny that there are people that are very, very good at playing the spoons. So that might satisfy our second rule. But as for the first and third, that's open to interpretation. Not a terribly expressive instrument, as such. And spoons are always better at being spoons than being a musical instrument. As opposed to, say, a guitar, which might make a serviceable hurley bat, but really, is much better at just being a guitar.

On the other end of the spectrum, here's a thought-experiment: is Ableton Live an instrument? One can at least re-create a huge range of expression, and one can also master it. And it is most assuredly purpose-built for making music. I've often found that people that don't "get" Live tend to look at it as a DAW, while people that do tend to look at it as an omnibus instrument.

In any case, my goal is to create something that satisfies all three of my criteria above, and utilizes a flat plane with visual feedback as its playing surface. We'll see how things turn out, but once more in to the breach...

## Comments (29)

**inteliko** (2012-09-11):

Any latency ?

**the83** (2012-09-11):

"Any instrument has to be capable of triggering a range of emotions in the listener (since, after all, that is the point of music.)"

Is that true?

**boobs** (2012-09-11):

:eatspopcorn:

**synthetic** (2012-09-11):

My opinion is that the difference between a toy and a musical instrument is this: when you play an instrument, you make mistakes. And when you first start playing that instrument, you make little but mistakes. But then you practice and you make more music than you do mistakes, and eventually you can produce music with emotion and little to no mistakes. Maybe you can even have a unique style on the instrument. That's why when I see those Tenori-on grid things that play a pentatonic scale I think, that's nice for synth collectors who can't play a D major scale. But it's not quite Ivy League now, is it.

**noisegeek** (2012-09-11):

I was thinking about something along these lines recently, with regard to how instruments have evolved in different cultures. Specifically, the effect that the idea in western cultures that music should be a part of standard education of the upper classes. As a result, we've developed a whole range of instruments that are reasonably easy to notate how they are played. Some form of pictogram works well for most instruments common in european cultures.

But when you look at instruments from places like africa, that virtuosity you were talking about becomes integral to the process of learning the instrument, because it's almost impossible to make a simple notation of how to play. Can you imagine trying the tabulature for a Kora would be like? Or a Maliian one-string guitar?

And let's say you took the time to figure out the notation for something like this: http://youtu.be/j-WpMthq5tU

Do you think you could ever find instruments that were set up the same as those?

I guess what I'm getting at is that in western traditions, replayability seems just as important as virtuosity, but in much of the rest of the world it's of almost no concern.

**noisegeek** (2012-09-11):

Jesus. I should not post things online when my blood sugar is low. Reading that, you'd think I failed every english class I ever took.

**atlastop** (2012-09-11):

I disagree with point 2. Virtuosity isn't a characteristic of an instrument. Its a characteristic of the player.

The spoon players are an example of that.

And if you agree with that. Then nearly anything can be used expressively, in the right hands.

Also point 3 seems circular. An instrument is an instrument if its purpose is to be and instrument?

**analogcre8or** (2012-09-11):

The Saw Lady refutes 3? A good old saw is more interesting, and perhaps even better, as an instrument than merely ... a saw. http://www.sawlady.com/

Can't anything potentially be a musical instrument facilitating performances of both emotional and technical value in the right hands, whether or not it was intended as such in the first place? Live is an instrument, Logic is an instrument, your whole studio is an instrument. Instruments within instruments, networked into 'super instruments'?

I any case, I'm certainly looking forward to what you'll come up with.

**pepezabala** (2012-09-11):

The question wether Live is an instrument is analog to asking wether MS-Office is a typewriter.

Among other things, Live can get used as an instrument. I once had much fun using a laptop with its built in microphone, a rubberband spread among the laptop (from lid to bottom), and Live for doing an expressive performance, live looping etc.

Thing is that a real instrument should be tangible. That's why they invented the reacTable, to have a tangible interface for a software instrument.

**RGiskard** (2012-09-11):

I'm with boobs.

**dingo** (2012-09-11):

I think that what makes an instrument is intent.

They sell folkloric wooden spoons and spoons joined at the end. They play much the same as what I can pull out of the kitchen. Musical saws don't have the teeth on the side. Is the musical saw not actually a saw because it can't cut wood? Are they not spoons because you can't eat soup with them?

Abelton, residing on a laptop is also a word processor and tv and calculator. It is software and a laptop. The CRT for the fairlight could not get email with out a serious upgrade.

So for number 3, if abelton was stuffed into a dedicated hardware platform, or if you coated the spoons with something inedible or some other way to keep the form but negate the spoonness, then it would be an instrument. It seems to be a meaningless distinction.

To me the distinction from a DAW and an instrument is using it in a real time and hands on. A sequence might not be an instrument, but changing an envelope while a sequence running could be.

**Chris Randall** (2012-09-11):

@dingo: That's an interesting concept; I like where you're going with it. You're essentially saying "it's an instrument because I'm a musician and I _say_ it is an instrument."

That makes a certain amount of sense, I have to admit.

-CR

**bongo_x** (2012-09-11):

What dingo said, if dingo is saying;

It's an instrument if you actively play music on it, not if you're reproducing music on it. If I play a record on a turntable it's not an instrument until I alter the playing of that record. Dj's and DJ haters, FIGHT!

bb

**inteliko** (2012-09-11):

Musical + Instrument = Musical Instrument.

**dingo** (2012-09-11):

Clock theory bitchas! Grandmaster Flash sat down and drew up a template for mechanically encoded random access variable playback with active volume envelopes for live composition and arrangement.

Maybe it isn't just intent but but also interpretation.

**rollmottle** (2012-09-12):

"It's an instrument because I'm a musician and I _say_ it is an instrument." -- Heisenberg, if he were a musician.

**obscurerobot** (2012-09-12):

How about a modern re-interpretation of the ANS Synthesizer?

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/history-soviet-synth-ans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer

**metaphysician** (2012-09-12):

excellent discussion, and i was just talking with a student in my class about this very situation referencing my background, where i came from piano. at some point when learning an instrument like this you have to get serious and practice based on some kind of effective pedagogy. so that means jazz or classical, and and i took the former approach, and used that as a springboard to be able to eventually do whatever i wanted with the instrument.

this issue that's facing us now is that the instrument can be anything, and as often as not, it means something arranged in a non standard way, like a no-input audio mixer, or a tablet computer running some experimental software or a self made instrument. none of this obviously should free the artist/creator/performer from the concept of practice. i absolutely agree 150% with synthetic that a pro instrument is one that you sound can sound bad on. if i download an iOS app, i try to find out if it can sound bad, wrong, unusual, and if i can't, i won't likely use it. i too am tired of fixed scale grid machines masquerading as 'instant proficiency'. we're choking on that mediocre approach, a lot like the society of Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron'. we need folks who craft expressive beautiful things with some expertise and control over their setup, whether it's some circuit bent junk, or a sophisticated generative algorithm. i tend to prefer performers rather than theorists, but i always let my ears be the judge.

anyway CR let us know more details as they unfold. for sure, creating a control interface can be just as valid an instrument as a resonating box with wires. set that to control any one or a combo of synths and samplers and you've designed a new instrument basically. a keyboard or guitar offers certain strategies, so a new interface is like seeing the setup from a new angle that offers a different set of possibilities. i find things like Konkreet Performer or the TC-11 synth are interesting starting points in this new journey. we just shouldn't forget to practice so that it becomes a valid artistic voice.

**Chris Randall** (2012-09-12):

Excellent points. I will say that it is difficult to build in the quirks you speak of that allow "bad" playing. My tendencies as a designer are to limit every control I'm going to bare to the user to its most musical range (to my ears.)

There are good arguments to be made for some of these habits. For instance, applying a logarithmic scale to a filter frequency knob, as with a linear one all the musically useful values are in a very narrow band. Or not letting the range of the parameter go in to areas that would (not "could") damage a user's reproduction equipment, easily possible in DSP. That sort of thing. But in what we call the tuning phase of development, we go through each control, and pick the range that most reflects how we perceive the device should be used, and how that range best interacts with the other controls.

So does this limit the opportunities for the product to be "bad, wrong, unusual?" Yes, absolutely. I mean, what people pay us for is to make those decisions for them, and to package those decisions in a convenient single-purpose solution. Otherwise, there'd only two audio software products: Max/MSP and Reaktor. Because there's nothing we make that can't be made in those two products.

Anyhow, an update. I got my hit-testing code working last night, so I can touch an object (from the N available) on the screen and drag it about, and I also have two-way OSC working between the app and Max/MSP. So it's all over but making it look pretty at this point.

_CR

**shamann** (2012-09-12):

The original post kind of lost me at spoons, because I've heard fairly expressive things played by spoons virtuosi in my day.

My take tries to b more basic, that an instrument is simply something that can be played for its ability to make sound. For instance an air conditioner makes sound, but there's no effective way to play it, but a section of air duct can be played, like a cajon, and can be an instrument in that context.

Computers often make concrete answers painful, but I would say that the sound making system as a whole would be the instrument, touch screens or monomes or keyboards aren't instruments on their own, but could be part of one.

**metaphysician** (2012-09-12):

well, of course, each maker or designer of a tool has to locate themselves on a continuum of flexibility on one end and usability on the other. Don Buchla, for example, generally went for flexibility whereas Bob Moog generally went for usability. i feel generally that the more flexible/versatile an instrument is, the easier it is to make it sound wrong/bad and thus the more practice you need to control it. the less flexible and more usable something is, the easier it is to sound good/proficient in a shorter amount of time. obviously you pick your sweet spot between these two poles and see what happens.

i remember in early days of a setup i had Max (pre MSP c. 1996) controlling a DX100 synth. i reverse engineered the sysex by pressing buttons and using MIDI Monitor to watch the results. eventually i had every parameter under control - and the instrument/setup was totally unusable. eventually i first boiled it down to 11 parameters i could control, and started saving my favorite preset combinations of the 11 parameters modified by my custom LFOs and control setup. then i found out i could just trigger these presets i saved from the keyboard, and that's when it finally became a performing instrument. learned an important lesson which i think a lot improvisers/experimenters/inventors can skip. they want ultimate flexibility but the cost is that the instrument/setup becomes too difficult to even practice on due to the complexity involved. i think i draw the line on the side of performing, not inventing, but i do tend to prefer flexibility over usability, at least up to a point.

**coyoteous** (2012-09-12):

I'm with haboobs.

**ToneHead** (2012-09-13):

Returning to your original criteria, the only one that is essential is expression. Virtuosity is a social construct in the analysis of musical expression, but the initial attempt to express seems a more essential impulse. And the purpose of a musical instrument could be reduced to that of expression, so purpose is arguably redundant with expression.

With regard to your mysterious current project, trying to move from the realm of conceptual ideas to actual designs is where the rubber meets the road, as you know from ample experience, so best of luck! I generally agree with your philosophy that limiting parameters to "useful" ranges makes sense, because if you have control of even a few parameters, all of which are limited to "useful" ranges, you can demonstrably make more "bad" sounds than "good" sounds. Take a simple BBD chorus with "depth" and "speed" knobs. With only two parameters, IMHO it can make a small assortment of very "good" sounds, and a much larger range of sounds I would consider subjectively "bad". So limiting things to "useful" ranges does not limit the user from doing many godawful things (some of which might still be surprisingly expressive despite any preconceived theory to the contrary.)

What I've seen so far from checking out some of the best iPad synths is that multitouch surfaces are quite good at getting the sort of "wiggles" that are considered expressive (vibratos, filter sweeps, etc.) while being somewhat hard to play a decent melody on, much like a cello or piano or theremin. A flat rectangular surface obviously provides less of a sense of relative space than the cello neck or piano keyboard or certainly, fretted instruments. I think the biggest fault tends to be that visual engagement tends to be necessary to play precise intervals, which can generally be done by feel on traditional instruments with three dimensional playing surfaces.

Multitouch will really come into its own when there's a piezoelectric surface warping effect (or something of the sort) that can extrude small "fret" or "key edge" bumps at arbitrary points on the surface.

**negatek** (2012-09-13):

I agree that anything can be an instrument, just like anything can be music, but that is not a very useful guideline for creating an instrument or writing a song.

For creating a -good- instrument I think expression and virtuosity are pretty good metrics. Also it's important to both have an easy/logical way to make something traditionally musical with it as well as allow for open ended expression. Guitars are so great because the direct route to musicality is there in the form of chords and scales, and the ability to step so far outside that, pick scratches, feedback, and the like.

I think Ableton does count, especially with people having the freedom to attach all sorts of controllers to whatever parameter they wish. I think very few other software "instruments" count though, they just aren't versatile or interesting enough for for people to want to achieve virtuosity on them.

**audioel** (2012-09-14):

I think Ableton and software in general can be an "instrument" in the sense that someone can master it and produce complex and emotive music with it. However, one thing that I think truly sets traditional instruments and even hardware synths etc apart is that the virtuosity you develop with them is actually tied to non-visual motor memory. You learn how to physically move and gesture in order to express notes, timbres and phrases. This is not directly possible in software - without bringing hardware controllers into it. I think it is possible as it is amply demonstrated by people like Tim Exile and Moldover (not a fan of the music in both cases, but they definitely fit the "virtuoso" tag).

I think decoupling the music playing from the visual process is a huge part of defining an instrument. Can you play it with your eyes closed? Can you master it based on motor memory?

Visual processing in the brain is a different area than auditory, and even though they both result in directing your hands etc to make musical events happen, there's a difference in the (for lack of a better word) "editing" that happens. Non-visual mental processes tend to be much more intuitive and less intellectual.

Seems easier to get the ego out of music when its not tied to visual perception - specially things like selecting plugins, editing automation, penciling notes in, etc.

One of the reasons I've moved back to using an MPC for composition is the ability to jam on it with eyes closed and to have lots of dedicated controls that don't change.

Purely my observation of my own mental states in 22+ years of mostly electronic music production, and graphic design. :)

**atlastop** (2012-09-15):

Just recently went the MPC route myself... with lots of Moogerfoogers. Nice to close ones eyes and listen again.

**coyoteous** (2012-09-20):

I was talking to a bona fide musicologist sometime back that considers the saxophone to be the last new musical instrument of any consequence. I tried to make a case for sequencer and synth/sample playback combinations a la x0x, etc. and she shot those down as an extension of piano roll technology. As an aside, that reminded me that there is or was a museum of all sorts of musical mechanical wonders here affiliated with what used to be called the Cowboy Hall of Fame. They kept extending and changing the name until, I think, it became something entirely different. I believe it was in the basement/saloon. As a kid, I remember seeing these contraptions playing just about any and every instrument imaginable. That's now come full circle, I guess, with the Metheny Orchestrion. Anyway, the good doctor didn't think much of the Theremin, either. I got further with edited tape and its descendants. Then the discussion diverged from player pianos to sheet music, Tin Pan Alley, organized crime and the decline and fall of the modern recorded music industry. I wonder what she would think of this touch screen business? To her, it would probably still be a keyboard of sorts, as were most synthesizers. A point being that the classification was sometimes more about the controlling mechanism than the sound generator. Good luck with it!

**obscurerobot** (2012-09-20):

The musicologist's analysis seems flawed from the beginning. Player pianos are clearly devices for composition and playback. You can't edit them in real time the way you can an x0x machine or an analog sequencer. It doesn't make much sense to directly compare performance-oriented sequencers with piano rolls.

But maybe the problem is that there is relatively little literature about how synthesizers are actually used. Even if you are reading Brian Eno, you have to know a lot about software, generative algorithms and how a music studio works to understand the process stuff he alludes to. The Nate Harrison videos on the history of the 303 and the breakbeat are a good start. But we need more of that if we are going to move the process and technique of making electronic music from fuzzy tribal knowledge to something more persistent.

For me, half of what I do with music is something like (weak, amateur) empirical musicology. I buy gear and figure out what it does, how it informs the music that has been made with it. Along the way, I end up making some derivative music. Occasionally I'll take a path less traveled and do something new, or combine old techniques in a new way. I probably know a lot more about the process of modern electronic music than the typical academic musicologist, but a lot less than those of you who have been working in the industry and involved in creating real tracks.

**beauty pill** (2012-09-21):

The piano roll comparison is interesting but counterintuitive and my gut says "nope." Clearly a different thing.

It's novel/fun/"impudent" in that "naughty academic" way to remind everybody that there is a lineage to the piano roll but gimme a break. It's clearly not the same thing.

- c