Multisensor broadband high dynamic range sensing: for a highly expressive step-based musical instrument

  • Authors:

  • Steve Mann;Ryan E. Janzen;Tom Hobson

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

We propose the use of multiple sensors of different sensitivity that simultaneously sense the same signal. Outputs of these sensors are then combined in a way that allows the simultaneous sensing of large-signal and small-signal phenomena. This sensing methodology is applied to the andantephone, a musical instrument that allows a player to physically step through the notes of a song as if they were walking along the song's timeline. When you stop walking the music stops. If you walk faster the music plays faster. A new, more expressive design of andantephone was created using a wideband complementary set of geophones to detect seismic waves transmitted from human footsteps. Each tile in the andantephone has one or more high-frequency piezoelectric geophones that respond to small-signals, as well as one or more low-frequency carbon geophones that respond to large-signals. These sensors are subsequently connected to a real-time frequency-shifting system that shifts each geophone's output to the correct musical pitch or chord for a particular note in a song. The proposed HDR sensing principle may be applied to many different sensing scenarios.