Princeton Global Network for New Electronic Musical Instrument Design

When the possibly of electronic musical instruments began to be a reality at the beginning of the 20th century, two major questions arose: What will these instruments sound like? and how will they be played? From early researchers like Leon Theremin and Max Matthews to contemporary designers like Brian Crabtree and Randy Jones, engineers, designers and musicians have explored the new sound worlds and interaction schemes suggested by the electronic medium, and many open research problems in the field are ongoing today. Unlike with acoustic instruments, the actions of a performer on an electronic instrument are significantly decoupled from the sound the instrument produces. This leads to several interesting opportunities for research paths that intersect with several academic fields, including Human­Computer Interaction (exploring, for example, the problem of mapping input sensor data to meaningful synthesis parameters), Digital Signal Processing (solving how the synthesized sound will be produced and what it will sound like), and Music Composition (how does one compose for a new instrument?) The NEMID project brings together researchers with diverse approaches to these problems and will foster new innovations through collaborative research in the field.

This project connects researchers at the participating institutions to
encourage and support collaborative research projects and short residencies/workshops between universities. Researchers involved are based at Princeton University, Stanford University, Goldsmiths University, Queen Mary University of London, University of Gothenburg, and Aalborg University Copenhagen. The culmination of the research will include concerts with newly developed instruments at some of the locations of the partner institutions: California, New Jersey, London, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg.

New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Electronic Musical Instrument Design, Sonic Interaction Design