bEADS: Extended Actuated Digital Shaker

While there are a great variety of digital musical interfaces
available to the working musician, few offer the level of immediate,
nuanced and instinctive interaction that one finds
in an acoustic shaker. bEADS is a prototype of a digital
musical instrument that utilises the gestural vocabulary
associated with shaken idiophones and expands on the techniques
and sonic possibilities associated with them.
By using a bespoke physically informed synthesis engine,
in conjunction with accelerometer and pressure sensor data,
an actuated handheld instrument has been built that allows
for quickly switching between widely differing percussive
sound textures. The prototype has been evaluated by three
experts with different levels of involvement in professional
music making.