Dynamic Patches for Live Musical Performance

This article reflects the current state of the reacTable* project,an electronic music instrument with a tangible table-basedinterface, which is currently under development at theAudiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In thispaper we are focussing on the issue of Dynamic Patching,which is a particular and unique aspect of the sound synthesisand control paradigms of the reacTable*. Unlike commonvisual programming languages for sound synthesis, whichconceptually separate the patch building process from theactual musical performance, the reacTable* combines theconstruction and playing of the instrument in a unique way.The tangible interface allows direct manipulation control overany of the used building blocks, which physically representthe whole synthesizer function.