WANDERLEY, MARCELO

Researcher

Trends in Gestural Control of Music : An Overview of Research, Teaching and Resources

Marcelo M. Wanderley holds a degree on electrical engineering from UFPR (Brazil), an MSc from UFSC (Brazil) on integrated analog circuit design, and a PhD from the University Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI (France) on acoustics, signal processing and computer science applied to music (Felicitations du Jury).

As part of his PhD, Prof. Wanderley spent five years at the Analysis-Synthesis Team at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique) in Paris, where he studied ways of designing new digital musical instruments, i.e. musical instruments based on computer generated sound. Specifically, he focused on performer-instrument interaction with applications to gestural control of sound synthesis. This work was based on a two-pronged approach : a) the study of a generic digital musical instrument, its constituent parts, and the suggestion of novel approaches to its design, and b) the analysis of acoustic instrument performances with the aim of finding cues to improve the design of existing digital musical instruments. From 1998 to 2000, Prof. Wanderley was the technical coordinator of the European funded CUIDAD Working Group (Esprit 28793), that gathered institutions, industrials and users interested in the content processing of music.

Prof. Wanderley has published various book chapters and conference papers on his research. He is the co-editor with Prof. Marc Battier of the electronic publication Trends in Gestural Control of Music, and is the coordinator of the International Computer Music Association/Electronic Music Foundation Working Group on Interactive Systems and Instrument Design in Music. He is also associate researcher at the Observatoire Musical Français (Musicologie, Informatique et Nouvelles Technologies (MINT)) at University Paris-Sorbonne, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music at the University of Leeds, and part of the advisory group of the EMF Institute.

Prof. Wanderley will be the chairman of the 2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME03 that will take place in Montreal, on May 22-24, 2003.

In this talk I review the main current trends related to gestural control of computer- generated music and new digital musical instrument design.

Contrary to the widespread belief, this is not a new research area and a great number of works have dealt with related topics, both in music and in related domains dealing with complex multiparametric control. My main point is that there is not enough awareness of the previous and existing efforts and that without this awareness, it will not be possible to develop a scientific research field.

I will therefore present the most representative trends and resources in both research and teaching and will focus on three main sources : a) the cdrom Trends in Gestural Control of Music, b) the ICMA/EMF Working Group on Interactive Systems and Instrument Design in Music, and c) the newly created International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

This overview hopes at presenting a balanced list of the several developments in these areas and also point out to the new emergent directions that will likely to become research and teaching mainstreams in the near future.