Exploring Pitch and Timbre through 3D Spaces: Embodied Models in Virtual Reality as a Basis for Performance Systems Design

Our paper builds on an ongoing collaboration between theorists and practitioners within the computer music community, with a specific focus on three-dimensional environments as an incubator for performance systems design. In particular, we are concerned with how to provide accessible means of controlling spatialization and timbral shaping in an integrated manner through the collection of performance data from various modalities from an electric guitar with a multichannel audio output. This paper will focus specifically on the combination of pitch data treated within tonal models and the detection of physical performance gestures using timbral feature extraction algorithms. We discuss how these tracked gestures may be connected to concepts and dynamic relationships from embodied cognition, expanding on performative models for pitch and timbre spaces. Finally, we explore how these ideas support connections between sonic, formal and performative dimensions. This includes instrumental technique detection scenes and mapping strategies aimed at bridging music performance gestures across physical and conceptual planes.