Abstract
We can define Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) as hardware-software solutions that are interactive and crafted to output sound according to users' input. DMIs are well known to unleash users' creativity but also to allow different and innovative experiences for the creation process, for example, smoothing the learning curve towards musical concepts such as rhythm and composition. On the other hand, Virtual Reality (VR) allows users to explore spatial interfaces in a natural and limitless way, which shows potential synergy towards the rise of new DMIs. In this paper, we introduce Songverse, an immersive DMI placed in a Virtual Reality scenario that allows users to create music by interacting with an environment designed to resemble the outer space. By adding systems, planets, and satellites to the virtual environment, the user can shape the produced sound through interactions that were extensively tested during the development phase. We then evaluated the instrument with musicians and non-musicians by interviewing and applying the System Usability Scale (SUS) to assess the easiness for people to create music using Songverse. As a result, users reported the use of the DMI as intuitive and easy to use, also highlighting the produced song as enjoyable.
Highlights
Acoustic instruments are a type of musical instruments that allow the user to perform directly on the sound-producing mechanisms in a tangible way
We performed a system usability evaluation with 15 participants, in which 7 are classified as musicians due to musical expertise or participation in musical projects, and 8 are classified as non-musicians. This classification is made by the user during the interview phase. These participants were grouped by experience with Virtual Reality (VR) applications, where 6 have experience from development or prototyping of VR applications, and 9 have no experience or have used a few applications
This paper proposes a Virtual Reality experience in which the user is immersed in a space-like environment, allowing the user to create real music while manipulating a virtual universe
Summary
Acoustic instruments are a type of musical instruments that allow the user to perform directly on the sound-producing mechanisms in a tangible way This interaction type is the main difference when compared to Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs), which are based on control systems that capture the user’s intention through input sensors and translate it into parameters to the digital synthesizer (Marshall, 2009). In the particular case of intangible DMIs, which usually require mid-air gestures to produce sound, building DMIs that are appealing to the user becomes a complex task due to the loss of intimacy between the user and the instrument We can explain this loss of intimacy by the lack of haptic feedback, such as sensorial touching, vibration, and pressure from the instrument and the absence of the sense that the sound is coming from the controller (Cook, 2004), showing how important it is to focus on user experience when developing DMIs
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