Hey guys, so this is the video that Miguel and I put together
ahh, we hope that you like it.
OK, let's see it.
Vodhran
Hi, it's Laurel Pardue I am presenting Vodhran which is a
project that we've been working on at SARC with Paul, Miguel,
Matthew and Maarten.
The Vodhran is an instrument that is designed to be a percussion proto-instrument.
When we say proto-instrument because it's not always designed to play the same way,
we're trying to do studies looking at how people explore
instruments and how people learn instruments. So being able to
reconfigure it to play in
different ways is a big part of what the design is for.
The Vodhran is composed of Sensel morph,
something we highly recommend as an interactive surface,
and then inside there's a computer, a LattePanda, and then it is
driven using a
Virtual physical plate.
So this sounds like a metallic plate, but one of the cool things is we
can use the morph to control things so I can dampen it,
or I can let it ring. So as I said, it's a proto-instrument,
which means we can change how it sounds quite easily.
So right now it's kind of an open sound, or we can change it to a very
closed sound.
Because it's a physical model of a metal plate. This means that we retain
a lot of the natural interaction that someone coming to hitting a
plate might experience and expect you wouldn't necessarily expect
you woudln't necessarifly expect
that that's going to be the way a plate would respond, but
that's part of the fun of it is we can change how it responds,
but it still has some of that net natural characteristics to it.
Vodhran
We do highly recommend looking at the Sensel morph as a tool
for interaction. In this case, we specifically wanted to make
sure that it was a kind of a more embodied feel, rather than giving
someone just a Sensel morph as a trackpad
so it's embedded here to look more like a percussion instrument that also
meant that inside. As I said, there is a small computer
we are using a LattePanda Alpha. The thing that's really nice about
the LattePanda is it's more powerful than, say something
like a Bela, but it's also very compact. It can run Linux,
it can run Windows, and you can also hackintosh it, which is how
we're using it. While we could be using Max, we're using Reaper
and two VST plugins that were built using JUCE. There is one
called Stomoxys, which is what runs reading the Sensel, and
then that passes data onto Glossina which is running the
plate model. Now one of the cool things that we're doing within
the system is we are doing something called
Data-as-Audio, in order to make sure we have the lowest latency and the
lowest jitter between reading the Sensel, which runs at 125Hz
and the audio side of the plate model which runs a lot
faster, we needed to try and make sure that, that data could
get through as quickly as possible. Things like OSC had
high latency, so we're actually putting data into an audio
channel and the host, Reaper will pass that through without any
delay for making any sound.
Because we use physical modeling where the excitation is driven
by a microphone or pick up signal, the sounds the Vodhran
produces captures the differences between hitting with
the knuckles
Versus the fingertips, or the nails
You can also have other sounds like scratching and rubbing.
Hi, I'm Bex Burch and I endorse
the Voltron.
What?
The vustata
The voodelee.
The... what was it?
The Buran.
Bela
The Vodhran
Wow! It's so expressive!
Now I don't need to go skip diving for my sheets of metal.
What else can you do with The Vodhran? Well...
Well, If you are fascinated by instrument design and want to meaningfully
investigate aspects of what makes a good musical instrument
through carefully designed processes, ecologies and
specificities, the Vodhran makes a perfect research tool.
You can use it to run exploratory studies of how expert musicians
explore and react to a novel instrument, and the impact of
"intuitive", "semi-intuitive" and "non-intuitive" mappings on
exploration and learnability.
You might find musicians quickly developing
performance styles that range from what we might consider
more traditionally virtuosic.
To the more Avant Garde and unexpected.
Or you might use the Vodhran to explore a study
looking at the impact of the three audio action mappings.
"Intuitive", "semi-intuitive" and "non-intuitive"
on motor learning in non-musicians.
except for a worldwide pandemic breaks out
and halts all practice based research.
Vodhran