Exploring interactions with synthesizers as live instruments

The background for this project lies in the dichotomy of between the technological advances made in musical synthesizers since their use as musical instruments began in the 20th century, and the way in which they are interacted with as instruments; The latter of which often more closely resembles pianos of the seventeen-hundreds than they do any object that uses modern computing technology. This mismatch between the possibilities of synthesizer technology and the ways in which musicians interact with synthesizers as instruments can leave something to be desired, and controlling the staggering amount of expression modern synthesis allows for is seems to not be particularly well-explored – especially for patters of use related to live music.



In light of this, the following design is an answer to this problem. It combines several effects, all united by a control surface which allows the user to blend between the effects in novel ways through simply moving a point in an xy-plane. These effects include a filter, delay, reverb and distortion. By passing a synthesized sound of the players choice through these effects, new sounds can be found in real time by simply moving the control point closer or further from one of the effect modules to blend different levels of each effect – related to which modules the control point is closest to at any given point.